CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
I sit watching the house for a minute. A few upstairs windows are softly lit. A walkway winds out of sight, decorated with ground lights. I find myself drifting back in time, back to when Tom first entered my office, and my life. His downcast eyes, his shoulders slumped. It had been six months since his father’s murder. Where had he been all that time? I try to remember if he’d gone to stay with the Bleekers straightaway or if there was a time he’d still been with his mother.
Maybe it was both. Laura Bishop, before she was arrested, might have gone to Long Island herself. Her Bronxville home would have now been a crime scene, the kitchen floor stained from the brutal slaying of her husband. Splatters of blood would have peppered the kitchen clocks, more flecks dotting the clocks on the staircase wall . . .
You wouldn’t stay there with your child. You’d take refuge with family. I just couldn’t recall who had been the one to drop Tom off for his sessions. I think I remember a woman.
Alice Bleeker. Dead now, from cancer.
I pick up the file on the passenger seat and leaf through it. Case notes, police reports, even a copy of David Bishop’s autopsy . . . I don’t remember having that. I slide it out for a closer look and find pictures clipped to the back. It’s not pretty. Bishop was hit in the head with a hammer, but not just once. Five times, caving in his skull.
The pictures are the stuff of nightmares. His head, shaved postmortem, looks like cratered asphalt.
I quickly shove the images and documents back in the file and close it up.
Why does an autopsy report accompany my notes on Tom Bishop? It must’ve been that the police had provided me a copy for context. This is what the boy saw.
As I sit there contemplating the horror of it, I get the sense that I’m being watched.
I first check the house, but nothing seems to have changed. The same windows are lighted, and one upstairs window flickers a bit, as if with TV light. The street ahead of me is empty: no one parks on the streets in Bronxville at night.
But then I see it. In the rearview mirror, a car is stopped behind me about forty yards, headlights off. A streetlamp in proximity reveals the shape of a driver at the wheel.
Gut reaction: I grab the shifter and put the car in drive. But before my foot leaves the brake and hits the gas, the door of the car behind me opens and a man steps out.
I’m trapped, too curious to just drive away, even if my heart is now banging my ribs.
The man comes up alongside the driver’s side of my car. I let out a shuddering breath, then buzz down the window.
“Evening,” he says.
“Hello.”
For a few long seconds, we just stare at each other. It’s been fifteen years, but both of us are calculating what we see — whom we see. He’s familiar. He’s Mooney’s partner.
“Detective Steven Starzyk,” he says, holding his hand up to the window.
Of course. I realize the car looks familiar. The shape of it, anyway; the make. Like an unmarked police car.
“You’re Dr. Lindman?”
“I am.”
We shake and he continues to give me cop-eyes, hunting for my agenda. But he seems satisfied a moment later when he says, “Guess we had the same idea. Or feeling.”
I’m not sure what he means. “I haven’t been here in a long time.”
“Me neither.”
He’s only kind of handsome, if a little weaselly, his eyes close-set and his nose a bit pinched. His hair is wispy and blond, cut like an aging surfer’s. He glances at the house, and his eyes come back to me.
I feel like I’m supposed to say something else. Something better. But before I do, he’s looking past me at the passenger seat. “That a file on, ah, the Bishop boy?”
“It is.” This is feeling awkward now.
Starzyk’s eyes narrow and his tone grows authoritative. “Mind if I ask what you’re doing here?”
Fine. I give him a version of the story: I’m on vacation upstate, and I just met the man my daughter is dating, Michael Rand, who looks remarkably like an older version of Tom Bishop. The story includes me coming down because of Maggie Lewis, but skips the trip to the Bleeker house on Long Island. “I just . . . I was in my office. I picked up the file. Then I just came by. Trying to remember, I guess.”
When I look at his face, I expect Starzyk to give me the expression I’ve been getting, you know, stranger things and what a coincidence, but I don’t. Starzyk looks a shade paler, his eyes a hue darker. He even takes a half-step back from the vehicle.
“It sounds like you’re not aware of it?”
“Aware of what?”
He glances at the house and then resumes in a low, grave tone: “Laura Bishop was granted parole. They’re letting her out.”
It feels like a bomb going off somewhere in the back of my brain. I actually see a hammer swinging down, arcing through the air, blood trailing. David Bishop on the morgue slab, half of his skull bashed in. Little Tom, head hanging, shoulders rounded, as he walked into my office the first day, six months later.
“She’s getting out?”
Starzyk nods. “The hearing was two months ago. The board reviewed her case and recommended parole.”
“Really? So when exactly is she released?” The nuances of parole have always eluded me.
“It’s not an exact science,” he says. “But today’s the eligibility date. I know that much because I had it written down. And it was in the paper this morning. Big headline.”
“I didn’t, ah . . . We’re out of town. I’ve kind of turned off the world.”
“Sure, I get that. But, so, you’re telling me Laura Bishop’s son is dating your daughter?”
“Well, I don’t know that it’s—”
“And you just met him this morning? I mean, that’s something, isn’t it? That’s more than something.” His eyes are getting intense, probing me.
“I don’t know that it’s him,” I explain. “Which is the whole thing.”
Starzyk makes a face, like yeah, right. He gives me the same line about long odds I’ve been telling myself. And he’s talking some more about how Laura Bishop must’ve charmed the parole board, that she’s got all the hallmarks of a psychopath, that she’s smart and clever and manipulative.
I let him talk, not saying much myself. Until my own question forms. “And what brings you here tonight, Mr. Starzyk?”
“Like I said, it was in the paper.”
“Right, but still . . .”
He shrugs. “I live only thirty minutes from here. And I don’t take an August vacation.” He looks off, up the street. “Half these houses are empty right now. Not me. I don’t have any place to go.” When his gaze comes back, he takes out his wallet and hands me a business card. Bureau of Criminal Investigation. “Would you mind doing me a favor? Let me know, okay? Let me know what you find out? If this is the boy.”
“Of course.” I tuck it into the file, adding, “I hear what you’re saying, but it doesn’t seem possible. I think I’ve just been under a lot of pressure. This was a much-needed vacation. I should get back to it.”