Shutter Island

by Dennis Lehane

  But to—

  The guard was suddenly standing there, as surprised by Teddy’s appearance as Teddy was by his, the guard’s fly still open, the rifle slung behind his back. He started to reach for his fly first, then changed his mind, but by then Teddy had driven the heel of his hand into his Adam’s apple. He grabbed his throat, and Teddy dropped to a crouch and swung his leg into the back of the guard’s and the guard flipped over on his back and Teddy straightened up and kicked him hard in the right ear and the guard’s eyes rolled back in his head and his mouth flopped open.

  Teddy bent down by him and slid the rifle strap off his shoulder and pulled the rifle out from under him. He could hear the guy breathing. So he hadn’t killed him.

  And now he had a gun.

  HE USED IT on the next guard, the one in front of the fence. He disarmed him, a kid, a baby, really, and the guard said, “You going to kill me?”

  “Jesus, kid, no,” Teddy said and snapped the butt of the rifle into the kid’s temple.

  THERE WAS A small bunkhouse inside the fence perimeter, and Teddy checked that first, found a few cots and girlie magazines, a pot of old coffee, a couple of guard uniforms hanging from a hook on the door.

  He went back out and crossed to the lighthouse and used the rifle to push open the door and found nothing on the first floor but a dank cement room, empty of anything but mold on the walls, and a spiral staircase made from the same stone as the walls.

  He followed that up to a second room, as empty as the first, and he knew there had to be a basement here, something large, maybe connected to the rest of the hospital by those corridors, because so far, this was nothing but, well, a lighthouse.

  He heard a scraping sound above him and he went back out to the stairs and followed them up another flight and came to a heavy iron door, and he pressed the tip of the rifle barrel to it and felt it give a bit.

  He heard that scraping sound again and he could smell cigarette smoke and hear the ocean and feel the wind up here, and he knew that if the warden had been smart enough to place guards on the other side of this door, then Teddy was dead as soon as he pushed it open.

  Run, baby.

  Can’t.

  Why not?

  Because it all comes to this.

  What does?

  All of it. Everything.

  I don’t see how it—

  You. Me. Laeddis. Chuck. Noyce, that poor fucking kid. It all comes to this. Either it stops now. Or I stop now.

  It was his hands. Chuck’s hands. Don’t you see?

  No. What?

  His hands, Teddy. They didn’t fit him.

  Teddy knew what she meant. He knew something about Chuck’s hands was important, but not so important he could waste any more time in this stairwell thinking about it.

  I’ve got to go through this door now, honey.

  Okay. Be careful.

  Teddy crouched to the left of the door. He held the rifle butt against his left rib cage and placed his right hand on the floor for balance and then he kicked out with his left foot and the door swung wide and he dropped to his knee in the swinging of it and placed the rifle to his shoulder and sighted down the barrel.

  At Cawley.

  Sitting behind a table, his back to a small window square, the ocean spread blue and silver behind him, the smell of it filling the room, the breeze fingering the hair on the sides of his head.

  Cawley didn’t look startled. He didn’t look scared. He tapped his cigarette against the side of the ashtray in front of him and said to Teddy:

  “Why you all wet, baby?”

  21

  THE WALLS BEHIND Cawley were covered in pink bedsheets, their corners fastened by wrinkled strips of tape. On the table in front of him were several folders, a military-issue field radio, Teddy’s notebook, Laeddis’s intake form, and Teddy’s suit jacket. Propped on the seat of a chair in the corner was a reel-to-reel tape recorder, the reels moving, a small microphone sitting on top and pointing out at the room. Directly in front of Cawley was a black, leather-bound notebook. He scribbled something in it and said, “Take a seat.”

  “What did you say?”

  “I said take a seat.”

  “Before that?”

  “You know exactly what I said.”

  Teddy brought the rifle down from his shoulder but kept it pointed at Cawley and entered the room.

  Cawley went back to scribbling. “It’s empty.”

  “What?”

