Lisa Scottoline - Mistaken Identity

“What?” Mike said, surprised. Then he got out of the car and went after her, but Bennie was already flying into the station.

Bennie spun around in the cavernous concourse, her pumps pivoting on the marble. The walls extended almost a hundred feet high, ending in a ceiling patterned with squares of carefully restored molding. Elongated frosted windows cast muted lighting on the lobby floor. The concourse was almost completely empty. The line at the information desk held only two students with backpacks; there was no business travel on Saturday afternoons and few tourists arrived by rail. Connolly wasn’t anywhere in sight.

Where could she be? The ticket counter, of course. Connolly would need to buy a ticket, first thing. Maybe she’d had it planned? Reserved, somehow?

Bennie ran across a floor polished to a high sheen and hurried to the ticket windows. NEXT AGENT AVAILABLE, read the lighted sign over the bank of windows. The white-shirted agents were helping customers. Connolly wasn’t among them. Maybe she was using a ticket machine. Bennie scanned the machines in the area, then the telephones. Connolly wasn’t in sight. How could she have gone so fast? Then Bennie thought of it. The ladies’ room! She took off for the bathroom, behind the ticket counters.

Bennie chugged inside the rank washroom, her pumps clattering over the black tile floor. She looked under each closed stall door but didn’t see any familiar gray pumps. She went back to the mirrors at the bathroom entrance. “Excuse me,” she said to a businesswoman applying blusher. “I’m looking for a woman, my twin. She looks exactly like me. Did she come in here?”

“Not that I saw.”

“Thanks,” Bennie said, and took off. Maybe Connolly was in one of the stores ringing the main concourse. She could be buying coffee, a snack, a magazine, gum even. With what money? Bennie hustled across the lobby, noticing that she’d picked up Mike after the ladies’ room.

The large bodyguard jogged to Bennie’s side, his jacket open and his tie flapping. “Are we having fun yet?” he asked.

“I’ll check McDonald’s, you check the bookstore.”

“Can’t do that. Have to stay with you. The contract.”

“Then put on the afterburners.” Bennie scooted into McDonald’s, but Connolly wasn’t there. She checked the bathroom, then hustled through a large bookstore, a video store, a food market area, even a flower shop, all with a barely winded Mike in tow. Connolly wasn’t in any of them. Bennie double-checked the gates that went to New York, Washington, and Boston. Even the suburban lines running west and north. No Connolly.

Bennie ended up, exhausted and panting, in the center of the concourse in front of a marble statue. Her suit was damp with sweat and she raked hair from her eyes. She whirled around one final time. The lobby was completely empty. Connolly wasn’t up, down, or around. Maybe she had simply run through the station and been picked up by someone. “I can’t believe it,” Bennie said, as Mike came jogging up on the other side.

“She’s gone,” he said, finally panting.

“She can’t be.”

“She is. We looked everywhere.”

“We’ll wait. She’ll show up. She has to.”

“No, she doesn’t.” Mike laid a heavy hand on Bennie’s shoulder. “Listen, I’ve been in security a long time. Before that I did private detective work. I can tell you, if somebody don’t want to be found, they won’t be.”

“We could wait.”

“She won’t show up.”

“Shouldn’t we wait?” Bennie’s eyes stung. Inside she felt a sort of panic. “Mike?”

“Time for you to go home,” the bodyguard said. He looped a strong arm around Bennie’s shoulder and guided her out of the train station.

Bennie opened her front door and was greeted by an exuberant dog and the aroma of fresh coffee. “No jumping, no jumping,” she said to the golden clawing her suit, but her heart wasn’t in it. In her hand was the day’s mail, which she had retrieved from the slot when she unlocked the front door. There were the usual catalogs, bills, and a People magazine, but it was the last business letter that made her breath catch in her throat. The envelope was business white and it had the name of a lab printed in the upper left corner. The lab in Virginia. It was the DNA test results. They’d come in today’s mail. After Connolly had vanished.

“Bennie?” Grady’s voice came from the dining room, over the whine of an orbital sander losing power. He appeared after a minute in a gray T-shirt and jeans, with a coffee mug in hand. He set it down the moment he saw Bennie’s face. “Honey, you okay?”

Bennie faced him, uncertain. She hadn’t seen Grady in so long she’d almost forgotten what he looked like. Mostly he looked appealing. Curly fair hair, round gold glasses, an intelligent smile. A puzzled expression, but distant. “I think I’m okay,” she said, and he cocked his head.

“You won the case. Congratulations.” Grady’s arms flopped at his sides, but he didn’t move to kiss her. “I was thinking maybe we could go out. Celebrate. Get reacquainted.”

“Look.” Bennie held up the mail. It was hard to speak. The dog danced at her feet, then plopped his butt sloppily on the plywood floor, his tail thumping hard. “The DNA test.”

“You’re kidding.” Grady brushed his hand on his jeans, leaving sawdust handprints on his thighs. “You want me to open it for you?”

“No.”

“You sure you want to know?”

“Sure.” Bennie looked at the envelope in her hands. “I didn’t go through all this not to know. Right?”

Grady nodded. “Sit down, then.”

Bennie looked around. The room was a dark shell of lath and plaster. Tile for the new kitchen was stacked in boxes in the center of the plywood floor. “We don’t have a chair.”

“An excellent point.” Grady pulled over a box of tile, and Bennie sat down. “Okay?”

“Okay.” Bennie tore open the envelope. A single sheet of paper was inside, reminding her of the verdict sheet earlier in the day. In court she had known what she wanted the verdict to be. This time she was less certain. Bennie extracted it from the envelope and opened it up.

“Well?” Grady asked, standing apart from her, his hands resting on his hips.

“I can’t tell.” Bennie squinted at the paper, which contained a large table. Twin Analysis, said the title. There were five entries of what looked to Bennie like gobbledygook, in columns on the left. CRI-pS194, CRI-pL427-4, CRI-pL159-2, CRI-pR365-1, CRI-pL355-8, p144-D6. The numbers swam before her eyes. At the bottom of the page was a doctor’s hasty signature, over a line that read MOLECULAR DIAGNOSTICS LABORATORY. “Christ! I can’t understand it.”

“Let me see.” Grady stood behind her and scrutinized the paper over her shoulder. “It isn’t very clear, is it?”

“You’d think they could make it easier.” Bennie read across the columns of four-digit numbers, under Sample A and Sample B, and noticed something striking. The numbers matched. She read them again, her heart pounding.

Grady looked up from the paper. “You’re twins. Lord, you’re really twins.”

Bennie swallowed hard. She had known it inside, but confirming it boggled the mind. “I couldn’t get this yesterday?” she said, her voice almost a cry. “Why didn’t I tell them to fax it? She’s gone now. Connolly’s gone.”

“What?” Grady asked, and Bennie told him the whole story, while he settled onto the plywood floor, Indian style, and listened quietly. He fetched coffee for her, and Grady interrupted with only a few questions, managing to learn more than she wanted and even more than she understood. By the end of the conversation, Bennie felt better, but restless. “So, do you think I should try to find her?”