"So how about you? Mass General's the end of the line. Impressive stuff."
"You definitely didn't fly here to flatter me about my job."
He leaned a little into my space. "Look, I heard everything you told me on the phone yesterday. Believe me, I still get nightmares from that case myself. I can still see-"
"-Then you're still human," I interrupted, not needing a recap of the carnage.
"And I don't blame you one bit for not wanting to get involved this time."
"Good. Because I'm not planning to."
"Can I tell you what's bothering me?" he said.
"Didn't you just say you wanted nothing to do with my couch?"
Anderson didn't break stride. "Like I said on the phone, with all his millions, Darwin Bishop pretty much invited me to question his son. Right in the house. No attorney present. No nothing. He could have pulled a Ramsey, tied the department in knots for months until we proved probable cause." He shook his head. "The kid wouldn't talk, but even so…"
"Maybe he's got no reason to get in your way. Maybe his little girl died of SIDS, after all."
"But she didn't."
"You know that for a fact," I said.
"We got the autopsy results late last night," Anderson said. "Brooke Bishop died of asphyxiation due to airway obstruction." He dropped his voice, maybe to take the edge off his words. "Her nasal passages and trachea were filled with plastic sealant, like you'd use to caulk up a window."
My stomach fell. I tried not to think of little Brooke's last minutes of life, but unwelcome images and feelings crashed through my resistance. I imagined her watching the person approaching her, maybe even smiling expectantly, cooing, then opening her eyes wider with curiosity at the white tube of caulk. I felt her laugh as the plastic tip tickled the rim of one nostril, then fall silent and begin to squirm as the tip moved deeper inside. I felt her begin to gag and strain, mouth open, lungs sealed. Cut off. Did she, I wondered, wish some last, infantile wish to be held? Did her mind flee to a memory of her mother's face or smell or touch?
"Frank?" Anderson said.
I focused on him again. "I'm listening," I said.
"Like I was saying," he went on, "if I'm Darwin Bishop, loaded to the gills, I get Billy the best lawyer money can-"
"Billy?" I broke in.
"They obviously renamed the kid when they brought him over from Russia," Anderson said. "American as apple pie, huh?"
I had lost one patient to suicide in my seventeen years as a psychiatrist. He was a depressed teenager named Billy Fisk. I had never stopped feeling responsible for his death. "Right," I said.
"Right?"
I closed my eyes, remembering Fisk.
"There are no coincidences" the voice at the back of my mind prodded me. "Take it as a sign."
"You still with me?" Anderson said.
I looked at him. "What else do you know about the family?"
Anderson relaxed visibly and let out a sigh.
"I'm just asking a question," I said. "I'm not signing onto the case."
He held up a hand. "Of course not." His tone said he thought otherwise. "It turns out Darwin Bishop grew up in Brooklyn," he said, "even though you'd never know it from his voice or the way he carries himself. He's all Park Avenue and Nantucket now. Fifty-one years old. His wife Julia is a former model. It's his second marriage."
"Much younger?" I said.
"Mid-thirties," Anderson said.
"How's she bearing up?"
"What would you expect?"
"I don't. Ever," I said. "That way I'm never surprised."
"She's a basket case," Anderson said. "She hardly leaves the twins' bedroom."
"And the older adopted son? The seventeen-year-old. What's he like?"
Anderson shrugged. "I only got about ten minutes with him. His name is Garret. Bishop adopted him a year before his divorce. He's a golden boy. Good-looking. Straight A's at Andover Academy. Varsity tennis and lacrosse. Headed for Yale in the fall. You know the pedigree."
"Did you learn anything from him?" I asked.
"I'd say he's in shock," Anderson said. "He kept holding his head in his hands, saying, 'I can't believe this is happening.' He was worried about his mother, mostly- whether she'd hold up. She's got a history of depression."
"Why did Bishop adopt the two boys in the first place?" I asked.
"I don't know. I was focused on the kids themselves."
I nodded. "So there's Garret, then Billy, then Brooke and… what's the surviving twin's name?"
"Tess."
"Garret, Billy, Brooke, and Tess."
"Right."
"Was anybody else in the house the night before they found Brooke dead?" I asked.
"A nanny. Claire Buckley. She summers on the island with the family. Takes care of the kids, gets a place to stay, half her nights and weekends free-that type of thing."
"Young and pretty," I said. "Sticks close to the wife."
"You got it."
"Any guests that evening?"
"No," Anderson said.
I looked out over the water, its surface speckled with white, electric jewels of light. "So why do you figure Mr. Bishop flung the door wide open for you?"
"I don't know. Like I said, that's what bothers me."
"It was before the autopsy results," I said.
"Still…" Anderson said.
"Maybe he's burnt out," I said. "He's gone to bat for Billy over his firesetting, his cruelty to animals-now this. Maybe he finally gets the picture that Billy's a dangerous kid."
"Could be."
"Or it could be something else."
"Like…" he said.
"Like maybe he'd rather have Billy take the fall than somebody else," I said. "Like his golden boy. Or his wife. Or himself."
"Also possible," Anderson said. He paused. "If I had a psychiatrist working with me, I might actually be able to find out which answer is the right one."
I took a deep breath, let it out.
"I really need you on this," Anderson said. "My gut tells me Billy Bishop isn't guilty. And if I'm right, that's only half the problem. Because then I've got to find out who is. There's another baby girl in that house."
Anderson was right to worry about Tess. In the dozen or so recorded cases of infanticide in families with twins, the surviving baby eventually dies mysteriously over seventy percent of the time, usually due to sudden heart or respiratory failure. Some researchers have theorized that the jarring loss of one twin spawns a toxic grief reaction in the other that mysteriously shuts down cardiac conduction or short-circuits the respiratory drive. An immeasurable connection of souls has been abruptly severed, sapping the will to live. But the most convincing explanation is that the killer has simply been given time and opportunity to claim another victim-probably by suffocation-either because the wrong person was arrested or because lack of evidence precluded any arrest.
I looked up at the sky. For some reason I pictured my father in a drunken rage, ready to mete out one of the beatings that were my childhood. I thought how nice it would be to keep myself safe, for a change. I thought how no one could blame me if I did. Because I already had wounds crisscrossing my psyche like a map to hell. And some of them had never stopped bleeding.
“No one could blame you" the voice whispered, "except yourself."
Justine had breakfast nearly ready when I got back to the loft. Omelets and bacon sizzled on the stove. Still-warm bagels from Katz's, a sixty-five-year-old shop just beyond the 7-Eleven, were sliced and spread with cream cheese. A deep red, sparkly liquid filled the blender.
"Strawberries, ice, and sugar," she said, without my asking.
"Everything looks wonderful," I said.
"So you will leave this minute or later today?" She flipped an omelet.
I wasn't expecting the question and didn't answer.
She glanced at me. "I know you have to go. I could see it in your friend's face."
"I told him I'd meet him at the airport in four hours. He's got a tough case on Nantucket. A little girl was murdered."