Marisha Pessl - Night Film

The third floor of Straffen looked identical to the second, except the overhead neon lights were pinker, the linoleum shinier, the walls painted spearmint green. Black doors spanned the hall in both directions. They were doctors’ offices. I moved along them, outside each one, a plaque printed with a name. I could hear low voices and bamboo-whistling music, the kind you hear at a spa while getting a massage. Midway down the hall, there was a small windowed sitting area where two young men sat stretched out on couches, writing in notebooks.

They didn’t notice me as I walked past.

I spotted the plaque, ANNIKA ANGLEY PH.D. I knocked lightly and, hearing nothing, tried the knob. Locked. I strolled back to the young men.

“Excuse me?” I asked.

They looked up, startled. One was blond with a soft, uncertain face. The other had brown curly hair, his skin red and pockmarked.

“Maybe you can help me,” I said. “Did either of you know a former resident who was here recently named Ashley Cordova?”

The blond kid glanced hesitantly at the other boy. “No. But I just got here.”

I turned to him. “What about you?”

He nodded slowly. “Yeah. I heard about her.”

“What did you hear?”

“Just that Cordova’s daughter was here.”

“Did you ever meet her or see her?”

He shook his head. “She was Code Silver.”

“What’s Code Silver?”

“The acute-care unit. They all live in Maudsley.”

“Excuse me,” a male voice called out behind me. “Can I help you?”

I turned. A short, portly man with a dense brown beard was in the hallway, staring at me.

“Hopefully,” I said. “I’m looking for my daughter, Lisa.”

“Come with me.” He held out his arm, beckoning me to step away from the boys with a rigidly pissed-off smile. I nodded my thanks to them and followed the man around the corner.

“This floor is prohibited to everyone but residents and physicians. How did you get up here?”

I explained as confusedly as I could that I’d been on a campus tour with Poole and had lost my daughter.

Looking me over with great distaste — though seemingly buying into my stupidity — he stepped toward an office, fumbling with his keys. He shoved the door open, switching on the lights.

“Please wait with me in here until I speak with Elizabeth.”

“Actually, I know the way. I’ll just head back myself.”

“Sir, get in here now or I’ll call security.”

He was Jason Elroy-Martin, M.D., according to his plaque. I entered, sitting on his leather couch as he, with increasing frustration, dialed phone numbers off a contact sheet taped to the wall beside his medical diploma from the University of Miami. After leaving two messages for Poole, he finally reached her, and swiftly his face — what was left of it; his beard had overrun his cheeks — was flushed with outrage.

“He’s in front of me,” he said, staring me down. “He approached two one-seventeens. They were free-writing in their journals. Yes. Yes. ” He paused, listening. “No problem.”

He hung up the phone and sat back in his swivel chair, interlacing his fingers.

“Am I dismissed?” I asked.

“You’re not going anywhere.”

He continued to frown at me until there was a knock on the door.

It opened, revealing two large uniformed security guards.

“Scott B. McGrath,” one of them said, “you’ll have to come with us.”

The fact that he’d said “ B ”—which stood for my middle name, Bartley — was not promising.

They escorted me across the grounds to the Security Center, a boxy cinder-block bunker away from the other buildings at the edge of the woods. We entered a stark lobby, where a toad-faced guard sat behind glass. I was led down a hall past rooms buzzing with monitors, each displaying jumpy black-and-white shots of corridors and classrooms.

“Is this the part where I get waterboarded?” I asked.

They ignored me, stopping beside the open doorway at the end.

Nora was there, hunched on a metal folding chair at the center of a yellow-carpeted room with plywood walls. Thankfully, she appeared to be out of character, biting her nails, staring wide-eyed up at Elizabeth Poole — now so red-faced she appeared to be radiating thermonuclear heat. Beside her, perched on the edge of a desk, was a tall man with salt-and-pepper hair. He was wearing ironed khaki slacks and a bright Easter egg — blue sweater.

“Scott,” he said, rising and extending his hand. “I’m Allan Cunningham. President of Briarwood Hall. Very nice to meet you.”

“Pleasure’s all mine.”

He smiled. He was one of those beaming men not merely clean-cut but spick-and-span, with the unblemished complexion one usually finds on babies and nuns.

“So, Nora, ” he said, looking down at her and smiling — she actually smiled back—“whose pseudonym today I understand has been Lisa. She’s been explaining that you guys aren’t potential guests, as you claimed, but here to dig illegally for information on a former patient.”

“That’s right,” I said. “Ashley Cordova. She escaped from your care and died ten days later. We’re trying to determine if there was misconduct on the part of the hospital, which directly resulted in her death.”

“There was no misconduct.”

“You admit, then, Ashley Cordova was a patient here.”

“Absolutely not.” It was taking considerable effort for Cunningham to keep that broad grin on his face. “But I will say there have been no breaches in patient safety.”

“If Ashley was authorized to leave with an unidentified male in the middle of the night, why did the hospital file a missing-person’s report the next day?”

He looked incensed, but didn’t answer.

“She was Code Silver. The acute-care unit. They’re not authorized to leave without a guardian. So someone at the hospital must have been asleep at the wheel.”

He took a deep breath. “Mr. McGrath, this is not a public hospital. You’re subject to trespass laws. I could have you both taken straight to jail.”

“Actually, you can’t. ” I unzipped my pocket, handing him a folded brochure. “You’ll find that, in addition to our concerns about Ashley, Nora and I are here to distribute materials about our religion, as we are legally allowed to do under Marsh versus Alabama, the Supreme Court ruling that upholds, under constitutional Amendments One and Fourteen, state trespass statutes do not apply to those involved in the distribution of religious literature, even if it takes place on private grounds.”

Cunningham surveyed my old Jehovah’s Witness brochure.

“Cute. Very cute, ” he said. “You’ll be escorted off the premises. I’ll file a complaint with police. If I hear you or your friends— including the person sleeping in your car — try to enter our grounds again, you’ll be arrested.”

He crumpled up the brochure, making a nice rim-shot with it in the trashcan by the door. I was about to thank him for his time, when sudden movement in the window behind him caught my attention.

A woman was racing through the woods along the dirt path encircling a deserted construction site, her red hair flashing in the sun. She was wearing pink nurse’s scrubs with a white cardigan and appeared to be in a serious hurry, heading straight for our building.

Cunningham glanced over his shoulder out the window, but then turned back, nonchalant.

“Do I make myself clear, Mr. McGrath?”

“Crystal.”

Cunningham nodded at the guards, and they escorted us outside.