Shutter Island(60)

Teddy heard the name again:

“Laeddis.”

It came from the right side of the cell this time.

“This was never about the truth.”

He pulled two matches free, pressed them together.

“Never.”

He struck the match. The bed was empty. He moved his hand to the right and saw the man standing in the corner, his back to him.

“Was it?”

“What?” Teddy said.

“About the truth.”

“Yes.”

“No.”

“This is about the truth. Exposing the—”

“This is about you. And Laeddis. This is all it’s ever been about. I was incidental. I was a way in.”

The man spun. Walked toward him. His face was pulverized. A swollen mess of purple and black and cherry red. The nose broken and covered in an X of white tape.

“Jesus,” Teddy said.

“You like it?”

“Who did this?”

“You did this.”

“How the hell could I have—”

George Noyce stepped up to the bars, his lips as thick as bicycle tires and black with sutures. “All your talk. All your fucking talk and I’m back in here. Because of you.”

Teddy remembered the last time he’d seen him in the visiting room at the prison. Even with the jail-house tan, he’d looked healthy, vibrant, most of his dark clouds lifted. He’d told a joke, something about an Italian and a German walking into a bar in El Paso.

“You look at me,” George Noyce said. “Don’t look away. You never wanted to expose this place.”

“George,” Teddy said, keeping his voice low, calm, “that’s not true.”

“It is.”

“No. What do you think I’ve spent the last year of my life planning for? This. Now. Right here.”

“Fuck you!”

Teddy could feel the scream hit his face.

“Fuck you!” George yelled again. “You spent the last year of your life planning? Planning to kill. That’s all. Kill Laeddis. That’s your fucking game. And look where it got me. Here. Back here. I can’t take here. I can’t take this fucking horror house. Do you hear me? Not again, not again, not again.”

“George, listen. How did they get to you? There have to be transfer orders. There have to be psychiatric consultations. Files, George. Paperwork.”

George laughed. He pressed his face between the bars and jerked his eyebrows up and down. “You want to hear a secret?”

Teddy took a step closer.

George said, “This is good…”

“Tell me,” Teddy said.

And George spit in his face.

Teddy stepped back and dropped the matches and wiped the phlegm off his forehead with his sleeve.

In the dark, George said, “You know what dear Dr. Cawley’s specialty is?”

Teddy ran a palm over his forehead and the bridge of his nose, found it dry. “Survivor guilt, grief trauma.”

“Noooo.” The word left George’s mouth in a dry chuckle. “Violence. In the male of the species, specifically. He’s doing a study.”

“No. That’s Naehring.”

“Cawley,” George said. “All Cawley. He gets the most violent patients and felons shipped in from all over the country. Why do you think the patient base here is so small? And do you think, do you honestly think that anyone is going to look closely at the transfer paperwork of someone with a history of violence and a history of psychological issues? Do you honestly fucking think that?”

Teddy fired up another two matches.

“I’m never getting out now,” Noyce said. “I got away once. Not twice. Never twice.”

Teddy said, “Calm down, calm down. How did they get to you?”

“They knew. Don’t you get it? Everything you were up to. Your whole plan. This is a game. A handsomely mounted stage play. All this”—his arm swept the air above him—“is for you.”

Teddy smiled. “They threw in a hurricane just for me, huh? Neat trick.”

Noyce was silent.

“Explain that,” Teddy said.

“I can’t.”

“Didn’t think so. Let’s relax with the paranoia. Okay?”

“Been alone much?” Noyce said, staring through the bars at him.

“What?”

“Alone. Have you ever been alone since this whole thing started?”

Teddy said, “All the time.”

George cocked one eyebrow. “Completely alone?”

“Well, with my partner.”

“And who’s your partner?”

Teddy jerked a thumb back up the cell block. “His name’s Chuck. He’s—”

“Let me guess,” Noyce said. “You’ve never worked with him before, have you?”

Teddy felt the cell block around him. The bones in his upper arms were cold. For a moment he was unable to speak, as if his brain had forgotten how to connect with his tongue.

Then he said, “He’s a U.S. marshal from the Seattle—”

“You’ve never worked with him before, have you?”

Teddy said, “That’s irrelevant. I know men. I know this guy. I trust him.”