Shutter Island Part 1

Shutter Island.

by Dennis Lehane.

. . must we dream our dreamsand have them, too?

Elizabeth Bishop,"Questions of Travel"ACKNOWLEDGMENTSThanks to Sheila, George Bick, Jack Driscoll, Dawn Ellenburg, Mike Flynn, Julie Anne McNary, David Robichaud, and Joanna Solfrian. Three texts were indispensable in writing this novel: Boston Harbor Islands by Emily and David Kale; Gracefully Insane, Alex Beam's account of McLean Hospital; and Robert Whitaker's Mad in America, which doc.u.mented the use of neuroleptics on schizophrenics in American psychiatric inst.i.tutions. I remain indebted to all three books for their outstanding reportage.As ever, as always, thanks to my editor, Claire Wachtel (every writer should be so blessed), and my agent, Ann Rittenberg, who gave me the book by giving me the Sinatra.ixPROLOGUEFROM THE JOURNALS OF DR. LESTER SHEEHANMAY 3, 1993I haven't laid eyes on the island in several years. The last time was from a friend's boat that ventured into the outer harbor, and I could see it off in the distance, past the inner ring, shrouded in the summer haze, a careless smudge of paint against the sky.I haven't stepped foot on it in more than two decades, but Emily says (sometimes joking, sometimes not) that she's not sure I ever left. She said once that time is nothing to me but a series of bookmarks that I use to jump back and forth through the text of my life, returning again and again to the events that mark me, in the eyes of my more astute colleagues, as bearing all the characteristics of the cla.s.sic melancholic. Emily may be right. She is so often right.Soon I will lose her too. A matter of months, Dr. Axelrod told us Thursday. Take that trip, he advised. The one you're always talking about. To Florence and Rome, Venice in the spring. Because Lester, he added, you're not looking too well yourself.I suppose I'm not. I misplace things far too often these days, my gla.s.ses more than anything. My car keys. I enter stores and forget what I've come for, leave the theater with no recollection of xvhat I've just seen. If time for me really is a series of bookmarks, then I feel as if someone has shaken the book and those yellowed slips of paper, torn matchbook covers and flattened coffee stirrers have fallen to the floor, and the dog-eared flaps have been pressed smooth.I want to write these things down, then. Not to alter the text so that I fall under a more favorable light. No, no. He would never allow that. In his own peculiar way, he hated lies more than anyone I have ever known. I want only to preserve the text, to transfer it from its current storage facility (which frankly is beginning to moisten and leak) to these pages.Ashecliffe Hospital sat on the central plain of the island's northwestern side. Sat benignly, I might add. It looked nothing like a hospital for the criminally insane and even less like the military barracks it had been before that. Its appearance reminded most of us, in point of fact, of a boarding school. Just outside the main compound, a mansarded Victorian housed the warden and a dark, beautiful Tudor minicastle, which had once housed the Union commander of the northeastern sh.o.r.eline, served as the quarters of our chief of staff. Inside the wall were the staff quarters-quaint, clapboard cottages for the clinicians, three low-slung cinder block dormitories for the orderlies, the guards, and the nurses. The main compound was composed of lawns and sculpted hedges, great shady oaks, Scotch pines, and trim maples, apple trees whose fruit dropped to the tops of the wall in late autumn or tumbled onto the gra.s.s. And in the center of the compound, twin redbrick colonials on either side of the hospital itself, a structure of large, charcoal stones and handsome granite. Beyond were the bluffs and the tidal marsh and a long valley where a collective farm had sprung up and then failed in the years just after the American Revolution. The trees they planted survived-peach and pear and chokeberry-but no longer bore fruit, and the night winds often came howling into that valley and screeched like cats.And the fort, of course, which stood long before the first hospital staff arrived, and stands there still, jutting out of the southern cliff face. And the lighthouse beyond, out of service since before the Civil War, rendered obsolete by the beam of Boston Light.From the sea, it didn't look like much. You have to picture it the way Teddy Daniels sawit on that calm morning in September of 1954. A scrub plain in the middle of the outer harbor. Barely an island, you'd think, so much as the idea of one. What purpose could it have, he may have thought. What purpose.Rats were the most voluminous of our animal life. They scrabbled in the brush, formed lines along the sh.o.r.e at night, clambered over wet rock. Some were the size of flounder. In the years following those four strange days of late summer 1954, I took to studying the rats from a cut in the hill overlooking the northern sh.o.r.e. I was fascinated to discover that some of the rats would try to swim for Paddock Island, little more than a rock in a cupful of sand that remained submerged twenty-two hours out of every day. When it appeared for that hour or two as the current reached its lowest ebb, sometimes they'd swim for it, these rats, never more than a dozen or so and always driven back by the riptide.I say always, but no. I saw one make it. Once. The night of the harvest moon in October '56. I saw its black moccasin of a body dart across the sand.Or so I think. Emily, whom I met on the island, will say, "Lester, you couldn't have. It was too far away."She's right.And yet I know what I saw. One fat moccasin darting across the sand, sand that was pearl gray and already beginning to drown again as the current returned to swallow Paddock Island, swallow that rat, I a.s.sume, for I never saw it swim back.But in that moment, as I watched it scurry up the sh.o.r.e (and I did, I saw it, distances be d.a.m.ned), I thought of Teddy. I thought of Teddy and his poor dead wife, Dolores Cha.n.a.l, and those twin terrors, Rachel Solando and Andrew Laeddis, the havoc they wreaked on us all. I thought that if Teddy were sitting with me, he would have seen that rat too. He would have.And I'll tell you something else:Teddy?He would have clapped.DAY ONERachelTEDDY DANIELS'S FATHER had been a fisherman. He lost his boatto the bank in '31 when Teddy was eleven, spent the rest of his life hr-ing onto other boats when they had the work, unloading freight alongthe docks when they didn't, going long stretches when he was back at the house by ten in the morning, sitting in an armchair, staring at his hands, whispering to himself occasionally, his eyes gone wide and dark. He'd taken Teddy out to the islands when Teddy was still a small boy, too young to be much help on the boat. All he'd been able to do was untangle the lines and tie off the hooks. He'd cut himself a few times, and the blood dotted his fingertips and smeared his palms. They'd left in the dark, and when the sun appeared, it was a cold ivory that pushed up from the edge of the sea, and the islands appeared out of the fading dusk, huddled together, as if they'd been caught at something.Teddy saw small, pastel-colored shacks lining the beach of one, a crumbling limestone estate on another. His father pointed out the prison on Deer Island and the stately fort on Georges. On Thompson, the high trees were filled with birds, and their chatter sounded like squalls of hail and gla.s.s.Out past them all, the one they called Shutter lay like something tossed from a Spanish galleon. Back then, in the spring of '28, it had been left to itself in a riot of its own vegetation, and the fort that stretched along its highest point was strangled in vines and topped with great clouds of moss."Why Shutter?" Teddy asked.His father shrugged. "You with the questions. Always the questions.""Yeah, but why?""Some places just get a name and it sticks. Pirates probably." "Pirates?" Teddy liked the sound of that. He could see them-big men with eye patches and tall boots, gleaming swords. His father said, "This is where they hid in the old days." His arm swept the horizon. "These islands. Hid themselves. Hid their gold." Teddy imagined chests of it, the coins spilling down the sides. Later he got sick, repeatedly and violently, pitching black ropes of it over the side of his father's boat and into the sea.His father was surprised because Teddy hadn't begun to vomit until hours into the