Compulsion

by Keith Ablow

  "Like?"

  "Julia did get quite depressed after the twins were born." I kept any alarm out of my voice. "I guess she even made a stray comment about wishing they hadn’t been born."

  Anderson raised an eyebrow. "All worth hearing," he said. "I'm glad you made the trip."

  "Me, too," I said.

  "I reviewed that data you e-mailed about the risk of a second infanticide when one twin has been killed," Anderson said. "Seventy percent. I'm going to press the Department of Social Services to intervene and get Tess out of there."

  I didn't like the idea of forcing Julia's hand, but the risk to Tess was too high to worry about hurt feelings. "It's the right thing to do," I said.

  As we passed Bishop's "watch house" another Range Rover pulled behind us.

  Anderson glanced into the rearview mirror, then over at me. "You should get out of that hotel and head to my place for the night."

  I instinctively felt for the Browning Baby in my front pocket. "Not a bad idea," I said. "Maybe I'll head over after the funeral."

  "Why just maybe?" he asked.

  "Because my room is nonrefundable," I joked.

  Anderson shook his head. "If you're planning anything with Julia, you're not thinking straight."

  "I'll probably come by," I said, feeling the urge to close down the discussion.

  "You've been warned," Anderson said.

  10

  The Brant Point Racket Club on North Beach Street is the kind of place you'd expect people of leisure to spend leisure time. The fences around the outdoor courts are hung with green nylon sheeting intended to protect the players not only from the sun but from the paparazzi. The clubhouse is understated and elegant, with deep armchairs to linger in and talk about this shot or that shot, this racket or that, all the while nursing a gin and tonic, maybe checking a stock quote on a Palm VII.

  I had driven over to Brant Point after Anderson left me at my hotel. I thought I might get a few minutes alone with Garret Bishop. My gut told me that something other than grief was keeping him scarce.

  I got to Garret's singles match just before 2:00 p.m. The temporary bleachers around the court were filled with spectators. Garret was already winning the third set 4-1. He'd taken the first two 6-2, 6-4. He was serving for another game point. He leaned back. Beads of sweat flew off his brow. He tossed the ball over his head, tracking it with his eyes like a hunter. Then he reached to the sky and funneled every ounce of strength in his powerful body to his arm and wrist. A dull thud broke the silence, his opponent swung and missed, and, just like that, it was 5-1.

  What sort of young man, I wondered, can perform with excellence on a tennis court when his baby sister's funeral is to be held four hours later? And what had it cost Garret to buckle to Darwin Bishop's demands for performance and grace under any pressure, no matter how intense? Where had all his anxiety, sadness, and fear gone?

  The match ended just five minutes later-6-2, 6-4, 6-1. Garret scored match point, moving in for a weak lob, posturing to slam the ball down the right baseline, making his opponent back up to defend against his power, then tapping the ball ever so gently, so that it dropped just over the net.

  As applause filled the air, Garret simply turned and walked off the court-no fist raised in triumph, no nod to the crowd, no handshake at the net.

  I tried to get his attention when he was about halfway to the clubhouse. "Garret," I called out, from a few steps behind him. He didn't stop. I quickened my pace until I was walking beside him. He kept staring straight ahead. "Garret," I said, a little louder.

  He turned to me, a blank expression on his face. "What?" he said, without any hint that he remembered we had met.

  "I'm Frank Clevenger," I said. "I met you with your mother at the house. I was with Officer Anderson."

  He kept walking.

  "The psychiatrist," I prodded him.

  "I know who you are," he said, without breaking pace.

  "I'd like to talk with you for a minute," I said.

  "I don't need to," he said. He picked up his pace. "I'm getting through it."

  It dawned on me that he might think Julia had sent me to help him with his feelings about the murder. "No one knows that I've come here," I said. "Your father and mother didn't send me. I came because I need information."

  "Such as?" he said.

  I didn't think I had the luxury of being subtle. "I want you to tell me what you can about your father."

  That stopped him. He turned to me. "My father," he said, with palpably fragile patience.

  "Yes," I said.

  "What do you need to know about him?" he asked.

