“What’s another?”
“People who don’t have schizophrenia are given hallucinogens to see how their brains react.”
“Bullshit.”
“This is a matter of public record, buddy. Attend a psychiatrists’ convention someday. I have.”
“But you said it’s legal.”
“It’s legal,” Teddy said. “So was eugenics research.”
“But if it’s legal, we can’t do anything about it.”
Teddy leaned into the slab. “No argument. I’m not here to arrest anyone just yet. I was sent to gather information. That’s all.”
“Wait a minute—sent? Christ, Teddy, how fucking deep are we here?”
Teddy sighed, looked over at him. “Deep.”
“Back up.” Chuck held up a hand. “From the top. How’d you get involved in all this?”
“It started with Laeddis. A year ago,” Teddy said. “I went to Shattuck under the pretense of wanting to interview him. I made up a bullshit story about how a known associate of his was wanted on a federal warrant and I thought Laeddis could shed some light on his whereabouts. Thing was, Laeddis wasn’t there. He’d been transferred to Ashecliffe. I call over here, but they claim to have no record of him.”
“And?”
“And that gets me curious. I make some phone calls to some of the psych hospitals in town and everyone is aware of Ashecliffe but no one wants to talk about it. I talk to the warden at Renton Hospital for the Criminally Insane. I’d met him a couple times before and I say, ’Bobby, what’s the big deal? It’s a hospital and it’s a prison, no different from your place,’ and he shakes his head. He says, ’Teddy, that place is something else entirely. Something classified. Black bag. Don’t go out there.’”
“But you do,” Chuck said. “And I get assigned to go with you.”
“That wasn’t part of the plan,” Teddy said. “Agent in charge tells me I have to take a partner, I take a partner.”
“So you’ve just been waiting for an excuse to come out here?”
“Pretty much,” Teddy said. “And, hell, I couldn’t bet it would ever happen. I mean, even if there was a patient break, I didn’t know if I’d be in town when it happened. Or if someone else would be assigned to it. Or, hell, a million ’ifs.’ I got lucky.”
“Lucky? Fuck.”
“What?”
“It’s not luck, boss. Luck doesn’t work that way. The world doesn’t work that way. You think you just happened to get assigned to this detail?”
“Sure. Sounds a little crazy, but—”
“When you first called Ashecliffe about Laeddis, did you ID yourself?”
“Of course.”
“Well then—”
“Chuck, it was a full year ago.”
“So? You don’t think they keep tabs? Particularly in the case of a patient they claim to have no record of?”
“Again—twelve months ago.”
“Teddy, Jesus.” Chuck lowered his voice, placed the flats of his palms on the slab, took a long breath. “Let’s say they are doing some bad shit here. What if they’ve been onto you since before you ever stepped foot on this island? What if they brought you here?”
“Oh, bullshit.”
“Bullshit? Where’s Rachel Solando? Where’s one shred of evidence that she ever existed? We’ve been shown a picture of a woman and a file anyone could have fabricated.”
“But, Chuck—even if they made her up, even if they staged this whole thing, there’s still no way they could have predicted that I would be assigned to the case.”
“You’ve made inquiries, Teddy. You’ve looked into this place, asked around. They got an electrified fence around a septic processing facility. They got a ward inside a fort. They got under a hundred patients in a facility that could hold three hundred. This place is fucking scary, Teddy. No other hospital wants to talk about it, and that doesn’t tell you something? You got a chief of staff with OSS ties, funding from a slush fund created by HUAC. Everything about this place screams ’government ops.’ And you’re surprised by the possibility that instead of you looking at them for the past year, they’ve been looking at you?”
“How many times do I have to say it, Chuck: how could they know I’d be assigned to Rachel Solando’s case?”
“Are you fucking thick?”
Teddy straightened, looked down at Chuck.
Chuck held up a hand. “Sorry, sorry. I’m nervous, okay?”
“Okay.”
“All I’m saying, boss, is that they knew you’d jump at any excuse to come here. Your wife’s killer is here. All they had to do was pretend someone escaped. And then they knew you’d pole-vault your way across that harbor if you had to.”