trip when the ocean was flat and glistening with its own quiet. His father said, "It's okay. It's your first time. Nothing to be ashamed of."Teddy nodded, wiped his mouth with a cloth his father gave him. His father said, "Sometimes there's motion, and you can't even feel it until it climbs up inside of you."Another nod, Teddy unable to tell his father that it wasn't motion that had turned his stomach.It was all that water. Stretched out around them until it was all that was left of the world. How Teddy believed that it could swallow the sky. Until that moment, he'd never known they were this alone.He looked up at his father, his eyes leaking and red, and his father said, "You'll be okay," and Teddy tried to smile.His father went out on a Boston whaler in the summer of '38 and never came back. The next spring, pieces of the boat washed up on Nantasket Beach in the town of Hull, where Teddy grew up. A strip of keel, a hot plate with the captain's name etched in the base, cans of tomato and potato soup, a couple of lobster traps, gap-holed and misshapen.They held the funeral for the four fishermen in St. Theresa's Church, its back pressed hard against the same sea that had claimed so many of its parishioners, and Teddy stood with his mother and heard testimonials to the captain, his first mate, and the third fisherman, an old salt named Gil Restak, who'd terrorized the bars of Hull since returning from the Great War with a shattered heel and too many ugly pictures in his head. In death, though, one of the bartenders he'd'errorized had said, all was forgiven.The boat's owner, Nikos Costa, admitted that he'd barely known Teddy's father, that he'd hired on at the last minute when a crew member broke his leg in a fall from a truck. Still, the captain had spoken highly of him, said everyone in town knew that he could do a day's work. And wasn't that the highest praise one could give a man? Standing in that church, Teddy remembered that day on his father's boat because they'd never gone out again. His father kept saying they would, but Teddy understood that he said this only so his son could hold on to some pride. His father never acknowledged what had happened that day, but a look had pa.s.sed between them as they headed home, back through the string of islands, Shutter behind them, Thompson still ahead, the city skyline so clear and close you'd think you could lift a building by its spire."It's the sea," his father said, a hand lightly rubbing Teddy's back as they leaned against the stern. "Some men take to it. Some men it takes." And he'd looked at Teddy in such a way that Teddy knew which of those men he'd probably grow up to be.TO GET THERE in '54, they took the ferry from the city and pa.s.sed through a collection of other small, forgotten islands-Thompson and Spectacle, Grape and b.u.mpkin, Rainford and Long-that gripped the scalp of the sea in hard tufts of sand, wiry trees, and rock formations as white as bone. Except for supply runs on Tuesdays and Sat.u.r.days, the ferry ran on an irregular schedule and the galley was stripped of everything but the sheet metal that covered the floor and two steel benches that ran under the windows. The benches were bolted to the floor and bolted to thick black posts at both ends, and manacles and their chains hung in spaghetti piles from the posts.The ferry wasn't transporting patients to the asylum today, however, just Teddy and his new lartner, Chuck Aule, a few canvas bags of mail, a few cases of medical supplies.Teddy started the trip down on his knees in front of the toilet, heaving into the bowl as the ferry's engine chugged and clacked and Teddy's nasal pa.s.sages filled with the oily smells of gasoline and the late-summer sea. Nothing came out of him but small streams of water, yet his throat kept constricting and his stomach banged up against the base of his esophagus and the air in front of his face spun with motes that blinked like eyes.The final heave was followed by a globe of trapped oxygen that seemed to carry a piece of his chest with it as it exploded from his mouth, and Teddy sat back on the metal floor and wiped his face with his handkerchief and thought how this wasn't the way you wanted to start a new partnership.He could just imagine Chuck telling his wife back home-if he had a wife; Teddy didn't even know that much about him yet-about his first encounter with the legendary Teddy Daniels. "Guy liked me so much, honey, he threw up."Since that trip as a boy, Teddy had never enjoyed being out on the water, took no pleasure from such a lack of land, of visions of land, things you could reach out and touch without your hands dissolving into them. You told yourself it was okay-because that's what you had to do to cross a body of water-but it wasn't. Even in the war, it wasn't the storming of the beaches he feared so much as those last few yards from the boats to the sh.o.r.e, legs slogging through the depths, strange creatures slithering over your boots.Still, he'd prefer to be out on deck, facing it in the fresh air, rather than back here, sickly warm, lurching.When he was sure it had pa.s.sed, his stomach no longer bubbling, his head no longer swimming, he washed his hands and face, checked his appearance in a small mirror mounted over the sink, most ofithe gla.s.s eroded by sea salt, a small cloud in the center where Teddy could just make out his reflection, still a relatively young man with a government-issue crew cut. But his face was lined with evidence of the war and the years since, his penchant for the dual fascinations of pursuit and violence living in eyes Dolores had once called "dog-sad." I'm too young, Teddy thought, to look this hard.He adjusted his belt around his waist so the gun and holster rested on his hip. He took his hat from the top of the toilet and put it back on, adjusted the brim until it tilted just slightly to the right. He tightened the knot in his tie. It was one of those loud floral ties that had been going out of style for about a year, but he wore it because she had given it to him, slipped it over his eyes one birthday as he sat in the living room. Pressed her lips to his Adam's apple. A warm hand on the side of his cheek. The smell of an orange on her tongue. Sliding into his lap, removing the tie, Teddy keeping his eyes closed. Just to smell her. To imagine her. To create her in his mind and hold her there. He could still do it-close his eyes and see her. But lately, white smudges would blur parts of her-an earlobe, her eyelashes, the contours of her hair. It didn't happen enough to fully obscure her yet, but Teddy feared time was taking her from him, grinding away at the picture flames in his head, crushing them."I miss you," he said, and went out through the galley to the foredeck.It was warm and clear out there, but the water was threaded with dark glints of rust and an overall pallor of gray, a suggestion of something growing dark in the depths, ma.s.sing.Chuck took a sip from his flask and tilted the neck in Teddy'sdirection, one eyebrow c.o.c.ked. Teddy shook his head, and Chuckslipped it back into his suit pocket, pulled the flaps of his overcoat around his hips, and looked out at the sea."You okay?" Chuck asked. "You look pale."Teddy shrugged it off. "I'm fine.""Sure ?"Teddy nodded. "Just finding my sea legs."They stood in silence for a bit, the sea undulating all around them, pockets of it as dark and silken as velvet."You know it used to be a POW camp?" Teddy said.Chuck said, "The island?"Teddy nodded. "Back in the Civil War. They built a fort there, barracks.""What do they use the fort for now?"Teddy shrugged. "Couldn't tell you. There's quite a few of them out here on the different islands. Most of them were target practice for artillery sh.e.l.ls during the war. Not too many left standing." "But the inst.i.tution?""From what I could tell, they use the old troop quarters."Chuck said, "Be like going back to basic, huh?""Don't wish that on us." Teddy turned on the rail. "So what's your story there, Chuck?"Chuck smiled. He was a bit stockier and a bit shorter than Teddy, maybe five ten or so, and he had a head of tight, curly black hair and olive skin and slim, delicate hands that seemed incongruous with the rest of him, as if he'd borrowed them until his real ones came back from the shop. His left cheek bore a small scythe of a scar, and he tapped it with his index finger."I always start with the scar," he said. "People usually ask sooner or later.""Okay.""Wasn't from the war," Chuck said. "My girlfriend says I should just say it was, be done with it, but..." He shrugged. "It was from playing war, though. When I was a kid. Me and this other kid shooting slingshots at each other in the woods. My friend's rock just misses me, so I'm okay, right?" He shook his head. "His rock hit a tree, senta piece of bark into my cheek. Hence the scar.""From playing war.""From playing it, yeah.""You transferred from Oregon?""Seattle. Came in last week."Teddy waited, but Chuck didn't offer any further explanation.Teddy said, "How long you been with the marshals?""Four years.""So you know how small it is.""Sure. You want to know how come I transferred." Chuck nodded, as if deciding something for himself. "If I said I was tired of rain?"Teddy turned his palms up above the rail. "If you said so...""But it's small, like you said. Everyone knows everyone in the service.So eventually, there'll be what do they call it?