Dennis Lehane - Shutter Island

He nodded. “That’s right. What should be the last resort gradually becomes standard response. And, I know, I’m mixing my metaphors. Sleep,” he said to Chuck. “Right. I’ll try that next time.”

“I’ve heard it works wonders,” Chuck said, and they headed up the final flight.

In Rachel’s room, Cawley sat heavily on the edge of her bed and Chuck leaned against the door. Chuck said, “Hey. How many surrealists does it take to screw in a lightbulb?”

Cawley looked over at him. “I’ll bite. How many?”

“Fish,” Chuck said and let loose a bright bark of a laugh.

“You’ll grow up someday, Marshal,” Cawley said. “Won’t you?”

“I’ve got my doubts.”

Teddy held the sheet of paper in front of his chest and tapped it to get their attention. “Take another look.”

THE LAW OF 4

I AM 47

THEY WERE 80

+YOU ARE 3

WE ARE 4

BUT

WHO IS 67?

After a minute, Cawley said, “I’m too tired, Marshal. It’s all gibberish to me right now. Sorry.”

Teddy looked at Chuck. Chuck shook his head.

Teddy said, “It was the plus sign that got me going, made me look at it again. Look at the line under ‘They were eighty.’ We’re supposed to add the two lines. What do you get?”

“A hundred and twenty-seven.”

“One, two, and seven,” Teddy said. “Right. Now you add three. But it’s separated. She wants us to keep the integers apart. So you have one plus two plus seven plus three. What’s that give you?”

“Thirteen.” Cawley sat up on the bed a bit.

Teddy nodded. “Does thirteen have any particular relevance to Rachel Solando? Was she born on the thirteenth? Married on it? Killed her kids on the thirteenth?”

“I’d have to check,” Cawley said. “But thirteen is often a significant number to schizophrenics.”

“Why?”

He shrugged. “The same way it is to many people. It’s a harbinger of bad luck. Most schizophrenics live in a state of fear. It’s the common bonding element in the disease. So most schizophrenics are also deeply superstitious. Thirteen plays into that.”

“That makes sense, then,” Teddy said. “Look at the next number. Four. Add one plus three you get four. But one and three on their own?”

“Thirteen.” Chuck came off the wall and cocked his head at the sheet of paper.

“And the last number,” Cawley said. “Sixty-seven. Six and seven equals thirteen.”

Teddy nodded. “It’s not the ‘law of four.’ It’s the law of thirteen. There are thirteen letters in the name Rachel Solando.”

Teddy watched both Cawley and Chuck count it up in their heads. Cawley said, “Go on.”

“Once we’ve accepted that, Rachel leaves a whole lot of bread crumbs. The code follows the most rudimentary principle of number-to-letter assignation. One equals A . Two equals B . You with me?”

Cawley nodded, followed by Chuck a few seconds later.

“The first letter of her name is R . Numerical assignation of R is eighteen. A is one. C is three. H is eight. E is five. L is twelve. Eighteen, one, three, eight, five, and twelve. Add ’em up, guys, and what do you get?”

“Jesus,” Cawley said softly.

“Forty-seven,” Chuck said, his eyes gone wide, staring at the sheet of paper over Teddy’s chest.

“That’s the ‘I,’” Cawley said. “Her first name. I get that now. But what about ‘they’?”

“Her last name,” Teddy said. “It’s theirs.”

“Whose?”

“Her husband’s family and their ancestors. It’s not hers, not by birth. Or it refers to her children. In either case, it doesn’t really matter, the whys. It’s her last name. Solando. Take the letters and add up their numerical assignations and, yeah, trust me, you come up with eighty.”

Cawley came off the bed, and both he and Chuck stood in front of Teddy to look at the code draped over his chest.

Chuck looked up after a while, into Teddy’s eyes. “What’re you—fucking Einstein?”

“Have you broken code before, Marshal?” Cawley said, eyes still on the sheet of paper. “In the war?”

“No.”

“So how did you…?” Chuck said.

Teddy’s arms were tired from holding up the sheet. He placed it on the bed.

“I don’t know. I do a lot of crosswords. I like puzzles.” He shrugged.

Cawley said, “But you were Army Intelligence overseas, right?”

Teddy shook his head. “Regular army. You, though, Doctor, you were OSS.”

Cawley said, “No. I did some consulting.”

“What kind of consulting?”

Cawley gave him that sliding smile of his, gone almost as soon as it appeared. “The never-talk-about-it kind.”

“But this code,” Teddy said, “it’s pretty simple.”

“Simple?” Chuck said. “You’ve explained it, and my head still hurts.”

“But for you, Doctor?”

Cawley shrugged. “What can I tell you, Marshal? I wasn’t a code breaker.”

Cawley bent his head and stroked his chin as he turned his attention back to the code. Chuck caught Teddy’s eyes, his own filled with question marks.

Cawley said, “So we’ve figured out—well, you have, Marshal—the forty-seven and the eighty. We’ve ascertained that all clues are permutations of the number thirteen. What about the ‘three’?”

“Again,” Teddy said, “it either refers to us, in which case she’s clairvoyant…”

“Not likely.”

“Or it refers to her children.”

“I’ll buy that.”

“Add Rachel to the three…”

“And you get the next line,” Cawley said. “’We are four.’”

“So who’s sixty-seven?”

Cawley looked at him. “You’re not being rhetorical?”

Teddy shook his head.

Cawley ran his finger down the right side of the paper. “None of the numbers add up to sixty-seven?”

“Nope.”

Cawley ran a palm over the top of his head and straightened. “And you have no theories?”

Teddy said, “It’s the one I can’t break. Whatever it refers to isn’t anything I’m familiar with, which makes me think it’s something on this island. You, Doctor?”

“Me, what?”

“Have any theories?”

“None. I wouldn’t have gotten past the first line.”

“You said that, yeah. Tired and all.”

“Very tired, Marshal.” He said it with his gaze fixed on Teddy’s face, and then he crossed to the window, watched the rain sluice down it, the sheets so thick they walled off the land on the other side. “You said last night that you’d be leaving.”

“First ferry out,” Teddy said, riding the bluff.

“There won’t be one today. I’m pretty sure of that.”

“So tomorrow, then. Or the next day,” Teddy said. “You still think she’s out there? In this?”

“No,” Cawley said. “I don’t.”

“So where?”

He sighed. “I don’t know, Marshal. It’s not my specialty.”

Teddy lifted the sheet of paper off the bed. “This is a template. A guide for deciphering future codes. I’d bet a month’s salary on it.”

“And if it is?”

“Then she’s not trying to escape, Doctor. She brought us here. I think there’s more of these.”

“Not in this room,” Cawley said.

“No. But maybe in this building. Or maybe out on the island.”

Cawley sucked the air of the room into his nostrils, steadying one hand against the windowsill, the man all but dead on his feet, making Teddy wonder what really had kept him up last night.

“She brought you here?” Cawley said. “To what end?”

“You tell me.”

Cawley closed his eyes and stayed silent for so long that Teddy began to wonder if he’d fallen asleep.