The door ripped free of its sole hinge and smashed back into the doorway, and they watched it hammer the stone and then lift into the air and shoot out above the graveyard and disappear in the sky.
Both of them stared at the doorway, and then Chuck said, “We both saw that, right?”
“They’re using human beings as guinea pigs,” Teddy said. “Doesn’t that bother you?”
“It terrifies me, Teddy. But how do you know this? You say you were sent to gather information. Who sent you?”
“In our first meeting with Cawley, you heard him ask about the senator?”
“Yeah.”
“Senator Hurly, Democrat, New Hampshire. Heads up a subcommittee on public funding for mental health affairs. He saw what kind of money was being funneled to this place, and he didn’t like it. Now, I’d come across a guy named George Noyce. Noyce spent time here. In Ward C. He was off the island two weeks when he walked into a bar in Attleboro and began stabbing people. Strangers. In jail, he starts talking about dragons in Ward C. His lawyer wants to claim insanity. If ever there was a case for it, it’s this guy. He’s bonkers. But Noyce fires his lawyer, goes in front of the judge, and pleads guilty, pretty much begs to be sent to a prison, any prison, just not a hospital. Takes him about a year in prison, but his mind starts coming back, and eventually, he starts telling stories about Ashecliffe. Stories that sound crazy, but the senator thinks they’re maybe not as crazy as everyone else assumes.”
Chuck sat up on the slab and lit a cigarette, smoked it for a bit as he considered Teddy.
“But how’d the senator know to find you and how’d you both manage to find Noyce?”
For a moment, Teddy thought he saw lights arcing through the eruptions outside.
“It actually worked the other way around. Noyce found me and I found the senator. It was Bobby Farris, the warden at Renton. He called me one morning and asked if I was still interested in Ashecliffe. I said sure, and he told me about this convict down in Dedham who was making all this noise about Ashecliffe. So I go to Dedham a few times, talk to Noyce. Noyce says when he was in college, he got a bit tense one year around exams time. Shouted at a teacher, put his fist through a window in his dorm. He ends up talking to somebody in the psych department. Next thing you know, he agrees to be part of a test so he can make a little pocket change. A year later, he’s out of college, a full-fledged schizophrenic, raving on street corners, seeing things, the whole nine yards.”
“Now this is a kid who started out normal…”
Teddy saw lights again flaring through the storm and he walked nearer to the door, stared out. Lightning? It would make sense, he supposed, but he hadn’t seen any before this.
“Normal as pecan pie. Maybe had some—what do they call it here?—’anger management issues,’ but all in all, perfectly sane. A year later, he’s out of his mind. So he sees this guy in Park Square one day, thinks it’s the professor who first recommended he see someone in the psych department. Long story short—it ain’t, but Noyce fucks him up pretty bad. Gets sent to Ashecliffe. Ward A. But he’s not there long. He’s a pretty violent guy by this time, and they send him to Ward C. They fill him up with hallucinogens and they step back and watch as the dragons come to eat him and he goes crazy. A little crazier than they hoped, I guess, bec
ause in the end, just to calm him down, they performed surgery.”
“Surgery,” Chuck said.
Teddy nodded. “A transorbital lobotomy. Those are fun, Chuck. They zap you with electroshock and then they go in through your eye with, get this, an ice pick. I’m not kidding. No anesthesia. They poke around here and there and take a few nerve fibers out of your brain, and then that’s it, it’s over. Piece of cake.”
Chuck said, “The Nuremberg Code prohibits—”
“—experimenting on humans purely in the interest of science, yes. I thought we had a case based on Nuremberg too. So did the senator. No go. Experimentation is allowable if it’s used to directly attack a patient’s malady. So as long as a doctor can say, ’Hey, we’re just trying to help the poor bastard, see if these drugs can induce schizophrenia and these drugs over here can stop it’—then they’re legally in the clear.”
“Wait a second, wait a second,” Chuck said. “You said this Noyce had a trans, um—”
“A transorbital lobotomy, yeah.”
“But if the point of that, however medieval, is to calm someone down, how’s he manage to go fuck some guy up in Park Square?”
