Marisha Pessl - Night Film

“It has to mean what you uncovered up there was real. ”

“You mean Kate Miller and Nelson Garcia?”

She nodded. “It had to be why John called you. Cordova probably got a clear picture of your face from the security camera when you drove up to his gatehouse. And John was a trap.”

“I tend to agree, but I’ve never had confirmation.”

“Maybe Cordova was hurt in the car that night. And someone was sick up at The Peak, which was why they were receiving that medical equipment.”

“I didn’t mention this in my notes,” I said, setting aside my laptop and sitting back against the cushions. “But I always thought Kate Miller’s ID of Cordova a little suspect. Six months after I talked to her, she tried to sell her story to the Enquirer, but they wouldn’t touch it. There could be no corroboration for anything she said, and they didn’t want to get tied up in litigation. Now, if the National Enquirer won’t touch you because you’re dirty, that means you’re really filthy.” I downed the rest of my scotch. “Anyway, Miller could never explain how she knew what Cordova looked like. Because no one really knows. The Rolling Stone pictures of him appear to be doctored. The infamous close-up of him on the set of The Legacy isn’t believed to be him, but a stand-in.”

“Maybe he’s disfigured like the Phantom of the Opera,” Nora whispered excitedly. “Or maybe it was a dead body Kate Miller saw in the car.”

“We can’t conclude we’re dealing with homicidal maniacs without proof.”

She didn’t appear to hear me. “The Cordovas might have some kind of mystical powers. There was what the Waldorf maid told us yesterday. Even Morgan Devold mentioned it — that Ashley somehow knew he was watching her. For a second, he thought he was watching something already dead. In your notes Garcia says that no one will talk about The Peak.” She picked up Ashley’s CD case, staring at the cover. “Even the music she recorded. It means ‘The Devil in the Night.’ ”

“You’d be shocked how many people go for the paranormal when they can’t explain something,” I said, striding to the bookshelf to refill my glass. “They reach for it like reaching for the ketchup. I, on the other hand, and hence, you, as my employee, will be dealing with cold, hard facts.”

Even though I was firmly not a believer in the paranormal, there was still the nagging remembrance of how Ashley had appeared the night at the reservoir. I hadn’t told Nora about it. I hadn’t told anyone. The truth was, I was no longer certain of what I’d seen. It was as if that night could be separated from all the others as a night without logic, a night of fantasy and strangeness, born of my own lonely delusions, a night that had no place in the real world.

Nora had picked up the 8 × 10 envelope containing Ashley’s police file — the one given to me by Sharon Falcone — and pulled out the stack of papers, loosening a page from the front and handing it to me.

It was one of the colored reproductions of photos taken of Ashley’s body when she’d arrived at the medical examiner’s office. There were a variety of shots — clothed and unclothed, though Sharon was correct in mentioning that any pictures that would be particularly graphic, full-frontal and rear shots, were missing from the file. This shot featured the upper portion of Ashley’s face, her gray eyes blotched red and yellow, staring out, dulled.

“Look at her left eye,” said Nora.

Within the iris there was a black freckle.

“ This? It’s concentrated pigmentation in the iris. It’s very common.”

“Not like that. It’s across from the pupil, perfectly horizontal. It has to be what Guadalupe talked about. Her mark. I can’t remember the Spanish word Hopper said, but it meant evil’s footprint.”

“Huella del mal.”

“And then there’s what happened to Cordova’s first wife.”

“Genevra.”

Nora nodded.

“I already looked into it.” I handed her back the photo and returned to the couch. “So did the police and about a hundred other reporters and gossip columnists at the time. She’d learned to swim only two months before. Her family — a bunch of snobs from Milan who loathed Cordova, considered him a working-class heathen — even they conceded it had to be a terrible accident. Genevra had a history of being impulsive. She announced to her son’s nanny she was going down to the lake to practice her swimming. She was asked to wait, but refused. It was an overcast day and it began to rain, which soon became a thunderstorm. She must have become disoriented. Couldn’t tell the direction of the shoreline. After a search, she was found tangled in the reeds at the bottom of the lake. Cordova was busy with postproduction for Treblinka and had a dozen alibis, his entire crew and his producer from Warner Brothers who spoke to the press, Artie Cohen. Five months later, he gave his final interview to Rolling Stone. He never appeared in public ever again.”

Nora didn’t appear to be listening. She was biting her lip, vigorously digging through the papers again. She pulled an article from my old notes, printed from microfiche, handing it to me.

I recognized it as something I’d printed out years ago from a library archive. It was dated July 7, 1977, the Albany Times Union.

“Even if it was an accident,” said Nora, “for your first wife and your daughter to die by accident — that’s not a good track record in terms of karma. But what really stood out was what her friend said.”

“That she was melancholy.”

She nodded. “Genevra might have committed suicide. If Ashley did, too, what does that say about Cordova?”

“He’s toxic. On the other hand, for a mother to commit suicide, orphaning her infant child, goes against the primal impulses of motherhood.”

“It was from being around him. ” Nora leaned forward, staring dubiously down at the stacks of papers. “I read your other notes, but you didn’t get too far in terms of anyone talking about him.”

“Thanks for the memo.”

“What about Matilde ? Ever hear anything about it?”

“Cordova’s supposed final film?” I was surprised she knew the title. Only diehard Cordovites knew about Matilde.

She nodded.

“Apart from a few unsubstantiated rumors that the script was a thousand pages and had driven him mad, no,” I said.

She nibbled her thumbnail, sighing. “We need a new direction.”

“I did have something promising. But I haven’t been able to crack it.”

“What?”

“The Blackboards. The invisible Cordovite network on the onion. A community for his hardcore fans.”

“What’s the onion?”

“The hidden Internet. You download a plug-in for Firefox to access it. I managed to get the URL from a professor friend, tried logging on. It kicks me out every time.” I carried my laptop over to the desk to show her, attempting to log on to the site, but again I was thrown back to the welcome to the blackboards page.

“Well, that’s your problem,” Nora said. “The user name you’re trying is Sire of Fogwatt. We should try something Cordova-related.”

Nora unplugged my wireless router in the corner, waited for five minutes, explaining that this would give me a new IP address, which wouldn’t be recognized and barred by the site. When she plugged it in again, she made it to THE CLIMB in page, where she typed in new registration details.