“No. I…Again, you lose track.”
“Sure. Anything unusual happen the last time you saw her?”
“No.”
“That was in group.”
“What?”
“The last time you saw her,” Teddy said. “It was in group therapy the night before last.”
“Yeah, yeah.” She nodded several times and shaved some ash off against the rim of the ashtray. “In group.”
“And you all went up to your rooms together?”
“With Mr. Ganton, yes.”
“What was Dr. Sheehan like that night?”
She looked up, and Teddy saw confusion and maybe some terror in her face. “I don’t know what you mean.”
“Was Dr. Sheehan there that night?”
She looked at Chuck, then over at Teddy, sucked her upper lip against her teeth. “Yeah. He was there.”
“What’s he like?”
“Dr. Sheehan?”
Teddy nodded.
“He’s okay. He’s nice. Handsome.”
“Handsome?”
“Yeah. He’s…not hard on the eyes, as my mother used to say.”
“Did he ever flirt with you?”
“No.”
“Come on to you?”
“No, no, no. Dr. Sheehan’s a good doctor.”
“And that night?”
“That night?” She gave it some thought. “Nothing unusual happened that night. We spoke about, um, anger management? And Rachel complained about the rain. And Dr. Sheehan left just before the group broke up, and Mr. Ganton led us up to our rooms, and we went to bed, and that was it.”
In his notebook, Teddy wrote “coached” underneath “lies” and closed the cover.
“That was it?”
“Yes. And the next morning Rachel was gone.”
“The next morning?”
“Yeah. I woke up and heard that she’d escaped.”
“But that night? Around midnight—you heard it, right?”
“Heard what?” Stubbing out her cigarette, waving at the smoke that wafted up in its wake.
“The commotion. When she was discovered missing.”
“No. I—”
“There was shouting, yelling, guards running in from everywhere, alarms sounding.”
“I thought it was a dream.”
“A dream?”
She nodded fast. “Sure. A nightmare.” She looked at Chuck. “Could I get a glass of water?”
“You bet.” Chuck stood and looked around, saw a stack of glasses in the rear of the cafeteria beside a steel dispenser.
One of the orderlies half rose from his seat. “Marshal?”
“Just getting some water. It’s okay.”
Chuck crossed to the machine, selected a glass, and took a few seconds to decide which nozzle produced milk and which produced water.
As he lifted the nozzle, a thick knob that looked like a metal hoof, Bridget Kearns grabbed Teddy’s notebook and pen. She looked at him, holding him with her eyes, and flipped to a clean page, scribbled something on it, then flipped the cover closed and slid the notebook and pen back to him.
Teddy gave her a quizzical look, but she dropped her eyes and idly caressed her cigarette pack.
Chuck brought the water back and sat down. They watched Bridget drain half the glass and then say, “Thank you. Do you have any more questions? I’m kind of tired.”
“You ever meet a patient named Andrew Laeddis?” Teddy asked.
Her face showed no expression. None whatsoever. It was as if it had turned to alabaster. Her hands stayed flat on the tabletop, as if removing them would cause the table to float to the ceiling.
Teddy had no clue as to why, but he’d swear she was on the verge of weeping.
“No,” she said. “Never heard of him.”
“YOU THINK SHE was coached?” Chuck said.
“Don’t you?”
“Okay, it sounded a little forced.”
They were in the breezeway that connected Ashecliffe to Ward B, impervious to the rain now, the drip of it on their skin.
“A little? She used the exact same words Cawley used in some cases. When we asked what the topic was about in group, she paused and then she said ‘anger management?’ Like she wasn’t sure. Like she was taking a quiz and she’d spent last night cramming.”
“So what’s that mean?”
“Fuck if I know,” Teddy said. “All I got are questions. Every half an hour, it’s like there’re thirty more.”
“Agreed,” Chuck said. “Hey, here’s a question for you—who’s Andrew Laeddis?”
“You caught that, huh?” Teddy lit one of the cigarettes he’d won in poker.
“You asked every patient we talked to.”
“Didn’t ask Ken or Leonora Grant.”
“Teddy, they didn’t know what planet they were on.”
“True.”
“I’m your partner, boss.”
Teddy leaned back against the stone wall and Chuck joined him. He turned his head, looked at Chuck.
“We just met,” he said.
“Oh, you don’t trust me.”
“I trust you, Chuck. I do. But I’m breaking the rules here. I asked for this case specifically. The moment it came over the wire in the field office.”
“So?”
“So my motives aren’t exactly impartial.”
Chuck nodded and lit his own cigarette, took some time to think about it. “My girl, Julie—Julie Taketomi, that’s her name—she’s as American as I am. Doesn’t speak a word of Japanese. Hell, her parents go back two generations in this country. But they put her in a camp and then…” He shook his head and then flicked his cigarette into the rain and pulled up his shirt, exposed the skin over his right hip. “Take a look, Teddy. See my other scar.”
Teddy looked. It was long and dark as jelly, thick as his thumb.
“I didn’t get this one in the war, either. Got it working for the marshals. Went through a door in Tacoma. The guy we were after sliced me with a sword. You believe that? A fucking sword. I spent three weeks in the hospital while they sewed my intestines back together. For the U.S. Marshals Service, Teddy. For my country. And then they run me out of my home district because I’m in love with an American woman with Oriental skin and eyes?” He tucked his shirt back in. “Fuck them.”
“If I didn’t know you better,” Teddy said after a bit, “I’d swear you really love that woman.”
“Die for her,” Chuck said. “No regrets about it, either.”
Teddy nodded. No purer feeling in the world that he knew of.
“Don’t let that go, kid.”
