"Your ex-wife didn’t win custody of Garret," I said.
"She didn’t sue for custody," he said.
"Why?" I asked.
"It’s a complicated story. Nothing worth going into right now."
His tone of voice told me the topic was off limits. I took a mental note of his discomfort and pushed in another direction. "Who found your daughter after... the crime?" I asked.
"I did," he said without hesitation and without emotion.
"When?"
"Friday, a little before four a.m."
"You just happened to be awake at four in the morning?" Anderson asked.
"I was reviewing financial data prior to the opening of the markets in the Far East," Bishop said.
"Did you follow the markets yesterday, as well?" I asked.
"Yes," he said.
I took a more direct shot at piercing his armor. "How is it that you were able to conduct business," I said, "after finding your daughter the way you did?"
Bishop’s eyes locked on mine. He didn’t respond.
Anderson looked at me with an expression that telegraphed he thought I had gone too far.
I worried he was right, that I had pushed the needle into Bishop’s soul and pierced something that would bleed uncontrollably. But when he finally spoke it was with the same cool certainty he had displayed throughout our meeting. "If I could pay a ransom to bring my daughter back," he said, "I would happily surrender every dollar I have. But that isn’t possible. And I’ve worked very hard for my money. I intend to keep it." He smiled a fake smile and checked his watch. "Gentlemen," he said, "we’re out of time. I promised Julia an early dinner."
"Would it be possible for Dr. Clevenger to interview Billy in New York?" Anderson asked.
Bishop’s face remained a mask of affability. "To what end?" he asked.
"I could be helpful to your son if he’s ultimately charged with murder," I said. "There may be issues of diminished capacity."
Diminished capacity is a legal doctrine that allows judges and juries to be more lenient with defendants who are sane at the time of their offenses, but still significantly mentally disturbed. Such defendants are sometimes convicted of lesser crimes — manslaughter or second-degree murder, for example, rather than first-degree murder.
"I can see how that might be of value," Bishop said. "I’ll make the arrangements." He stood up. "Is there anything else I can help with?"
"Not just now," Anderson said.
We got to our feet and started out of the office. A grouping of three oil paintings mounted just inside the door caught my eye. They were portraits of three polo ponies, dressed with fancy saddles and stirrups, ankles wrapped in bright purple bindings. I stopped in front of them. I wanted to see how easily Bishop could shift from a discussion of his daughter’s murder to a topic of infinitely less gravity. "Yours?" I asked him.
The transition seemed effortless for him. "Yes," he said, with real pride. "They’re all mine." It was the most emotion he had shown. "I keep a string of twelve."
"Beautiful animals," Anderson said.
"They are," Bishop said.
"I’ve never played the game myself," I said. "I’ve always had it in mind to learn."
"I hope you’ll be my guest someday," Bishop said. "Perhaps Myopia. It’s so close to Boston." His tone told me I shouldn’t hold my breath for an invitation.
"I’d like that." I looked back at the portraits. "Are these your favorites? Of your string of twelve, I mean."
"Not really. They happened to be available for the artist."
"You haven’t fallen in love with any one as opposed to another?"
Bishop smirked. "I feel the same way about each of them."
"Is it like loving a pet?" I asked. "A dog or a cat?"
"No," he said. "It’s more like loving a tennis racket or a golf club."
"I’m not sure I follow," I said.
"You love them," he said, "as much as they help you win."
* * *
Claire Buckley showed us out. As we walked into the driveway, Garret Bishop and his mother happened to be walking toward the house from the tennis courts. We slowed so I could meet them.
The older Bishop boy, in white shorts and a white T-shirt, was already, at seventeen, close to six feet tall and broadly built, like his father. But where his father’s gait was certain and aggressive, leading with his right shoulder like a running back, his son’s was more tentative — shoulders turned inward, a slight bend in each knee, a momentary shuffle with each step.
Julia Bishop, wearing a black pareo and white T-shirt, was a little shorter and slighter than I would have guessed from her photograph in the study. She was walking with her head hung.
