Cawley nodded.
“No roof access?” Chuck said.
Cawley shook his head. “The only way up is from the fire escape. You’ll see it on the south side of the building. It has a gate, and the gate is always locked. Staff has keys, of course, but no patients. To get to the roof, she’d have had to go downstairs, outside, use a key, and climb back up top.”
“But the roof was checked?”
Another nod. “As were all the rooms in the ward. Immediately. As soon as she was discovered missing.”
Teddy pointed at the orderly who sat by a small card table in front of the stairs. “Someone’s there twenty-four hours?”
“Yes.”
“So, someone was there last night.”
“Orderly Ganton, actually.”
They walked to the staircase and Chuck said, “So…,” and raised his eyebrows at Teddy.
“So,” Teddy agreed.
“So,” Chuck said, “Miss Solando gets out of her locked room into this corridor, goes down these steps.” They went down the steps themselves and Chuck jerked a thumb at the orderly waiting for them by the second-floor landing. “She gets past another orderly here, we don’t know how, makes herself invisible or something, goes down this next flight, and comes out into…”
They turned down the last flight and were facing a large open room with several couches pressed against the wall, a large folding table in the center with folding chairs, bay windows saturating the space with white light.
“The main living area,” Cawley said. “Where most of the patients spend their evenings. Group therapy was held here last night. You’ll see the nurses’ station is just through that portico there. After lights-out, the orderlies congregate here. They’re supposed to be mopping up, cleaning windows and such, but more often than not, we catch them here, playing cards.”
“And last night?”
“According to those who were on duty, the card game was in full swing. Seven men, sitting right at the base of the stairs, playing stud poker.”
Chuck put his hands on his hips, let out a long breath through his mouth. “She does the invisible thing again, apparently, moves either right or left.”
“Right would bring her through the dining area, then into the kitchen, and beyond that is a door that is caged and set with an alarm at nine o’clock at night, once the kitchen staff has left. To the left is the nurses’ station and the staff lounge. No door to the outside. The only ways out are that door on the other side of the living area, or back down the corridor behind the staircase. Both had men at their stations last night.” Cawley glanced at his watch. “Gentlemen, I have a meeting. If you have any questions, please feel free to ask any of the staff or visit McPherson. He’s handled the search thus far. He should have all the information you need. Staff eats at six sharp in the mess hall in the basement of the orderlies’ dormitory. After that, we’ll assemble here in the staff lounge and you can speak to anyone who was working during last night’s incident.”
He hurried out the front door, and they watched him until he turned left and disappeared.
Teddy said, “Is there anything about this that doesn’t feel like an inside job?”
“I’m kind of fond of my invisible theory. She could have the formula in a bottle. You following me? She could be watching us right now, Teddy.” Chuck looked over his shoulder quick, then back at Teddy. “Something to think about.”
IN THE AFTERNOON they joined the search party and moved inland as the breeze grew swollen, warmer. So much of the island was overgrown, clogged with weeds and thick fields of tall grass threaded with grasping tendrils of ancient oak and green vines covered in thorns. In most places, human passage was impossible even with the machetes some of the guards carried. Rachel Solando wouldn’t have had a machete, and even if she had, it seemed the nature of the island to push all comers back to the coast.
The search struck Teddy as desultory, as if no one but he and Chuck truly had his heart in it. The men wound their way along the inner ring above the shoreline with downcast eyes and sullen steps. At one point they rounded a bend on a shelf of black rocks and faced a cliff that towered out past them into the sea. To their left, beyond a stand of moss and thorns and red berries curled into an overgrown mass, lay a small glade that dropped away at the base of some low hills. The hills rose steadily, each one higher than the last, until they gave way to the jagged cliff, and Teddy could see cuts in the hills and oblong holes in the side of the cliff.
“Caves?” he said to McPherson.
He nodded. “A few of them.”
“You check ’em?”
