Shutter Island(34)

“But no one’s seen him.”

“No one in Ward A or B.”

“Which suggests he’s in C.”

“Yup.”

“Or dead.”

“Possibly. One more reason to find the cemetery.”

“Let’s say he isn’t dead, though.”

“Okay…”

“If you find him, Teddy, what are you going to do?”

“I don’t know.”

“Don’t bullshit me, boss.”

A pair of nurses came toward them, heels clicking, bodies pressed close to the wall to avoid the rain.

“You guys are wet,” one of them said.

“All wet?” Chuck said, and the one closest to the wall, a tiny girl with short black hair, laughed.

Once they’d passed, the black-haired nurse looked back over her shoulder at them. “You marshals always so flirty?”

“Depends,” Chuck said.

“On?”

“Quality of personnel.”

That stopped both of them for a moment, and then they got it, and the black-haired nurse buried her face in the other one’s shoulder, and they burst out laughing and walked to the hospital door.

Christ, how Teddy envied Chuck. His ability to believe in the words he spoke. In silly flirtations. In his easy-GI’s penchant for quick, meaningless wordplay. But most of all for the weightlessness of his charm.

Charm had never come easily to Teddy. After the war, it had come harder still. After Dolores, not at all.

Charm was the luxury of those who still believed in the essential rightness of things. In purity and picket fences.

“You know,” he said to Chuck, “the last morning I was with my wife, she spoke about the Cocoanut Grove fire.”

“Yeah?”

“That’s where we met. The Grove. She had this rich roommate and I was let in because they gave a serviceman’s discount. It was just before I shipped out. Danced with her all night. Even the foxtrot.”

Chuck craned his neck out from the wall, looked into Teddy’s face. “You doing the foxtrot? I’m trying to picture it, but…”

“Hey, boss,” Teddy said, “if you’d seen my wife that night? You would have hopped around the floor like a bunny if she asked.”

“So you met her at the Cocoanut Grove.”

Teddy nodded. “And then it burned down while I was in—Italy? Yeah, I was in Italy then—and she found that fact, I dunno, meaningful, I guess. She was terrified of fire.”

“But she died in a fire,” Chuck said softly.

“Beats all, don’t it?” Teddy bit back against an image of her from that last morning, lifting her leg against the bathroom wall, naked, her body splattered with dead white foam.

“Teddy?”

Teddy looked at him.

Chuck spread his hands. “I’ll back you on this. No matter what. You want to find Laeddis and kill him? That’s jake with me.”

“Jake.” Teddy smiled. “I haven’t heard that since—”

“But, boss? I need to know what to expect. I’m serious. We got to get our shit straight or we’ll end up in some new Kefauver Hearing or something. Everyone’s looking these days, you know? Looking in at all of us. Watching. World gets smaller every minute.” Chuck pushed back at the stand of bushy hair over his forehead. “I think you know about this place. I think you know shit you haven’t told me. I think you came here to do damage.”

Teddy fluttered a hand over his heart.

“I’m serious, boss.”

Teddy said, “We’re wet.”

“So?”

“My point. Care if we get wetter?”



THEY LEFT THROUGH the gate and walked the shore. The rain blanketed everything. Waves the size of houses hit the rocks. They flared high and then shattered to make way for new ones.

“I don’t want to kill him,” Teddy shouted over the roar.

“No?”

“No.”

“Not sure I believe you.”

Teddy shrugged.

“It was my wife?” Chuck said. “I’d kill him twice.”

“I’m tired of killing,” Teddy said. “In the war? I lost track. How’s that possible, Chuck? But I did.”

“Still. Your wife, Teddy.”

They found an outcropping of sharp, black stones that rose off the beach toward the trees, and they climbed inland.

“Look,” Teddy said once they’d reached a small plateau and a circle of high trees that blocked some of the rain, “I still put the job first. We find what happened to Rachel Solando. And if I meet up with Laeddis while I’m doing it? Great. I’ll tell him I know he killed my wife. I’ll tell him I’ll be waiting on the mainland when he gets released. I’ll tell him free air isn’t something he breathes as long as I’m alive.”

“And that’s all?” Chuck said.

“That’s all.”

Chuck wiped his eyes with his sleeve, pushed his hair off his forehead. “I don’t believe you. I just don’t.”

Teddy looked off to the south of the ring of trees, saw the top of Ashecliffe, its watchful dormers.

“And don’t you think Cawley knows why you’re really here?”