Free Compulsion by Keith Ablow Page A

nothing to irritate him."
    "So did the testing yield any useful data?" I asked.
    "It did."  She picked up a set of sheets from her desk and turned a page.  "First things first:  Billy is highly intelligent.  His IQ tested full scale at 152.  He’s in the extremely gifted range.  In his case, that’s good news and it’s bad news."
    "What’s the bad part?"
    "The bad part is that his intelligence seems to exist in a moral vacuum.  It may just make him a more cunning predator.  On the projective sections of the test, his responses were highly egocentric.  He saw people almost exclusively in terms of what they could do to satisfy his needs."  She flipped a few more pages.  "Billy was asked, for example, to tell a story about a drawing of a police officer chasing a man.  The man is holding a fistful of money.  Billy’s only comments were, ‘I wish I had that money.  He’d never catch me.’  When the examiner coaxed him to say more about the scene, all he added was, ‘I want a gun like that someday, too.’"
    "He didn’t say anything about what the man had done wrong?" I asked.  "He didn’t offer any thoughts about what would happen to him if he were caught?"
    She shook her head.  "Nothing related to law, morality, or punishment."  She looked at the report again.  "A drawing of a baseball player lying on the ground between bases, clutching his knee, yielded, ‘I didn’t want to play baseball this summer, but my father made me.  It’s a stupid game.’"
    "He showed no interest in how the man had been injured?" I asked.
    "None whatsoever," Mossberg said without looking up.  "A third example:  When he was asked to describe what was happening in a picture of a man leaving a room, obviously angry, with a woman in tears looking after him, he said, ‘She should stop crying.  She’s loud, and it’s hurting his ears.  He should go back and make her stop.’"
    I cringed at that narrative, remembering how Tess, the surviving Bishop twin, had cried out while North Anderson and I were with Darwin Bishop in his study.  Could little Brooke Bishop’s wailing have annoyed Billy enough to seal off her windpipe?  "Did you question Billy directly about the loss of his sister?" I asked.
    "In a general way," Mossberg said.  "I asked him what had happened to Brooke."
    "And?"
    "He said she had stopped breathing."
    "Did he show any emotion when he answered?" I asked.
    "No."
    "Did you sense he was suffering any guilt?"
    "He insists he had nothing to do with it," she said.
    "But you don’t believe him," I said.
    "Well... no.  Of course not."
    "Why not?" I asked.
    Mossberg looked at me askance.  "I hadn’t heard anyone express doubt that Billy committed the crime.  Mr. Bishop’s wishes were for a secure setting where his son could be held — away from the glare of the media — until trial.  I assumed you would be helping to craft an insanity plea."
    "Did Bishop say that?  He expects Billy to stand trial for murdering Brooke?"
    "Very clearly," Mossberg said.  "Am I missing something?  Is there confusion on Nantucket about whether Billy killed his sister?"
    I took a deep breath, let it out.  "Less than you might expect," I said.

Chapter 5
     
    Laura Mossberg walked me down the hall to Billy’s room, a space about the size of her office, but furnished with a smaller wooden desk, a desk chair, and a platform bed.  Billy was lying facedown on the mattress, apparently asleep.  He was wearing blue jeans and a white T-shirt.  A young man about college age sat outside the room, reading a textbook.
    "We have Billy on one-to-one observation, around the clock," Mossberg explained.  "I should tell you that this unit wouldn’t normally provide services to someone with a history of violence like his.  We admitted him at the request of our CEO.  Mr. Bishop is a major donor to the medical center."
    That didn’t surprise me.  Darwin Bishop’s influence obviously reached far and wide.  "I won’t need more