  “The rifle. It doesn’t have any bullets in it. Given all your experience with firearms, how could you fail to notice that?”

  Teddy pulled back the breech and checked the chamber. It was empty. Just to be sure, he pointed at the wall to his left and fired, but got nothing for his effort but the dry click of the hammer.

  “Just put it in the corner,” Cawley said.

  Teddy lay the rifle on the floor and pulled the chair out from the table but didn’t sit in it.

  “What’s under the sheets?”

  “We’ll get to that. Sit down. Take a load off. Here.” Cawley reached down to the floor, came back up with a heavy towel and tossed it across the table to Teddy. “Dry yourself off a bit. You’ll catch cold.”

  Teddy dried his hair and then stripped off his shirt. He balled it up and tossed it in the corner and dried his upper body. When he finished, he took his jacket from the table.

  “You mind?”

  Cawley looked up. “No, no. Help yourself.”

  Teddy put the jacket on and sat in the chair.

  Cawley wrote a bit more, the pen scratching the paper. “How badly did you hurt the guards?”

  “Not too,” Teddy said.

  Cawley nodded and dropped his pen to the notebook and took the field radio and worked the crank to give it juice. He lifted the phone receiver out of its pouch and flicked the transmit switch and spoke into the phone. “Yeah, he’s here. Have Dr. Sheehan take a look at your men before you send him up.”

  He hung up the phone.

  “The elusive Dr. Sheehan,” Teddy said.

  Cawley moved his eyebrows up and down.

  “Let me guess—he arrived on the morning ferry.”

  Cawley shook his head. “He’s been on the island the whole time.”

  “Hiding in plain sight,” Teddy said.

  Cawley held out his hands and gave a small shrug.

  “He’s a brilliant psychiatrist. Young, but full of promise. This was our plan, his and mine.”

  Teddy felt a throb in his neck just below his left ear. “How’s it working out for you so far?”

  Cawley lifted a page of his notebook, glanced at the one underneath, then let it drop from his fingers. “Not so well. I’d had higher hopes.”

  He looked across at Teddy and Teddy could see in his face what he’d seen in the stairwell the second morning and in the staff meeting just before the storm, and it didn’t fit with the rest of the man’s profile, didn’t fit with this island, this lighthouse, this terrible game they were playing.

  Compassion.

  If Teddy didn’t know any better, he’d swear that’s what it was.

  Teddy looked away from Cawley’s face, looked around at the small room, those sheets on the walls. “So this is it?”

  “This is it,” Cawley agreed. “This is the lighthouse. The Holy Grail. The great truth you’ve been seeking. Is it everything you hoped for and more?”

  “I haven’t seen the basement.”

  “There is no basement. It’s a lighthouse.”

  Teddy looked at his notebook lying on the table between them.

  Cawley said, “Your case notes, yes. We found them with your jacket in the woods near my house. You blew up my car.”

  Teddy shrugged. “Sorry.”

  “I loved that car.”

  “I did get that feeling, yeah.”

  “I stood in that showroom in the spring of ’forty-seven and I remember thinking as I picked it out, Well, John, that box is checked off. You won’t have to shop fo
r another car for fifteen years at least.” He sighed. “I so enjoyed checking off that box.”

  Teddy held up his hands. “Again, my apologies.”

  Cawley shook his head. “Did you think for one second that we’d let you get to that ferry? Even if you’d blown up the whole island as a diversion, what did you think would happen?”

  Teddy shrugged.

  “You’re one man,” Cawley said, “and the only job anyone had this morning was to keep you off that ferry. I just don’t understand your logic there.”

  Teddy said, “It was the only way off. I had to try.”

  Cawley stared at him in confusion and then muttered, “Christ, I loved that car,” and looked down at his own lap.

  Teddy said, “You got any water?”

  Cawley considered the request for a while and then turned his chair to reveal a pitcher and two glasses on the windowsill behind him. He poured each of them a glass and handed Teddy’s across the table.

  Teddy drained the entire glass in one long swallow.

