Compulsion

"Told you you'd meet him," Anderson said. "That's Brian O'Do

"Got a minute?" O'Do

"Sure," Anderson said.

Claire turned around, walked back inside, and closed the door.

"I should introduce Dr. Clevenger," Anderson said, as O'Do

O'Do

"Conducting an investigation," Anderson said. "What did you think we might be doing?"

O'Do

"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'Do

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'Do

"We're just dealing with the one homicide right now," I reminded him. "Hopefully, it stays that way."

"Whatever," O'Do

"You any closer?" I asked.

"We think we're closing in," O'Do

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'Do

"If he did this time," I said.

O'Do

"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 ma

"Sounds open and shut," Anderson said.

"Think what you want," O'Do

I saw Anderson 's jaw set. His breathing moved into a Zen-like study in self-control.

O'Do

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'Do

I shook it. "I'm sure we'll see each other again," I said.

15

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'Do

"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 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 Bishops' 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 Rot-man 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 his 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.

A nineteen-year-old man I evaluated was upset that his cousin-a South Boston gang member who disliked blacks-had been stricken with leukemia. To fuel the cousin's recovery, he approached a fourteen-year-old black boy in Roxbury and emptied four bullets into his chest. "I was sort of doing what my cousin would do, kind of like that might bring him back," the man told me.

Strange calculus, indeed. And none of it surprises me, anymore-certainly not after what 1 was to learn about the Bishops.

Anderson and I made it to the Brant Point Racket Club just after 2:00 p.m. There was enough activity in the place that we attracted little attention as we located Garret's locker.