Compulsion

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 prisoners 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 mentioned 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.

He looked at me, a little put out to be interrupted. "Yes?" he said, with a synthetic amiability.

"Is it true that the little girl's windpipe had been blocked off?" I said.

"What?"

I noticed that his friends were still talking about the markets. "It's what I heard, but I wasn't sure. I'm not from the island. I'm a friend of Julia's from way back. I heard her baby was-essentially-strangled."

"I guess that's right," he said tightly.

"I was just thinking how terrible that would be," I went on, "not being able to breathe. Suffocating."

"Then don't think about it." He let that linger a beat, then turned away.

I listened to hear whether my little intervention would resonate for a while, keeping Mr. Bow Tie quiet, if nothing else. But he was right back in the fray, arguing that the SEC rules were vague and unevenly applied. He got pretty heated about it.

Dozens of limousines were lined up closer to the church steps. Whispers had it that they had transported some of the most powerful guests, including Senator Drew Anscombe and famed financier Christopher Burch of Links Securities. Assistant Secretary of State William Rust and Russian ambassador Nikolai Tartokovsky had supposedly been fast-tracked to the family's side aboard Darwin Bishop's Gulfstream jet.

The atmosphere inside the teak doors of the weathered gray church was far more solemn. A marble statue of Mary, hands down, palms open, stood near the entrance. A stained-glass window of gold, ruby, emerald, and sapphire panes, depicting her in the same posture, glowed behind the altar. Between the two lay a tiny casket covered by a white pall, emblazoned with a deep red cross.

A tiny casket is a non sequitur, a wrenching failure of all God's magnificent intentions.

Julia will bury her baby come morning, I thought to myself. She will put her baby in the ground and leave her there. My throat tightened as I pictured Julia walking away from the burial plot, pictured Brooke curled into a ball, shivering. I shook that image out of my head, but it lodged like a fistful of earth in my throat.

All the pews were full. I stood to one side of the hall. Looking around the room, I saw not only Anscombe and Burch but a host of luminaries, from newscasters to rock stars.

The priest, a surprisingly young man with wavy black hair and tanned skin, offered the opening prayer:

"To You, O Lord, we humbly entrust this child, so precious in your sight. Take Brooke into your arms and welcome her into Paradise, where there will be no sorrow, no weeping nor pain, but the fullness of peace and joy with your son and the Holy Spirit for ever and ever."

My eyes looked up at Mary, another mother who lost her child to murder. I wondered whether that connection, or anything that could be said inside these four walls, or anything that could be said anywhere, ever, would provide real solace to Julia.

Darwin Bishop was the next to offer a prayer. My jaw tightened as I watched him climb the stairs to the altar. He gripped each side of the lectern and slowly took stock of the room, much as he might at a corporate gathering. His eyes were dry. "Wisdom 3:1-7," he said. In an unwavering voice, he read:

"But the souls of the just are in the hands of God and no torment shall touch them.

"They seemed in the view of the foolish to be dead and their passing away was thought an affliction and their going forth from us utter destruction.

"But they are in peace."

Brooke had died, horribly. It was Bishop who seemed at peace. I felt my blood pressure rising as he went on:

"Chastised a little they shall be greatly blessed because God tried them and found them worthy of himself.

"As gold in the furnace, he proved them, he took them to himself.

"In time of their visitation they shall shine and shall dart about as sparks."

I turned and walked quietly out to the lobby, not wanting to watch Bishop or listen to him or risk seeing Julia kiss him when he took his seat.

I did want to offer Julia my condolences. I waited until the end of the mass, when the family formed its receiving line.

The Bishops stood to one side of the altar, accepting a seemingly endless stream of sympathies. Julia, in a simple black fitted dress that I am embarrassed to say made my heart race even in the presence of tragedy, stood next to the priest. Darwin stood on his other side.

I shook Garret's hand first. His grip was firm and, as I looked at him, his gray-blue eyes met mine with composure, if not chilliness. I stepped in front of Julia's mother next. She was an elegant and slim woman, about sixty-five, battling tears. I took her hand. "I'm sorry about your granddaughter," I said, recognizing how inadequate the words inevitably sounded.

"Thank you," she said, leaving her hand in mine. "You are?"

"Frank Clevenger," I said, not expecting the name to register with her.

"I thought you might be," she said, glancing toward Julia, a few feet away.

I moved on toward Julia. I couldn't help feeling that it was appropriate for me to have met her mother, that there was some small chance I might become important in both of their lives, even after the investigation was over. It was a warm feeling, but I fought it. I wanted to maintain my balance until Brooke's murder had been solved. But in the instant I took Julia's hand, my plans for equanimity evaporated. Darwin Bishop had moved off several feet, obviously not wanting to greet me, and I found myself locked in a private moment with his wife, at their daughter's funeral, staring into her eyes as she stared into mine. "I'm so…" I stumbled, wanting to avoid the cliché.

She took my hand, moving her thumb along the inside of my wrist. "I appreciate your being here. I know it was asking a lot of you."

"You could ask for more," I whispered, drunk with her presence. Her black hair and green eyes, together with skin as smooth and radiant as I ever expect to see or touch, made me feel further than ever from the tenement house I grew up in. Add the chaser of feeling just a little outclassed by Julia's wealth, a little lucky to be smiled upon by a woman with so many options, and my balance was truly put to the test.

"Are you staying on the island?" she said.

"Yes," I said.

"Where?"

I could feel myself falling. "The Breakers," I said. Letting go of her hand was an act of will, but I sensed that if we lingered any longer, it would raise eyebrows. I instinctively glanced at Garret and saw that he had already registered the emotional exchange between his mother and me. He shot me a look full of confusion and anger. "I hope I see you soon," I told Julia, and walked away, headed toward the back of the church.

I wasn't quite to the door when someone behind me grabbed my arm. I whirled around and found myself face-to-face with Darwin Bishop. His face had a look of fragile indulgence on it. "There's a part of me that likes your audacity," he said, still holding my arm.

Half of me wanted to share my condolences with him. The other half wanted to break his hand. "I don't think this is a good place to talk," I said.

"It's not the place I would have chosen, especially for you to romance my wife," Bishop said.

"That's not…" I started.

He let go of my arm. "You're in over your head," he said, in a tone that was almost fatherly. "Your instincts aren't serving you."

"Thanks for the advice," I said, and left it at that. I turned to go, but he grabbed hold of my arm again. I turned back to him.

"You know how you told me you have one skill?" Bishop said. "You're a burrower. Nothing more, nothing less."

"That's what I told you."

"I thought about that. And I realized I've really only got one skill myself."

"Which is?" I said.

"I pick winners from losers. In anything. It doesn't matter whether it's stocks, people, businesses, ideas. It's like a sixth sense with me."

I thought back to Bishop's bet on Acribat Software, down forty-five percent in a year. But that fact was a petty distraction; his billion-dollar fortune obviously meant he could see things other people would miss-in the markets, and perhaps elsewhere. "That's a valuable skill," I said.

"I rely on it," he said. "And my sixth sense tells me you're about to lose everything." He smiled. "I can smell it coming." He turned and walked away.

I watched him take his place again in the receiving line. My pulse was racing, and the muscles in my right arm were tense from holding back with the right cross I would have liked to deliver to his chin. But thinking about it now, what probably bothered me most was that I knew he was right, at least about one thing: I would have told anyone else in my place to stand back from the boundaries I was starting to cross.