Shutter Island(76)

Trey didn’t say anything for a while.

“Then it’s the ferry,” he said eventually.

“It’s the ferry. But how do I get out of the compound?”

“Shit,” Trey said. “You might not buy this, but it is your lucky day. Storm fucked up everything, particularly the electrical systems. Now we repaired most of the wires on the wall. Most of them.”

Teddy said, “Which sections didn’t you get to?”

“The southwest corner. Those two are dead, right where the wall meets in a ninety-degree angle. The rest of them will fry you like chicken, so don’t slip and reach out and grab one. Hear?”

“I hear.”

Trey nodded to his reflection. “I’d suggest you git. Time’s wasting.”

Teddy stood. “Chuck,” he said.

Trey scowled. “There is no Chuck. All right? Never was. You get back to the world, you talk about Chuck all you like. But here? The man never happened.”



IT OCCURRED TO Teddy as he faced the southwest corner of the wall that Trey could be lying. If Teddy put a hand to those wires, got a good grip, and they were live, they’d find his body in the morning at the foot of the wall, as black as last month’s steak. Problem solved. Trey gets employee of the year, maybe a nice gold watch.

He searched around until he found a long twig, and then he turned to a section of wire to the right of the corner. He took a running jump at the wall, got his foot on it, and leapt up. He slapped the twig down on the wire and the wire spit out a burst of flame and the twig caught fire. Teddy came back to earth and looked at the wood in his hand. The flame went out, but the wood smoldered.

He tried it again, this time on the wire over the right side of the corner. Nothing.

He stood down below again, taking a breath, and then he jumped up the left wall, hit the wire again. And again, nothing.

There was a metal post atop the section where the wall met, and Teddy took three runs at the wall before he got a grip. He held tight and climbed up to the top of the wall and his shoulders hit the wire and his knees hit the wire and his forearms hit the wire, and each time, he thought he was dead.

He wasn’t. And once he’d reached the top, there wasn’t much to do but lower himself down to the other side.

He stood in the leaves and looked back at Ashecliffe.

He’d come here for the truth, and didn’t find it. He’d come here for Laeddis, and didn’t find him either. Along the way, he’d lost Chuck.

He’d have time to regret all that back in Boston. Time to feel guilt and shame then. Time to consider his options and consult with Senator Hurly and come up with a plan of attack. He’d come back. Fast. There couldn’t be any question of that. And hopefully he’d be armed with subpoenas and federal search warrants. And they’d have their own goddamned ferry. Then he’d be angry. Then he’d be righteous in his fury.

Now, though, he was just relieved to be alive and on the other side of this wall.

Relieved. And scared.



IT TOOK HIM an hour and a half to get back to the cave, but the woman had left. Her fire had burned down to a few embers, and Teddy sat by it even though the air outside was unseasonably warm and growing clammier by the hour.

Teddy waited for her, hoping she’d just gone out for more wood, but he knew, in his heart, that she wasn’t going to return. Maybe she believed he’d already been caught and was, at this moment, telling the warden and Cawley about her hiding place. Maybe—and this was too much to hope for, but Teddy allowed himself the indulgence—Chuck had found her and they’d gone to a location she believed was safer.

When the fire went out, Teddy took off his suit jacket and draped it over his chest and shoulders and placed his head back against the wall. Just as he had the night before, the last thing he noticed before he passed out were his thumbs.

They’d begun to twitch.





20


ALL THE DEAD and maybe-dead were getting their coats.

They were in a kitchen and the coats were on hooks and Teddy’s father took his old pea coat and shrugged his arms into it and then helped Dolores with hers and he said to Teddy, “You know what I’d like for Christmas?”

“No, Dad.”

“Bagpipes.”

And Teddy understood that he meant golf clubs and a golf bag.

“Just like Ike,” he said.

“Exactly,” his father said and handed Chuck his topcoat.

Chuck put it on. It was a nice coat. Prewar cashmere. Chuck’s scar was gone, but he still had those delicate, borrowed hands, and he held them in front of Teddy and wiggled the fingers.

“Did you go with that woman doctor?” Teddy said.

Chuck shook his head. “I’m far too overeducated. I went to the track.”

“Win?”

“Lost big.”

“Sorry.”

Chuck said, “Kiss your wife good-bye. On the cheek.”

Teddy leaned in past his mother and Tootie Vicelli smiling at him with a bloody mouth, and he kissed Dolores’s cheek and he said, “Baby, why you all wet?”

“I’m dry as a bone,” she said to Teddy’s father.

“If I was half my age,” Teddy’s father said, “I’d marry you, girl.”

They were all soaking wet, even his mother, even Chuck. Their coats dripped all over the floor.