McPherson sighed and cupped a match against the wind to light a thin cigar. “She had two pairs of shoes, Marshal. Both found back in her room. How’s she going to get through what we just came through, cross over these rocks, and scale that cliff?”
Teddy pointed off past the glade to the lowest of the hills. “She takes the long way, works her way up from the west?”
McPherson placed his own finger beside Teddy’s. “See where the glade drops off? That’s marshland right there at the tip of your finger. The base of those hills is covered in poison ivy, live oak, sumac, about a thousand different plants, and all of ’em with thorns the size of my dick.”
“That mean they’re big or little?” This from Chuck, a few steps ahead of them, looking back over his shoulder.
McPherson smiled. “Might be somewhere in between.”
Chuck nodded.
“All I’m saying, gentlemen? She would’ve had no choice but to stick hard to the shoreline, and halfway around in either direction, she would’ve run out of beach.” He pointed at the cliff. “Met one of those.”
AN HOUR LATER, on the other side of the island, they met the fence line. Beyond it lay the old fort and the lighthouse, and Teddy could see that the lighthouse had its own fence, penning it in, two guards at the gate, rifles held to their chests.
“Septic processing?” he said.
McPherson nodded.
Teddy looked at Chuck. Chuck raised his eyebrows.
“Septic processing?” Teddy said again.
NO ONE CAME to their table at dinner. They sat alone, damp from the careless spits of rain, that warm breeze that had begun to carry the ocean with it. Outside, the island had begun to rattle in the dark, the breeze turning into a wind.
“A locked room,” Chuck said.
“Barefoot,” Teddy said.
“Past three interior checkpoints.”
“A roomful of orderlies.”
“Barefoot,” Chuck agreed.
Teddy stirred his food, some kind of shepherd’s pie, the meat stringy. “Over a wall with electric security wire.”
“Or through a manned gate.”
“Out into that.” The wind shaking the building, shaking the dark.
“Barefoot.”
“No one sees her.”
Chuck chewed his food, took a sip of coffee. “Someone dies on this island—it’s got to happen, right?—where do they go?”
“Buried.”
Chuck nodded. “You see a cemetery today?”
Teddy shook his head. “Probably fenced in somewhere.”
“Like the septic plant. Sure.” Chuck pushed his tray away, sat back. “Who we speaking to after this?”
“The staff.”
“You think they’ll be helpful?”
“Don’t you?”
Chuck grinned. He lit a cigarette, his eyes on Teddy, his grin turning into a soft laugh, the smoke chugging out in rhythm with it.
TEDDY STOOD IN the center of the room, the staff in a circle around him. He rested his hands on the top of a metal chair, Chuck slouched against a beam beside him, hands in his pockets.
“I assume everyone knows why we’re all here,” Teddy said. “You had an escape last night. Far as we can tell, the patient vanished. We have no evidence that would allow us to believe the patient left this institution without help. Deputy Warden McPherson, would you agree?”
“Yup. I’d say that’s a reasonable assessment at this time.”
Teddy was about to speak again when Cawley, sitting in a chair beside the nurse, said, “Could you gentleman introduce yourselves? Some of my staff have not made your acquaintance.”
Teddy straightened to his full height. “U.S. Marshal Edward Daniels. This is my partner, U.S. Marshal Charles Aule.”
Chuck gave a small wave to the group, put his hand back in his pocket.
Teddy said, “Deputy Warden, you and your men searched the grounds.”
“Sure did.”
“And you found?”
McPherson stretched in his chair. “We found no evidence to suggest a woman in flight. No shreds of torn clothing, no footprints, no bent vegetation. The current was strong last night, the tide pushing in. A swim would have been out of the question.”
“But she could have tried.” This from the nurse, Kerry Marino, a slim woman with a bundle of red hair that she’d loosed from the pile atop her head and unclenched from another clip just above her vertebrae as soon as she’d walked into the room. Her cap sat in her lap, and she finger-combed her hair in a lazy way that suggested weariness but had every guy in the room sneaking glances at her, the way that weary finger-combing suggested the need for a bed.
