Was history repeating itself? Was God testing me to see whether I had learned to go all the way out on a limb for someone about to fall?
I flicked through the handful of numbers that had registered on my message machine. They were all in the 508 area code, which included Cape Cod and Nantucket. The only number I recognized was North Anderson 's. I figured the others probably belonged to Billy, that he had run closer to home, rather than further away.
I listened to North's message. No emergency, but he wanted me to call him. I dialed his number at work. His secretary put me through.
"Billy's come up for air," I told him.
"How so?" he asked.
"He called me for a loan."
"I hope he's looking to buy a one-way airplane ticket to Russia instead of a stolen gun," he said. "I wouldn't give him any dough."
"He wanted the money dropped off so a buddy could run it to him. I told him no deal."
"Good. The last thing I want to do is tail sixteen-year-olds across two states-or two continents," Anderson said. "He'll circle back to you."
"He got pretty threatening at the end," I admitted. "He told me to watch the papers."
"All the more reason to keep him running on empty. Without a full wallet, he'll turn up sooner."
That made me feel better about my decision to withhold the cash, but not a whole lot better. "I got your message on my machine," I said. "What's up?"
"Nothing urgent. I just wanted you to know I'm starting to feel some political pressure from good old Darwin. We must be getting to him."
"What sort of political pressure?" I asked him.
"I serve at the pleasure of the mayor," Anderson said. "And the mayor serves all kinds of masters, including Darwin Bishop. He called to let me know he isn't pleased I have you on board. He doesn't see why we need a forensic psychiatrist involved in the case when there's an identified lead suspect and a clear path to prosecution once that suspect is apprehended."
"Translation: Leave the billionaire alone and close the case down," I said.
"You speak Nantucket very well."
"So what does that mean for us, in the short term?" I asked.
"It doesn't mean anything, short or long term, until they fire me, run me off the island, and set up a blockade to keep me away."
I had relied on North Anderson 's loyalty before, but I didn't want to take it for granted. "You could cut me loose, and I could keep working on my own time," I said.
"Wow," he said. "You've come a long way. You didn't even want this gig, let alone wanting it pro bono."
"Things change," I said.
"Not everything," Anderson said. "If they want to shake you off the case, they'll have to get me off the case. And that's not happening."
"Understood." I let myself linger a couple seconds on the good feeling that Anderson 's camaraderie inspired in me. "I got my own message from Darwin Bishop today," I said. "He had me followed when I took Julia to lunch. Some gorilla in one of his Range Rovers was parked outside the restaurant."
Anderson was silent for a bit. "I think you ought to come down here for a few days," he said.
"You want to watch my back for me?"
"Why not? You've watched mine enough."
I had already started to feel myself being pulled back to the island, especially since Billy's calls seemed to place him a lot closer to Nantucket than Chelsea. "Any chance I could interview Darwin Bishop once more?"
"I can try to set it up," Anderson said. "He's already having you followed. He might actually like the chance to check in face-to-face."
"I'll take a ferry over tonight, provided they have space. If you get me that interview, I'll have a pretty full dance card. I'm attending Brooke Bishop's funeral tomorrow."
"At Julia's invitation?" he said.
"Yes."
There was a little longer silence this time. "Look, we go back a long way, right?"
I knew where he was headed. "You don't have to say it."
"I'm just going to tell you the way it is: You can't touch her."
"I haven't," I said.
"You haven't and you won't?"
I hesitated.
"Listen to me," Anderson said. "Whether you mess around with married women is your own business. I'm not about to give you any lectures on morality."
"Good."
"You can't touch her because it contaminates the case. You can't see clearly from the inside of anything, if you know what I mean."
I knew exactly what he meant. Crossing personal boundaries in professional relationships is always ill-advised. As a psychiatrist, it's especially unethical. But my attraction to Julia was blurring all those lines. I didn't feel I could honestly make any promises or predictions about where my relationship with her was headed. "You're right," was all I told Anderson.
"And…"
"And I'll try to be on that ferry I mentioned."
"You're playing with fire, Frank."
"I hear you."
He let out a heavy sigh. "Call me when you hit the island."
"Will do."
I packed light, but then realized I was traveling a little too light, given the special attention Darwin Bishop was paying me. I walked over to the bed, reached down to the bed frame, and grabbed my Browning Baby pistol. I tucked it in my front pocket. It had been a long time since I'd needed to carry, but it was that time again.
I walked to the kitchen next. I looked up at the double doors of the cabinet over the refrigerator. I hadn't opened those doors for more than two years. But I hadn't emptied the cabinet, either. A collection of single malt scotches stood inside, waiting for a moment like this one, when some sort of trouble in the world would become my trouble again. There was a flask in the cabinet, too-a well-worn, sterling silver one with "FGC" engraved, front and center. Frank Galvin Clevenger. I was never one for monograms, but Galvin had been my father's first name, and it had seemed fitting that I include the "G" on a vessel that contained the spore of the illness we shared.
I reached up and opened the doors. I took down the flask and a bottle of twenty-year-old Glenlivet. I twisted the cap off each. Then, in a ritual that had sometimes reminded me of a transfusion, sometimes of bloodletting, I poured a thin stream of scotch from bottle to flask, listening to the familiar song of the liquid splashing into the hollow vessel. It was a deep, throaty tune at first and something more shrill toward the end. I remembered it with dread and-more ominous for me-nostalgia.
I put the bottle back in the cabinet and the flask in my back pocket. And I walked out of the loft that way, on a journey that would take me, in equal measure, into my future and into my past.
I planned to take the 7:00 p.m. ferry out of Hyannis and leave my truck in the lot there. But when the clerk at Steamship Authority told me a car reservation had opened up (something of a miracle in June), I happily paid the $202 and drove aboard.
North Anderson had reached me on my cell phone and offered me the guestroom at his house, but I had passed, not wanting to impose on him or his wife, Tina. Playing hostess, with no notice, when you're six months pregnant can't be much fun. I also preferred having my own base to work from. I gave Anderson my ETA and found a vacancy at the Breakers, part of the White Elephant hotel complex on Easton Street, which runs along the north side of Nantucket Harbor.
I napped for about an hour in my truck, then woke up and stepped onto the deck to get some air. It wasn't quite sixty degrees, chilly for late June. I stood near the stern, breathing in the mist and watching the ship's white cotton wake. I wondered whether Billy had made the same trip earlier. I imagined him laying low and stealing onto the island unseen or unrecognized, a cruel irony for a boy whose identity-including his biological parents, his native land, his first language, and his name-had already been stripped from him. Now survival required burying the rest of himself, at least temporarily. If that felt too much like dying, he might decide to make it official. Strangely, suicide is sometimes a person's way of taking control-the soul's last-ditch effort to free itself from overwhelming earthly influences.