Compulsion (28 page)
I wanted to lighten the mood. "Nice collection, by the way," I said, motioning toward the wall of books.
He ignored the compliment. "If this looks like it might go long, we should move it somewhere else," he said. "I’m only allowed to stay in here two hours a day. I don’t want to waste it."
"What do you mean, you’re only allowed to stay in here two hours?" Anderson said. "This is your room, isn’t it?"
"Darwin’s worried I’ll become a recluse, a bookworm, maybe a fag," he said, sounding half-bitter, half-amused. "Even worse, I might start ‘thinking too much,’ as he puts it. Much better to swat a fuzzy ball back and forth over a net or ride a horse within an inch of its life, swinging a long stick."
"I take it you’re no fan of polo," I said.
"Not much, lately. I used to like watching this one horse. Her name was Brandy," he said. "She was special."
"In what way?" I said.
"Her coat was unbelievable — kind of a cinnamon brown, very soft to the touch. Every muscle on her was perfectly cut. When she ran, it was like poetry. And she was sweet. She’d walk right up to me whenever I came around the stables, look at me with those big, brown eyes, almost as if she knew we were in the same tough spot."
"What spot is that?" Anderson said.
"Being ridden by Darwin," Garret said.
Garret sounded more human and vulnerable than he had the other two times we had met. "Is Brandy still around?" I asked him.
"Glued, dude." He winked. The hard edge had come back into his voice.
"She died?" Anderson said.
"She stopped winning. Then she disappeared." Garret shrugged. "It’s all very Darwinian. Survival of the fittest." He looked at me. "Are you all right?" he said. "You look like death yourself."
The muscles in my back had tightened, and I was trying to stay on my feet. "I’m fine," I managed. "Sprained muscles." I paused, shifted gears. "Captain Anderson and I are here because I haven’t had the chance to speak with you since I saw you at the tennis club," I said. "That was the day before Tess was rushed to the hospital."
"And..." he said.
"And I want to know if you can help us," I said.
"Help you, like, how?"
"For starters, if you saw anything strange before you left for Brooke’s funeral, or when you got back, we’d be interested in hearing about it," I said.
"You would," he said.
"Of course," I said.
"Enough to pay for it?" he said.
Anderson and I glanced at one another.
Before either of us could answer him, Garret smiled broadly. "Just kidding," he said. "The last thing I need is money. Would you shut the door, please?"
Anderson took care of it. "Anything you tell us stays confidential," he said.
"Right," Garret said. "I’ve already told Dr. Clevenger I’m not testifying at any trial, if there ever is one. Dad’s got Johnny McBride working for him now, you know."
"We know," I said.
"There aren’t even any bloodstains in this case," Garret said. "How hard do you think it’s gonna be for McBride to make jackasses out of the police and D.A.?" He looked at Anderson. "The search of the house was bungled, by the way. UPS dropped off two packages
inside the foyer
, and the State Police sergeant let the driver use the bathroom to take a leak — the one Billy snuck into."
"I’ll look into that," Anderson said.
"You’ll want to, before they carve you up on the witness stand," Garret said. "Better you than me."
"Did you have something to tell us about that night?" Anderson said, nudging the discussion back into line.
"All I heard was another argument between Darwin and Julia," he said. "It got just as hot as the ones they used to have about the twins — how Darwin wanted to abort them."
"Was Claire around to hear it?" I asked, wondering whether she had edited her memory of that night.
"I’m not sure, but I don’t think so," Garret said. "I think she had gone to the store to buy formula for Tess." He shrugged. "I wouldn’t swear to it, but that’s what I remember."
"What was the argument about?" Anderson asked.
"The Nortriptyline," Garret said.
"What about it?" I said.
"Darwin wanted the prescription bottle from Julia. He was screaming at her for most of an hour before she gave in."
"Did he say why he wanted it?" I asked.
"He said she would find some way to kill herself," Garret said, "like she was about to take an overdose, or something."
"And did you think your mother might try to hurt herself?" I asked.
"I think Darwin had something else in mind," Garret said, smiling.
"What?" I said.
