Dennis Lehane - Shutter Island

They turned down the last flight and were facing a large open room with several couches pressed against the wall, a large folding table in the center with folding chairs, bay windows saturating the space with white light.

“The main living area,” Cawley said. “Where most of the patients spend their evenings. Group therapy was held here last night. You’ll see the nurses’ station is just through that portico there. After lights-out, the orderlies congregate here. They’re supposed to be mopping up, cleaning windows and such, but more often than not, we catch them here, playing cards.”

“And last night?”

“According to those who were on duty, the card game was in full swing. Seven men, sitting right at the base of the stairs, playing stud poker.”

Chuck put his hands on his hips, let out a long breath through his mouth. “She does the invisible thing again, apparently, moves either right or left.”

“Right would bring her through the dining area, then into the kitchen, and beyond that is a door that is caged and set with an alarm at nine o’clock at night, once the kitchen staff has left. To the left is the nurses’ station and the staff lounge. No door to the outside. The only ways out are that door on the other side of the living area, or back down the corridor behind the staircase. Both had men at their stations last night.” Cawley glanced at his watch. “Gentlemen, I have a meeting. If you have any questions, please feel free to ask any of the staff or visit McPherson. He’s handled the search thus far. He should have all the information you need. Staff eats at six sharp in the mess hall in the basement of the orderlies’ dormitory. After that, we’ll assemble here in the staff lounge and you can speak to anyone who was working during last night’s incident.”

He hurried out the front door, and they watched him until he turned left and disappeared.

Teddy said, “Is there anything about this that doesn’t feel like an inside job?”

“I’m kind of fond of my invisible theory. She could have the formula in a bottle. You following me? She could be watching us right now, Teddy.” Chuck looked over his shoulder quick, then back at Teddy. “Something to think about.”

IN THE AFTERNOON they joined the search party and moved inland as the breeze grew swollen, warmer. So much of the island was overgrown, clogged with weeds and thick fields of tall grass threaded with grasping tendrils of ancient oak and green vines covered in thorns. In most places, human passage was impossible even with the machetes some of the guards carried. Rachel Solando wouldn’t have had a machete, and even if she had, it seemed the nature of the island to push all comers back to the coast.

The search struck Teddy as desultory, as if no one but he and Chuck truly had his heart in it. The men wound their way along the inner ring above the shoreline with downcast eyes and sullen steps. At one point they rounded a bend on a shelf of black rocks and faced a cliff that towered out past them into the sea. To their left, beyond a stand of moss and thorns and red berries curled into an overgrown mass, lay a small glade that dropped away at the base of some low hills. The hills rose steadily, each one higher than the last, until they gave way to the jagged cliff, and Teddy could see cuts in the hills and oblong holes in the side of the cliff.

“Caves?” he said to McPherson.

He nodded. “A few of them.”

“You check ’em?”

McPherson sighed and cupped a match against the wind to light a thin cigar. “She had two pairs of shoes, Marshal. Both found back in her room. How’s she going to get through what we just came through, cross over these rocks, and scale that cliff?”

Teddy pointed off past the glade to the lowest of the hills. “She takes the long way, works her way up from the west?”

McPherson placed his own finger beside Teddy’s. “See where the glade drops off? That’s marshland right there at the tip of your finger. The base of those hills is covered in poison ivy, live oak, sumac, about a thousand different plants, and all of ’em with thorns the size of my dick.”

“That mean they’re big or little?” This from Chuck, a few steps ahead of them, looking back over his shoulder.

McPherson smiled. “Might be somewhere in between.”

Chuck nodded.

“All I’m saying, gentlemen? She would’ve had no choice but to stick hard to the shoreline, and halfway around in either direction, she would’ve run out of beach.” He pointed at the cliff. “Met one of those.”

AN HOUR LATER, on the other side of the island, they met the fence line. Beyond it lay the old fort and the lighthouse, and Teddy could see that the lighthouse had its own fence, penning it in, two guards at the gate, rifles held to their chests.

“Septic processing?” he said.

McPherson nodded.

Teddy looked at Chuck. Chuck raised his eyebrows.

“Septic processing?” Teddy said again.

NO ONE CAME to their table at dinner. They sat alone, damp from the careless spits of rain, that warm breeze that had begun to carry the ocean with it. Outside, the island had begun to rattle in the dark, the breeze turning into a wind.

“A locked room,” Chuck said.

“Barefoot,” Teddy said.

“Past three interior checkpoints.”

“A roomful of orderlies.”

“Barefoot,” Chuck agreed.

Teddy stirred his food, some kind of shepherd’s pie, the meat stringy. “Over a wall with electric security wire.”

“Or through a manned gate.”

“Out into that.” The wind shaking the building, shaking the dark.

“Barefoot.”

“No one sees her.”

Chuck chewed his food, took a sip of coffee. “Someone dies on this island—it’s got to happen, right?—where do they go?”

“Buried.”

Chuck nodded. “You see a cemetery today?”

Teddy shook his head. “Probably fenced in somewhere.”

“Like the septic plant. Sure.” Chuck pushed his tray away, sat back. “Who we speaking to after this?”

“The staff.”

“You think they’ll be helpful?”

“Don’t you?”

Chuck grinned. He lit a cigarette, his eyes on Teddy, his grin turning into a soft laugh, the smoke chugging out in rhythm with it.

TEDDY STOOD IN the center of the room, the staff in a circle around him. He rested his hands on the top of a metal chair, Chuck slouched against a beam beside him, hands in his pockets.

“I assume everyone knows why we’re all here,” Teddy said. “You had an escape last night. Far as we can tell, the patient vanished. We have no evidence that would allow us to believe the patient left this institution without help. Deputy Warden McPherson, would you agree?”

“Yup. I’d say that’s a reasonable assessment at this time.”

Teddy was about to speak again when Cawley, sitting in a chair beside the nurse, said, “Could you gentleman introduce yourselves? Some of my staff have not made your acquaintance.”

Teddy straightened to his full height. “U.S. Marshal Edward Daniels. This is my partner, U.S. Marshal Charles Aule.”

Chuck gave a small wave to the group, put his hand back in his pocket.

Teddy said, “Deputy Warden, you and your men searched the grounds.”

“Sure did.”

“And you found?”

McPherson stretched in his chair. “We found no evidence to suggest a woman in flight. No shreds of torn clothing, no footprints, no bent vegetation. The current was strong last night, the tide pushing in. A swim would have been out of the question.”

“But she could have tried.” This from the nurse, Kerry Marino, a slim woman with a bundle of red hair that she’d loosed from the pile atop her head and unclenched from another clip just above her vertebrae as soon as she’d walked into the room. Her cap sat in her lap, and she finger-combed her hair in a lazy way that suggested weariness but had every guy in the room sneaking glances at her, the way that weary finger-combing suggested the need for a bed.