Compulsion

5

Laura Mossberg walked me down the hall to Billy's room, a space about the size of her office, but furnished with a smaller wooden desk, a desk chair, and a platform bed. Billy was lying facedown on the mattress, apparently asleep. He was wearing blue jeans and a white T-shirt. A young man about college age sat outside the room, reading a textbook.

"We have Billy on one-to-one observation, around the clock," Mossberg explained. "I should tell you that this unit wouldn't normally provide services to someone with a history of violence like his. We admitted him at the request of our CEO. Mr. Bishop is a major donor to the medical center."

That didn't surprise me. Darwin Bishop's influence obviously reached far and wide. "I won't need more than half an hour with him," I said.

"Feel free to ask for me when you're finished," she said. She started back down the hallway.

I walked into Billy's room. He rolled onto his back, flipped his straight, dirty blond hair out of his eyes, and stared at me. He obviously hadn't been sleeping. "You would be who?" he demanded.

"Frank Clevenger," I said, staring back at him. "I'm a psychiatrist."

Billy's ice-blue eyes sparkled. He was sixteen and looked like a prototype adolescent, at the edge of boyhood and manhood, with fine features that promised to become handsome. The lines of his nose and jaw were almost feminine, suggesting fragility, but in another year or two, as his wiry body filled out, his broad shoulders adding impressive bulk, that hint of femininity would be the very thing that reassured women they could immerse themselves in him, rather than fear him-this Russian-American, bad-boy billionaire's kid. That is, if he wasn't in prison for life.

"My dad sent you," he said.

"Not exactly," I said. "Your father gave me permission to see you. I'm working with the Nantucket Police Department."

Billy sat up, smiled. "He gave me your name before I left home," he said. "Trust me. He sent you."

The bravado in his voice reminded me of Billy Fisk, the teenager I had lost to suicide. I pictured Fisk sauntering around my office during his first visit, talking trash about how much respect he got on the streets. It took me months, and fifty or so meetings together, to get him to back off the tough-guy routine and talk to me about how tough his life had been. I should have taken things even slower. Because I had lost him somewhere on the journey into his pain. I closed my eyes, remembering the call I'd gotten that he had hung himself.

"Still with the program, Doc?" Billy asked.

I opened my eyes. "I'm fine," I said. I noticed Billy's forearms were marred by faded, haphazard scars where he had slashed at himself. "And maybe you're right. Maybe your father sent me, after all." I pulled out the chair from under the desk, turned it toward the bed, and sat down.

"This should be fun," he said.

"Really. Why?" I said.

"I've never seen a police psychiatrist before, just the regular ones."

"And what were they like?" I asked.

"Mossbergs. Every one of them," he said, with a smile full of disdain-his father's smile. "Nice, soft people, who felt very powerful holding the keys to their little locked kingdoms. I keep every one of their names right here." He pointed at his head, made a mock gun of his fist, thumb, and forefinger, and pointed it at me. He pretended to drop the hammer, then winked and let his hand drift to his side.

I hadn't forgotten that Billy was a predator, whether or not he had murdered Brooke. His firesetting and cruelty to animals showed he was intoxicated by his own power-the power to destroy. I wanted him to know that I wouldn't be scared off. "Let's not waste our time on threats," I said. I stood up and walked toward the door, feeling Billy's eyes on me. I reached for the door, pushed it shut. Then I turned around, facing him again. "I know exactly who and what you are," I said.

He rolled his eyes. "You're clairvoyant and over-educated."

"I know about the feeling in your gut-the emptiness."

"Actually, I had a big breakfast this morning," he said. "Courtesy the hospital cafeteria. I'm full."

"Even when you joke about it, it's there. It's always there, gnawing at you," I said.

He looked away, tilting his head. "Let's see… two eggs, sunny-side, hash browns…"

"Some days are worse than others," I pressed. "Some days, you feel so empty it actually hurts."

He flashed that Bishop smile again, but said nothing.

"Maybe you light up a joint and get yourself two, three hours of relief. It never lasts. You've tried cutting yourself, biting yourself, pulling out your hair, probably making yourself vomit now and then, to start feeling something. Anything. Nothing works."