McPherson said, “What was that?”
Marino’s fingers stopped moving through her hair and she dropped them to her lap.
“How do we know she didn’t try to swim, end up drowning instead?”
“She would have washed ashore by now.” Cawley yawned into his fist. “That tide?”
Marino held up a hand as if to say, Oh, excuse me, boys, and said, “Just thought I’d bring it up.”
“And we appreciate it,” Cawley said. “Marshal, ask your questions, please. It’s been a long day.”
Teddy glanced at Chuck and Chuck gave him a small tilt of the eyes back. A missing woman with a history of violence at large on a small island and everyone seemed to just want to get to bed.
Teddy said, “Mr. Ganton has already told us he checked on Miss Solando at midnight and discovered her missing. The locks to the window grate in her room and the door were not tampered with. Between ten and twelve last night, Mr. Ganton, was there ever a point where you didn’t have an eye’s view of the third-floor corridor?”
Several heads turned to look at Ganton, and Teddy was confused to see a kind of amused light in some of the faces, as if Teddy were the third-grade teacher who’d asked a question of the heppest kid in class.
Ganton spoke to his own feet. “Only time my eyes weren’t on that corridor was when I entered her room, found her gone.”
“That would have taken thirty seconds.”
“More like fifteen.” He turned his eyes to Teddy. “It’s a small room.”
“But otherwise?”
“Otherwise, everyone was locked down by ten. She was the last one in her room. I take up my seat on the landing, I don’t see no one for two hours.”
“And you never left your post?”
“No, sir.”
“Get a cup of coffee, nothing?”
Ganton shook his head.
“All right, people,” Chuck said, coming off the pole. “I have to make a huge leap here. I have to say, for the sake of argument only and meaning no disrespect to Mr. Ganton here, let’s play with the idea that somehow Miss Solando crawled across the ceiling or something.”
Several members of the group chuckled.
“And she gets to the staircase leading down to the second floor. Who’s she gotta pass?”
A milk-white orderly with orange hair raised his hand.
“And your name?” Teddy said.
“Glen. Glen Miga.”
“Okay, Glen. Were you at your post all night?”
“Uh, yeah.”
Teddy said, “Glen.”
“Yeah?” He looked up from the hangnail he’d been picking.
“The truth.”
Glen looked over at Cawley, then back at Teddy. “Yeah, I was.”
“Glen,” Teddy said, “come on.”
Glen held Teddy’s gaze, his eyes beginning to widen, and then he said, “I went to the bathroom.”
Cawley leaned forward on his knees. “Who stepped in as your relief?”
“It was a quick piss,” Glen said. “A pee, sir. Sorry.”
“How long?” Teddy said.
Glen shrugged. “A minute. Tops.”
“A minute. You’re sure?”
“I’m not a camel.”
“No.”
“I was in and out.”
“You breached protocol,” Cawley said. “Christ.”
“Sir, I know. I—”
“What time was this?” Teddy said.
“Eleven-thirty. Thereabouts.” Glen’s fear of Cawley was turning into hate for Teddy. A few more questions, he’d get hostile.
“Thanks, Glen,” Teddy said and turned it back to Chuck with a tilt of his head.
“At eleven-thirty,” Chuck said, “or thereabouts, was the poker game still in full swing?”
Several heads turned toward one another and then back to Chuck and then one Negro nodded, followed by the rest of the orderlies.
“Who was still sitting in at that point?”
Four Negroes and one white raised their hands.
Chuck zeroed in on the ringleader, the first guy to nod, first one to raise his hand. A round, fleshy guy, his head shaved and shiny under the light.
“Name?”
“Trey, sir. Trey Washington.”
“Trey, you were all sitting where?”
Trey pointed at the floor. “Right about here. Center of the room. Looking right at that staircase. Had an eye on the front door, had one on the back.”
