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 gentlemen 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 quesffons, 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