Billy's expression shifted a few degrees away from mockery, toward uneasiness.

I kept burrowing. "There are times you feel so much dead space inside, such a cold, black hole, that you wonder whether you even exist. You look around at other people and wonder if they're real. Maybe they're just pretending to be alive, too."

He shook his head, squinted at me. "How much is my father paying you for this crap?" he asked.

"He's not paying me," I said.

"Then you're an idiot," he said.

"Why's that?"

"Because," he said, "you're doing exactly what he wants you to do. You may as well cash in."

"He's projecting" the voice at the back of my mind interjected. "He's the one who feels bought and paid for."

I listened to that voice and decided to reflect Billy's comment back onto whatever fragile part of his psyche it had come from. "Your dad owns you, champ," I said, "not me."

His face lost every trace of gaminess. "No one owns me," he said, a new loathing creeping into his tone.

I had struck a nerve. I wanted to follow it toward its root. "The way I understand it, you're bought and paid for, buddy."

"Wrong, Sigmund." His face flushed.

"F.O.B. Moscow," I said.

His upper lip started to twitch.

"And now," I said, "it looks like your dad's finally convinced you're damaged goods. He's cutting his losses."

Billy shrugged, but the movement looked weak and artificial. He knew he couldn't shrug me off. "Leave," he said, his voice thin with rage. "Get out." He stood up. He was nearly six feet tall. The muscles in his arms were ropy and tight. His hands were balled into fists.

I wasn't about to back down. Not when we were getting closer to the truth. "I'm not ready to leave," I said.

He took a step toward me.

I instinctively focused on the point where I would plant the ball of my foot to drop him if he lunged at me-just where his ribs met, at the lowest point of his sternum. "Why can't you admit it?" I prodded. "All you cost Win Bishop was a one-way ticket."

He took another step. "I've cost him a lot more…" he sputtered, then stopped himself short.

A new quiet filled the room-the pure silence that heralds the arrival of the truth.

"Tell me," I said. "Just how angry are you at your father?"

He stared at me for a few moments, as if he might answer, but then took a deep breath, spread his fingers wide, and stepped back toward his bed.

"You're mad enough to take it out on a few cats, from what I heard." I shook my head. "I love cats, by the way."

"You heard what you heard," he said.

"Mad enough to try burning his house down."

"If I had wanted to burn his house down," he said, "it would be gone."

"But none of that was enough," I continued. "So you moved on to your baby sister, Brooke. You had to cost him a child. One of his real children."

He looked away from me, toward the room's single, grated window. With the light falling on his face, he suddenly looked more like a lost boy than a violent young man.

"I think I get it," I said, not letting up. "It's the old cliché: 'Misery loves company.' You're so dead inside that you feel a little better watching the life drain out of something else. And you're not brave enough to go after your father-who you'd really like to kill-so you pick on things that can't fight back. Kittens, babies, real brave stuff like that." I got up. "I don't need to hear anything else." I walked to the door and opened it.

"You don't know the first thing about me," he seethed. "Or my father."

"Let him tell you the first thing" the voice at the back of my mind said.

My skin turned to gooseflesh. A crown of shivers made my scalp tingle. Billy seemed about to invite me into his suffering. And I have never felt closer to God than when journeying into a damaged heart. I pushed the door to the room closed again and slowly turned to face him.

"I'll let you in on a little secret," Billy deadpanned. He pulled his shirt off, tossed it on his bed, and stood there, the taut muscles of his chest and abdomen twitching.

I wondered if he was baiting me while he gathered the courage to rush me. I shifted most of my weight to my left side, freeing up my right foot in case I needed to deliver the blow I had planned. But all Billy did was turn around. And that was enough to make me nearly lose my balance. Because I saw that his back was covered with welts, from his shoulder blades to his waist, as if he had been savaged with a strap. Some were raw and open. Others had healed into thick scars.

"If you want to figure out what happened to little Brooke," Billy said, "maybe you should figure out why good old Win gets off on doing this to me."