--scuttleb.u.t.t.""That's a word for it.""You caught Breck, right?"Teddy nodded."How'd you know where he'd go? Fifty guys chasing him, they all went to Cleveland. You went to Maine.""He'd summered there once with his family when he was a kid. That thing he did with his victims? It's what you do to horses. I talked to an aunt. She told me the only time he was ever happy was at a horse farm near this rental cottage in Maine. So I went up there." "Shot him five times," Chuck said and looked down the bow at the foam."Would have shot him five more," Teddy said. "Five's what it took."Chuck nodded and spit over the rail. "My girlfriend's j.a.panese. Well, born here, but you know... Grew up in a camp. There's still a lot of tension out there-Portland, Seattle, Tacoma. No one likes me being with her.""So they transferred you."Chuck nodded, spit again, watched it fall into the churning foam."They say it's going to be big," he said.Teddy lifted his elbows off the rail and straightened. His face was damp, his lips salty. Somewhat surprising that the sea had managed to find him when he couldn't recall the spray hitting his face.He patted the pockets of his overcoat, looking for hisChesterfields. "Who's 'they'? What's 'it'?""They. The papers," Chuck said. "The storm. Big one, they say. Huge." He waved his arm at the pale sky, as pale as the foam churning against the bow. But there, along its southern edge, a thin line of purple cotton swabs grew like ink blots.Teddy sniffed the air. "You remember the war, don't you, Chuck?" Chuck smiled in such a way that Teddy suspected they were already tuning in to each other's rhythms, learning how to luck with each other."A bit," Chuck said. "I seem to remember rubble. Lots of rubble. People denigrate rubble, but I say it has its place. I say it has its own aesthetic beauty. I say it's all in the eye of the beholder." "You talk like a dime novel. Has anyone else told you that?" "It's come up." Chuck giving the sea another of his small smiles, leaning over the bow, stretching his back.Teddy patted his trouser pockets, searched the inside pockets of his suit jacket. "You remember how often the deployments were dependent on weather reports."Chuck rubbed the stubble on his chin with the heel of his hand."Oh, I do, yes.""Do you remember how often those weather reports prdzed correct?" , Chuck furrowed his brow, wanting Teddy to know he was giviiag this due and proper consideration. Then he smacked his lips and said, "About thirty percent of the time, I'd venture.""At best."Chuck nodded. "At best.""And so now, back in the world as we are...""Oh, back we are," Chuck said. "Ensconced, one could even say."Teddy suppressed a laugh, liking this guy a lot now. Ensconced.Jesus."Ensconced," Teddy agreed. "Why would you put any more credence in the weather reports now than you did then?""Well," Chuck said as the sagging tip of a small triangle peeked above the horizon line, "I'm not sure my credence can be measured in terms of less or more. Do you want a cigarette?"Teddy stopped in the middle of a second round of pocket pats, found Chuck watching him, his wry grin etched into his cheeks just below the scar."I had them when I boarded," Teddy said.Chuck looked back over his shoulder. "Government employees. Rob you blind." Chuck shook a cigarette free of his pack of Luckies, handed one to Teddy, and lit it for him with his bra.s.s Zippo, the stench of the kerosene climbing over the salt air and finding the back of Teddy's throat. Chuck snapped the lighter closed, then flicked it back open with a snap of his wrist and lit his own.Teddy exhaled, and the triangle tip of the island disappeared for a moment in the plume of smoke."Overseas," Chuck said, "when a weather report dictated if you went to the drop zone with your parachute pack or set off for the beachhead, well, there was much more at stake, wasn't there?" "True.""But back home, where's the harm in a little arbitrary faith? That's all I'm saying, boss."It began to reveal itself to them as more than a triangle tip, the lower sections gradually filling in until the sea stretched out flat again on the other side of it and they could see colors filling in as if by brush stroke-a muted green where the vegetation grew unchecked, a tan strip of sh.o.r.eline, the dull ochre of cliff face on the northern edge. And at the top, as they churned closer, they began to make out the flat rectangular edges of buildings themselves."It's a pity," Chuck said."What's that?""The price of progress." He placed one foot on the towline and leaned against the rail beside Teddy, and they watched the island attempt to define itself. "With the leaps-and there are leaps going on, don't kid yourself, leaps every day-happening in the field of mental health, a place like this will cease to exist. Barbaric they'll call it twenty years from now. An unfortunate by-product of the bygone Victorian influence. And go it should, they'll say. Incorporation, they'll say. Incorporation will be the order of the day. You are all welcomed into the fold. We will soothe you. Rebuild you. We are all General Marshalls. We are a new society, and there is no place for exclusion. No Elbas."The buildings had disappeared again behind the trees, but Teddy could make out the fuzzy shape of a conical tower and then hard, jutting angles he took to be the old fort."But do we lose our past to a.s.sure our future?" Chuck flicked his cigarette out into the foam. "That's the question. What do you lose when you sweep a floor, Teddy? Dust. Crumbs that would otherwise draw ants. But what of the earring she misplaced? Is that in the trash now too.)"Teddy said, "Who's 'she'? Where did 'she' come from, Chuck?'"There's always a she. Isn't there?"Teddy heard the whine of the engine change pitch behind them, felt the ferry give a small lurch underfoot, and he could see the fort clearer now atop the southern cliff face as they came around toward the western side of the island. The cannons were gone, but Teddy could make out the turrets easily enough. The land went back into hills behind the fort, and Teddy figured the walls were back there, blurring into the landscape from his current angle, and then Ashecliffe Hospital sat somewhere beyond the bluffs, overlooking the western sh.o.r.e."You got a girl, Teddy? Married?" Chuck said."Was,' Teddy said, picturing Dolores, a look she gave him once on their honeymoon, turning her head, her chin almost touching her bare shoulder, muscles moving under the flesh near her spine. "She died." Chuck came off the rail, his neck turning pink. "Oh, Jesus.""It's okay," Teddy said."No, no." Chuck held his palm up by Teddy's chest. "It's... I'd heard that. I don't know how I could've forgotten. A couple of years ago, wasn't it?"Teddy nodded."Christ, Teddy. I feel like an idiot. Really. I'm so sorry." Teddy saw her again, her back to him as she walked down the apartment hallway, wearing one of his old uniform shirts, humming as she turned into the kitchen, and a familiar weariness invaded his bones. He would prefer to do just about anything-swim in that water even-rather than speak of Dolores, of the facts of her being on this earth for thirty-one years and then ceasing to be. Just like that. There when he left for work that morning. Gone by the afternoon. But it was like Chuck's scar, he supposed-the story that had to be dispensed with before they could move on, or otherwise it would always be between them. The hows. The wheres. The whys.Dolores had been dead for two years, but she came to life at night in his dreams, and he sometimes went full minutes into a new morning thinking she was