Compulsion (26 page)

I was feeling more determined than scared, which I probably should have taken as a warning sign that I was losing perspective.  "I’m going to the island later today," I said.  "I have to finish some work with North Anderson."

"When will you be back?" Her eyes filled up.

"A day.  Maybe two."

"Win flies in today," she said.  "I’m going to tell him I don’t want him to see Tess.  If he tries to, I’ll file a restraining order with the court."

"I have someone who could help you with that," I said.  "Carl Rossetti, a lawyer from the North End."  I took her in my arms and held her a moment, trying to keep my breathing steady, despite the searing pain that gripped me whenever I raised my hands above waist level.  "I’ll call to check in," I managed.  I let go.

She leaned closer.  "You know that I love you," she said.

Those words took me by surprise, not because I didn’t feel the same way, but because I wasn’t used to anyone keeping pace with my emotions.  "I love you, too," I said.

*            *            *

I was headed out of the hospital lobby when Caroline Hallissey, the MGH chief resident in psychiatry, caught up with me.  Hallissey, a gay activist, was around thirty years old, under five feet tall, and about 250 pounds.  Her face might have been pretty at one time, but her features were swollen now.  She wore a silver hoop through her right nostril and a silver bolt through the skin over her left eyebrow.  I had heard that she and her partner had just adopted a daughter of their own.  "Got a minute?" she said.

"Sure," I said.

I must have looked as bad as I felt.  "You okay?" she asked.

"I’m fine.  What’s up?"

"I did the consult on that woman in ICU.  Julia Bishop?  You’re involved in that case, right?"

"Right," I said.  "What do you think?"

"She’s depressed, that’s for sure," Hallissey said.  "She has numerous neurovegetative signs.  Sleep loss.  Lack of appetite.  Difficulty concentrating.  Low self-esteem.  The symptoms were even worse just after her twins were born, but she’s very resistant to being treated for any of it."

"It’s a tough time for her to think clearly about herself," I said.

"Agreed," she said.  "I wouldn’t force anything on her.  She’s not suicidal, in the classic sense — just alluding to not wanting to go on if her daughter should die."  She paused.  "The thing that troubled me more was that I felt a lot of hostility from her."

"Meaning?"

"She asked a lot about my credentials.  What undergrad school did I graduate?  Where did I go to medical school?  Who supervises my work with patients?  The whole nine yards."

I wondered if that had anything to do with Hallissey’s appearance.  "She’s in the middle of a homicide investigation," I said.  "She doesn’t know exactly who to trust."

"That could be part of it," Hallissey said.  "But this felt more personal than that.  Like she had an issue with
me
."  She looked away, her eyes thinning as she struggled for words to describe her interaction with Julia.  "I got the same feeling from her that I used to get from male patients who didn’t respect female physicians.  The ones who wanted to make sure I knew it."

"Not every psychiatrist-patient interaction is a love match," I said.

Hallissey looked directly at me.  "I don’t mean to step out of line, but it doesn’t sound like you want to hear any of this.  Maybe it’s not a good time to talk."

I shook my head.  Hallissey was right.  I was automatically discounting her negative feedback about Julia.  "I do want to hear it," I said.  "Please.  Tell me what else you noticed."

She hesitated.

"I’m listening," I said.

"Maybe it’s the way she is with women," Hallissey said.  "I mean, I've seen her be very cordial with Dr. Karlstein. And you don’t seem to have any problem with her.  But a couple of the female nurses in the ICU told me she treats them like she owns them.  They definitely get bad vibes."  She shrugged.  "She supposedly modeled, right?  Someone mentioned
Elite
or something."

The word
supposedly
stuck out like a sore thumb.  I wondered whether jealousy was blurring Hallissey’s therapeutic vision.  Psychiatrists call it
countertransference
— the clinician’s own feelings boomeranging back as if they had something to do with the patient’s inner world.  "She did model," I said.  I pushed further to gauge Hallissey’s reaction.  "I guess she was pretty successful at it.  The cover of
Cosmo
,
Vogue
, all that.  Big time."

"Of course she was successful," Hallissey said.  "It’s textbook.  She’s magnificent-looking, but she has no real self-esteem.  She exists for men.  She needs them to adore her because she loathes herself.  And that’s why she immediately feels hatred toward me.  Because I’m a woman."

