Dennis Lehane - Shutter Island

There was the guard on the gate, and Teddy could see lights in the rooms, but otherwise, the place was empty. He made his way over to the hospital and went up the steps and pulled on the door only to find it locked. He heard a squeak of hinges and looked out to see that the guard had opened the gate and gone out to join his comrade on the other side, and when the gate swung closed again, Teddy could hear his shoes scrape on the concrete landing as he stepped back from the door.

He sat on the steps for a minute. So much for Noyce’s theory. Teddy was now, beyond any doubt, completely alone. Locked in, yes. But unwatched as far as he could tell.

He walked around to the back of the hospital and his chest filled when he saw an orderly sitting on the back landing, smoking a cigarette.

Teddy approached, and the kid, a slim, rangy black kid, looked up at him. Teddy pulled a cigarette from his pocket and said, “Got a light?”

“Sure do.”

Teddy leaned in as the kid lit his cigarette, smiled his thanks as he leaned back and remembered what the woman had told him about smoking their cigarettes, and he let the smoke flow slowly out of his mouth without inhaling.

“How you doing tonight?” he said.

“All right, sir. You?”

“I’m okay. Where is everyone?”

The kid jerked his thumb behind him. “In there. Some big meeting. Don’t know about what.”

“All the doctors and nurses?”

The kid nodded. “Some of the patients too. Most of us orderlies. I got stuck with this here door ’cause the latch don’t work real good. Otherwise, though, yeah. Everyone in there.”

Teddy took another cigar puff off his cigarette, hoped the kid didn’t notice. He wondered if he should just bluff his way up the stairs, hope the kid took him for another orderly, one from Ward C maybe.

Then he saw through the window behind the kid that the hallway was filling and people were heading for the front door.

He thanked the kid for the light and walked around out front, was met with a crowd of people milling there, talking, lighting cigarettes. He saw Nurse Marino say something to Trey Washington, put her hand on his shoulder as she did, and Trey threw back his head and laughed.

Teddy started to walk over to them when Cawley called to him from the stairs. “Marshal!”

Teddy turned and Cawley came down the stairs toward him, touched Teddy’s elbow, and began walking toward the wall.

“Where’ve you been?” Cawley said.

“Wandering. Looking at your island.”

“Really?”

“Really.”

“Find anything amusing?”

“Rats.”

“Well, sure, we have plenty of those.”

“How’s the roof repair coming?” Teddy said.

Cawley sighed. “I have buckets all over my house catching water. The attic is done, wrecked. So’s the floor in the guest bedroom. My wife’s going to be beside herself. Her wedding gown was in that attic.”

“Where is your wife?” Teddy said.

“Boston,” Cawley said. “We keep an apartment there. She and the kids needed a break from this place, so they took a week’s vacation. It gets to you sometimes.”

“I’ve been here three days, Doctor, and it gets to me.”

Cawley nodded with a soft smile. “But you’ll be going.”

“Going?”

“Home, Marshal. Now that Rachel’s been found. The ferry usually gets here around eleven in the morning. Have you back in Boston by noon, I’d expect.”

“Won’t that be nice.”

“Yes, won’t it?” Cawley ran a hand over his head. “I don’t mind telling you, Marshal, and meaning no offense—”

“Oh, here we go again.”

Cawley held up a hand. “No, no. No personal opinions regarding your emotional state. No, I was about to say that your presence here has had an agitating effect on a lot of the patients. You know—Johnny Law’s in town. That made several of them a bit tense.”

“Sorry about that.”

“Not your fault. It was what you represent, not you personally.”

“Oh, well, that makes it all okay, then.”

Cawley leaned against the wall, propped a foot there, looking as tired as Teddy felt in his wrinkled lab coat and loosened tie.

“There was a rumor going around Ward C this afternoon that an unidentified man in orderly’s clothes was on the main floor.”

“Really?”

Cawley looked at him. “Really.”

“How about that.”

Cawley picked at some lint on his tie, flicked it off his fingers. “Said stranger apparently had some experience subduing dangerous men.”

“You don’t say.”

“Oh, I do. I do.”

“What else did Said Stranger get up to?”

“Well.” Cawley stretched his shoulders back and removed his lab coat, draped it over his arm, “I’m glad you’re interested.”

“Hey, nothing like a little rumor, a little gossip.”

“I agree. Said Stranger allegedly—and I can’t confirm this, mind you—had a long conversation with a known paranoid schizophrenic named George Noyce.”

“Hmm,” Teddy said.

“Indeed.”

“So this, um…”

“Noyce,” Cawley said.

“Noyce,” Teddy repeated. “Yeah, that guy—he’s delusional, huh?”

“To the extreme,” Cawley said. “He spins his yarns and his tall tales and he gets everyone agitated—”

“There’s that word again.”

“I’m sorry. Yes, well, he gets people in a disagreeable mood. Two weeks ago, in fact, he got people so cross that a patient beat him up.”

“Imagine that.”

Cawley shrugged. “It happens.”

“So, what kind of yarns?” Teddy asked. “What kind of tales?”

Cawley waved at the air. “The usual paranoid delusions. The whole world being out to get him and such.” He looked up at Teddy as he lit a cigarette, his eyes brightening with the flame. “So, you’ll be leaving.”

“I guess so.”

“The first ferry.”

Teddy gave him a frosty smile. “As long as someone wakes us up.”

Cawley returned the smile. “I think we can handle that.”

“Great.”

“Great.” Cawley said, “Cigarette?”

Teddy held up a hand to the proffered pack. “No, thanks.”

“Trying to quit?”

“Trying to cut down.”

“Probably a good thing. I’ve been reading in journals how tobacco might be linked to a host of terrible things.”

“Really?”

He nodded. “Cancer, I’ve heard, for one.”

“So many ways to die these days.”

“Agreed. More and more ways to cure, though.”

“You think so?”

“I wouldn’t be in this profession otherwise.” Cawley blew the smoke in a stream above his head.

Teddy said, “Ever have a patient here named Andrew Laeddis?”

Cawley dropped his chin back toward his chest. “Doesn’t ring a bell.”

“No?”

Cawley shrugged. “Should it?”

Teddy shook his head. “He was a guy I knew. “He—”

“How?”

“What’s that?”

“How did you know him?”

“In the war,” Teddy said.

“Oh.”

“Anyway, I’d heard he went a little bugs, got sent here.”

Cawley took a slow drag off his cigarette. “You heard wrong.”

“Apparently.”

Cawley said, “Hey, it happens. I thought you said ‘us’ a minute ago.”

“What?”

“’Us,’” Cawley said. “As in first-person plural.”

Teddy put a hand to his chest. “Referring to myself?”

Cawley nodded. “I thought you said, ‘As long as someone wakes us up.’ Us up.”

“Well, I did. Of course. Have you seen him by the way?”

Cawley raised his eyebrows at him.

Teddy said, “Come on. Is he here?”

Cawley laughed, looked at him.

“What?” Teddy said.

Cawley shrugged. “I’m just confused.”