out in the kitchen or taking her coffee on the front stoop of their apartment on b.u.t.tonwood. This was a cruel trick of the mind, yes, but Teddy had long ago accepted the logic of it-waking, after all, was an almost natal state. You surfaced without a history, then spent the blinks and yawns rea.s.sembling your past, shuffling the shardsinto chronological order before fortifying yourself for the present. What was far crueler were the ways in which a seemingly illogical list of objects could trigger memories of his wife that lodged in his brain like a lit match. He could never predict what one of the objects would be-a shaker of salt, the gait of a strange woman on a crowded street, a bottle of Coca-Cola, a smudge of lipstick on a gla.s.s, a throw pillow.But of all the triggers, nothing was less logical in terms of connective tissue, or more pungent in terms of effect, than water-drizzling from the" tap, clattering from the sky, puddled against the sidewalk, or, as now, spread around him for miles in every direction. He said to Chuck: "There was a fire in our apartment building. I was working. Four people died. She was one of them. The smoke got her, Chuck, not the fire. So she didn't die in pain. Fear? Maybe. But not pain. That's important."Chuck took another sip from his flask, offered it to Teddy again. Teddy shook his head. "I quit. After the fire. She used to worry about it, you know? Said all of us soldiers and cops drank too much. So..." He could feel Chuck beside him, sinking in embarra.s.sment, and he said, "You learn how to carry something like that, Chuck. You got no choice. Like all the s.h.i.t you saw in the war. Remember?" Chuck nodded, his eyes going small with memory for a moment, distant."It's what you do," Teddy said softly."Sure," Chuck said eventually, his face still flushed.The dock appeared as if by trick of light, stretching out from the sand, a stick of chewing gum from this distance, insubstantial and gray.Teddy felt dehydrated from his time at the toilet and maybe a bit exhausted from the last couple of minutes; no matter how much he'd learned to carry it, carry her, the weight could wear him down every now and then. A dull ache settled into the left side of his head, just behind his eye, as if the flat side of an old spoon were pressed there. It was too early to tell if it were merely a minor side effect of the dehydration, the beginnings of a common headache, or the first hint of something worse-the migraines that had plagued him since adolescence and that at various times could come so strongly they could temporarily rob him of vision in one eye, turn light into a hailstorm of hot nails, and had once-only once, thank G.o.d-left him partially paralyzed for a day and a half. Migraines, his anyway, never visited during times of pressure or work, only afterward, when all had quieted down, after the sh.e.l.ls stopped dropping, after the pursuit was ended. Then, at base camp or barracks or, since the war, in motel rooms or driving home along country highways-they came to do their worst. The trick, Teddy had long since learned, was to stay busy and stay focused. They couldn't catch you if you didn't stop running.He said to Chuck, "Heard much about this place?""A mental hospital, that's about all I know.""For the criminally insane," Teddy said."Well, we wouldn't be here if it weren't," Chuck said.Teddy caught him smiling that dry grin again. "You never know, Chuck. You don't look a hundred percent stable to me." "Maybe I'll put a deposit down on a bed while we're here, for the future, make sure they hold a place for me.""Not a bad idea," Teddy said as the engines cut out for a moment, and the bow swung starboard as they turned with the current and the engines kicked in again and Teddy and Chuck were soon facing the open sea as the ferry backed toward the dock."Far as I know," Teddy said, "they specialize in radical approaches.""Red?" Chuck said."Not Red," Teddy said. "Just radical. There's a difference.""You wouldn't know it lately.""Sometimes, you wouldn't," Teddy agreed."And this woman who escaped?"Teddy said, "Don't know much about that. She slipped out last night. I got her name in my notebook. I figure they'll tell us everything else."Chuck looked around at the water. "Where's she going to go? She's going to swim home?"Teddy shrugged. "The patients here, apparently, suffer a variety of delusions.""Schizophrenics?""I guess, yeah. You won't find your everyday mongoloids in here in any case. Or some guy who's afraid of sidewalk cracks, sleeps too much. Far as I could tell from the file, everyone here is, you know, really crazy." Chuck said, "How many you think are faking it, though? I've always wondered that. You remember all the Section Eights you met in the war? How many, really, did you think were nuts?""I served with a guy in the Ardennes-""You were there?"Teddy nodded. "This guy, he woke up one day speaking backward.""The words or the sentences?""Sentences," Teddy said. "He'd say, 'Sarge, today here blood much too is there.' By late afternoon, we found him in a foxhole, hitting his own head with a rock. Just hitting it. Over and over. We were s6rattled that it took us a minute to realize he'd scratched out his own eyes.""You are s.h.i.tting me."Teddy shook his head. "I heard from a guy a few years later who ran across the blind guy in a vet hospital in San Diego. Still talking backward, and he had some sort of paralysis that none of the doctors could diagnose the cause of, sat in a wheelchair by the window all day, kept talking about his crops, he had to get to his crops. Thing was, the guy grew up in Brooklyn.""Well, guy from Brooklyn thinks he's a farmer, I guess he is Section Eight.""That's one tip-off, sure."DEPUTY WARDEN MCPH'ERSON met them at the dock. He was young for a man of his rank, and his blond hair was cut a bit longer than the norm, and he had the kind of lanky grace in his movements that Teddy a.s.sociated with Texans or men who'd grown up around horses.He was flanked by orderlies, mostly Negroes, a few white guys with deadened faces, as if they hadn't been fed enough as babies, had remained stunted and annoyed ever since.The orderlies wore white shirts and white trousers and moved in a pack. They barely glanced at Teddy and Chuck. They barely glanced at anything, just moved down the dock to the ferry and waited for it to unload its cargo.Teddy and Chuck produced their badges upon request and McPherson took his time studying them, looking up from the ID cards to their faces, squinting."I'm not sure I've ever seen a U.S. marshal's badge before," he said."And now you've seen two," Chuck said. "A big day."He gave Chuck a lazy grin and flipped the badge back at him. The beach looked to have been lashed by the sea in recent nights; it was strewn with sh.e.l.ls and driftwood, mollusk skeletons and dead fish half eaten by whatever scavengers lived here. Teddy noticed trash that must have blown in from the inner harbor-cans and sodden wads of paper, a single license plate tossed up by the tree line and washed beige and numberless by the sun. The trees were mostly pine and maple, thin and haggard, and Teddy could see some buildings through the gaps, sitting at the top of the rise.Dolores, who'd enjoyed sunbathing, probably would have loved this place, but Teddy could feel only the constant sweep of the ocean breeze, a warning from the sea that it could pounce at will, suck'you down to its/:]oor.The orderlies came back down the dock with the mail and fhe medical cases and loaded them onto handcarts, and McPherson signed for the items on a clipboard and handed the clipboard back to one of the ferry guards and the guard said, "We'll be taking off, then." McPherson blinked in the sun."The storm," the guard said. "No one seems to know what it's going to do."McPherson nodded."We'll contact the station when we need a pickup," Teddy said.The guard nodded. "The storm," he said again."Sure., sure," Chuck said. "We'll keep that in mind."McPherson led them up a path that rose gently throUgh the stand of trees. When they'd cleared the trees, they reached a paved road that crossed their path like a grin, and Teddy could see a house off to both 25 his right and his left. The one to the left was the simpler of the two, a maroon mansarded Victorian with black trim, small windows that gave the appearance of sentinels. The one to the right was a Tudor that commanded its small rise like a castle.They continued on, climbing a slope that was steep and wild with sea gra.s.s before the