The idea that Julia might harbor ill-will toward females troubled me.  She had given birth to twin girls, after all.  "Do you think she’s a risk to the baby?" I asked Hallissey.  "You feel a sitter is necessary?"

"I don’t see what good it would do," she said.  "I mean, if the kid’s going home with her within a couple days, what’s the sense of one-to-one observation now?"  She rolled her eyes.  "She’d probably end up taking advantage of the coverage to run to Gucci for a pair of shoes, or something.  Beef up the wardrobe."

That comment increased my suspicion that jealousy or ill-will might be coloring Hallissey’s perspective on Julia.  I nodded and relaxed, but only a little.  I couldn’t afford to ignore her theory.  "Will you be checking in with Ms. Bishop again?" I asked.

"Dr. Karlstein asked me to stop by tomorrow," she said.

"Would you page me if you come up with anything else interesting?" I asked.

"I’ll do that," she said.

"And congratulations on your child," I said.  "Hopefully, she won’t end up modeling."

Hallissey’s face lighted up.  "No way," she said.  "I can promise you that isn’t going to happen."

*            *            *

It was 7:20
A.M.
when I pulled myself into my truck and headed home to throw a few things together for my trip to Nantucket.  The day was sunny and heating up the way Boston can in late June.  I took the curves on Storrow Drive slowly, avoided potholes where I could, and slowly climbed the stairs, pausing every half-flight to gather courage.

I was most of the way to the fifth floor when a few frames of my experience in the alleyway visited me.  I remembered being pushed, feeling a flash of pain, then losing my balance and pitching forward.  I closed my eyes and stood motionless on the steps, trying to coax more of the attack back into consciousness, but nothing would come.

I grabbed fresh jeans and a black T-shirt in my apartment and was about to pull them on when I noticed the gauze around my abdomen had bled through.  I walked to the bathroom and unwrapped myself.

Colin Bain had worked hard on me.  The surface of the wound was more of a jagged laceration than a simple puncture, as if my assailant had ripped the knife upward, trying to gut me from behind.  Bain’s handiwork was impressive — tiny stitches, the mark of a surgical craftsman, ran in a lightning bolt shape along the bottom of my rib cage.  I turned toward the sink, doused the wound with cold water, and blotted it dry.  Then I rewrapped myself with a roll of gauze that Bain had thrown in an emergency-room doggy bag, along with samples of Motrin, my prescription for Keflex, and my wallet.  I swallowed three more Motrin, stuffed the wallet in my jeans, and got dressed.

My chances of making it to Hyannis conscious, then having the luck to get a seat (let alone space for my truck) on the ferry, were vanishingly slim, so I drove to Logan and waited for the ten-fifteen Cape Air flight.  I tried North Anderson on his mobile, but go this voice mail.  I left him a message that I’d be arriving at eleven and hoped he’d meet me at Nantucket Memorial — an intriguing name, I’ve always thought, for a very pleasant airport on a very beautiful island.

Chapter 14

Anderson was waiting at the gate when I arrived.  We’d had some turbulence in the last fifteen minutes of the flight, and I was bent toward my right side, trying to keep the muscles on that side slack.  "You look great," he said, with a tight grin.

"Thanks a lot," I said.

The grin dissolved.  "Truth is, you should be laying low, letting yourself heal up."

"I feel fine."

"Half of me thinks we should get out of the way," he said, "let the state cops handle the whole investigation from here."

"They’ll let it begin and end with Billy," I said.  "Bishop’s too wired politically."

"I don’t want it to end with you in a box," Anderson said.  He shook his head, let out a long breath.  "You’re sleeping at my place tonight, period."

"Your place it is.  Better safe than sorry."  I winced as I straightened up.

"You didn’t get a look at whoever did this?  Nothing?"

"Not that I can remember."

"I guess it could be a random attack," he said.  "The ER at Mass General draws a tough crowd."

"Could be," I said.

"It doesn’t feel that way, though," Anderson said.  "I’d lay a hundred-to-one odds that whoever did this was looking to do
you
."