  “Dry mouth, huh?” Cawley said. “Settled in your tongue like an itch you can’t scratch no matter how much you drink?” He slid the pitcher across the table and watched as Teddy refilled his glass. “Tremors in your hands. Those are getting pretty bad. How’s your headache?”

  And as he said it, Teddy felt a hot wire of pain behind his left eye that extended out to his temple and then went north over his scalp and south down his jaw.

  “Not bad,” he said.

  “It’ll get worse.”

  Teddy drank some more water. “I’m sure. That woman doctor told me as much.”

  Cawley sat back with a smile and tapped his pen on his notebook. “Who’s this now?”

  “Didn’t get her name,” Teddy said, “but she used to work with you.”

  “Oh. And she told you what exactly?”

  “She told me the neuroleptics took four days to build up workable levels in the bloodstream. She predicted the dry mouth, the headaches, the shakes.”

  “Smart woman.”

  “Yup.”

  “It’s not from neuroleptics.”

  “No?”

  “No.”

  “What’s it from, then?”

  “Withdrawal,” Cawley said.

  “Withdrawal from what?”

  Another smile and then Cawley’s gaze grew distant, and he flipped open Teddy’s notebook to the last page he’d written, pushed it across the table to him.

  “That’s your handwriting, correct?”

  Teddy glanced down at it. “Yeah.”

  “The final code?”

  “Well, it’s code.”

  “But you didn’t break it.”

  “I didn’t have the chance. Things got a bit hectic in case you didn’t notice.”

  “Sure, sure.” Cawley tapped the page. “Care to break it now?”

  Teddy looked down at the nine numbers and letters:

  13(M)-21(U)-25(Y)-18(R)-1(A)-5(E)-8(H)-15(O)-9(I)

  He could feel the wire poking the back of his eye.

  “I’m not really feeling my best at the moment.”

  “But it’s simple,” Cawley said. “Nine letters.”

  “Let’s give my head a chance to stop throbbing.”

  “Fine.”

  “Withdrawal from what?” Teddy said. “What did you give me?”

  Cawley cracked his knuckles and leaned back into his chair with a shuddering yawn. “Chlorpromazine. It has its downsides. Many, I’m afraid. I’m not too fond of it. I’d hoped to start you on imipramine before this latest series of incidents, but I don’t think that will happen now.” He leaned forward. “Normally, I’m not a big fan of pharmacology, but in your case, I definitely see the need for it.”

  “Imipramine?”

  “Some people call it Tofranil.”

  Teddy smiled. “And chlorpro…”

  “…mazine.” Cawley nodded. “Chlorpromazine. That’s what you’re on now. What you’re withdrawing from. The same thing we’ve been giving you for the last two years.”

  Teddy said, “The last what?”

  “Two years.”

  Teddy chuckled. “Look, I know you guys are powerful. You don’t have to oversell your case, though.”

  “I’m not overselling anything.”

  “You’ve been drugging me for two years?”

  “I prefer the term ’medicating.’”

  “And, what, you had a guy working in the U.S. marshals’ office? Guy’s job was to spike my joe every morning? Or maybe, wait, he worked for the newsstand where I buy my cup of coffee on the way in. That would be better. So for two years, you’ve had someone in Boston, slipping me drugs.”

  “Not Boston,” Cawley said quietly. “Here.”

  “Here?”

  He nodded. “Here. You’ve been here for two years. A patient of this institution.”

  Teddy could hear the tide coming in now, angry, hurling itself against the base of the bluff. He clasped his hands together to quiet the tremors and tried to ignore the pulsing behind his eye, growing hotter and more insistent.

  “I’m a U.S. marshal,” Teddy said.

  “Were a U.S. marshal,” Cawley said.

  “Am,” Teddy said. “I am a federal marshal with the United States government. I left Boston on Monday morning, September the twenty-second, 1954.”

  “Really?” Cawley said. “Tell me how you got to the ferry. Did you drive? Where did you park?”

  “I took the subway.”

  “The subway doesn’t go out that far.”