land greened and softened around them, leveling out up top as the gra.s.s grew shorter, gave way to a more traditional lawn that spread back for several hundred yards before coming to a stop at a wall of orange brick that seemed to curve away the length of the island. It was ten feet tall and topped with a single strip of wire, and something about the sight of the wire got to Teddy. He felt a sudden pity for all those people on the other side of the wall who recognized that thin wire for what it was, realized just how badly the world wanted to keep them in. Teddy saw several men in dark blue uniforms just outside the wall, heads down as they peered at the ground. Chuck said, "Correctional guards at a mental inst.i.tution. Weird sight, if you don't mind me saying, Mr. McPherson.""This is a maximum security inst.i.tution," McPherson said. "We operate under dual charters-one from the Ma.s.sachusetts Department of Mental Health, the other from the Federal Department of Prisons." "I understand that," Chuck said. "I've always wondered, though- you guys have much to talk about around the dinner table?" McPherson smiled and gave a tiny shake of his head.Teddy saw a man with black hair who wore the same uniform as the rest of the guards, but his was accented by yellow epaulets and a standing collar, and his badge was gold. He was the only one who walked with his head held up, one hand pressed behind his back as he strode among the men, and the stride reminded Teddy of full colonels he'd met in the war, men for whom command was a necessary burden not simply of the military but of G.o.d. He carried a small black book pressed to his rib cage, and he nodded in their direction and then walked down the slope from which they'd come, his black hair stiff in the breeze."The warden," McPherson said. "You'll meet later."Teddy nodded, wondering why they didn't meet now, and the warden disappeared on the other side of the rise.One of the orderlies used a key to open the gate in the center of the wall, and the gate swung wide and the orderlies and their carts went in as two guards approached McPherson and came to a stop on either side of him.McPherson straightened to his full height, all business now, and said, "I've got to give you guys the basic lay of the land." "Sure.""You gentlemen will be accorded all the courtesies we have to offer, all the help we can give. During your stay, however short that may be, you will obey protocol. Is that understood?"Teddy nodded and Chuck said, "Absolutely."McPherson fixed his eyes on a point just above their heads. "Dr. Cawley will explain the finer points of protocol to you, I'm sure, but have to stress the following: unmonitored contact with patients of this inst.i.tution is forbidden. Is that understood?"Teddy almost said, Yes, sir, as if he were back in basic, but he stopped short with a simple "Yes.""Ward A of this inst.i.tution is the building behind me to my right, the male ward. Ward B, the female ward, is to my left. Ward C is beyond those bluffs directly behind this compound and the staff quarters, housed in what was once Fort Walton. Admittance to Ward C is forbidden without the written consent and physical presence of both the warden and Dr. Cawley. Understood?"Another set of nods.McPherson held out one ma.s.sive palm, as if in supplication to the sun. "You are hereby requested to surrender your firearms." Chuck looked at Teddy. Teddy shook his head.Teddy said, "Mr. McPherson, we are duly appointed federal marshals. We are required by government order to carry our firearms at all times."McPherson's voice hit the air like steel cable. "Executive Order three-nine-one of the Federal Code of Penitentiaries and Inst.i.tutions for the Criminally Insane states that the peace officer's requirement to bear arms is superseded only by the direct order of his immediate superiors or that of persons entrusted with the care and protection of penal or mental health facilities. Gentlemen, you find yourself under the aegis of that exception. You will not be allowed to pa.s.s through this gate with your firearms."Teddy looked at Chuck. Chuck tilted his head at McPherson's extended palm and shrugged.Teddy said, "We'd like our exceptions noted for the record." McPherson said, "Guard, 'please note the exceptions of Marshals Daniels and Aule.""Noted, sir.""Gentlemen," McPherson said.The guard on McPherson's right opened a small leather pouch. Teddy pulled back his overcoat and removed the service revolver from his holster. He snapped the cylinder open with a flick of his wrist and then placed the gun in McPherson's hand. McPherson handed it off to the guard, and the guard placed it in his leather pouch and McPherson held out his hand again.Chuck was a little slower with his weapon, fumbling with the holster snap, but McPherson showed no impatience, just waited until Chuck placed the gun awkwardly in his hand.McPherson handed the gun to the guard, and the guard added it to the pouch and stepped through the gate."Your weapons will be checked into the property room directly outside the warden's office," McPherson said softly, his words rustling like leaves, "which is in the main hospital building in the center of the compound. You will pick them back up on the day of your departure." McPherson's loose, cowboy grin suddenly returned. "Well, that about does it for the official stuff for now. I don't know about y'all, but I am glad to be done with it. What do you say we go see Dr. Cawley?"And he turned and led the way through the gate, and the gate was closed behind them.Inside the wall, the lawn swept away from either side of a main path made from the same brick as the wall. Gardeners with manacled ankles tended to the gra.s.s and trees and flower beds and even an array of rosebushes that grew along the foundation of the hospital. The gardeners were flanked by orderlies, and Teddy saw other patierits in manacles walking the grounds with odd, ducklike steps. Most were men, a few were women. ""When the first clinicians came here," McPherson said, "this was all sea gra.s.s and scrub. You should see the pictures. But now..." To the right and left of the hospital stood two identical redbrick colonials with the trim painted bright white, their windows barred, and the panes yellowed by salt and sea wash. The hospital itself was charcoal-colored, its brick rubbed smooth by the sea, and it rose six stories until the dormer windows up top stared down at them. McPherson said, "Built as the battalion HQ just before the Civil War. They'd had some designs, apparently, to make this a training facility. Then when war seemed imminent, they concentrated on the fort, and then later on transforming this into a POW camp." Teddy noticed the tower he'd seen from the ferry. The tip of it peeked just above the tree line on the far side of the island. "What's the tower?""An old lighthouse," McPherson said. "Hasn't been used as such since the early 1800s. The Union army posted lookout sentries there, or so I've heard, but now it's a treatment facility.""For patients?"He shook his head. "Sewage. You wouldn't believe what ends up in these waters. Looks pretty from the ferry, but every piece of trash in just about every river in this state floats down into the inner harbor, out through the midharbor, and eventually reaches us." "Fascinating," Chuck said and lit a cigarette, took it from his mouth to suppress a soft yawn as he blinked in the sun. "Beyond the wall, that way"-he pointed past Ward B-"is the original commander's quarters. You probably saw it on the walk up. Cost a fortune to build at the time, and the commander was relieved of his duties when Uncle Sam got the bill. You should see the place." "Who lives there now?" Tdddy said."Dr. Cawley," McPherson said. "None of this would exist if it weren't for Dr. Cawley. And the warden. They created something really unique here."They'd looped around the back of the compound, met more manacled gardeners and orderlies, many hoeing a dark loam against the rear wall. One of the gardeners, a middle-aged woman with wispy wheat hair gone almost bald on top, stared at Teddy as he pa.s.sed, and then raised a single finger to her lips. Teddy noticed a dark red scar, thick as licorice, that ran across her throat. She smiled, finger still held to her lips, and then shook her head very slowly at him."Cawley's a legend in his field," McPherson was saying as they pa.s.sed back around toward the front oi: the hospital. "Top of his cla.s.s at both Johns Hopkins and Harvard, published his first