My head was spinning. I tried to picture Darwin Bishop wielding a strap as Billy cowered in a corner of the family's Nantucket mansion, but my mind kept serving up my father, in the tenement house we called home. His belt was black, two inches wide, thirty-eight inches long, with a square, brushed silver buckle. He wore it every day, whether he was drunk or not, which left me with a tinge of terror even when he was sober and kind and picking me off my feet with a bear hug, telling me how much he loved me. Standing there with Billy, I could actually smell the stench of alcohol that came off my father's skin. I could feel the mixture of nausea and fear that I lived with until I had lived long enough to get myself out of that house and out of his way.

"Your father did that?" I quietly asked Billy.

He didn't respond. But his scarred shoulders seemed to sag under the weight of his revelation.

I walked closer to him and reached out, almost touching his back. I let my hand fall. "When?" I said.

He turned around, the fake smile back on his face. "Whenever he feels like it," he said. "When I got to this country, I tried being good, because I thought I might get sent back to the orphanage, but he seemed to like punishing me, anyhow, especially when he'd had a little bit to drink, so I figured, Why try to please him? Why give a fuck-about anyone?" He shrugged. "Then something strange happened," he said.

"What was that?" I asked.

"It stopped hurting," he said, simply. "He could whip me as hard as he wanted, and it didn't get to me."

"Is that when you started to hurt yourself? The biting?"

He turned his arms over, revealing more arc-shaped scars here and there on the undersides of his forearms. "It felt good for a while," he said.

"It felt good?"

"Well, I could feel it. And that was good. You know?"

I did know. "The cats? The house?" I said. "Talk to me about those."

He sat on the edge of his mattress, looking away. "I don't know why I did that stuff," he said. "Maybe it was what you were saying before, how I wanted to hurt something or destroy something because I was feeling destroyed myself. Maybe I wanted to see them suffer. Maybe because I couldn't, anymore. I don't know. I'm all mixed up about it." He looked at me. His eyes were filled with worry. "I'm not right in the head. I'm not… normal. I never will be."

I didn't want to get distracted by how badly I felt for Billy. I needed more information. "What about Brooke?" I said. "Be straight with me. I'll try to help you either way. Are you the one who killed her, or not?"

"No," he said emphatically. He sat down on his bed. "I would never do that. You've got to believe me."

"You know that's why you're here," I said. "You know that your father believes you're guilty."

"I'm here because of my father," Billy said, flipping his hair out of his eyes again, "but he doesn't believe I hurt Brooke."

"Then why would he send you?" I asked.

"Why? Probably because he's the one who did it. And he isn't about to take the blame. He never does."

"Why would your father kill your sister?" I asked.

"He never wanted one baby girl, let alone twins," Billy said. "He wanted my mother to have an abortion."

"How do you know that?"

"He was always screaming at her to get one." Billy squinted at me, as if remembering. "I'd wake up in the middle of the night and hear him yelling, 'Get rid of them! Stop thinking about yourself all the time! Get rid of them or get out!' Mom would cry and curse him and say she'd do it. I think she even went to an appointment once at one of those family planning places. But she never went through with it."

I remembered Laura Mossberg's comment that Billy's extraordinary intelligence might just make him a more cunning liar. "Why tell me all this?" I said. "Why didn't you tell Dr. Mossberg or the police?"

"You're the only one who asked," he said. He swallowed hard. "I got to take a chance, sometime, on somebody." Our eyes locked. "Also, I figure I got just about nothing left to lose."

I found Laura Mossberg back at her office. She invited me in. I took the seat near her desk.

"Well," she asked. "Any breakthroughs?"

"Only one, if you want to call it a breakthrough," I said. "He insists he didn't hurt his sister."

"He answered you directly about that?"

"Yes," I said. "He did."

"Did he point a finger at someone else?"

I couldn't be sure whether what I told Mossberg would stay with her or be passed on to Darwin Bishop. Billy was a minor, after all. His medical records were officially the property of his parents. And Darwin Bishop probably had an even more immediate pipeline to the goings-on at Payne Whitney, through his friend, the medical center's CEO. "No," I said. "He didn't have any theory about Brooke's murder."