"An overdose for little Tess, of course."
Anderson let out a long breath. "So you think it’s a coincidence your brother broke into the house that night?" he said.
"A lucky break for Darwin, the way I see it. Win was already going to do the deed, but Billy’s daring move — which I give him a lot of credit for, by the way — made it the perfect crime." He paused and looked at me with an intensity that made me uncomfortable. "Or nearly perfect," he said.
"Why
nearly
?" I asked.
"Because I have the prescription bottle," Garret said matter-of-factly.
"You..." I started.
"
Where?
" Anderson said anxiously.
Garret turned around and pulled open the lowest drawer of his desk. He reached all the way to the back of it. His hand emerged holding a key. "My locker at Brant Point," he said. He tossed me the key. "Number 117, top shelf. Back, right-hand corner. Inside a tennis ball can."
"How did you get it?" I asked.
He winked. "Darwin left it in the top drawer of his desk in his study. Pure arrogance." He glanced at Anderson. "Of course, when you figure you have the local police and the state cops in your back pocket, you get heady."
Anderson ignored the comment.
"When did you find the bottle?" I asked.
"The day after Tess’s overdose," Garret said. "But that’s not the important part. The important part is that you won’t find Billy’s fingerprints anywhere on it."
* * *
Claire Buckley showed us to the door. Her demeanor was ice-cold. Before stepping outside, I tried to think of something to say to reassure her that Anderson and I had no intention of revealing her secret, but all of us got distracted by a State Police cruiser barreling into the circular drive. It stopped short behind North Anderson’s car. A tall and broad fellow, about fifty, wearing a State Police uniform decorated with elaborate, embroidered patches and enameled pins, bolted out of the car and headed for us. His face was one of those sharp-angled, weathered ones that looked like it would stay ruggedly handsome forever. His salt-and-pepper hair was full and wavy.
"Told you you’d meet him," Anderson said. "That’s Brian O’Donnell."
"Got a minute?" O’Donnell called gruffly to Anderson.
"Sure," Anderson said.
Claire turned around, walked back inside, and closed the door.
"I should introduce Dr. Clevenger," Anderson said, as O’Donnell reached us."
O’Donnell nodded at me, but didn’t extend a hand. "What are you guys doing here?" he asked.
"Conducting an investigation," Anderson said. "What did you think we might be doing?"
O’Donnell frowned. "I thought
we
decided you’d clear things with me. I had no idea you were arranging another set of interviews for the doctor here."
"I don’t think we ever came up with a hard-and-fast rule about what got cleared with who," Anderson said. "I agreed to work closely with you. And I will."
"Look, if you need a call from the Governor’s office to make it official, I’ll get that done for you. From here on out, the investigation is being run by my department. That means
me
."
"Maybe that call from the Governor would help clarify things," Anderson said.
"Well, let me make this much clear right now," O’Donnell said. "If you just interviewed the boy, you did so without his parents’ consent. That means his statements aren’t freely given and can’t be used at Billy’s trial."
Billy’s trial
. I heard that loud and clear.
Anderson didn’t say whether we’d interviewed Garret or not. He also didn’t mention the key to Garret’s locker.
"As for Ms. Buckley," O’Donnell said, "I just don’t see why she’s on the suspect list at all. I know you have your thoughts about her supposed relationship with Darwin Bishop, but that hasn’t been proven, and it’s a pretty weak motive for a double homicide, to begin with."
"We’re just dealing with the one homicide right now," I reminded him. "Hopefully, it stays that way."
"Whatever," O’Donnell said, shooting me an annoyed look. He collected himself. "North, I’m not trying to clip your wings here," he said. "I’m trying to get things done right so the case doesn’t fall apart. First things first, let’s get Billy and go from there."
"You any closer?" I asked.
"We think we’re closing in," O’Donnell said. "We’re moving as fast as we can, but not so fast that we ignore the potential dangers. The Commons are surprisingly tough terrain to search. And we don’t know if Billy is armed or not."
That comment made me think back to Carl Rossetti’s fear that the cleanest way to bury the truth in the Bishop case would be to bury Billy. "He’s never used a gun before," I said.