paper on delusional pathologies at the age of twenty. Has been consulted numerous times by Scotland Yard, MI5, and the OSS.""Why?"Teddy nodded. It seemed a reasonable question."Well..." McPherson seemed at a loss."The OSS," Teddy said. "Try them for starters. Why would they consult a psychiatrist?""War work," McPherson said."Pdght," Teddy said slowly. "What kind, though?""The cla.s.sified kind," McPherson said. "Or so I'd a.s.sume." "How cla.s.sified can it be," Chuck said, one bemused eye catching Teddy's, "if we're talking about it?"McPherson paused in front of the hospital, one foot on the first step. He seemed baffled. He looked off for a moment at the curve of orange wall and then said, "Well, I guess you can ask him. He should be out of his meeting by now."They went up the stairs and in through a marble foyer, the ceil'.mg arching into a coffered dome above them. A gate buzzed open as they approached it, and they pa.s.sed on into a large anteroom where an orderly sat at a desk to their right and another across from him to their left and beyond lay a long corridor behind the confines of another gate. They produced their badges again to the orderly by the upper staircase and McPherson signed their three names to a clipboard as the orderly checked their badges and IDs and handed them back. Behind the orderly was a cage, and Teddy could see a man in there wearing a uniform similar to the warden's, keys hanging from their rings on a wall behind him.They climbed to the second floor and turned into a corridor that smelled of wood soap, the oak floor gleaming underfoot and bathed in a white light from the large window at the far end."Lot of security," Teddy said.McPherson said, "We take every precaution."Chuck said, "To the thanks of a grateful public, Mr. McPherson, I'm sure.""You have to understand," McPherson said, turning back to Teddy as they walked past several offices, doors all closed and bearing the names of doctors on small silver plates. "There is no facility like this in the United States. We take only the most damaged patients. We take the ones no other facility can manage.""Gryce is here, right?" Teddy said.McPherson nodded. "Vincent Gryce, yes. In Ward C."Chuck said to Teddy, "Gryce was the one... ?"Teddy nodded. "Killed all his relatives, scalped them, made himself hats."Chuck was nodding fast. "And wore them into town, right?""According to the papers."They had stopped outside a set of double doors. A bra.s.s plate affixed in the center of the ight door read CHIEF OF STAFF, DR. J.CAWLEY.McPherson turned to them, one hand on the k.n.o.b, and looked at them with an unreadable intensity.McPherson said, "In a less enlightened age, a patient like Gryce would have been put to death. But here they can study him, define a pathology, maybe isolate the abnormality in his brain that caused him to disengage so completely from acceptable patterns of behavior. If they can do that, maybe we can reach a day where that kind of disengagement can be rooted out of society entirely."He seemed to be waiting for a response, his hand stiff against the doork.n.o.b."It's good to have dreams," Chuck said. "Don't you think?" DR. CAWLEY WAS thin to the point of emaciation. Not quite te swimming bones and cartilage Teddy had seen at Dachau, but definitely in need of several good meals. His small dark eyes sat far back in their sockets, and the shadows that leaked from them bled across the rest of his face. His cheeks were so sunken they appeared collapsed, and the flesh around them was pitted with aged acne. His lips and nose were as thin as the rest of him, and his chin appeared squared off to the point of nonexistence. What remained of his hair was as dark as his eyes and the shadows underneath.He had an explosive smile, however, bright and bulging with a confidence that lightened his irises, and he used it now as he came around the desk to greet them, his hand outstretched."Marshal Daniels and Marshal Aule," he said, "glad you could come so quickly."His hand was dry and statue smooth in Teddy's, and his grip was a shocker, squeezing the bones in Teddy's hand until Teddy could feel the press of it straight up his forearm. Cawley's eyes glittered for a moment, as if to say, Didn't expect that, did you? and then he moved on to Chuck. He shook Chuck's hand with a "Pleased to meet you, sir," and then the smile shot off his face and he said to McPherson, "That'll be all for now, Deputy Warden. Thank you."McPherson said, "Yes, sir. A pleasure, gentlemen," and backed out of the room.Cawley's smile returned, but it was a more viscous version, and it reminded Teddy of the film that formed over soup."He's a good man, McPherson. Eager.""For?" Teddy said, taking a seat in front of the desk.Cawley's smile morphed again, curling up one side of his face and freezing there for a moment. "I'm sorry?""He's eager," Teddy said. "But for what?"Cawley sat behind the teak desk, spread his arms. "For the work. A moral fusion between law an'd order and clinical care. Just half a century ago, even less in some cases, the thinking on the kind of patients we deal with here was that they should, at best, be shackled and left in their own filth and waste. They were systematically beaten, as if that could drive the psychosis out. We demonized them. We tortured them. Spread them on racks, yes. Drove screws into their brains. Even drowned them on occasion.""And now?" Chuck said."Now we treat them. Morally. We try to heal, to cure. And if that fails, we at least provide them with a measure of calm in their lives." "And their victims?" Teddy said.Cawley raised his eyebrows, waiting."These are all violent offenders," Teddy said. "Right?"Cawley nodded. "Quite violent, actually.""So they've hurt people," Teddy said. "Murdered them in many cases.""Oh, m most.""So why does their sense of calm matter in relation to their victims'?" Cawley said, "Because my job is to treat them, not their victims. I can't help their victims. It's the nature of any life's work that it have limits. That's mine. I can only concern myself with my patients." He smiled. "Did the senator explain the situation?"Teddy and Chuck shot each other glances as they sat.Teddy said, "We don't know anything about a senator, Doctor. We were a.s.signed by the state field office."Cawley propped his elbows on a green desk blotter and clasped his hands together, placed his chin on top of them, and stared at them over the rim of his gla.s.ses."My mistake, then. So what have you been told?""We know a female prisoner is missing." Teddy placed his notebook on his knee, flipped the pages. "A Rachel Solando."""Patient." Cawley gave them a dead smile.,,"Patient," Teddy said. "I apologize. We understand she escaped within the last twenty-four hours."Cawley's nod was a small tilt of his chin and hands. "Last night.Sometime between ten and midnight.""And she still hasn't been found," Chuck said."Correct, Marshal..." He held up an apologetic hand."Aule," Chuck said.Cawley's face narrowed over his hands and Teddy noticed drops of water spit against the window behind him. He couldn't tell whether they were from the sky or the sea."And your first name is Charles?" Cawley said."Yeah," Chuck said."I'd take you for a Charles," Cawley said, "but not necessarily an Aule.""That's fortunate, I guess.""How so?""We don't choose our names," Chuck said. "So it's nice when someone thinks that one of them, at least, fits.""Who chose yours?" Cawley said."My parents.""Your surname."Chuck shrugged. "Who's to tell? We'd have to go back twenty generations.""Or one."Chuck leaned forward in his chair. "Excuse me?""You're Greek," Cawley said. "Or Armenian. Which?""Armenian.""So Aule was...""Anasmajian."Cawley turned his slim gaze on Teddy. "And yourself?" "Daniels?" Teddy said. "'Ienth-generation Irish." He gave Cawley a small grin. "And, yeah, I can trace it back, Doctor.""But your given first name? Theodore?""Edward."Cawley leaned his chair back, his hands falling free of his chin. He tapped a letter opener against the desk edge, the sound as soft and persistent as snow falling on a roof."My wife," he said, "is named Margaret. Yet no one ever calls her that except me. Some of her oldest friends call her Margo, which makes a certain amount of sense, but everyone else calls her Peggy. I've never understood that.""Vdhat?""How you get Peggy from Margaret. And yet it's quite common. Or how you get Teddy from Edward. There's no p in Margaret and no t in Edward."Teddy shrugged. "Your first name?""John.""Anyone ever call you Jack?"

