"Sure," I said.

I must have looked as bad as I felt. "You okay?" she asked.

"I'm fine. What's up?"

"I did the consult on that woman in the ICU. Julia Bishop? You're involved in that case, right?"

"Right," I said. "What do you think?"

"She's depressed, that's for sure," Hallissey said. "She has numerous neurovegetative signs. Sleep loss. Lack of appetite. Difficulty concentrating. Low self-esteem. The symptoms were even worse just after her twins were born, but she's very resistant to being treated for any of it."

"It's a tough time for her to think clearly about herself," I said.

"Agreed," she said. "I wouldn't force anything on her. She's not suicidal, in the classic sense-just alluding to not wanting to go on if her daughter should die." She paused. "The thing that troubled me more was that I felt a lot of hostility from her."

"Meaning?"

"She asked a lot about my credentials. What undergrad school did I graduate? Where did I go to medical school? Who supervises my work with patients? The whole nine yards."

I wondered if that had anything to do with Hallissey's appearance. "She's in the middle of a homicide investigation," I said. "She doesn't know exactly who to trust."

"That could be part of it," Hallissey said. "But this felt more personal than that. Like she had an issue with me." She looked away, her eyes thinning as she struggled for words to describe her interaction with Julia. "I got the same feeling from her that I used to get from male patients who didn't respect female physicians. The ones who wanted to make sure I knew it."

"Not every psychiatrist-patient interaction is a love match," I said.

Hallissey looked directly at me. "I don't mean to step out of line, but it doesn't sound like you want to hear any of this. Maybe it's not a good time to talk."

I shook my head. Hallissey was right. I was automatically discounting her negative feedback about Julia. "I do want to hear it," I said. "Please. Tell me what else you noticed."

She hesitated.

"I'm listening," I said.

"Maybe it's the way she is with women," Hallissey said. "I mean, I've seen her be very cordial with Dr. Karlstein. And you don't seem to have any problem with her. But a couple of the female nurses in the ICU told me she treats them like she owns them. They definitely get bad vibes." She shrugged. "She supposedly modeled, right? Someone mentioned Elite or something."

The word supposedly stuck out like a sore thumb. I wondered whether jealousy was blurring Hallissey's therapeutic vision. Psychiatrists call it countertransference-the clinician's own feelings boomeranging back as if they had something to do with the patient's inner world. "She did model," I said. I pushed further to gauge Hallissey's reaction. "I guess she was pretty successful at it. The cover of Cosmo, Vogue, all that. Big time."

"Of course she was successful," Hallissey said. "It's textbook. She's magnificent-looking, but she has no real self-esteem. She exists for men. She needs them to adore her because she loathes herself. And that's why she immediately feels hatred toward me. Because I'm a woman."

The idea that Julia might harbor ill-will toward females troubled me. She had given birth to twin girls, after all. "Do you think she's a risk to the baby?" I asked Hallissey. "You feel the sitter is necessary?"

"I don't see what good it would do," she said. "I mean, if the kid's going home with her within a couple days, what's the sense of one-to-one observation now?" She rolled her eyes. "She'd probably end up taking advantage of the coverage to run to Gucci for a pair of shoes, or something. Beef up the wardrobe."

That comment increased my suspicion that jealousy or ill-will might be coloring Hallissey's perspective on Julia. I nodded and relaxed, but only a little. I couldn't afford to ignore her theory. "Will you be checking in with Ms. Bishop again?" I asked.

"Dr. Karlstein asked me to stop by tomorrow," she said.

"Would you page me if you come up with anything else interesting?" I asked.

"I'll do that," she said.

"And congratulations on your child," I said. "Hopefully, she won't end up modeling."

Hallissey's face lighted up. "No way," she said. "I can promise you that isn't going to happen."

It was 7:20 a.m. when I pulled myself into my truck and headed home to throw a few things together for my trip to Nantucket. The day was sunny and heating up the way Boston can in late June. I took the curves on Storrow Drive slowly, avoided potholes where I could, and slowly climbed the stairs, pausing every half-flight to gather courage.

I was most of the way to the fifth floor when a few frames of my experience in the alleyway visited me. I remembered being pushed, feeling a flash of pain, then losing my balance and pitching forward. I closed my eyes and stood motionless on the steps, trying to coax more of the attack back into consciousness, but nothing would come.

I grabbed fresh jeans and a black T-shirt in my apartment and was about to pull them on when I noticed the gauze around my abdomen had bled through. I walked to the bathroom and unwrapped myself.

Colin Bain had worked hard on me. The surface of the wound was more of a jagged laceration than a simple puncture, as if my assailant had ripped the knife upward, trying to gut me from behind. Bain's handiwork was impressive- tiny stitches, the mark of a surgical craftsman, ran in a lightning bolt shape along the bottom of my rib cage. I turned toward the sink, doused the wound with cold water, and blotted it dry. Then I rewrapped myself with a roll of gauze Bain had thrown in an emergency-room doggy bag, along with samples of Motrin, my prescription for Keflex, and my wallet. I swallowed three more Motrin, stuffed the wallet in my jeans, and got dressed.

My chances of making it to Hyannis conscious, then having the luck to get a seat (let alone space for my truck) on the ferry, were vanishingly slim, so I drove to Logan and waited for the ten-fifteen Cape Air flight. I tried North Anderson on his mobile, but got his voice mail. I left him a message that I'd be arriving at eleven and hoped he'd meet me at Nantucket Memorial-an intriguing name, I've always thought, for a very pleasant airport on a very beautiful island.

14

Anderson was waiting at the gate when I arrived. We'd had some turbulence in the last fifteen minutes of the flight, and I was bent toward my right side, trying to keep the muscles on that side slack. "You look great," he said, with a tight grin.

"Thanks a lot," I said.

The grin dissolved. "Truth is, you should be laying low, letting yourself heal up."

"I feel fine."

"Half of me thinks we should get out of the way," he said, "let the state cops handle the whole investigation from here."

"They'll let it begin and end with Billy," I said. "Bishop's too wired politically."

"I don't want it to end with you in a box," Anderson said. He shook his head, let out a long breath. "You're sleeping at my place tonight, period."

"Your place it is. Better safe than sorry." I winced as I straightened up.

"You didn't get a look at whoever did this? Nothing?"

"Not that I can remember."

"I guess it could be a random attack," he said. "The ER at Mass General draws a tough crowd."

"Could be," I said.

"It doesn't feel that way, though," Anderson said. "I'd lay hundred-to-one odds that whoever did this was looking to do you."

"Maybe we're making somebody nervous," I said. "Maybe that's not such a bad thing." I didn't add that I had done more than enough to make someone jealous, namely, Darwin Bishop.

Anderson nodded to himself. "How's Tess?"