Marisha Pessl - Night Film

We filed down the sidewalk around the construction site. Lisa, for all her bad-girl scowling, certainly looked docile now. As we walked between the two guards she shot me countless freaked-out, what-are-we-going-to-do-now? looks — all of which suggested she was relishing this clash with authority. If you could even call these security officers authority. They looked like La-Z-Boys.

Farther down the path, I noticed that nurse again — the same redhead I’d spotted out the window. She’d just stepped out of nowhere and was rushing toward us, staring emphatically at the ground. But when we were just a few yards away, she jerked her head up, staring agitatedly right at me.

I stopped in surprise.

She only picked up her pace, veering onto another route leading around the back of a dormitory.

“ Mr. McGrath. Let’s go.”

When we reached the parking lot, news of a security breach appeared to have traveled around the hospital, because we had a handful of onlookers — nurses, administrators, shrinks — standing on the front steps of Dycon, watching our procession.

“A going-away party,” I said. “You shouldn’t have.”

“Kindly make your way to your vehicle,” the guard ordered.

I unlocked the car, and the two of us climbed in. Hopper was still passed out in the back. He looked like he hadn’t moved.

“Why don’t you make sure he has a pulse?” I muttered, starting the engine.

I eased out of the parking space, edging the car toward the exit. There were people still milling around Dycon, watching us, but no sign anywhere of that redhaired nurse. Had she wanted me to follow her? Surely she’d have seen with the security guards it was impossible.

“He has a pulse,” chirped Nora happily, turning back. “That was a close call, huh?”

“Close? No. I’d call that a bull’s-eye.”

I made a right, accelerating out onto the main road that would get us the hell out of here, a dizzying two-minute drive through the woods.

“You mad or something?” Nora asked.

“Yes. I’m mad. ”

“How come?”

“Your little Houdini act back there? You didn’t just draw attention to us. You drew a red circle around us and added a They are here arrow. Next time bring a mariachi band.”

She huffed, fiddling with the radio.

“Right now Cunningham’s on the phone with Ashley’s family — Cordova himself, probably — telling him a reporter named Scott McGrath accompanied by a white cracker Floridian is snooping around his daughter’s medical history. Any hope I had at keeping this investigation quiet is gone now, thanks to you, Bernstein. Which brings me to your acting. I don’t know if anyone’s told you this, but you need to rethink your life purpose.”

I checked the rearview mirror. A blue Lincoln had just appeared behind us — in the front seats, the unmistakable boxy forms of the security officers.

“Now we’ve got Mumbo and Jumbo tailing us,” I muttered.

Nora excitedly whipped around in the seat to look. The girl was about as stealthy as a semi hauling a wide load.

We sped down the hill, rounding a grove of trees. I counted about fifteen seconds between the time our car rounded a curve and the blue sedan appeared behind us. I pressed harder on the gas, racing around another bend.

“Bet I got more on Ashley than you, ” Nora announced.

“Oh, yeah? What’ve you got?”

She only shrugged, smiling.

“ Bupkis. Exactly.”

We sped around another turn, the road straightening and intersecting with a dirt service road. I paused at the stop sign and was just starting to floor it when suddenly Nora screamed.

That woman —the redheaded nurse — was crashing out of the steep wooded bank just to our right, running directly in front of our car.

I slammed on the brakes.

She fell forward against the hood, red hair spilling everywhere. For a horrified moment I thought she was hurt, but then she lifted her head, racing around the car to my side, leaning in an inch from the window.

She stared in at me — her brown eyes bloodshot, her freckled face desperate.

“Morgan Devold,” she shouted. “Find him. He’ll tell you what you want to know.”

“What?”

“Morgan. Devold. ”

She lurched back in front of the car and ran to the shoulder, scrambling up the steep embankment just as the blue sedan appeared behind us.

Frantically she was crawling on her hands and knees up the hill, sliding in the leaves and dirt. She reached the summit and wrapped her cardigan around herself, pausing to stare down at our car.

The guards had pulled up behind us and beeped.

They hadn’t seen her.

I took my foot off the brake and — still intoxicated with shock — we continued down the drive, though in the rearview mirror, just before we rounded the next bend, I saw the woman was still standing on the hill, a gust of wind whipping that red hair into her face, blotting it out.

A stone-faced guard opened the electronic gate and we accelerated through, the Lincoln behind us doing a U-turn, heading back to the hospital.

“Oh my God,” said Nora, exhaling, pressing a hand to her chest.

“What was the name she said?” I asked.

“Morgan Devold?”

“Write it down. D-E-V-O-L-D.”

Nora hurriedly dug through her purse for a pen and bit off the cap, scribbling the name on the top of her hand.

“I saw her before when we were in the Security Center,” she said. “And then she passed us on our way out. She wanted to talk to us.”

“Apparently so.”

“What’s going on?” mumbled a hoarse voice from the backseat.

Hopper was up, yawning. He rubbed his eyes, staring out at the rural landscape speeding by, unsurprised.

I handed Nora my phone. “Google Morgan Devold and New York. Tell me what you get.”

It took a few minutes, due to the patchy cell service.

“There’s nothing much,” she said. “Just one of those genealogy websites. A man named Morgan Devold lived in Sweden in 1836. He had a son named Henrik.”

“Nothing else?”

“The name turns up on a site called Lawless Legwear.”

We accelerated past another road sign. BIG INDIAN 5.

“Where the hell are we?” asked Hopper, rolling down the window.

Nora turned around, eagerly filling him in on what had transpired in the last four hours.

“We were about to be arrested,” she went on. “But Scott was a total rock star. He whipped out this brochure that read across the front, ‘The Greatest Man Who Ever Lived. Questions About Jesus Christ for Young People.’ ” She giggled. “It was classic. ”

As she explained what had just happened with the nurse, I spotted a Qwik Mart approaching on our right. I braked and made the turn.

“Go inside,” I said to Nora, pulling up beside a gas tank and cutting the engine. “Ask if we can borrow a phone book. And pick up some snacks.” I handed her twenty bucks and set about filling the tank.

Hopper emerged from the backseat, stretching.

“What’d you find out about Ashley?” he asked hoarsely.

“Not much. Apparently, she was a Code Silver patient, which is the most critical level of care.”

“But you didn’t find out what was wrong with her.”

“No.”

He seemed about to ask me something else, but instead turned, strolling across the parking lot, pulling out his cigarettes.

It was after four o’clock. The sun had loosened its grip on the world, letting the shadows get sloppy, the light, thawed and soft.