He shook his head. "Most people just call me Doctor." The water spit lightly against the window, and Cawley seemed to review their conversation in his head, his eyes gone shiny and distant, and then Chuck said, "Is Miss Solando considered dangerous?" "All our patients have shown a proclivity for violence," Cawley said. "It's why they're here. Men and women. Rachel Solando was a war widow. She drowned her three children in the lake behind her house. Took them out there one by one and held their heads under until they died. Then she brought them back into the house and arranged them around the kitchen table and ate a meal there before a neighbor dropped by.""She kill the neighbor?" Chuck asked.Cawley's eyebrows rose, and he gave a small sigh. "No. Invite&him to sit and have breakfast with them. He declined, naturally, and called the police. Rachel still believes the children are alive, waiting for her. It might explain why she's tried to escape.""To return home," Teddy said.Cawley nodded."And where's that?" Chuck asked."A small town in the Berkshires. Roughly a hundred fifty miles from here." With a tilt of his head, Cawley indicated the window behind him. "To swim that way, you don't reach land for eleven miles. To swim north, you don't reach land until Newfoundland."Teddy said, "And you've searched the grounds.""Yes.?'"Pretty thoroughly?"Cawley took a few seconds to answer, played with a silver bust of a horse on the corner of his desk. "The warden and his men and a detail of orderlies spent the night and a good part of the morning scouring the island and every building in the inst.i.tution. Not a trace. What's even more disturbing is that we can't tell how she got out of her room. It was locked from the outside and its sole window was barred. We've found no indication that the locks were tampered with." He took his eyes off the horse and glanced at Teddy and Chuck. "It's as if she evaporated straight through the walls."Teddy jotted "evaporated" in his notebook. "And you are sure that she was in that room at lights-out.""Positive.""How so?"Cawley moved his hand back from the horse and pressed the call b.u.t.ton on his intercom. "Nurse Marino?""Yes, Doctor.""Please tell Mr. Ganton to come in.""Right away, Doctor."There was a small table nar the window with a pitcher of water and four gla.s.ses on top. Cawley went to it and filled three of the gla.s.ses. He placed one in front of Teddy and one in front of Chuck, took his own back behind the desk with him.Teddy said, "You wouldn't have some aspirin around here, would you ?"Cawley gave him a small smile. "I think we could scare some up."He rummaged in his desk drawer, came out with a bottle of Bayer."Two or three?""Three would be nice." Teddy could feel the ache behind his eye begin to pulse.Cawley handed them across the desk and Teddy tossed them in his mouth, chased them with the water."p.r.o.ne to headaches, Marshal?"Teddy said, "p.r.o.ne to seasickness, unfortunately."Cawley nodded. "Ah. Dehydrated."Teddy nodded and Cawley opened a walnut cigarette box, held it open to Teddy and Chuck. Teddy took one. Chuck shook his head and produced his own pack, and all three of them lit up as Cawley lifted the window open behind him.He sat back down and handed a photograph across the desk-a young woman, beautiful, her face blemished by dark rings under the eyes, rings as dark as her black hair. The eyes themselves were too wide, as if something hot were prodding them from inside her head. Whatever she saw beyond that camera lens, beyond the photographer, beyond anything in the known world probably-wasn't fit to be seen. There was something uncomfortably familiar about her, and then Teddy made the connection-a young boy he'd seen in the camps who wouldn't eat the food they gave him. He sat against a wall in the April sun with that same look in his eyes until his eyelids closed and eventu ally they added him to the pile at the train station.'Chuck unleashed a low whistle. "My G.o.d.".Cawley took a drag on his cigarette. "Are you reacting to her apparent beauty or her apparent madness?""Both," Chuck said.Those eyes, Teddy thought. Even frozen in time, they howled. You wanted to climb inside the picture and say, "No, no, no. It's okay, it's okay. Sssh." You wanted to hold her until the shakes stopped, tell her that everything would be all right.The office door opened and a tall Negro with thick flecks of gray in his hair entered wearing the white-on-white uniform of an orderly. "Mr. Ganton," Cawley said, "these are the gentlemen I told you about-Marshals Aule and Daniels."Teddy and Chuck stood and shook Ganton's hand, Teddy getting a strong whiff of fear from the man, as if he wasn't quite comfortable shaking hands with the law, maybe had a pending warrant or two against him back in the world."Mr. Ganton has been with us for seventeen years. He's the head orderly here. It was Mr. Ganton who escorted Rachel to her room last night. Mr. Ganton?"Ganton crossed his ankles, placed his hands on his knees, and hunched forward a bit, his eyes on his shoes. "There was group at nine o'clock. Then-" Cawley said, "That's a group therapy session led by Dr. Sheehan and Nurse Marino."Ganton waited until he was sure Cawley had finished before hebegan again. "So, yeah. They was in group, and it ended round ten. I escorted Miss Rachel up to her room. She went inside. I locked up fromthe outside. We do checks every two hours during lights-out. I go back at midnight. I look in, and her bed's empty. I figure maybe she's on the floor. They do that a lot, the patients, sleep on the floor. I open up-" Cawley again: "Using your keys, correct, Mr. Ganton?" Ganton nodded at Cawly, looked back at his knees. "I use my keys, yeah, 'cause the door's locked. I go in. Miss Rachel ain't nowhere to be found. I shut the door and check the window and the bars. They locked tight too." He shrugged. "I call the warden." He looked up at Cawley, and Cawley gave him a soft, paternal nod."Any questions, gentlemen?"Chuck shook his head.Teddy looked up from his notebook. "Mr. Ganton, you said you entered the room and ascertained that the patient wasn't there. What did this entail?""Sir?"Teddy said, "Is there a closet? s.p.a.ce beneath the bed where she could hide?""Both.""And you checked those places.""Yes, sir.""With the door still open.""Sir?""You said that you entered the room and looked around and couldn't find the patient. Then you shut the door behind you." "No, I... Well..."Teddy waited, took another hit off the cigarette Cawley had given him. It was smooth, richer than his Chesterfields, and the smell of the smoke was different too, almost sweet."It took all of five seconds, sir," Ganton said. "No door on the closet. I look there, I look under the bed, and I shut the door. No place she could have been hiding. Room's small.""Against the wall, though?" Teddy said. "To the right or the left of the door?""Nah." Ganton shook his head, and for the first time Teddy thought he glimpsed anger, a sense of primal resentment behin& the downcast eyes and the "Yes, sirs" and "No, sirs.""It's unlikely," Cawley said to Teddy. "I see your point, MarsHal, but