She nodded. "So, let me ask you the same question you put to me: Do you believe him? Could someone else be responsible?" She toyed with the pearls hanging around her neck.

"I have no reason to believe him right now," I said. "His psychological profile, his prior history of violence, his lying on the standardized tests you administered here-all of it puts whatever he says in grave doubt. I suppose the shocking thing would be if he admitted the crime."

"Agreed," she said. "But you seem troubled. What's on your mind?"

I knew I was sitting with someone trained to listen to the music between spoken words. "I feel for him," I said, hoping that would be a sufficient explanation. "Like his father told me, Billy isn't evil, he's ill."

"And on that score, could you be helpful to him in court? Does he meet the criteria for an insanity plea?" Mossberg asked.

"He certainly has a history of terrible trauma," I said, "going all the way back to his childhood in Russia, witnessing the murder of his parents. A case could be made that he lost the emotional ties that bind the rest of us. Without empathy, without conscience, he might not have any brake on his primal feelings-including being pathologically jealous of new children in the family. He may have lashed out as a reflex, rather than a premeditated act. To put it in" legal terms, he may 'lack the substantial capacity to conform his behavior to the requirements of the law.' "

"That rings true," she said. "His psychological testing would support that."

I looked into Blue Dog's golden eyes. "Just out of curiosity," I asked, "did Billy have a physical examination when he was admitted?"

"He refused," Mossberg said. "We didn't see a reason to press him on it. He's been quite healthy-from a medical standpoint-according to his father." She paused. "Is there anything in particular you're concerned about?"

"Billy has quite a few welts on his back," I said, looking at Mossberg. "Some are scarred over. Others are fresh."

She nodded. "That would be consistent with what Mr. Bishop told me," she said. "Apparently, Billy has the habit of whipping himself with a belt-along with his cutting, biting, and hair-pulling. I've understood all of that as an outgrowth of his self-hatred. He makes attempts to channel his violence inward, but it inevitably spills over, and he strikes out at others."

"Mr. Bishop hadn't told me about the belt," I said. "Just the other behaviors."

Mossberg shrugged. "Maybe it slipped his mind. He may not have thought it was as important to let you know, given that you wouldn't normally be doing a physical examination."

"That's probably right," I said. It was equally possible that it had "slipped" Darwin Bishop's mind because he didn't think I would find out about it.

"How did he come to show you his back to begin with?" Mossberg asked.

"Very much by accident," I fibbed. "He took off his shirt to intimidate me. He's a strong kid and he looks it. For a minute there I thought he might attack me."

"I'll keep that at the front of my mind," she said. "I bruise easily." She winked. "Is there any other way I can be helpful to you?"

"Will you be assembling Billy's other medical records?" I asked. "I understand he's been treated by other psychiatrists."

"We've sent out the relevant requests," she said. "I'll be sure to call you with anything we get our hands on."

"That could be a big help," I said.

I grabbed a quick lunch at a greasy spoon and hailed a taxi. I was anxious to get my hands on information about Darwin Bishop's 1981 conviction for assault. I'd had luck getting case records before at the Office of Court Administration, way downtown on Beaver Street, just below Wall Street, a couple blocks from Battery Park.

"Let's take Second Avenue, headed downtown," I told the cab driver. I opened the window a few inches to let out the odor of stale smoke that was making me hold my breath.

"Why Second?" he said, without turning around. "The FDR. Faster." He had a European accent I couldn't quite place. Maybe Russian.

I glanced at his photo ID, mounted to the dash, next to a white plastic Jesus. His name was Alex Puzick. He looked about sixty years old. His eyes were weary. His face was half-shaven. He wore a white shirt that had yellowed at the collar and along the shoulder creases. "I want to make a quick stop at the River House," I said. "It won't take me more than a minute."

He answered by throwing the car into drive and barreling across 67th Street, then down Second Avenue.

As I half-watched the endless parade of copy shops, boutiques, groceries, and electronics stores, my mind kept wandering to Tess Bishop, Brooke's surviving twin. Because I wasn't more than fifty-fifty on Billy's guilt. And that left even odds that a killer was still loose on the Bishop estate.