“Obviously, it didn’t take.”
“Is that common?”
Teddy saw the arcing lights again, and this time he was pretty sure he could hear the whine of an engine behind all that squealing.
“Marshals!” The voice was weak on the wind, but they both heard it.
Chuck swung his legs over the end of the slab and jumped off and joined Teddy at the doorway and they could see headlights at the far end of the cemetery and they heard the squawk of a megaphone and a screech of feedback and then:
“Marshals! If you are out here, please signal us. This is Deputy Warden McPherson. Marshals!”
Teddy said, “How about that? They found us.”
“It’s an island, boss. They’ll always find us.”
Teddy met Chuck’s eyes and nodded. For the first time since they’d met, he could see fear in Chuck’s eyes, his jaw trying to tighten against it.
“It’s going to be okay, partner.”
“Marshals! Are you out here?”
Chuck said, “I don’t know.”
“I do,” Teddy said, though he didn’t. “Stick with me. We’re walking out of this fucking place, Chuck. Make no mistake about it.”
And they stepped out of the doorway and into the cemetery. The wind hit their bodies like a team of linemen but they stayed on their feet, locking arms and gripping the other’s shoulder as they stumbled toward the light.
10
“ARE YOU FUCKING crazy?”
This from McPherson, shouting into the wind, as the jeep hurtled down a makeshift trail along the western edge of the cemetery.
He was in the passenger seat, looking back at them with red eyes, all vestiges of Texas country boy charm washed away in the storm. The driver hadn’t been introduced to them. Young kid, lean face, and pointed chin were about all Teddy could make out under the hood of his rain slicker. Drove that jeep like a professional, though, tearing through scrub brush and the storm’s debris like it wasn’t even there.
“This has just been upgraded from a tropical storm to a hurricane. Winds are coming in at around a hundred miles an hour right now. By midnight, they’re expected to hit a hundred fifty. And you guys go strolling off in it?”
“How do you know it was upgraded?” Teddy said.
“Ham radio, Marshal. We expect to lose that within a couple of hours too.”
“Of course,” Teddy said.
“We could have been shoring up the compound right now, but instead we were looking for you.” He slapped the back of his seat, then turned forward, done with them.
The jeep bounced over a rise and for a moment Teddy saw only sky, felt nothing underneath the wheels, and then the tires hit dirt and they spun through a sharp curve that dipped steeply with the trail and Teddy could see the ocean off their left, the water churning with explosions that bloomed white and wide like mushroom clouds.
The jeep tore down through a rise of small hills and then burst into a stand of trees, Teddy and Chuck holding on to the seats as they banged off each other in the back, and then the trees were behind them and they were facing the back of Cawley’s mansion, crossing a quarter acre of wood chips and pine needles before they hit the access road and the driver pushed out of low gear and roared toward the main gate.
“We’re taking you to see Dr. Cawley,” McPherson said, looking back at them. “He just can’t wait to talk to you guys.”
“And here I thought my mother was back in Seattle,” Chuck said.
THEY SHOWERED IN the basement of the staff dormitory and were given clothes from the orderlies’ stockpile. Their own clothes were sent to the hospital laundry, and Chuck combed his hair back in the bathroom and looked at his white shirt and white pants and said, “Would you like to see a wine list? Our special tonight is beef Wellington. It’s quite good.”
Trey Washington stuck his head in the bathroom. He seemed to be biting back on a smile as he appraised their new clothes and then he said, “I’m to bring you to Dr. Cawley.”
“How much trouble we in?”
“Oh, a bit, I’d expect.”
“GENTLEMEN,” CAWLEY SAID as they entered the room, “good to see you.”
He seemed in a magnanimous mood, his eyes bright, and Teddy and Chuck left Trey at the door as they entered a boardroom on the top floor of the hospital.
The room was filled with doctors, some in white lab coats, some in suits, all sitting around a long teak table with green-shaded banker’s lamps in front of their chairs and dark ashtrays that smoldered with cigarettes or cigars, the sole pipe belonging to Naehring, who sat at the head of the table.
