Part 40 (2/2)
”It's him,” Jeannie said to her father. ”He even sounds like Steve, except Steve is politer.”
She had briefly explained the scenario to her father. He grasped the broad outlines, although he found it somewhat bewildering. ”What are you going to do next?”
”Call the cops.” She dialed the s.e.x Crimes Unit and asked for Sergeant Delaware.
Her father shook his head in amazement. ”This is hard for me to get used to: the idea of working with the police. I sure hope this sergeant is different from every other detective I've ever met.”
”I believe she probably is.”
She did not expect to find Mish at her desk-it was nine o'clock. She planned to ask them to get an urgent message to her. But by good luck Mish was still in the building. ”Catching up with my paperwork,” she explained. ”What's up?”
”Steve Logan and Dennis Pinker are not twins.”
”But I thought-”
”They're triplets.”
There was a long pause. When Mish spoke again, her tone was guarded. ”How do you know?”
”You remember I told you how I found Steve and Dennis-by searching a dental database for pairs of similar records?”
”Yes.”
”This week I searched the FBI's fingerprint file for similar fingerprints. The program gave me Steve, Dennis, and a third man in a group.”
”They have the same fingerprints?”
”Not exactly the same. Similar. But I just called the third man. His voice is like Steve's. I'll bet my life they look alike. Mish, you have to believe me.”
”Do you have an address?”
”Yeah. In New York.”
”Give.”
”There's a condition.”
Mish's voice hardened. ”Jeannie, this is the police. You don't make conditions, you just answer the G.o.dd.a.m.n questions, now give me the address.”
”I have to satisfy myself. I want to see him.”
”Do you want to go to jail, that's the question for you right now, because if not you better give me that address.”
”I want us both to go see him together. Tomorrow.”
There was a pause. ”I ought to throw you in the slammer for abetting a felon.”
”We could catch the first plane to New York in the morning.”
”Okay.”
SAt.u.r.dAY.
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43.
THEY CAUGHT THE USA USAIR FLIGHT TO N NEW Y YORK AT 6:40 IN the morning. the morning.
Jeannie was full of hope. This might be the end of the nightmare for Steve. She had called him last night to bring him up-to-date and he had been ecstatic. He had wanted to come to New York with them, but Jeannie knew Mish would not allow it. She had promised to call him as soon as she had more news.
Mish was maintaining a kind of tolerant skepticism. She found it hard to believe Jeannie's story, but she had to check it out.
Jeannie's data did not reveal why Wayne Stattner's fingerprints were on file with the FBI, but Mish had checked overnight, and she told Jeannie the story as they took off from Baltimore-Was.h.i.+ngton International Airport. Three years ago, the distraught parents of a missing fourteen-year-old girl had tracked her down to Stattner's New York apartment. They had accused him of kidnap. He had denied it, saying the girl had not been coerced. The girl herself had said she was in love with him. Wayne was only nineteen at the time, so in the end there had been no prosecution.
The story suggested that Stattner needed to dominate women, but to Jeannie it did not quite fit in with the psychology of a rapist. However, Mish said there were no strict rules.
Jeannie had not told Mish about the man who attacked her in Philadelphia. She knew Mish would not take her word for it that the man was not Steve. Mish would want to question Steve herself, and Steve did not need that. In consequence she also had to keep quiet about the man who had called yesterday and threatened her life. She had not told anyone about that, not even Steve; she did not want to add to his worries.
Jeannie wanted to like Mish, but there was always a tension between them. Mish as a cop expected people to do what she told them, and Jeannie hated that in a person. To try to get closer to her, Jeannie asked her how she came to be a cop.
”I used to be a secretary, and I got a job with the FBI,” she replied. ”I was there ten years. I began to think I could do the job better than the agent I worked for. So I applied for police training. Went to the academy, became a patrol officer, then volunteered for undercover work with the drugs squad. That was scary, but I proved I was tough.”
For a moment Jeannie felt alienated from her companion. She smoked a little weed herself now and again, and she resented people who wanted to throw her in jail for it.
”Then I moved to the Child Abuse Unit,” Mish went on. ”I didn't last long there. n.o.body does. It's important work, but a person can only see so much of that stuff. You'd go crazy. So finally I came to s.e.x Crimes.”
”Doesn't sound like much of an improvement.”
”At least the victims are adults. And after a couple of years they made me a sergeant and put me in charge of the unit.”
”I think all rape detectives should be women,” Jeannie said.
”I'm not sure I agree.”
Jeannie was surprised. ”Don't you think victims would talk more easily to a woman?”
”Elderly victims, perhaps; women over seventy, say.”
Jeannie shuddered at the thought of frail old women being raped.
Mish went on: ”But, frankly, most victims will tell their story to a lamppost.”
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