I wondered if I could move the Department of Social Services office on Nantucket to take custody of the child until the murder investigation was further along. But the likelihood of DSS intervening, given the District Attorney's exclusive focus on Billy, was slim.

The key might be a direct appeal to Julia Bishop to place her daughter in a safer environment. I knew that wouldn't be without risk; if she shared my suspicions with her husband, he would almost certainly shut the door completely on me-and North Anderson.

I was still weighing the idea of talking openly with Julia when the cab driver glanced over his shoulder. "Live here?"

"No," I said. "I live outside Boston."

"What brings you?"

"I'm a psychiatrist," I said. "I have a patient in town."

He stared into the rearview mirror, studying me several seconds. Then his gaze settled back on the road. "They bring you in from Boston," he said, "you must be good."

"I've been at it a while," I said.

He nodded to himself. A few more seconds passed. "You treat schizophrenics? You've had schizophrenic patients?"

"Many times."

He nodded to himself again, but said nothing.

"Why do you ask?" I said.

"I have a daughter," he said. "Twenty-six years old."

"She has the illness?"

"Since seventeen," he said. He took a hard left onto 52nd Street. "My only child."

I stayed silent. I was feeling the reluctance I always feel before embracing another life story-as if mine might finally slip its binding and get lost amidst the thousands of disconnected chapters floating free inside me. I looked out the window again.

"Her name is Dorothy," Puzick said. "She's in Poland, with her mother. Warsaw."

Now the life story had a name and a hometown and a mother and a father. And those slim facts were enough to dissolve my reluctance to hear more. If I were a rock, I would be pumice-rough on the outside, permeable to the core. "How do they come to be there, and you here?" I asked.

"I left them," he said simply. "Bitch!" He swerved to avoid an old woman stepping off the curb. "I left them," he said again.

"Why?"

"I fell in love with an American. I didn't want to be married anymore." He shrugged. "I left, and Dorothy was nine years old." He suddenly pulled the car over to the curb. "River House."

I opened the door to the cab, but sat there. "Nine years old," I said.

His brow furrowed. "Go. See what you have to see. I wait here for you."

I pulled myself out of the cab. I walked to the sidewalk, lined with black, chauffeured limousines, and looked through the open gates of the River House, their immense wrought frames anchored in limestone pillars marked "Private" and capped by carved eagles, heads turned, staring at one another. Past the eagles, a cobblestone driveway separated a magnificent courtyard with flowering gardens from the entrance to the building, flanked by two doormen standing under a massive, hunter green awning.

The scene spoke of timelessness, security, elite tranquility.

I looked up at the building itself, which ran an entire city block. It was about fifteen stories high, the first three stories of limestone and the rest of brick, covered with ivy in places. The corner penthouse Darwin Bishop and his family called home was a duplex that boasted a series of two-story pillars and a terrace that had to be a thousand square feet or more, its innermost wall lined with enormous slate slabs.

I walked down to the East River and took in a view framed by the Queensboro Bridge to the left and the Williamsburg Bridge to the right. Between them stood epic symbols of American industry-giant smokestacks, the Citibank Building, a landmark neon Pepsi-Cola sign. My eyes skated past them and lingered on the mesmerizing ruin of a castle on Roosevelt Island.

Standing there, I got what I had come for: a hint of the majesty Darwin Bishop must have felt the moment he purchased his home, laying claim to real estate at the epicenter of the civilized world, a safe haven not one mile from the Waldorf-Astoria, St. Patrick's Cathedral, Radio City Music Hall, and Central Park. Nobody would ever peg him for a guy from Brooklyn, with a criminal record. I walked back to the cab.

"So?" Puzick said. "You saw so fast everything you needed to?"

"Pretty much," I said.

"Garbo lived right there," he said, pointing to the building across the street from the River House.

"Garbo," I said. "Really."

"That's what they say." He started back toward First Avenue, heading toward FDR Drive for the rest of trip downtown. He glanced at me twice in the rearview mirror, without saying anything.

