Keith Ablow - Compulsion

"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.