"Maybe we’re making somebody nervous," I said.  "Maybe that’s not such a bad thing."  I didn’t add that I had done more than enough to make someone jealous, namely, Darwin Bishop.

Anderson nodded to himself.  "How’s Tess?"

"Her heart stopped again.  They got her back, and they’re putting in a temporary pacemaker.  I think she’ll pull through."

"Julia hanging in there?" he asked.

"As well as anyone could," I said.  "No question, she’s depressed.  She’ll need help down the road."

"From a disinterested third party, I hope," he said.

I sidestepped that comment.  "She says she’ll take out a restraining order on Bishop if he tries to visit Tess in the hospital."

"We’d see fireworks from that day in court all the way down here," he said.  "I spoke with Lauren Dunlop, Bishop’s first wife.  She’s remarried, three kids.  Lives in Greenwich, Connecticut, now."

"What did she have to say?" I asked.

"She confirmed everything," he said.  "Said she put up with physical and emotional abuse from Bishop for years, finally found the backbone to get the restraining order and file for divorce.  It was a long haul.  She was terrified of him."

"Did you ask her why she didn’t end up with custody of Garret, under the circumstances?" I asked.

"According to her, it was out of the question," Anderson said.  "Bishop would have fought the divorce tooth and nail, if it meant surrendering Garret.  He was obsessed with the boy.  Like some
Prince and the Pauper
thing.  He wanted to take an abandoned baby and raise him to be a nuclear physicist or pro athlete or President of the United States.  He even did what he could to interfere with Lauren’s visitation rights.  She doubts very much that he’ll let Julia leave with the children.  Not without a huge battle."

"I don’t think Julia’s going to back down," I said.  "She doesn’t plan to go home when Tess is discharged.  She says she’s leaving for her mother’s — with the children."

"Good for her.  Terry McCarthy filled me in on her statement, by the way.  I think he’s the best detective on the Boston force."

"And?"

"She came through with flying colors," Anderson said.  "Everything was consistent with what she told you:  Bishop took the Nortriptyline from her just before Tess was poisoned."  He paused.  "Tommy found her convincing.  He got no bad vibes, even when he bluffed and asked her if she’d sit for a polygraph."

I thought back to Caroline Halverson’s comments and wondered how well Julia would have fared with a female detective.  "What did she say," I asked.

"She said, ‘How about we do the polygraph right now?’"

"Good for her," I said, feeling relieved.  I smirked.  "I wonder whether Win would sit for one."

"I asked him to," Anderson said.

"You asked Bishop to take a polygraph?"

"Obviously it wouldn’t be worth jack at trial, but I wanted to gauge his reaction."

"And..."

"He told me to talk with his lawyer," Anderson said.

"He may need one."

"He retained John McBride about an hour after I made the polygraph suggestion."

McBride, based in Boston, was one of the best criminal defense attorneys in the country and a master at excluding physical evidence against his clients.  "Better be careful how you conduct the search of the Bishop estate."

"White glove, all the way."  Anderson smiled.  "I heard from McBride personally this morning.  He wanted to put me on notice that his client won’t be available for questioning until charges are filed against him."

"Is McBride representing anyone else in the family?"

"He didn’t say he was."

"So what’s the plan?  We just drive onto the Bishop estate and ask for Claire and Garret?"

"Just like that, the way I figure it," Anderson said.  "I still have an active search warrant for every inch of that property, and they’re both on the grounds right now, according to the patrolmen I stationed on Wauwinet Road.  Either one of them can refuse to talk.  But I don’t think they will."

"Why not?" I asked.

"The family’s full of agendas," he said.  "Garret’s got one.  Claire has her own.  They’re all using this tragedy to get things done — jockeying for more power, more freedom, whatever."

"So let’s get over there while we can."  I bent to pick up my overnight bag, sending the muscles of my back and side into spasms that nearly brought me to my knees.

Anderson grabbed me under the arms.  "Easy," he said.

I closed my eyes and gritted my teeth, waiting for the pain to end.  When it had died down, I stepped back and forced a smile.  "Sudden movements are not what the doctor ordered," I said.

Anderson leaned and picked up my bag.  "Let me do the heavy lifting for now," he said.

*            *            *