  I had the feeling I would get more, rather than less, information from Garret if he knew I suspected his father of involvement in Brooke's death. Maybe he'd relish the chance to get out from under Bishop's thumb. "I'm not comfortable with the party line that Billy killed your sister," I said. "I'm looking at other possibilities."

  He looked at me doubtfully. "Isn't Win the one paying you?" he asked.

  I remembered that Billy had asked me the same question. I also noted that Garret called his father by his first name. No terms of endearment anywhere in sight. "No," I said. "I work for the police."

  "They usually work for Win, too."

  Garret's statement gave me a moment's pause about whether North Anderson had always kept himself at arm's length from the Bishop family. But the doubt didn't last more than that moment. Anderson and I had been through hell and back together. "Nobody investigating this case is on your dad's payroll," I said. "That may be a problem for him."

  He glanced at the ground, then back at me, sizing me up. "Okay," he said. "So, talk."

  "Do you think Billy killed your sister?" I said.

  "No," he said.

  "What do you think happened?"

  "I think she was born dead."

  "Excuse me?"

  "Stillborn," he said.

  I shrugged. "I don't get it."

  "Not just Brooke. Her and Tess."

  "What do you mean?" I said.

  "I mean we're all walking dead people in that house," Garret said. "Only one person matters. Darwin Harris Bishop."

  "He made you play in the tournament today," I said. "Claire told me that."

  "Claire," he repeated with scorn. He shook his head. "You don't get it," he said.

  "Get what?"

  "It's not this tournament. It's not tennis. It's everything. What I wear. Who my friends are. What I study. What I think. What I feel."

  In some ways, Garret's complaint sounded like one that most seventeen-year-olds would have about their fathers or mothers. And that probably explained why I responded with an unfortunate cliché. "You don't have your own life," I said.

  "Right on," he said. "I'm going through a phase."

  "I'm sorry," I said immediately. "I didn't mean it that way."

  Garret looked at the ground again, kicked the sand, and chuckled to himself.

  "I really do want to know what it's like in that house," I said.

  He looked back at me. His lip curled. "It's like being eaten from the inside out, until there's nothing left of you," he said. "Dad's kind of like Jeffrey Dahmer. Only he doesn't have to pour acid in your head to turn you into a zombie. He does it in other ways."

  Garret clearly thought of his father as psychologically fatal to him, but I wanted to know if he had any direct physical evidence that would link him to Brooke's murder. "Did you see anything the night Brooke died?" I asked. "Do you think your father…?"

  He looked away. "You still aren't getting the point," he said.

  "I want to," I said. "Give me another shot at it."

  "There's only air in our family for Win. The rest of us have been struggling to breathe our whole lives. So it doesn't matter if he suffocated Brooke." He looked at me more intensely. "It really doesn't. In a way, it's better. Less painful. Quicker."

  Garret was speaking the language of learned helplessness, the mindset that takes over in prison
ers who, seeing no chance of escape, stop struggling to achieve it. "You still might be able to help Billy," I reminded him. "I know you two aren't close, but he could spend his life behind bars."

  "He'll have more freedom there," Garret said. "And I doubt the guards would beat him as badly."

  I heard that loud and clear. Julia, Billy, and Garret all seemed to disagree with Darwin Bishop's claim that the wounds on Billy's back were self-inflicted. "If Billy is innocent, and you can prove it," I said, "then you must have seen something the night Brooke died."

  "And if I step out on a limb and testify against Win, and Win goes free," Garret said, "then what do I do?"

  I didn't have a good answer to that question. In the seconds I took to try to think of one, Garret started to walk away. "Where are you going?" I called to him.

  He turned back toward me, but didn't stop moving. "Think about it," he said. "None of us can get away from Win. Billy still doesn't understand that. Otherwise, he'd head right back to the hospital." He turned, broke into a jog, and headed to the clubhouse.

  I climbed into my truck and checked my home machine for a message from Billy, but he hadn't left one.