"He hadn’t asphyxiated one sibling and tried to poison another before, either," O’Donnell said.
"If he did this time," I said.
O’Donnell smiled. "I know you interviewed Billy at Payne Whitney. That went, what, half an hour?"
"It went long enough for me to use what I learned to learn more," I said.
"Just so you know something about me, Doctor: I’ve gotten to be a quick study, too. I’ve led twenty-six homicide investigations. And my take here is that everyone else in this family who might land on somebody’s suspect list is no more than a red herring," he said. "Billy Bishop looks like, smells like, is the killer. Period. He worked his way up to murder in the usual manner, with stops along the way at destruction of property, theft, arson, and cruelty to animals. There’s nothing very special about him."
"Sounds open and shut," Anderson said.
"Think what you want," O’Donnell said. "But please do what you say you will. And you
said
you’d clear your moves with me."
I saw Anderson’s jaw set. His breathing moved into a Zen-like study in self-control.
O’Donnell made a visible effort at relaxing himself. "This is the way it always goes, North," he said. "I know it doesn’t feel good yielding your home turf to the state, but we’ll be out of your hair soon enough." He paused. "We found a swatch of cloth from one of Billy’s jackets about a half-mile into the Commons. So we know we’re headed in the right direction. It’s just a matter of time now."
Anderson nodded. "I’ll talk to you later, then." He walked toward his car.
I started to follow him.
"Good meeting you, Dr. Clevenger," O’Donnell said, extending his hand just as I moved past him.
I shook it. "I’m sure we’ll see each other again," I said.
I braced myself as Anderson accelerated away from the Bishop house, but my back still screamed at me to stop moving. I fished in my pocket, came up with four Motrin, and swallowed them.
"Claire must have called O’Donnell while we were talking with Garret," Anderson said. "If I wasn’t sure before, I am now: He’s got to be in Bishop’s pocket."
"All the more reason to keep pushing," I said. "I didn’t like his comment about Billy being armed."
"Neither did I."
Anderson and I seemed to be on the same page again, which felt good. "After we grab the empty bottle of Nortriptyline, I should pay Julia another visit in Boston," I said. "I’d like to see her reaction to that letter, not just hear it."
"Agreed," he said, dialing a call on his cell phone. "See how things go today. You can take a flight late tonight or catch the first one in the morning." As we sped past the gauntlet of reporters, Anderson squinted through the windshield, listening to his phone. He clicked it off, shook his head. "Your lawyer friend is no slouch," he said.
"Rossetti? Why? What’s up?" I asked.
"The detective I assigned to check out the Bishop’s life insurance policies left me a message while we were at the estate."
"The twins were insured?" I said.
"Ten million apiece," he said. "A guy named Ralph Rotman at Atlantic Benefit Group set them up with Northwestern Mutual."
"Twenty million dollars is a lot of money, even to Darwin Bishop," I said.
"Especially when your stocks are in the gutter," Anderson said.
I thought of Bishop’s Gatsbyesque rise out of Brooklyn, all the distance he had put between himself and the poverty and hunger he had faced as a child. If his cash crunch made him feel he was headed back there, he might do anything to keep his inflated sense of himself alive — even kill Brooke and Tess. He might even convince himself that their lives would have been worthless with a disgraced, bankrupted father. Why not sacrifice them to the greater good, let their blood transfuse the rest of the family?
Some people do that kind of strange calculus when they feel besieged, whether the panic is rational or not. I once testified at the trial of a man who had murdered his wife because, he said, she was overly domineering toward him and the couple’s two daughters. He believed they would all be better off without her, even if it meant spending his life in prison. After pretending to leave for work one day, he circled back home and stabbed her thirty-six times. He went grocery shopping as she lay bleeding and unconscious on their bed. He filled the refrigerator and tidied up his kids’ rooms. He wanted them to feel a little more organized amidst the impending chaos — his arrest, his wife’s funeral, his trial. Then he put on a fresh shirt and pair of slacks, called the police, and confessed what he had done.