"You visited her in Poland?" I prompted him. "Your daughter?"

"Every year, as God is my witness," he said. "But it wasn't enough." His voice trailed off.

I knew exactly what Alex Puzick was looking for. Forgiveness. I stared at the little plastic Jesus glued to his dashboard. "Leaving your wife didn't make your daughter sick," I said.

He didn't turn around, didn't even look at me in the mirror. "How can you know?" he said, in a voice as solemn as a prayer.

"Because you worry over it," I said. "You worry about her."

He sighed. "Probably I should have stayed with them," he said, as much to himself as to me.

Maybe he should have. And maybe staying would have made things worse. All I could say for sure was that a man I had known barely fifteen minutes was in so much pain that it was flowing freely from him to me. "You left because you were in love," I told him. "That means you acted on your heart. You were true to yourself. I don't know what made Dorothy lose control of her emotions, but I can tell you it wasn't that."

"You sound so sure."

"I've done this work a long time," I said, leaning toward him. "I am sure."

He relaxed visibly. "I'll see her in another month," he said. "Five weeks."

I sat back in my seat. "Good."

Neither of us spoke another word until we had pulled over in front of 25 Beaver. I got out of the cab and stepped up to Puzick's window.

"On the house," he said.

The meter read $11.30. I held out a twenty. "You don't need to do that," I said.

"I don't need to. You didn't need to," he said. "We're even."

I took an elevator to the eighth-floor Criminal History Search office. There were two clerks and about a dozen people in line, so I waited my turn, which meant waiting about an hour. When I got to the desk, a young Asian woman, with a very serious expression on her face and very large silver hoop earrings, reminded me that I would need to pay sixteen dollars to do a computerized criminal background check on Darwin Bishop. The search would yield the docket number and disposition of any case against him since the mid-1970s. I was happy to hand over the money, but unhappy when she told me to come back the next morning for the results.

"I'm working with the police on a case," I said. "I could really use the information today."

"You're a police officer," she said skeptically.

"A psychiatrist," I said. "I'm working with the police on a case involving the Bishop family."

"A psychiatrist. That's a first." She almost smiled. "You don't look like a psychiatrist."

"I've been told that," I conceded. "More than a few times." I pulled out my wallet and showed her my medical license.

"It says here, ' Massachusetts,' " she said, pointing at the card.

"That's where my office is, but I take cases in other states," I said.

"This one case," the voice at the back of my mind chided me. "This case, then no more."

I silently agreed. Forensic psychiatry had nearly cost me my sanity. I didn't want to gamble it away.

The clerk looked at me, as if to check whether I was on the level, then shook her head. "If you're a liar, you're a good one." She turned around and disappeared into an office. Ten minutes later, she came back to the counter with a computer printout. She folded it and placed it in an envelope. She held it out to me, but pulled it back before I could take it from her. "We can't do this all the time," she said. "Doesn't matter who you are."

"I appreciate this one time," I said.

She handed over the envelope.

I took the report to a bench just outside the office, sat down, and started to read:

Adult Record Information as of 06/24/2002 Page 1 of 1

Name: Bishop, Darwin G. DOB: 05/11/1948

PCF# 507950C0 POB: Brooklyn

Sex: M SS#: 013-42-1057 Mother: Norma Erickson

Father: Thomas

Home Address: 829 Park Avenue Ethnicity: White

NY, NY 10021

Alias Name(s): None

Date: 05/22/95 Manhattan Docket #6656 CR952387

Criminal Offense: Operating to Endanger

Lives and Safety

Disposition: Dismissed

Date: 05/22/95 Manhattan

Criminal Offense: Operating Under the Docket #6656 CR952388

Influence of Alcohol

Disposition: Dismissed

Date: 09/06/81 Manhattan

Criminal Offense: Domestic Assault Docket #7513 CR811116

Disposition: Convicted

(Probation)

Date: 07/23/80 Manhattan

Criminal Offense: Violation of Restraining Docket #4912 CR800034

Order, Abuse Prevention Act

Disposition: Convicted

(Probation)

____________________

Nothing about the rap sheet gave me any comfort. Bishop's 1981 conviction for assault obviously had been for smacking his first wife, Lauren, around. And that episode had apparently followed another worrisome event during 1980-something threatening enough that the court had issued a restraining order against Bishop, an order he then violated. So much for the "I couldn't have a better friend" line that Bishop had fed the New York magazine writer who asked about his and Lauren's divorce.

