The Third Twin - Ken Follett [135]
“And robbed me.”
“I never intended to, honey. I thought you’d help me get on my feet and find a legitimate job of some kind. Then, when you were out, the old feeling came over me. I’m sitting there, I’m looking at the stereo and thinking I could get a couple hundred bucks for that, and maybe a hundred for the TV, and I just did it. After I sold it all I wanted to kill myself, I swear.”
“But you didn’t.”
Patty said: “Jeannie!”
Daddy said: “I had a few drinks and got into a poker game and by the morning I was broke again.”
“So you came to see Patty.”
“I won’t do it to you, Patty. I won’t do it to anyone again. I’m going to go straight.”
“You better!” Patty said.
“I have to, I got no choice.”
Jeannie said: “But not yet.”
They both looked at her. Patty said nervously: “Jeannie, what are you talking about?”
“You have to do one more job,” Jeannie said to Daddy. “For me. A burglary. Tonight.”
42
IT WAS GETTING DARK AS THEY ENTERED THE JONES FALLS campus. “Pity we don’t have a more anonymous car,” her father said as Jeannie drove the red Mercedes into the student parking lot. “A Ford Taurus is good, or a Buick Regal. You see fifty of those a day, nobody remembers them.”
He got out of the car, carrying a battered tan leather briefcase. In his checked shirt and rumpled pants, with untidy hair and worn shoes, he looked just like a professor.
Jeannie felt strange. She had known for years that her daddy
was a thief, but she herself had never done anything more illegal than driving at seventy miles an hour. Now she was about to break into a building. It felt like crossing an important line. She did not think she was doing wrong but, all the same, her self-image was shaken. She had always thought of herself as a law-abiding citizen. Criminals, including her father, had always seemed to belong to another species. Now she was joining them.
Most of the students and faculty had gone home, but there were still a few people walking around: professors working late, students going to social events, janitors locking up, and security guards patrolling. Jeannie hoped she would not see anyone she knew.
She was wound up tight like a guitar string, ready to snap. She was afraid for her father more than herself. If they were caught it would be deeply humiliating for her, but that was all; the courts did not send you to jail for breaking into your own office and stealing one floppy disk. But Daddy, with his record, would go down for years. He would be an old man when he came out.
The street lamps and exterior building lights were beginning to come on. Jeannie and her father walked past the tennis court, where two women were playing under floodlights. Jeannie remembered Steve speaking to her after the game last Sunday. She had given him the brush-off automatically, he had looked so confident and pleased with himself. How wrong she had been in her first judgment of him.
She nodded toward the Ruth W. Acorn Psychology Building. “That’s the place,” she said. “Everyone calls it Nut House.”
“Keep walking at the same speed,” he said. “How do you get in that front door?”
“A plastic card, same as my office door. But my card doesn’t work anymore. I might be able to borrow one.”
“No need. I hate accomplices. How do we get around the back?”
“I’ll show you.” A footpath across a lawn led past the far side of Nut House toward the visitors’ parking lot. Jeannie followed it, then turned off to a paved yard at the back of the building. Her father ran a professional eye over the rear elevation. “What’s that door?” he said, pointing. “I think it’s a fire door.”
He nodded. “It probably has a crossbar at waist level, the kind that opens the door if you push against it.”
“I believe it does. Is that where we’re going to get in?”
“Yes.”
Jeannie remembered a sign on the inside of it that read THIS DOOR Is ALARMED. “You’ll set off an alarm,” she said.
“No, I won’t,” he replied. He looked around. “Do many people come around the back here?”
“No. Especially at night.