Keith Ablow - Compulsion

"Sorry to give you bad news, Frank. I'd love to see you. Maybe when this whole thing settles down."

"You will," I said.

I ran down the stairs to the lobby. The woman at the front desk gave me directions to the hospital, but as I raced from street to street in the darkness, I realized I actually could have connected the little, fluorescent "H's" and gotten there just fine. Another thing about Nantucket: Nothing is random. Everything has signage. Over the course of four hundred years, Nantucketers have slowly worn away all the island's rough edges, and all possibility for surprise, so that the island now has its metaphor in every piece of beautiful, smooth, dead driftwood that washes up on its shores.

In such places, I reminded myself, things must happen to let people know they are alive and human. Love affairs take root-complicated ones, full of jealousy, pain, and revenge. Deep depression strikes. Addictions flourish. And, occasionally, some very ugly variety of psychopathology, which has had time to twist on itself grotesquely-like a gnarled, forbidding tree-begins to bear poisonous fruit.

North Anderson 's cruiser was parked near the emergency room, next to an ambulance and two black Range Rovers. I parked alongside them and hurried through the sliding glass doors.

Darwin Bishop, in khakis, a pink polo shirt, and black Gucci loafers, was pacing the lobby, talking on his cell phone. Two of his security guards stood nearby. He turned away and, keeping his voice just above a whisper, said, "Sell all of it at fifty-eight."

I walked up to the receptionist, a blue-haired woman who was obviously beside herself. "I'm Dr. Clevenger," I said. "I'm here to see Captain Anderson."

"He's in Room Five, with Mrs. Bishop and the baby," she said, wringing her thickly veined hands. "I hope you can do something. She's so tiny."

"You're not going in there," Bishop said, from behind me.

I turned around. He was standing with his two goons. "What happened to Tess?" I asked flatly.

He ignored the question. "You're not welcome here," he said.

I started past the receptionist. But I hadn't taken more than four steps when someone grabbed my wrist and jerked it, hard, behind my back, his arm falling across my neck.

I looked over my straining shoulder and saw one of the bodyguards had hold of me. It was an amateur move that made me question whether Bishop had hired him away from a Kmart. I leaned slightly forward, then drove my free elbow into the man's rib cage. A sharp crack told me I had hit home. He groaned and let go. Then his friend started coming at me.

"That's the end of it!" Anderson yelled from the hallway, half a dozen yards past the reception desk. He walked toward us.

Bishop pointed at me, but kept his distance. "I want him out of here."

Anderson walked up to me. "Let's go outside. I can bring you up to speed."

I took a mental note of that minor surrender and followed him back through the sliding glass doors, over to his cruiser.

"What the hell is going on?" I said. "What happened to Tess?"

He leaned against the hood. "Cardiac arrest," he said. "They got her back, but her heart's still not beating the right way. They're not sure if there's damage to her brain from lack of oxygen."

"My God."

"The Bishops rushed her to the ER at about three a.m." he explained. "I guess she'd been crying for about an hour before she stopped breathing. Julia and Claire were with her the whole time. When she passed out, they called 911. Actually, they had Darwin place the call."

"What does the doctor say?"

"She drew a toxic screen and found a high level of nor… trip… something."

"Nortriptyline," I said.

"That's it."

Nortriptyline is an antidepressant medication that can be fatal in overdose. Too high a concentration in the bloodstream slows electrical conduction through cardiac muscle, making the heart skip beats, then spiral into chaotic rhythms that pump no blood. "Where did the nortriptyline come from?" I asked.

"It's Julia's, prescribed by a psychiatrist in Aspen," Anderson said. "She was skiing there with Darwin a year or so back and was really feeling low. She says she felt better when they got home, so she stopped using it."

"But she kept the bottle?" I said.

"Right."

"So what are you thinking?"

"Actually, Frank," Anderson said, "it's looking like Billy's our man."

I hadn't even broached the news about Billy having broken into the Bishops' home. "Why do you say that?"

"He snuck into the house through a bathroom window during Brooke's funeral, stole some cash and jewelry. I guess he must have decided to take a little side trip to the nursery and feed Tess the pills. Claire had been writing letters in Darwin 's study most of the night."

"How did you know he'd been in the house at all?" I asked.

"He left a note," Anderson said.

"What did it say?"

"Payback's a bitch. Love, Billy."

"Where did he leave it?" I asked.

"In an empty bank envelope Bishop says was full of cash-about five grand. The envelope was in a little antique desk in the master bedroom. I guess that's where he keeps his spare change."

"Interesting." I shook my head, thinking how peculiar it would be for Billy to tie himself so clearly to a murder scene. "Billy left me a message on my Chelsea machine about an hour ago. I tried calling you to tell you about it just before I headed here."

"What did he say?" Anderson asked.

"That he went in through that window, stole some things. That's all."

"I've got officers combing the house for evidence. We'll see what turns up. All hell is going to break loose on the island now."

"Meaning?"

"I've asked the State Police to help with a manhunt for Billy," Anderson said. "They're bringing in thirty troopers, dogs, infrared search devices, the whole nine yards. And that's the tame part. Bishop may have used his contacts to keep the press at bay so far, but that dam won't hold. Reporters will start pouring in as soon as word about Tess filters through the wires. One rich kid murdered at home sounds like yesterday's news. Another attempted murder in the same family, and you've trumped the Ramseys."

"And raised them about nine hundred million," I said. "How's Julia?"

"Stunned," Anderson said. "She hasn't said ten words in there."

I wanted to be with her. More, I felt it was my place to be with her. But I was troubled by the fact that it was Julia's medication Tess had overdosed on. "Anyone in that house could still be the killer," I said. "The signs of nortriptyline toxicity can show up many hours after an overdose. Tess could have been poisoned before the funeral." Another thought occurred to me. "I'm not sure Billy would even know a nortriptyline overdose can be lethal. The only ones who talked to the doctor in Aspen were Darwin and-"

"Julia," Anderson said. "Agreed. Nobody's cleared yet. But anybody would say Billy is the lead suspect, by a country mile."

"Why would he leave a note and a voice message about breaking into the house, if he knew he would be connecting himself to another murder?" I asked.

Anderson shrugged. "We're not talking about a normal kid."

"No," I said, "we're talking about a sociopath. They usually don't make our work easy, do they?"

"I didn't say to stop poking around," Anderson said, "to the extent Bishop lets you."

"He could have poisoned Tess as easily as anyone else," I said. "For all we know, he might have decided Billy's break-in was the perfect cover. So, tell me: When, exactly, did he start deciding who investigates what?"

Anderson stiffened. "Don't go there again, Frank. I'm paying him the same deference I'd pay anyone. He doesn't have to give you access if he doesn't want to. I'm sure you can figure a way around him."