From twenty yards away, mother and son looked like a college-aged couple fresh from a tennis tournament. But as they came closer, it became clear that Julia looked her age — mid-thirties — and that she was taking the loss of her daughter hard. Her cheeks were a bit puffy and her throat was blotchy in places, suggesting she had been crying a long time. And yet, her beauty was undeniable, a spotlight burning through fog. I noticed her emerald eyes first, a deep green made more remarkable by a frame of silky black hair cut shoulder length — the hair of a geisha. Then my gaze traveled to her high cheekbones and full lips, the slender neck that blended gracefulness and raw sexuality into something more potent than the simple sum of the two, something magnetic and irrepressible, created by their fusion.
I couldn’t take my eyes off her. They cheated lower, taking in Julia’s short-sleeved, scoop-neck white T-shirt, the Hanes kind I wore as a little boy. Hers was tight enough to show the outline of a lace, underwire demi-cup bra, and short enough to expose her navel and three or four inches of her tanned abdomen. Lower still, the skinny sides of a black bikini bathing suit bottom peeked over her pareo of black linen, tied on one hip, completely exposing one perfectly toned leg.
I held out my hand as Anderson made the introductions, and Julia took it.
"I’m sorry you had to come all this way, Doctor," she said in a voice full of vulnerability, as if she might ask to be held at any moment.
"
She would ask or you would offer?
" the voice at the back of my mind interjected.
I silently conceded the point. The impulse to hold her was mine. As I kept looking at her, the luminosity she emanated seemed to envelope me. An azure haze. I felt the loss of her hand as she withdrew it. "I was able to talk with your husband," I said. "I’m glad I made the trip."
Julia looked at Claire. "How is Tess?" she asked anxiously.
"Just fine," Claire said. She had a little crying jag earlier..."
Julia sighed and looked up toward the second floor of the house. "I knew I shouldn’t have left her. Is she...?"
She’s fine, Claire said, a soothing lilt in her voice. "She stopped right away with a bottle. Now she’s napping."
Julia nodded to herself, twisting her engagement ring and wedding band nervously. The diamond shimmered in the light. It had to be eight or ten carats. A skating rink.
Garret looked even more fidgety. Occasionally, he’d kick at one of the pebbles on the ground. He was not a handsome young man, but he had a Roman nose and Lincolnesque, prominent cheekbones that made him look sturdy and serious. "I want to go inside," he said. He pulled at the braided leather bracelet around his wrist.
Julia forced a smile, but the sadness never left her eyes. "Garret nearly beat his tennis instructor today."
"I don’t care about any of that," the boy objected, directing the words at Claire. "I didn’t want to play in the first place. I just want to be alone."
"My husband wants him to keep his routine," Julia said, looking at me plaintively. She obviously felt a need to explain why Garret would be taking a tennis lesson a couple days after his sister was murdered and several hours after his brother was shipped off to a locked psychiatric unit. It wasn’t a bad question. "It’s not just Win," Julia added. "Our family doctor said to keep things as normal as possible."
Garret shook his head. "Whatever," he said.
I didn’t want to be a bull in a china shop, but I didn’t want to leave without learning as much as I could about the family’s emotional dynamics. "Garret," I said. "How are you handling what’s happened here over the past forty-eight hours?"
He stopped fidgeting and made fleeting eye contact with me. For an instant, he looked as if he might cry. But then his expression hardened. "Fine," he said defiantly. "I’ll get through it."
Julia winced.
I reached out and gently touched her arm. "If you — or anyone else in the family — want to talk about what happened, I’d be happy to take the time," I said. I noticed Anderson staring at my hand lingering on Julia’s soft skin and withdrew it.
She swallowed hard. "Thank you," she said. "I don’t suppose we can all be expected to ‘get through it’ by ourselves."
* * *
"What do you think?" Anderson asked as we started down the driveway, heading back toward Wauwinet Road.
"I’ll tell you what I
don’t
think," I said. "I don’t think Darwin Bishop forgot to let you know Billy was hospitalized in New York."
"Meaning?"
"Anyone who can trade stocks on the Nikkei twenty-four hours after he finds his daughter dead in her crib doesn’t forget that the chief of police is stopping by with a shrink from Boston. He wanted us at the house."
