Keith Ablow - Compulsion

He nodded to himself, glanced at me, then looked down at the table. "If I did get released…" he started, then stopped short.

"Go on," I encouraged him. I was glad he could at least entertain the possibility that he'd go free.

"Nothing," he said. "It's stupid."

"Try me," I said.

He just shrugged.

"I've said more stupid things in my life than I can count," I assured him. "You'll never catch up."

That got him to smile. He glanced at me again, a little longer this time. "Well, if I ever did get out of here, I wouldn't have anywhere to go. They'd never take me back home." He cleared his throat. "Not that I'd go there, anyway."

"That can all get worked out," I said. "Between the Department of Social Services and Nantucket Family Services there are…"

"What I'm getting at is… Well, maybe I could kind of crash with you a while," he said. " 'Cause I think I could be different than the way I've been. If I had someone around I trusted. You know?" He looked at me, for my reaction.

I was slow to respond because at least half my mind was occupied with thoughts of Billy Fisk, how things might have been different for him if I'd been willing to go out on a limb.

Billy looked embarrassed. "It is a stupid idea. I mean…"

"I'd be willing to give it a try," I said.

"You would?" His voice was equal parts surprise, doubt, and relief.

"Sure," I said. "Why not? What have we got to lose?"

Billy and I said our good-byes, and I headed out of the prison. A prison guard friend of Anderson 's escorted me to a back exit so I could circle around to my car without being hounded by the media. "They'll be waiting for you," he explained, handing over copies of the Boston Globe and Boston Herald. Both papers, apparently worried about exhausting their readers' appetites for the Bishop family saga, had run stories about me. The headlines were typical tabloid trash: "Doc in Hostage Drama Back for Billionaire Babies" and "He Doesn't Shrink From Murder." The photographs of me that accompanied the articles had been shot during my testimony years ago in Trevor Lucas's very public murder trial.

All in all, I knew the coverage wasn't a bad thing. The media would be primed to listen to the message about Billy that Anderson and I hoped to get out. I just had to be careful to pull the trigger at the right time.

It was 4:10 a.m. En route home, I called the chemistry laboratory at Mass General to check on Tess's blood work. The laboratory technician told me the toxic screen had been negative; no new substance had been found in the baby's bloodstream. That ruled out Julia having slipped Tess anything to slow her breathing-at least anything recognizable by routine testing.

I called North Anderson next. He'd been in touch with Art Fields about the prints Leona had lifted from inside the prescription bottle. Three individuals-including Darwin Bishop, but not Billy Bishop-had touched the inner surface. No surprises there. "I would guess the other sets belong to Julia and maybe to the pharmacist who filled the prescription," Anderson said. "So that's another chink in the armor of Harrigan's case against Billy." He paused. "How did your visit go with him? They let you in, didn't they?"

"I just finished," I said.

"How does he look to you? Is he holding up?"

"He's lost some weight. And he's scared. But he hasn't lost hope."

"Good for him," Anderson said. "He's a tough kid, then. Did he give us anything we can use?"

"He thinks Garret may be holding something back," I said. "He wants us to ask him one more time whether he saw anything the night Brooke was killed."

"It's going to be hard to get access to him, but we can give it a shot."

"It's the best one we have," I said.

"You're headed my way then?" he asked.

"First thing."

"Call me before you leave. I'll swing by the airport and pick you up."

"Will do."

I took the left onto Winnisimmet Street, heading to my loft. Luckily, I happened to glance down the first cross street, called Beacon. I noticed two of Darwin Bishop's Range Rovers parked halfway down the block, engines running. That was a very bad sign. I drove past my building and saw a couple of Bishop's men huddled in the entry way, either politely buzzing my apartment or, more likely, getting ready to jimmy the front door.

With my wound still howling at me and my gun on the coffee table five stories up, I wasn't about to go looking for trouble. I figured I'd travel real light to Nantucket, buy myself a change of clothing on the island. I needed a new pair of jeans and a new black T-shirt, anyhow. My favorite set was bloodstained, and the T-shirt had a nasty tear across the back, to boot.

I turned up Front Street and drove straight for Logan Airport and the first Cape Air commuter flight of the morning.

Anderson picked me up at 7:30 a.m., an hour before his scheduled meeting with Mayor Keene. We headed over to the temporary State Police headquarters for the Bishop investigation, a specially decked out trailer that had been sited next to the Nantucket Police Station.

Brian O'Donnell greeted us cordially enough, maybe because he figured Anderson was about to be fired, anyhow.

As we walked through the strategy room, its conference table loaded with maps of the island, its walls covered with aerial photographs of the varied terrain, I managed to hold back from needling O'Donnell about the fact that Billy had apparently escaped the island before all the ATVs and choppers started scrambling through cranberry bogs and hidden forests.

Anderson showed less restraint. "Did they use infrared heat-seeking devices out there in the moors?" he asked O'Donnell.

"I believe so," O'Donnell said, without breaking stride.

"Anything turn up? A lost dog or cat, or something? That might make an interesting human interest story for New England Cable News, trigger some goodwill toward the department. You always want to have something to show for a production as expensive as what went down around here."

"We got what we were looking for," O'Donnell said, turning to smile at us for the briefest moment. "That's all that matters."

O'Donnell's office occupied the last third of the trailer. He took a seat behind a folding aluminum table he was using as a desk. We each took one of the plastic chairs opposite him. He laced his fingers behind his neck. "Gentlemen, how can I help you this morning?" he asked.

I got right to the point. "I'd like to interview Garret Bishop one more time," I said.

"Impossible," O'Donnell said.

"Why is that?" Anderson asked.

"You already know why. The investigation is wrapped up. Garret's given his statement. We have a suspect under arrest. Billy will be indicted by the grand jury within a day or so."

I heard O'Donnell loud and clear. Don't rock the boat. "I think Garret may be able to add critical information about what happened in the Bishop household the night Brooke died," I said.

"We have a clear picture," O'Donnell replied, with a grin. He glanced at Anderson in a way that seemed to telegraph that he'd seen the photograph of him with Julia on the beach. He let his not-so-subtle double meaning sink in for a few seconds. "The picture's been developing ever since Billy Bishop tortured his first animal. From there, he's escalated. Breaking and entering. Destruction of property. Arson. Murder. We've been over this ground."

"That picture doesn't fit with the fingerprint evidence I shared with you from the state laboratory," Anderson said.

"It doesn't need to fit that data," O'Donnell countered. "'Unless you're a Navy Seal, you're not going to get into and out of a property with no evidence you were ever there. The important thing for Billy, given that his hands had been all over that house for years anyhow, would be to keep his prints off anything directly linked to the mayhem he committed while inside. It's simple enough. He wore gloves. End of story."