"And emotionally?" I asked.
"Seemingly a very gentle, fragile child. Terrified of loud noises, new places, new people. Even me. The biggest problem he had was with nightmares. He would wake up hysterical. His sleep has never really stabilized." Bishop laced his fingers together. "Some of that might be due to a problem he's had with bedwetting."
I thought back to Carl Rossetti's wager, at Cafe Positano in East Boston, that Billy would turn out to have the full triad of risk factors for psychopathy-cruelty to animals, firesetting, and bedwetting. "How did he do over time?" I asked.
"His fear certainly receded," Bishop said. "Unfortunately, in its place came aggression. He would strike out at me and his mother, unpredictably. We wondered for a time whether he was angry with us for bringing him to this country-or for trying to replace his natural parents. But his destructiveness was never exclusively focused on Julia and me. It attached itself to almost anything: property, animals, even himself."
"Cutting himself?" I asked.
"Yes. And he would bite himself," Bishop said. "He also had a rather nasty habit of pulling out his hair. The self-abuse stopped; the violence toward others never did."
"Has Billy been treated by a psychiatrist?" I asked.
"More than a few. He's been admitted to half a dozen psychiatric units, starting with the first problems he had hurting neighborhood pets at age nine."
"And has he had a steady psychiatrist outside the hospital?"
Bishop shook his head. "The Department of Youth Services tried to make outpatient care a condition of Billy's release on several occasions. He would comply with the letter of the law-ten sessions, fifteen, whatever it took to get out and stay out of detention centers. Then he'd utterly refuse to go to the clinics. If we forced him, he would sit in silence the entire hour. There was a brief trial on Prozac after he tried to set fire to the house. But, if anything, the medication seemed to make him more impulsive."
I studied Bishop a few moments. He looked as staged as his surroundings. Elegant and unflappable. Maybe a little confrontation, I thought, wouldn't be such a bad idea, after all. It might wring a little emotion out of him. Guilt. Anger. Anything. "Why did you make the mistake of adopting Billy in the first place? Foreign adoptions are notorious for trouble, even without a catastrophic personal history like his."
He didn't take issue with the word mistake. "I had had a very positive experience with my first adoption, of Garret. I was building a company in Russia, having extraordinary success," he said. "I wanted to give something back. I'm sure I underestimated the emotional hurdles in Billy's way."
I noticed that Bishop spoke of the adoptions as if he had undertaken them alone. "The adoptions were both your idea," I ventured.
"Yes," he said. "I like the idea of leveling the playing field for people with odds stacked heavily against them. Especially young people. Especially children."
"And how did your wife Julia feel about Billy joining the family?" I asked.
"She was supportive," he said.
"Sounds like a long way from ecstatic," I pressed.
Bishop's hands remained folded on his lap. His voice stayed steady. "I've asked a great deal of Julia," he said. "She welcomed my son Garret into our household from the day we were married. Integrating another child after seven years was no small challenge-especially a boy with Billy's past."
"Your ex-wife didn't win custody of Garret," I said.
"She didn't sue for custody," he said.
"Why?" I asked.
"It's a complicated story. Nothing worth going into right now."
His tone of voice told me the topic was off limits. I took a mental note of his discomfort and pushed in another direction. "Who found your daughter after… the crime?" I asked.
"I did," he said, without hesitation and without emotion.
"When?"
"Friday, a little before four a.m."
"You just happened to be awake at four in the morning?" Anderson asked.
"I was reviewing financial data prior to the opening of the markets in the Far East," Bishop said.
"Did you follow the markets yesterday, as well?" I asked.
"Yes," he said.
I took a more direct shot at piercing his armor. "How is it that you were able to conduct business," I said, "after finding your daughter the way you did?"
Bishop's eyes locked on mine. He didn't respond.
Anderson looked at me with an expression that telegraphed he thought I had gone too far.
I worried he was right, that I had pushed the needle into Bishop's soul and pierced something that would bleed uncontrollably. But when he finally spoke it was with the same cool certainty he had displayed throughout our meeting. "If I could pay a ransom to bring my daughter back," he said, "I would happily surrender every dollar I have. But that isn't possible. And I've worked very hard for my money. I intend to keep it." He smiled a fake smile and checked his watch. "Gentlemen," he said, "we're out of time. I promised Julia an early dinner."
"Would it be possible for Dr. Clevenger to interview Billy in New York?" Anderson asked.
Bishop's face remained a mask of affability. "To what end?" he asked.
"I could be helpful to your son if he's ultimately charged with murder," I said. "There may be issues of diminished capacity."
Diminished capacity is a legal doctrine that allows judges and juries to be more lenient with defendants who are sane at the time of their offenses, but still significantly mentally disturbed. Such defendants are sometimes convicted of lesser crimes-manslaughter or second-degree murder, for example, rather than first-degree murder.
"I can see how that might be of value," Bishop said. "I'll make the arrangements." He stood up. "Is there anything else I can help with?"
"Not just now," Anderson said.
We got to our feet and started out of the office. A grouping of three oil paintings mounted just inside the door caught my eye. They were portraits of three polo ponies, dressed with fancy saddles and stirrups, ankles wrapped in bright purple bindings. I stopped in front of them. I wanted to see how easily Bishop could shift from a discussion of his daughter's murder to a topic of infinitely less gravity. "Yours?" I asked him.
The transition seemed effortless for him. "Yes," he said, with real pride. "They're all mine." It was the most emotion he had shown. "I keep a string of twelve."
"Beautiful animals," Anderson said.
"They are," Bishop said.
"I've never played the game myself," I said. "I've always had it in mind to learn."
"I hope you'll be my guest, someday," Bishop said. "Perhaps Myopia. It's so close to Boston." His tone told me I shouldn't hold my breath for an invitation.
"I'd like that." I looked back at the portraits. "Are these your favorites? Of your string of twelve, I mean."
"Not really. They happened to be available for the artist."
"You haven't fallen in love with any one as opposed to another?"
Bishop smirked. "I feel the same way about each of them."
"Is it like loving a pet?" I asked. "A dog or a cat?"
"No," he said. "It's more like loving a tennis racket or a golf club."
"I'm not sure I follow," I said.
"You love them," he said, "as much as they help you win."
Claire Buckley showed us out. As we walked into the driveway, Garret Bishop and his mother happened to be walking toward the house from the tennis courts. We slowed so I could meet them.
The older Bishop boy, in white shorts and a white T-shirt, was already, at seventeen, close to six feet tall and broadly built, like his father. But where his father's gait was certain and aggressive, leading with his right shoulder like a running back, his son's was more tentative-shoulders turned inward, a slight bend in each knee, a momentary shuffle with each step.
Julia Bishop, wearing a black pareo and white T-shirt, was a little shorter and slighter than I would have guessed from her photograph in the study. She was walking with her head hung.