"Why? Why drag us out here when Billy wasn’t available?"
"Maybe to check me out, maybe to deliver a message. He certainly got his point across: How damaged Billy is; how he, Julia, and a half-dozen psychiatrists have tried to help him; even how Billy fits the portrait of a psychopath to a tee. He didn’t miss a beat: Firesetting. Cruelty to animals. Bedwetting. He even threw in self-mutilation, for good measure — the biting and hair-pulling."
"He was answering your questions," Anderson said. "He didn’t volunteer a thing."
"A man like Darwin Bishop communicates the same way a black belt fights," I said. "He harnesses your momentum to take you where he wants you to go. If he wanted to tell you something about his company, he wouldn’t blurt it out. He’d make you think you were dragging the information out of him." I nodded to myself. "He’s handling this the way he would handle a business deal. Strategically."
"Well, is isn’t a great strategy," Anderson said. "He’s backing the D.A.’s office against a wall. Once the media gets hold of the fact that Billy is out of state, Tom Harrigan almost has to charge him with the murder. Otherwise, he looks weak."
"That could be exactly what Bishop is hoping for."
"To force Harrigan’s hand, make him go after Billy before he’s really ready to?"
"Or," I said, "to make him go after Billy instead of someone else."
The last Cape Air flight landed me back in Boston just after 8:00
P.M.
Anderson and I had decided I would shuttle to New York the next morning, provided he could get me clearance that quickly to meet with Billy Bishop at Payne Whitney.
On my way back to Chelsea, I stopped at Massachusetts General. I wanted to make good on my promise to see Lilly Cunningham after the incision and drainage of her leg abscess.
She was sleeping when I got to her room, but her bedside lamp was on. Even from her doorway I could see that the surgery had been more extensive than planned. Her leg was in traction, bent at the knee and suspended six, eight inches off the mattress. Her thigh was covered with a wet gauze dressing. Two thin steel rods had been screwed into each side of her femur.
I knocked on the door frame, but she didn’t awaken. I walked into the room. I stood there half a minute, listening to the tired electronic beeping pulse of the ward at night, and watching Lilly breathe. I tried to imagine the emotions she might have experienced each time she buried a hypodermic needle in her flesh, soiling her insides. I didn’t settle on rage or panic or even sadness. For the moment, she could shed the pretense of normalcy. Her sham self-esteem and self-confidence could melt away, yielding to her real unconscious vision of herself as dirty and infected. Trash. Like someone finally allowed to drop her arms after holding them aloft for hours, she could give up the struggle to fend off her demons and, instead, let them spirit her away.
"Lilly," I said softly.
She didn’t stir.
A little louder: "Lilly."
She slowly opened her eyes, but didn’t respond.
"It’s Dr. Clevenger," I said. "I told you I’d stop by after the procedure."
She took a dreamy breath, then closed her eyes again. "They gave me something for the pain."
"Would you rather sleep? I could try to stop back tomorrow."
She looked at me, squinting to focus. "No. Stay."
I walked the rest of the way to her bedside, pulled up a chair, and sat down. "How did it go?" I asked.
"Dr. Slattery says the infection had gotten into the bone. They had to take a piece of it."
I nodded, looking at the steel rods holding he leg together. "Opening the wound and letting the bad stuff out should prevent that from happening again," I said, picking up on the metaphor for her psychological trauma that I had started to build during out last meeting.
"Right," she whispered, obviously unconvinced.
I remembered telling her that I wasn’t afraid to see the truth — even if it was ugly. I needed to prove that that was true in the physical realm, in order to coax her to reveal her emotional wounds. I leaned forward and touched one corner of the gauze bandage. "Do you mind if I take a look?" I asked.
She shook her head. Her gaze focused intently on my hand.
I gently pulled the gauze back far enough for me — and Lilly — to see the incision. She turned her head immediately and stared at the wall. I kept looking at the dissected layers of skin, fat, and muscle. Sterile gauze, soaked with bloody drainage, filled the base of the wound, which clearly went bone-deep. "Good," I said.