Chuck walked over by him, craned his head to clock the front and back doors, the staircase. “Good position.”
Trey lowered his voice. “Ain’t just about the patients, sir. ’Bout the doctors, some of the nurses who don’t like us. Ain’t supposed to be playing cards. Gotta be able to see who’s coming, grab us a mop right quick.”
Chuck smiled. “Bet you move fast too.”
“You ever seen lightning in August?”
“Yeah.”
“Slow compared to me getting on that mop.”
That broke the group up, Nurse Marino unable to suppress a smile, and Teddy noticing a few of the Negroes sliding their fingers off each other. He knew then that for the duration of their stay, Chuck would play Good Cop. He had the knack with people, as if he’d be comfortable in any cross section of the population, regardless of color or even language. Teddy wondered how the fuck the Seattle office could have let him go, Jap girlfriend or not.
Teddy, on the other hand, was instinctively alpha male. Once men accepted it, as they’d had to pretty quickly in the war, they got along great with him. Until then, though, there’d be tension.
“Okay, okay.” Chuck held up a hand to quiet the laughter, still grinning himself. “So, Trey, you were all at the base of these stairs, playing cards. When did you know something was wrong?”
“When Ike—ah, Mr. Ganton, I mean—he start shouting down, ’Call the warden. We got us a break.’”
“And what time was that?”
“Twelve-oh-two and thirty-nine seconds.”
Chuck raised his eyebrows. “You a clock?”
“No, sir, but I trained to look at one the first sign of trouble. Anything might be what you call an ’incident,’ we all going to have to fill out an IR, an ’incident re-port.’ First thing you get asked on an IR is the time the incident began. You do enough IRs? Gets to be second nature to look at a clock the first hint of trouble.”
Several of the orderlies were nodding as he spoke, a few “Uh-huh’s” and “That’s right’s” tumbling out of their mouths as if they were at a church revival.
Chuck gave Teddy a look: Well, how about that?
“So twelve-oh-two,” Chuck said.
“And thirty-nin
e seconds.”
Teddy said to Ganton, “Those extra two minutes past midnight, that would be because you checked a few rooms before you got to Miss Solando’s, right?”
Ganton nodded. “She’s the fifth down that hallway.”
“Warden arrives on scene when?” Teddy said.
Trey said, “Hicksville—he one o’ the guards—he’s first through the front door. Was working the gate, I think. He come through at twelve-oh-six and twenty-two seconds. The warden, he come four minutes after that with six men.”
Teddy turned to Nurse Marino. “You hear all the commotion and you…”
“I lock the nurses’ station. I come out into the rec hall at about the same time Hicksville was coming through the front door.” She shrugged and lit a cigarette, and several other members of the group took it as a cue, lit up their own.
“And nobody could have gotten by you in the nurses’ station.”
She propped her chin on the heel of her palm, stared through a sickle-stream of smoke at him. “Gotten by me to where? The door to Hydrotherapy? You go in there, you’re locked in a cement box with a lot of tubs, a few small pools.”
“That room was checked?”
“It was, Marshal,” McPherson said, sounding tired now.
“Nurse Marino,” Teddy said, “you were part of the group therapy session last night.”
“Yes.”
“Anything unusual occur?”
“Define ’unusual.’”
“Excuse me?”
“This is a mental institution, Marshal. For the criminally insane. ’Usual’ isn’t a big part of our day.”
Teddy gave her a nod and a sheepish smile. “Let me rephrase. Anything occur in group last night that was more memorable than, um…?”
“Normal?” she said.
That drew a smile from Cawley, a few stray laughs.
Teddy nodded.
She thought about it for a minute, her cigarette ash growing white and hooked. She noticed it, flicked it off into the ashtray, raised her head. “No. Sorry.”
“And did Miss Solando speak last night?”
“A couple of times, I think, yes.”
“About?”
Marino looked over at Cawley.
He said, “We’re waiving patient confidentiality with the marshals for now.”