once you see the room, you'll understand that Mr. Ganton would have been hard-pressed to miss the patient if she were standing anywhere within its four walls.""That's right," Ganton said, staring openly at Teddy now, and Teddy could see the man carried a furious pride in his work ethic that Teddy, by questioning, had managed to insult."Thank you, Mr. Ganton," Cawley said. "That'll be all for now." Ganton rose, his eyes lingering on Teddy for another few seconds, and then he said, "Thank you, Doctor," and left the room. They .were quiet for a minute, finishing their cigarettes and then stubbing them out in the ashtrays before Chuck said; "I think we should see the room now, Doctor.""Of course," Cawley said and came out from behind his desk, a ring of keys in his hand the size of a hubcap. "Follow me." IT WAS A tiny room with the door opening inward and to the right, the door cut from steel and the hinges well greased so that it swung hard against the wall on the right. To their left was a short length of wall and then a small wooden closet with a few smocks and drawstring pants hanging on plastic hangers."There goes that theory," Teddy admitted.Cawley nodded. "There would have been no place for her to hide from anyone standing in this doorway.""Well, the ceiling," Chuck said, and all three of them looked up and even Cawley managed a smile.Cawley closed the door behind them and Teddy felt the immediate sense of imprisonment in his spine. They might call it a room, but it was a cell. The window hovering behind the slim bed was barred. A small dresser sat against the right wall, and the floor and walls were a white inst.i.tutional cement. With three of them in the room, there was barely s.p.a.ce to move without b.u.mping limbs.Teddy said, "Who else would have access to the room?" "At that time of night? Very few would have any reason to be in the ward.""Sure," Teddy said. "But who would have access?""The orderlies, of course." ooctors. Chuck said."Well, nurses," Cawley said."Doctors don't have keys for this room?" Teddy asked. "They do," Cawley said with just a hint of annoyance. "But by ten o'clock, the doctors have signed out for the night.""And turned in their keys?"Yes."And there's a record of that?" Teddy said."I don't follow."Chuck said, "They have to sign in and out for the keys, Doctor- that's what we're wondering.""Of course.""And we could check last night's sign-in log," Teddy said."Yes, yes. Of course.""And that would be kept in the cage we saw on the first floor," Chuck said. "The one with the guard inside of it and the wall of keys behind him?"Cawley gave him a quick nod."And the personnel files," Teddy said, "of the medical staff and the orderlies and the guards. We'll need access to those."Cawley peered at him as if Teddy's face were sprouting blackflies."Why?""A woman disappears from a locked room, Doctor? She escapes onto a tiny island and no one can find her? I have to at least conider that she had help.""We'll see," Cawley said."We'll see?""Yes, Marshal. I'll have to speak with the warden and some of the other staff. We'll make a determination of your request based on-" "Doctor," Teddy said, "it wasn't a request. We're here by order of the government. This is a federal facility from which a dangerous prisoner-" "Patient.""A dangerous patient," Teddy said, keeping his voice as even as possible, "has escaped. If you refuse to aid two U.S. marshals, Doctor, i.n the apprehension of that patient you are, unfortunately-Chuck?"Chuck said, "Obstructing justice, Doctor."Cawley looked at Chuck as if he'd been expecting grief from Teddy, but Chuck hadn't been on his radar."Yes, well," he said, his voice stripped of life, "all I can say is that I will do all that I can to accommodate your request."Teddy and Chuck exchanged a small glance, went back to looking at the bare room. Cawley probably wasn't used to questions that continued after he'd shown displeasure with them, so they gave him a minute to catch his breath.Teddy looked in the tiny closet, saw three white smocks, two pairs of white shoes. "How many shoes are the patients given?""TWO.""She left this room barefoot?""Yes." He fixed the tie under his lab coat and then pointed at a large sheet of paper lying on the bed. "We found that behind the dresser. We don't know what it means. We were hoping someone could tell us."Teddy lifted the sheet of paper, turned it over to see that the other side was a hospital eye chart, the letters shrinking and descending in a pyramid. He turned it back over and held it up for Chuck:THE LAW OF 4I AM 47THEY WERE 80+YOU ARE 3WE ARE 4BUTWHO IS 67?Teddy didn't even like holding it. The edges of the paper tingled against his fingers.Chuck said, "f.u.c.k if I know."Cawley stepped up beside them. "Quite similar to our clinical conclusion.""We are three," Teddy said.Chuck peered at the paper. "Huh?""We could be the three," Teddy said. "The three of us right now, standing in this room."Chuck shook his head. "How's she going to predict that?"Teddy shrugged. "It's a reach.""Yeah."Cawley said, "It is, and yet Rachel is quite brilliant in her games. Her delusions-particularly the one that allows her to believe her three children are still alive-are conceived on a very delicate but intricate architecture. To sustain the structure, she employs an elaborate narrative thread to her life that is completely fict.i.tious." Chuck turned his head slowly, looked at Cawley. "I'd need, a degree to understand that, Doctor."Cawley chuckled. "Think of the lies you tell your parents as a child. How elaborate they are. Instead of keeping them simple to explain why you missed school or forgot your ch.o.r.es, you embellish, you make them fantastical. Yes?"Chuck thought about it and nodded.Teddy said, "Sure. Criminals do the same thing.""Exactly. The idea is to obfuscate. Confuse the listener until they believe out of exhaustion more than any sense of truth. Now consider those lies being told to yourself. That's what Rachel does. In four years, she never so much as acknowledged that she was in an inst.i.tution. As far as she was concerned, she was back home in the Berkshires in her house, and we were deliverymen, milkmen, postal workers, just pa.s.sing by. Whatever the reality, she used sheer force of will to make her illusions stronger.""But how does the truth never get through?" Teddy said. "I mean, she's in a mental inst.i.tution. How does she not notice that from time to time?""Ah," Cawley said, "now we're getting into the true horrible beauty of the full-blown schizophrenic's paranoid structure. If you believe, gentlemen, that you are the sole holder of truth, then everyone else must be lying. And if everyone is lying...""Then any truth they say," Chuck said, "must be a lie."Cawley c.o.c.ked his thumb and pointed his finger at him like a gun."You're getting it."Teddy said, "And that somehow plays into these numbers?" "It must. They have to represent something. With Rachel, no thought was idle or ancillary. She had to keep the structure in her head from collapsing, and to do that, she had to be thinking always. This"- he tapped the eye chart-"is the structure on paper. This,