  I had time before I needed to be at Brooke's funeral. I felt like I should use it to get my thoughts clear on what I had learned about the Bishop family. I downed a sandwich and two coffees at the 'Sconset Café then drove out to the Sankaty Head Lighthouse, opposite the Sankaty Head Golf Club. The light, perched on sandy cliffs, is visible from twenty-nine miles at sea. It was built in 1850 to help sailors navigate the treacherous Nantucket shoals, a beautiful but shallow graveyard of ships.

  I parked near the lighthouse and walked a quarter mile into the tall grass that surrounds it. The sun was warm and bright, and the ocean stretched endlessly before me. There are those who insist it is impossible to walk the bluffs from the center of Siasconset to the lighthouse and arrive with a single negative thought in mind. Maybe I should have taken that route, because my mind was full of them.

  The list of suspects in Brooke's murder was getting longer, not shorter; it now included every person in the Bishop house the night she was killed.

  Certainly, Darwin Bishop headed the list. He was the only one with a history of domestic assault, a history that stretched back decades and reached all the way to the raw welts on Billy Bishop's back. He was the only one who had threatened me or tried to shake me off the case. It was he, so far as I could tell, who had not wanted the twins. He may have been enraged by their intrusion on his plans for a fresh start with a new love-Claire Buckley.

  But then there was Billy. Anyone with a history of fire-setting, torturing animals, destruction of property, theft, and, yes, bedwetting had the pedigree of a true psychopath. Add to that the pent-up rage reflected in his self-abuse-biting himself, cutting himself, and pulling out his hair-and the prescription for disaster was complete.

  My mind moved on to Claire Buckley. How draining was it for her, after all, to serve as a glorified baby-sitter when being the lady of the household seemed within reach? After traveling the world with Darwin Bishop, sharing luxury suites and rare bottles of wine, how did she feel when Julia announced she was pregnant again-and with twins? Had Darwin told her that leaving his wife would have to be put off? Beneath the care and concern Claire had shown the infants, did she look upon them with bitterness, as living embodiments of her billionaire lover's continuing bond with his beautiful, supposedly estranged wife?

  I thought back to Claire's revelation of Julia's ambivalence about having had the twins, including Julia's statement that she "wished they were dead." Had Claire truly given me that data reluctantly? Or had she scripted the disclosure in order to distract me from her own motives? How could I be certain that Julia had made the statement at all?

  That brought me to Julia herself. Would I take her more seriously as a suspect if I wasn't moved by her? I had to admit that Julia's postpartum depression, complete with feelings of estrangement from Brooke and Tess, increased the risk of her harming them. But it didn't increase that risk dramatically. The vast, vast majority of women with postpartum depression, after all, never strike out at their infants.

  Finally, Garret himself had begun to worry me. Growing up with Darwin Bishop had seemingly sapped him of any hope for a real future. I wondered whether his prison camp mentality might lead him to put other family members "out of their misery." Could he have killed Brooke, I wondered, in order to free her?

  I shook my head. Darwin Bishop had vowed that neither the police nor the District Attorney would be able to prove Billy's guilt because anyone at home the night Brooke was killed could be the murderer. It almost felt as though the family was actively organizing to make Bishop's case, choreographing a dizzying dance to keep me off balance.

  There was another way to think about the maze of possibilities. It was true that every member of the family had had the opportunity to kill Brooke. But each might also have had part of the motive. The family's collective psyche, working largely unconsciously, might have silently spurred one of its members to act on behalf of the group. Maybe that was the dynamic making it so difficult to settle on a lead suspect.

  Some students of the Kennedy assassination, for example, discount the theory that an organized conspiracy existed to do in the president. Instead, they say, a convergence of interests from many different venues-including, but not limited to, the military, the CIA, and the Mafia-worked silently and almost magically to place the president in jeopardy. According to this vision, Lee Harvey Oswald acted alone, but as the culmination of those myriad dark forces, in the same way that a great and popular leader can express and achieve goals that represent the culmination of our collective hope and courage.

  That vision of how Brooke had come to die bothered me more than any other. Because the same forces that would have emboldened her killer still existed. And, most likely, their next target would be Tess Bishop.

  I took out my mobile phone and dialed North Anderson. His office patched me through to his cruiser. I asked him whether he had made any progress getting Tess off the Bishop estate.