For all his Manhattan and Nantucket cachet, Bishop was starting to look like a garden variety alcoholic and domestic abuser-something I knew more than a little bit about, firsthand. I'd grown up with one. It didn't seem like much of a reach to think Bishop could be beating Billy, or that he could have killed little Brooke.

I called North Anderson 's mobile phone from the lobby. He answered right away.

"I just picked up a copy of Darwin Bishop's criminal record in New York," I told him.

"What criminal record?" he asked.

"I found a newspaper article that referenced an assault charge against him during the early eighties, so I pulled his whole sheet."

"And?"

"Not good. He was convicted of a domestic assault on his wife Lauren during 1981. He also violated a restraining order the prior year. That's on top of charges of driving to endanger and driving under the influence during the mid-nineties that he managed to get dismissed, with the help of F. Lee Bailey."

"That puts Sir Bishop in a whole new light," he said. "How about Billy? What did you learn from him?"

"He says he's innocent."

"What do you think?"

"I'm not sure what to think. Billy says his father's been beating him, badly. He has welts all over his back to prove it. He also seems convinced that his father is the one who killed the baby. He even suggested a motive: According to him, Darwin never wanted the twins. He pressured Julia to get an abortion. Ranted and raved about it, all hours of the night. But she wouldn't give in."

"And Bishop's used to getting his way," Anderson said.

"Probably in any way he has to," I said. I took a deep breath and let it out. "We've got to remember, though: Billy's no saint. He's a sociopath, whether he murdered Brooke or not. He may be lying about his father's feelings toward the twins. The wounds he showed me could even have been self-inflicted."

"This case keeps getting more complicated," Anderson said. "There's another wrinkle."

"What's that?"

"My friend Sal Ferrera, a private eye out of Brooklyn -used to teach at Xaverian-did a little research for me. Turns out Claire Buckley's job description must be something more than the traditional nanny. She and Darwin traveled together to San Francisco, Chicago, Palm Beach, London, and Buenos Aires, just this year. No other family members had reservations on any major airline for any of the dates they were away."

"She could be an executive assistant type," I said, even though I didn't really believe it.

"According to Sal, they only booked one room at each of the hotels where Bishop checked in," Anderson said. "There were plenty of room service charges for two meals. And there was a hell of a lot of wine and champagne on the tab."

"The man has his needs," I said.

"So, if I'm Darwin Bishop," Anderson said, "looking to hook up with my nanny, maybe make her Mrs. Bishop number three, I might not like the idea my present wife is saddling me with twins. I might see that as a direct threat to my future."

I winced, wondering whether Anderson 's own conflicted feelings about his unborn child might be coloring his perspective. But I went with the theme he was developing, because it did seem powerful. From my perspective, Darwin Bishop was starting to eclipse Billy as the lead suspect in Brooke Bishop's murder. "Bishop is a man who has recreated himself," I said. "He's Jay Gatsby. He rises out of poverty, sheds his Brooklyn roots and accent, plants his flag on the Upper East Side and Nantucket. He's at the top of the world. He wouldn't take kindly to anyone telling him that he can't go forward with his plans. In fact, he may experience people who get in his way as, quite literally, trying to do him in, trying to kill off his vision of himself. Then he's psychologically prepared to defend himself-by lethal means, if necessary." I paused. "What do we do to protect the other baby?" I asked.

"I'm not sure there's much we can do," Anderson said. "The D.A.'s office has decided to charge Billy with the murder. Tom Harrigan is in court today seeking an order to arrest him and bring him back to Massachusetts. New York seems to be cooperating. Making the case that Tess Bishop could be in danger from another family member isn't going to fly."

"Even if it's true," I said.

"I wish it were always about that, Frank," he said. "Welcome back to my world."