Keith Ablow - Compulsion

I looked at Anderson, trying to decide whether I could ever trust him again. All the questions that had visited me as I had walked down the hall were still in play. He could easily be carrying on a sexual relationship with Julia and secretly be furious at me for doing the same. The two of them could truly be using me to paint Darwin Bishop as the killer. "Was the letter Claire Buckley handed over to us meant for you?" I asked. "Are you the one Julia was going to send it to?"

"I don't think so," Anderson said.

"You don't think so," I said.

"I can't know for sure, but it's just not the tone we used with one another," he said. "It's much more flowery. It would have come out of left field, if you know what I'm saying. Not only that; we hadn't been in touch for weeks before Brooke's murder."

"So you think there's someone else in her life, besides you and me."

"I do," Anderson said. "I think that's why I went off a little on Claire back at the Bishop estate, leaning on her about her affair with Darwin." He shrugged. "I was pissed off about what I had just read. I killed the messenger."

I was split between feeling as if I were with a blood brother who had been through the same war as I or with an enemy caught red-handed sticking a knife in my back. Maybe, literally. "When you asked me to get involved with this case," I said, "did you do it because you wanted to help Julia, because you were in love with her?"

"She let me know she didn't believe Billy was guilty," he said. "My gut told me the same thing."

"That doesn't answer my question."

He hesitated, but only for an instant. "Yes," he said. "I called you because I wanted to help her."

"And…" I said, prompting him to answer the second part of my question.

"And because I thought I…" He stopped, corrected himself. "And because I loved her." He shrugged. "You wanted an answer. You got one. It sounds crazy, but I loved her."

I nodded. That honest response brought me a bit closer to feeling like Anderson was on the level. But it still left me with doubts. I focused intently on Anderson. "If I didn't think Darwin Bishop belonged at the top of the suspect list, would I still be on this case?"

"What are you asking me, Frank?" Anderson said, struggling to keep his voice steady. "You want to know whether I'd try to jail a man for the rest of his life in order to steal his woman?"

That was what I was asking, even though it sounded horrible when Anderson said it. I stayed silent.

"When I told you they'd have to bounce me off the case to get you off the case, I meant it," he said. "It may be hard to believe that now. But if you'd told me Billy had all the traits of a murderer, he'd be at the top of our list, not Darwin. I wouldn't railroad someone into a murder conviction. Not even for Julia Bishop."

Anderson flew to Nantucket. I took a cab from State Police headquarters to Mass General. While we needed space and time to make sense of how to go forward together, we both knew we had to keep moving. With all the complications in the Bishop case, one thing hadn't changed: Someone had tried to kill five-month-old Tess Bishop-and might well try again.

As the taxi sped down Storrow Drive, with the Charles River off to my left and the Boston skyline to my right, I began to wonder who had placed the photographic negative in the medicine bottle. The obvious candidate was Garret, given his penchant for island photography and the fact that he had turned the bottle over to Anderson and me. But it was also remotely possible that Darwin Bishop had put it there-storing away part of his motive for attempting to kill Tess right along with the means he had used to try to kill her. The answer was on its way; Leona would be dusting the negative for prints.

It was after 6:00 p.m. and getting dark when I walked through the hospital's main entrance. I had the fleeting impulse to stop in at the emergency room and grab a Percocet prescription from Colin Bain, to dull the pain from the injuries to my body and psyche-my savaged back, my hurt pride, my broken friendship. Any addictions counselor would forgive me the slip, given the circumstances. Luckily, I realized that staying sober might be one of the few things still within my control. No sense burying a knife in my own back when other people were doing such a good job of it.

I took an elevator up to the PICU and instinctively walked toward Tess's room. But I stopped short, noticing that a five- or six-year-old Asian child was lying in that bed. I scanned the other rooms around the PICU perimeter, but Tess wasn't in any of them. My mind jumped to the most dire conclusion-that her heart had given out. I stopped a young, female nurse walking by. "I'm a doctor working on the Bishop case," I said. I couldn't bring myself to ask the obvious question. "She was here yesterday," I said.

"Do you have identification?" the woman asked.

Her response seemed to confirm my fear. She wanted proof I was a staff member before delivering bad news. I felt lightheaded.

"Are you all right?" she said. "Do you need to sit down?"

Before I could answer, John Karlstein strode through the PICU's sliding glass doors. "Frank!" he called out, from behind me.

I turned quickly, without thinking, and stretched my lacerated muscles. "Jesus," I muttered, between clenched teeth.

"My mother thought I was," Karlstein said. "Nobody since."

I straightened up, as best I could.

"It's good to see you," Karlstein said. "Bain told me what happened in the alleyway out there. You should sue."

The nurse apparently got the idea I was part of the team. She smiled and walked away.

"Sue?" I said. "Who? For what?"

"They've had trouble in that spot before," Karlstein said. "Remember? A mugging less than a year ago. They should have lighted it like day. Sue the hospital, man."

"I think I'll pass," I said.

"It's a payday from some goddamn insurance company," he said. "What do you care? They've been sticking it to us pretty good, haven't they? You should give me a finder's fee for suggesting it."

Karlstein was probably joking, but I could never quite tell with him. My mind focused back on Tess. "What happened to the Bishop baby?" I said. I steadied myself for the worst. "Bad news?"

"Only for my census," he said. "We transferred her to Telemetry. She's out of the woods. Pacemaker's working like a charm."

Telemetry is a "step-down" cardiac unit where patients' hearts are still monitored, but in a more laid-back setting. "Thank God," I said.

"We did have a little trouble before she left," Karlstein said.

"What sort of trouble?"

"The billionaire. He wanted to see the baby-badly."

"Who was stopping him?" I asked.

"Your friend. She turns out to have some real backbone of her own."

"My friend…"

"Julia. The mother." Karlstein winked, making it obvious he had intuited she was special to me. "She had already hustled down to Suffolk Superior Court a couple hours before her husband arrived. Picked up a temporary restraining order against him. She had all the paperwork in a neat manila folder. Security showed him and his bodyguards to the door."

"He came here with his bodyguards?" I said.

"I assumed that's who they were. They were bigger than I am."

I knew we hadn't heard the last of that confrontation. "How did Julia handle things?"

"She was a rock while her husband was here. Then she fell apart. Just wracked with tears. I had Caroline Hallissey visit with her again, just to make sure she would be able to pull it together."

"And?"

"Hallissey is her own person," Karlstein said evasively.

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

"Nothing sensible."

"C'mon, John. Just tell me."

"She thought Mrs. Bishop was acting upset," he said, "manufacturing her emotions to manipulate us into doting on her."