Dennis Lehane - Shutter Island

Teddy gave him a big smile. “Edify us.”

Cawley, behind them, placed a record on the phonograph and the scratch of the needle was followed by stray pops and hisses that reminded Teddy of the phones he’d tried to use. Then a balm of strings and piano replaced the hisses. Something classical, Teddy knew that much. Prussian. Reminding him of cafes overseas and a record of collection he’d seen in the office of a subcommandant at Dachau, the man listening to it when he’d shot himself in the mouth. He was still alive when Teddy and four GIs entered the room. Gurgling. Unable to reach the gun for a second shot because it had fallen to the floor. That soft music crawling around the room like spiders. Took him another twenty minutes to die, two of the GIs asking der Kommandant if it hurt as they ransacked the room. Teddy had taken a framed photograph off the guy’s lap, a picture of his wife and two kids, the guy’s eyes going wide and reaching for it as Teddy took it away from him. Teddy stood back and looked from the photo to the guy, back and forth, back and forth, until the guy died. And all the time, that music. Tinkling.

“Brahms?” Chuck asked.

“Mahler.” Cawley took the seat beside Naehring.

“You asked for edification,” Naehring said.

Teddy rested his elbows on his knees, spread his hands.

“Since the schoolyard,” Naehring said, “I would bet neither of you has ever walked away from physical conflict. That’s not to suggest you enjoyed it, only that retreat wasn’t something you considered an option. Yes?”

Teddy looked over at Chuck. Chuck gave him a small smile, slightly abashed.

Chuck said, “Wasn’t raised to run, Doc.”

“Ah, yes—raised. And who did raise you?”

“Bears,” Teddy said.

Cawley’s eyes brightened and he gave Teddy a small nod.

Naehring didn’t seem appreciative of humor, though. He adjusted his pants at the knee. “Believe in God?”

Teddy laughed.

Naehring leaned forward.

“Oh, you’re serious?” Teddy said.

Naehring waited.

“Ever seen a death camp, Doctor?”

Naehring shook his head.

“No?” Teddy hunched forward himself. “Your English is very good, almost flawless. You still hit the consonants a tad hard, though.”

“Is legal immigration a crime, Marshal?”

Teddy smiled, shook his head.

“Back to God, then.”

“You see a death camp someday, Doctor, then get back to me with your feelings about God.”

Naehring’s nod was a slow closing and reopening of his eyelids and then he turned his gaze on Chuck.

“And you?”

“Never saw the camps, myself.”

“Believe in God?”

Chuck shrugged. “Haven’t given him a lot of thought, one way or the other, in a long time.”

“Since your father died, yes?”

Chuck leaned forward now too, stared at the fat little man with his glass-cleaner eyes.

“Your father is dead, yes? And yours as well, Marshal Daniels? In fact, I’ll wager that both of you lost the dominant male figure in your lives before your fifteenth birthdays.”

“Five of diamonds,” Teddy said.

“I’m sorry?” Hunching ever forward.

“Is that your next parlor trick?” Teddy said. “You tell me what card I’m holding. Or, no, wait—you cut a nurse in half, pull a rabbit from Dr. Cawley’s head.”

“These are not parlor tricks.”

“How about this,” Teddy said, wanting to pluck that cherry head right off those lumpy shoulders. “You teach a woman how to walk through walls, levitate over a building full of orderlies and penal staff, and float across the sea.”

Chuck said, “That’s a good one.”

Naehring allowed himself another slow blink that reminded Teddy of a house cat after it’s been fed.

“Again, your defense mechanisms are—”

“Oh, here we go.”

“—impressive. But the issue at hand—”

“The issue at hand,” Teddy said, “is that this facility suffered about nine flagrant security breaches last night. You’ve got a missing woman and no one’s looking for—”

“We’re looking.”

“Hard?”

Naehring sat back, glanced over at Cawley in such a way that Teddy wondered which of them was really in charge.

Cawley caught Teddy’s look and the underside of his jaw turned slightly pink. “Dr. Naehring, among other capacities, serves as chief liaison to our board of overseers. I asked him here in that capacity tonight to address your earlier requests.”

“Which requests were those?”

Naehring stoked his pipe back to life with a cupped match. “We will not release personnel files of our clinical staff.”

“Sheehan,” Teddy said.

“Anyone.”

“You’re cock-blocking us, essentially.”

“I’m not familiar with that term.”

“Consider traveling more.”

“Marshal, continue your investigation and we’ll help where we can, but—”

“No.”

“Excuse me?” Cawley leaning forward now, all four of them with hunched shoulders and extended heads.

“No,” Teddy repeated. “This investigation is over. We’ll return to the city on the first ferry. We’ll file our reports and the matter will be turned over, I can only assume, to Hoover’s boys. But we’re out of this.”

Naehring’s pipe stayed hovering in his hand. Cawley took a pull on his drink. Mahler tinkled. Somewhere in the room a clock ticked. Outside, the rain had grown heavy.

Cawley placed his empty glass on the small table beside his chair.

“As you wish, Marshal.”

IT WAS POURING when they left Cawley’s house, the rain clattering against the slate roof and the brick patio, the black roof of the waiting car. Teddy could see it slicing through the blackness in slanted sheets of silver. It was only a few steps from Cawley’s porch to the car, but they got drenched just the same, and then McPherson came around the front and hopped behind the wheel and moisture splattered the dashboard as he shook it free of his head and put the Packard in gear.

“Nice night.” His voice rose over the slapping wiper blades and the drumming rain.

Teddy looked back through the rear window, could see the blurry forms of Cawley and Naehring on the porch watching them go.

“Not fit for man or beast,” McPherson said as a thin branch, torn from its mother trunk, floated past the windshield.

Chuck said, “How long you worked here, McPherson?”

“Four years.”

“Ever had a break before?”

“Hell no.”

“How about a breach? You know, someone gets missing for an hour or two?”

McPherson shook his head. “Not even that. You’d have to be, well, fucking crazy. Where can you go?”

“How about Dr. Sheehan?” Teddy said. “You know him?”

“Sure.”

“How long has he been here?”

“I think a year before me.”

“So five years.”

“Sounds right.”

“Did he work with Miss Solando much?”

“Not that I know of. Dr. Cawley was her primary psychotherapist.”

“Is that common for the chief of staff to be the primary on a patient’s case?”

McPherson said, “Well…”

They waited, and the wipers continued to slap, and the dark trees bent toward them.

“It depends,” McPherson said, waving at the guard as the Packard rolled through the main gate. “Dr. Cawley does a lot of primary work with the Ward C patients, of course. And then, yeah, there are a few in the other wards whose casework he assumes.”

“Who besides Miss Solando?”

McPherson pulled up outside the male dormitory. “You don’t mind if I don’t come around to open your doors, do you? You get some sleep. I’m sure Dr. Cawley will answer all your questions in the morning.”

“McPherson,” Teddy said as he opened his door.