“Doctors, these are the federal marshals we discussed. Marshals Daniels and Aule.”
“Where are your clothes?” one man asked.
“Good question,” Cawley said, enjoying the hell out of this, in Teddy’s opinion.
“We were out in the storm,” Teddy said.
“Out in that?” The doctor pointed at the tall windows. They’d been crisscrossed with heavy tape and they seemed to breathe slightly, exhaling into the room. The panes drummed with fingertips of rain, and the entire building creaked under the press of wind.
“Afraid so,” Chuck said.
“If you could take a seat, gentlemen,” Naehring said. “We’re just finishing up.”
They found two seats at the end of the table.
“John,” Naehring said to Cawley, “we need a consensus on this.”
“You know where I stand.”
“And I think we all respect that, but if neuroleptics can provide the necessary decrease in five-HT imbalances of serotonin, then I don’t feel we have much choice. We have to continue the research. This first test patient, this, uh, Doris Walsh, fits all the criteria. I don’t see a problem there.”
“I’m just worried about the cost.”
“Far less than surgery and you know that.”
“I’m talking about the damage risks to the basal ganglia and the cerebral cortex. I’m talking about early studies in Europe that have shown risks of neurological disruption similar to those caused by encephalitis and strokes.”
Naehring dismissed the objection with a raised hand. “All those in favor of Dr. Brotigan’s request, please raise your hands.”
Teddy watched every hand at the table except Cawley’s and one other man’s hit the air.
“I’d say that’s a consensus,” Naehring said. “We’ll petition the board, then, for funding on Dr. Brotigan’s research.”
A young guy, must have been Brotigan, gave a nod of thanks to each end of the table. Lantern-jawed, all-American, smooth-cheeked. He struck Teddy as the kind of guy who needed watching, too secure in his own fulfillment of his parents’ wildest dreams.
“Well, then,” Naehring said and closed the binder in front of him as he looked down the table at Teddy and Ch
uck, “how are things, Marshals?”
Cawley rose from his seat and fixed a cup of coffee for himself at the sideboard. “Rumor has it you were both found in a mausoleum.”
There were several soft chuckles from the table, doctors raising fists to mouths.
“You know a better place to sit out a hurricane?” Chuck said.
Cawley said, “Here. Preferably in the basement.”
“We hear it may hit land at a hundred fifty miles an hour.”
Cawley nodded, his back to the room. “This morning, Newport, Rhode Island, lost thirty percent of its homes.”
Chuck said, “Not the Vanderbilts, I pray.”
Cawley took his seat. “Provincetown and Truro got hit this afternoon. No one knows how bad because the roads are out and so is radio communication. But it looks to be heading right at us.”
“Worst storm to hit the eastern seaboard in thirty years,” one of the doctors said.
“Turns the air to pure static electricity,” Cawley said. “That’s why the switchboard went to hell last night. That’s why the radios have been so-so at best. If it gives us a direct hit, I don’t know what’s going to be left standing.”
“Which is why,” Naehring said, “I repeat my insistence that all Blue Zone patients be placed in manual restraints.”
“Blue Zone?” Teddy said.
“Ward C,” Cawley said. “Patients who have been deemed a danger to themselves, this institution, and the general public at large.” He turned to Naehring. “We can’t do that. If that facility floods, they’ll drown. You know that.”
“It would take a lot of flooding.”
“We’re in the ocean. About to get hit with hurricane winds of a hundred and fifty miles per hour. A ’lot of flooding’ seems distinctly possible. We double up the guards. We account for every Blue Zone patient at all times. No exceptions. But we cannot lock them to their beds. They’re already locked down in cells, for Christ’s sake. It’s overkill.”
“It’s a gamble, John.” This was said quietly by a brown-haired man in the middle of the table. Along with Cawley, he’d been the only abstaining vote on whatever they’d been discussing when Teddy and Chuck first entered. He clicked a ballpoint pen repeatedly and his gaze was given to the tabletop, but Teddy could tell from his tone that he was friends with Cawley. “It’s a real gamble. Let’s say the power fails.”
Shutter Island Page 12
