Shutter Island

cold. They fill my kneecaps.”

The orderlies crossed to their table, looked over Ken at Chuck. The white one said, “You guys about done, or you want to hear more about his feet?”

“My feet are cold.”

The black orderly raised an eyebrow. “It’s okay, Kenny. We’ll take you to Hydro, warm you right up.”

The white one said, “I been here five years. Topic don’t change.”

“Ever?” Teddy said.

“It hurts to walk.”

“Ever,” the orderly said.

“Hurts to walk ’cause they put cold in my feet…”

THE NEXT ONE, Peter Breene, was twenty-six, blond, and pudgy. A knuckle-cracker and a nail-biter.

“What are you here for, Peter?”

Peter looked across the table at Teddy and Chuck with eyes that seemed permanently damp. “I’m scared all the time.”

“Of what?”

“Things.”

“Okay.”

Peter propped his left ankle up on his right knee, gripped the ankle, and leaned forward. “It sounds stupid, but I’m afraid of watches. The ticking. It gets in your head. Rats terrify me.”

“Me too,” Chuck said.

“Yeah?” Peter brightened.

“Hell, yeah. Squeaky bastards. I get the piss-shivers just looking at one.”

“Don’t go out past the wall at night, then,” Peter said. “They’re everywhere.”

“Good to know. Thanks.”

“Pencils,” Peter said. “The lead, you know? The scratch-scratch on the paper. I’m afraid of you.”

“Me?”

“No,” Peter said, pointing his chin at Teddy. “Him.”

“Why?” Teddy asked.

He shrugged. “You’re big. Mean-looking crew cut. You can handle yourself. Your knuckles are scarred. My father was like that. He didn’t have the scars. His hands were smooth. But he was mean-looking. My brothers too. They used to beat me up.”

“I’m not going to beat you up,” Teddy said.

“But you could. Don’t you see? You have that power. And I don’t. And that makes me vulnerable. Being vulnerable makes me scared.”

“And when you get scared?”

Peter gripped his ankle and rocked back and forth, his bangs falling down his forehead. “She was nice. I didn’t mean anything. But she scared me with her big breasts, the way her can moved in that white dress, coming to our house every day. She’d look at me like…You know the smile you give a child? She’d give me that smile. And she was my age. Oh, okay, maybe a few years older, but still, in her twenties. And she had so much sexual knowledge. It was apparent in her eyes. She liked to be naked. She’d sucked cock. And then she asks me, as if she can have a glass of water. She’s alone in the kitchen with me, as if that’s no big deal?”

Teddy tilted the file so Chuck could see Cawley’s notes:

Patient assaulted his father’s nurse with a broken glass. Victim critically injured, permanently scarred. Patient in denial over his responsibility for the act.

“It’s only because she scared me,” Peter said. “She wanted me to pull out my thing so she could laugh at it. Tell me how I’d never be with a woman, never have children of my own, never be a man? Because, otherwise, I mean you know this, you can see it in my face—I wouldn’t hurt a fly. It’s not in me. But when I’m scared? Oh, the mind.”

“What about it?” Chuck’s voice was soothing.

“You ever think about it?”

“Your mind?”

“The mind,” he said. “Mine, yours, anyone’s. It’s an engine essentially. That’s what it is. A very delicate, intricate motor. And it’s got all these pieces, all these gears and bolts and hinges. And we don’t even know what half of them do. But if just one gear slips, just one…Have you thought about that?”

“Not recently.”

“You should. It’s just like a car. No different. One gear slips, one bolt cracks, and the whole system goes haywire. Can you live knowing that?” He tapped his temple. “That it’s all trapped in here and you can’t get to it and you don’t really control it. But it controls you, doesn’t it? And if it decides one day that it doesn’t feel like coming to work?” He leaned forward, and they could see tendons straining in his neck. “Well, then you’re pretty much good and fucked, aren’t you?”

“Interesting perspective,” Chuck said.

Peter leaned back in his chair, suddenly listless. “That’s what scares me most.”

Teddy, whose migraines gave him a bit of insight into the lack of control one had over one’s mind, would cede a point to Peter on the general concept, but mostly he just wanted to pick the little shit up by his throat, slam him against one of the ovens in the back of the cafeteria, and ask him about that poor nurse he’d carved up.

Do you even remember her name, Pete? What do you think she feared? Huh? You. That’s what. Trying to do an honest day’s work, make a living. Maybe she had kids, a husband. Maybe they were trying to save enough to put one of those kids through college someday, give him a better life. A small dream.

But, no, some rich prick’s fucked-up mama’s boy of a son decides she can’t have that dream. Sorry, but no. No normal life for you, miss. Not ever again.

Teddy looked across the table at Peter Breene, and he wanted to punch him in the face so hard that doctors would never find all the bones in his nose. Hit him so hard the sound would never leave his head.

Instead, he closed the file and said, “You were in group therapy the night before last with Rachel Solando. Correct?”

“Yes, I sure was, sir.”

“You see her go up to her room?”

“No. The men left first. She was still sitting there with Bridget Kearns and Leonora Grant and that nurse.”

“That nurse?”

Peter nodded. “The redhead. Sometimes I like her. She seems genuine. But other times, you know?”

“No,” Teddy said, keeping his voice as smooth as Chuck’s had been, “I don’t.”

“Well, you’ve seen her, right?”

“Sure. What’s her name again?”

“She doesn’t need a name,” Peter said. “Woman like that? No name for her. Dirty Girl. That’s her name.”

“But, Peter,” Chuck said, “I thought you said you liked her.”

“When did I say that?”

“Just a minute ago.”

“Uh-uh. She’s trash. She’s squishy-squishy.”

“Let me ask you something else.”

“Dirty, dirty, dirty.”

“Peter?”

Peter looked up at Teddy.

“Can I ask you something?”

“Oh, sure.”

“Did anything unusual happen in group that night? Did Rachel Solando say anything or do anything out of the