Compulsion Read Online Free PDF Page A

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 into 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 other 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.