Marisha Pessl - Night Film

It looked like there’d been an earthquake. Papers and boxes, files, entire shelves had been ransacked and dumped on the floor. A window was open, rain pouring in. Nora was moving frantically around the wreckage.

“What’s the matter? Are you hurt?”

“He’s gone.”

“What?”

She was panicked. “Septimus. I can’t find him.”

I spotted the empty birdcage on the floor.

“ Where the hell’s my laptop? ” I shouted.

“Everything’s been stolen. Someone else was here. I heard him go out the window, but I didn’t see him.” She moved to the closet, the wooden door hanging off the runner.

I scaled through the mess to the window, angrily slamming it closed. My filing cabinets were pulled open, the papers looted. My old framed Time articles had been pulled off the wall. The Le Samouraï poster was hanging cockeyed, so Alain Delon —usually gazing out coolly in his fedora at something beyond the room — now contemplated the floor. Was that some type of cryptic message? A hint that I was shortsighted, wasn’t seeing straight?

I righted the frame, seized the leather cushions, and threw them to the couch. I grabbed one of the fallen shelves and heaved it upright, stepping on a picture frame lying facedown. I picked it up, seeing with a twinge of horror that it was my favorite shot of Sam, taken when she was hours old. The glass had been smashed. I shook out the shards, set it on my desk, then stepped over to the overturned box of Cordova research.

I almost laughed.

It was empty — except for the Meet Yumi escort flier that I’d pocketed back at 83 Henry. The half-naked girl stared mischievously at me, as if to whisper, Are you really that surprised?

I couldn’t fathom my stupidity. I’d known we were being followed, yet like some reckless fool, I’d taken no precautions, which now seemed especially idiotic, considering that the last time I’d gone after Cordova, my life had collapsed around me like a cheap vaudeville set. Now my notes were in the hands of the very subject of my investigation. Cordova would be reading my every note, every brainstormed thought and scrawl. He’d be perusing my head like a department store. My laptop had a password, but any decent hacker could override it. Now Cordova would know everything we knew about Ashley’s final days.

Whatever edge we might have had after breaking into Oubliette, the Waldorf, Briarwood, knowing that Ashley had been searching for this person called the Spider —it was gone.

I picked up my stereo, putting the receiver back on the shelf, and saw with disbelief Ashley’s CD was gone, too. This gave way to another alarming thought.

“Where’s Ashley’s police file?”

Nora was still digging through the closet.

“Ashley’s file that I got illegally from Sharon Falcone — you were reading it two days ago. Where is it?”

She turned, her face distraught.

“I don’t know.”

She began to cry, so I started trawling through the rubble myself. I couldn’t imagine the ripple effect of that file going public: Sharon losing her job; her career ending in disgrace due to my own folly; my name appearing in print yet again as something toxic. It made me so furious, it took me a moment to realize that Hopper was shouting for us.

We found him in the kitchen, standing by the open oven door.

The parakeet was inside, frantically fluttering around the fan.

Nora rushed forward, gently capturing the bird. He was alive but trembling violently.

“Was the oven on ?” she asked Hopper.

“No.”

As she tended to the bird, Hopper looked meaningfully at me.

He was thinking what I was. This was no act of clemency. It was a threat. Sparing the bird sent a clear message: They were in control. They wanted to toy with the bird, play with it, petrify the fragile thing a little longer. But if they’d wanted to, they could have killed it.

And so the same was true for us.

We spent the next few hours cleaning up my office, while a locksmith replaced the bolt on the front door. Everything about Ashley and Cordova had been taken, with a few exceptions — my old Crowthorpe Falls notes, Iona’s Bachelor Party Entertainment business card. We found these items under the couch, which suggested that my study had been trashed first, then scoured for information on the Cordovas.

In another stroke of luck, they’d left behind Ashley’s coat — we found it still crammed into the Whole Foods bag behind the door, probably assumed to be garbage. We also found Sharon Falcone’s police file. Two days ago, Nora had taken it upstairs to review before bed. It was still on her bedside table — a sign the intruders had never made it upstairs.

I kept thinking about Olivia Endicott. It was certainly convenient that while we were uptown listening to her, the intruders had unmitigated access to my apartment. I couldn’t help but wonder if I’d misread her. Had she been in on the whole thing from the start and tipped them off to the appointment? Why? What motivation did Olivia have to protect Cordova?

There was also an unsettling symmetry to what had happened. We were following Ashley’s footsteps; Theo Cordova had followed ours. Hopper broke into their home last night; today, they broke into mine. Searching for the man on the pier, I’d only encountered myself, my business card. Were they genuinely threatened by what we were doing? Or were they treating it as a game, mirroring our actions, boomeranging them back onto us, one violation of the Cordovas’ privacy resulting in one of mine, one invasion for another?

I didn’t know what any of it meant, but at least one thing Olivia had said seemed about right: The space around Cordova distorts … the speed of light slackens, information gets scrambled, rational minds grow illogical, hysterical.

I went upstairs and took a shower, gave Hopper some towels so he could, too. I was planning to order some Chinese food and then quiz him about the townhouse — he’d briefly mentioned he hadn’t seen very much before he was caught. I left Nora monitoring Septimus and retreated to my bedroom to clean out the old safe in my closet. I hadn’t used it in years, but going forward, all notes and evidence would have to be locked inside.

I was clearing out some old redacted files when there was a knock behind me.

Nora was in the doorway, her face ashen.

“What’s the matter? Is it Septimus?”

She shook her head, beckoning me to follow her.

She’d put on deafening music in the living room, the volume turned up so loud it drowned out our footsteps. She crept to the very end of the hallway, pointing at the bathroom door — open just a crack.

Hopper was inside, the faucet running. I wasn’t in the habit of spying on men in bathrooms, but she animatedly gestured that I take a look.

I leaned forward. Hopper was at the sink, brushing his teeth, a towel around his waist.

And then I saw it.

“What’s going on?” asked Hopper, stepping into the living room.

“Have a seat,” I said. “We’re going to have a little chat.”

“Right. The townhouse.”

“Not the townhouse,” said Nora crossly. “The tattoo on your foot.”

He froze, astonished. “What?”

“Ashley’s kirin,” she said. “ You have the other half.”

He eyed the door.

“Hopper, we saw it. You lied to us.”

He glared at her, then suddenly darted for the doorway, but I was ready. I grabbed him by the back of his T-shirt and shoved him hard into a club chair.