  "No go," he said. "I talked personally with-Sam Middleton, the executive director of the Department of Social Services. He told me what I guess I already knew: Regardless of the statistics, kids aren't yanked out of a home just because there's been a murder, especially when somebody has been charged with that murder. You didn't see Jon-Benet's brother placed in any foster home after she was killed."

  "That's just DSS policy Middleton is parroting," I said. "Isn't there a creative way around it?"

  "I tried Leslie Grove, the medical director of Nantucket Family Services. She could file a 'child at risk' petition with DSS, but says she won't go near it without evidence that Tess has been directly threatened."

  "Then I guess Julia is the only one who can make the difference," I said. "I'll see if I can get a minute with her at the funeral. Her mother's coming in with her from the Vineyard. Maybe they could go back together, with the baby."

  "Sounds like you're comfortable the baby would be safe with them," Anderson said.

  In my heart, I was comfortable with that. But I knew Anderson was still concerned I had lost perspective where Julia was concerned. "We don't have a way to isolate Tess from the entire family," I said. "The next best thing is to keep her away from as many family members as possible. For my money, that should include Darwin Bishop."

  "Fair enough," Anderson said. "Hell, if it made anyone feel any better, the kid could stay with Tina and me."

  "Thanks," I said. "I'll make the offer. I wouldn't hold my breath, though."

  "Did you get to talk with Garret?" he asked.

  "For five minutes. He goes on the list. He said Brooke was better off dead than living with Darwin. I didn't like the sound of that."

  "Any more good news?" he said sarcastically.

  "Absolutely," I said. I needed to let Anderson know we should at least touch base with the baby nurse Julia had fired. "When I spoke with Claire, she me
ntioned a private duty nurse Julia had hired to care for the twins. Kristen Collier, from Duxbury. Julia argued with her and fired her about a week after Brooke and Tess were born. I guess it's worth talking to her. She still might have a key to the place. I'd just like to know she was somewhere other than Nantucket when Brooke died."

  "Will do," he said.

  "I think that about covers it, then," I said. "I'll talk to you later, after the funeral."

  "At my place?" he asked pointedly. "Sacrificing your room deposit?"

  "Sure," I said, mostly to avoid arguing. "Your place it is." I hung up.

  I looked out at the Atlantic, then turned and took in the whole panorama at Sankaty Head. The cliffs seemed literally to dissolve into beach, then beach into sea. Birds dove out of the sky to skim the cresting waves. It was a scene of awesome beauty, and the thought occurred to me that I had once lingered in such places myself, having lived with my girlfriend Kathy in Marblehead, another yachting town that had spawned a guidebook for tourists. The quiet danger in such places, I had learned, is that the combination of their wealth and physical beauty keeps pain from surfacing, forcing it to cut its own repressed geography of underground dark rivers. Thus, one can easily believe all is well, that the terrain of life ahead promises solid footing, when it is actually ripe to give way.

  I walked to my truck. As I reached it, I noticed one of Darwin Bishop's white Range Rovers parked about fifty yards away, closer to the road. I waved. Then I climbed in and headed back toward town, to watch a Nantucket family of fortune bid farewell to an infant daughter.

  Darwin Bishop's colleagues turned out in numbers to pay their respects. A line a quarter-mile long stretched from the door of St. Mary's Our Lady of Hope down Federal Street, onto cobblestoned Main. I waited in that line over an hour, behind a group of men talking about the competitive nature of the oil business and in front of another group planning a trip to India to recruit software engineers. Granted, Brooke hadn't been their daughter, and people will do their best to distance themselves from tragedy, but something about the tone of the conversations felt especially removed, as if we might have been in line to attend a convention or watch a movie. After about thirty minutes, the banter really started to bother me. At the forty-five-minute mark I couldn't help interrupting a particularly energized, bow-tied fellow, about forty, with thick, sandy hair, who had been jawing about the "fucking SEC." I touched his arm gently, noticing the fine cotton of his pinstriped shirt. Sea Island cotton, they call it. "Excuse me," I said.