  “Transferred to a bus.”

  “Why didn’t you drive?”

  “Car’s in the shop.”

  “Oh. And Sunday, what is your recollection of Sunday? Can you tell me what you did? Can you honestly tell me anything about your day before you woke up in the bathroom of the ferry?”

  Teddy could. Well, he would have been able to, but the fucking wire in his head was digging through the back of his eye and into his sinus passages.

  All right. Remember. Tell him what you did Sunday. You came home from work. You went to your apartment on Buttonwood. No, no. Not Buttonwood. Buttonwood burned to the ground when Laeddis lit it on fire. No, no. Where do you live? Jesus. He could see the place. Right, right. The place on…the place on…Castlemont. That’s it. Castlemont Avenue. By the water.

  Okay, okay. Relax. You came back to the place on Castlemont and you ate dinner and drank some milk and went to bed. Right? Right.

  Cawley said, “What about this? Did you get a chance to look at this?”

  He pushed Laeddis’s intake form across the table.

  “No.”

  “No?” He whistled. “You came here for it. If you got that piece of paper back to Senator Hurly—proof of a sixty-seventh patient we claim to have no record of—you could have blown the lid off this place.”

  “True.”

  “Hell yes, true. And you couldn’t find time in the last twenty-four hours to give it a glance?”

  “Again, things were a bit—”

  “Hectic, yes. I understand. Well, take a look at it now.”

  Teddy glanced down at it, saw the pertinent name, age, date of intake info for Laeddis. In the comments section, he read:

  Patient is highly intelligent and highly delusional. Known proclivity for violence. Extremely agitated. Shows no remorse for his crime because his denial is such that no crime ever took place. Patient has erected a series of highly developed and highly fantastical narratives which preclude, at this time, his facing the truth of his actions.

  The signature below read Dr. L. Sheehan.

  Teddy said, “Sounds about right.”

  “About right?”

  Teddy nodded.

  “In regards to whom?”

  “Laeddis.”

  Cawley stood. He walked over to the wall and pulled down one of the sheets.

  Four names were written there in block letters six inches high:

  EDWARD DANIELS—ANDREW LAEDDIS<
br />
  RACHEL SOLANDO—DOLORES CHANAL

  Teddy waited, but Cawley seemed to be waiting too, neither of them saying a word for a full minute.

  Eventually Teddy said, “You have a point, I’m guessing.”

  “Look at the names.”

  “I see them.”

  “Your name, Patient Sixty-seven’s name, the missing patient’s name, and your wife’s name.”

  “Uh-huh. I’m not blind.”

  “There’s your rule of four,” Cawley said.

  “How so?” Teddy rubbed his temple hard, trying to massage that wire out of there.

  “Well, you’re the genius with code. You tell me.”

  “Tell you what?”

  “What do the names Edward Daniels and Andrew Laeddis have in common?”

  Teddy looked at his own name and Laeddis’s for a moment. “They both have thirteen letters.”

  “Yes, they do,” Cawley said. “Yes, they do. Anything else?”

  Teddy stared and stared. “Nope.”

  “Oh, come on.” Cawley removed his lab coat, placed it over the back of a chair.

  Teddy tried to concentrate, already tiring of this parlor game.

  “Take your time.”

  Teddy stared at the letters until their edges grew soft.

  “Anything?” Cawley said.

  “No. I can’t see anything. Just thirteen letters.”

  Cawley whacked the names with the back of his hand. “Come on!”

  Teddy shook his head and felt nauseated. The letters jumped.

  “Concentrate.”

  “I am concentrating.”

  “What do these letters have in common?” Cawley said.

  “I don’t…There are thirteen of them. Thirteen.”

  “What else?”

  Teddy peered at the letters until they blurred. “Nothing.”

  “Nothing?”

  “Nothing,” Teddy said. “What do you want me to say? I can’t tell you what I don’t know. I can’t—”

  Cawley shouted it: “They’re the same letters!”

  Teddy hunched forward, tried to get the letters to stop quivering. “What?”