Shutter Island

“But this code,” Teddy said, “it’s pretty simple.”

“Simple?” Chuck said. “You’ve explained it, and my head still hurts.”

“But for you, Doctor?”

Cawley shrugged. “What can I tell you, Marshal? I wasn’t a code breaker.”

Cawley bent his head and stroked his chin as he turned his attention back to the code. Chuck caught Teddy’s eyes, his own filled with question marks.

Cawley said, “So we’ve figured out—well, you have, Marshal---the forty-seven and the eighty. We’ve ascertained that all clues are permutations of the number thirteen. What about the ‘three’?”

“Again,” Teddy said, “it either refers to us, in which case she’s clairvoyant...”

“Not likely.”

“Or it refers to her children.”

“I’ll buy that.”

“Add Rachel to the three...”

“And you get the next line,” Cawley said. “ ‘We are four.’ “ “So who’s sixty-seven?”

Cawley looked at him. “You’re not being rhetorical?”

Teddy shook his head.

Cawley ran his finger down the right side of the paper. “None of the numbers add up to sixty-seven?”

“Rope.”

Cawley ran a palm over the top of his head and straightened. “And you have no theories?”

Teddy said, “It’s the one I can’t break. Whatever it refers to isn’t anything I’m familiar with, which makes me think it’s something on this island. You, Doctor?”

“Me, what?”

“Have any theories?”

“None. I wouldn’t have gotten past the first line.”

“You said that, yeah. Tired and all.”

“Very tired, Marshal.” He said it with his gaze fixed on Teddy’s face, and then he crossed to the window, watched the rain sluice down it, the sheets so thick they walled off the land on the other side. “You said last night that you’d be leaving.”

“First ferry out,” Teddy said, riding the bluff.

“There won’t be one today. I’m pretty sure of that.”

“So tomorrow, then. Or the next day,” Teddy said. “You still think she’s out there? In this?”

“No,” Cawley said. “I don’t.”

“So where?”

He sighed. “I don’t know, Marshal. It’s not my specialty.” Teddy lifted the sheet of paper off the bed. “This is a template. A guide for deciphering future codes. I’d bet a month’s salary on it.” “And if it is?”

“Then she’s not trying to escape, Doctor. She brought us here. l think there’s more of these.”

“Not in this room,” Cawley said.

“No. But maybe in this building. Or maybe out on the island.” Cawley sucked the air of the room into his nostrils, steadying one hand against the windowsill, the man all but dead on his feet, making Teddy wonder what really had kept him up last night.  “She brought you here?” Caley said. “To what end?”

“You tell me.”

Cawley closed his eyes and stayed silent for so long that Teddy began to wonder if he’d fallen asleep.

He opened his eyes again, looked at both of them. “I’ve got a full day. I’ve got staff meetings, budget meetings with the overseers, emergency maintenance meetings in case this storm really hits us. You’ll be happy to know I’ve arranged for you both to speak with all of the patients who were in group therapy with Miss Solando the night she disappeared. Those interviews are scheduled to begin in fifteen minutes.  Gentlemen, I appreciate you being here. I do. I’m jumping through as many hoops as I can, whether {t appears so or not.” “Then give me Dr. Sheehan’s personnel file.”

“I can’t do that. I absolutely cannot.” He leaned his head back against the wall. “Marshal, I’ve got the switchboard operator trying his number on a steady basis. But we can’t reach anyone right now. For all we know, the whole eastern seaboard is underwater. Patience, gentlemen.  That’s all I’m asking. We’ll find Rachel, or we’ll find out what happened to her.” He looked at his watch. “I’m late. Is there anything else, or can it wait?”

THEY STOOD UNDER an awning outside the hospital, the rain sweeping across their field of vision in sheets the size of train cars.  “You think he knows what sixty-seven means?” Chuck said.

“Yup.”

“You think he broke the code before you did?”

“I think he was OSS. I think he’s got a gift or two in that department.”

Chuck wiped his face, flicked his fingers toward the pavement.

“How many patients they got here?”

“It’s small,” Teddy said.

“Yeah.”

“What, maybe twenty women, thirty guys?”

“Not many.”

“No.”

“Not quite sixty-seven anyway.”

Teddy turned, looked at him. “But “ he said.

“Yeah,” Chuck said. “But.”

And they looked off at the tree line and beyond, at the top of the fort pressed back behind the squall, gone fuzzy and indistinct like a charcoal sketch in a smoky room.

Teddy remembered what Dolores had said in the dream—Count the beds.

“How many they got up there, you think?”

“I don’t know,” Chuck said. “We’ll have to ask the helpful doctor.”

“Oh, yeah, he just screams ‘helpful,’ don’t he?”

“Hey, boss.”

“Yeah.”

“In your life, have you ever come across this much wasted federal space?”

“How so?”

“Fifty patients in these two wards? What do you think these build ings could hold? A couple hundred more?”

“At least.”

“And the staff-to-patient ratio. It’s like two-to-one favoring staff.

You ever seen anything like that?”

“I gotta say no to that one.”

They looked at the grounds sizzling underwater.

“What the fuck is this place?” Chuck said.

THEY HELD THE interviews in the cafeteria, Chuck and Teddy sitting at a table in the rear. Two ‘orderlies sat within shouting distance, and Trey Washington was in charge of leading the patients to them and then taking them away when they were through.

The first guy was a stubbled wreck of tics and eye blinks. He sat hunched into himself like a horseshoe crab, scratching his arms, and refused to meet their eyes.