Night Film(176)

“I know Olivia’s out of the country, but call her assistant. She’ll authorize it.”

He looked doubtful, but waited patiently while I found the number.

“Yeah, hi,” he said into the phone after I dialed for him. “This is The Campanile. I got a gentleman here.” He squinted down at my business card. “Scott McGrath.” He went on to explain the situation, falling silent.

And then, abruptly, his face—so amiable before—sobered. He glanced at me, visibly startled, then hung up without a word. He stood up, coming around the side of the desk, his arm out to escort me toward the door.

“You’re gonna have to be on your way, mister.”

“Just tell me what she said.”

“If you harass any of the people here again, I’m gonna call the cops. You don’t have any connection to Olivia Endicott.”

Outside, I turned back—speechless—but he was standing staunchly in the door, glaring at me.

I headed swiftly down the sidewalk. When I reached the corner, I dialed Olivia’s assistant’s number myself. She picked up immediately.

“This is Scott McGrath. What the hell just happened?”

“I beg your pardon, sir? I don’t know what you’re talking—”

“Cut the bullshit. What’d you tell the doorman?”

She said nothing, seemingly deciding whether or not to feign ignorance. Then, in a cold, clipped voice: “Mrs. du Pont would prefer it if you did not contact her or any member of her family.”

“Mrs. du Pont and I are working together.”

“Not anymore. She wants no further connection to your activities.”

I hung up, seething, and phoned The Campanile’s management company to get Harold’s home phone number.

It was disconnected.





105


I returned to Perry Street and systematically tried contacting every witness we’d encountered during the investigation.

Iona, the bachelor party entertainer who’d tipped us off to Ashley heading to Oubliette—I called the number on her business card and was informed by the automated recording that her voicemail box was full.

This didn’t change, not even after four days.

I dialed Morgan Devold. I no longer had the page torn out of the phone book—that had been stolen when my office was broken into—but found it after calling directory assistance for Livingston Manor, New York.

There was only a busy signal. I tried the number every hour for the next six hours. It remained busy.

After learning from the assistant director of housekeeping at the Waldorf Towers that Guadalupe Sanchez was no longer an employee at the hotel, I decided to track down the strawberry-haired young nurse who’d run out in front of our car at Briarwood. I remembered her name had been Genevieve Wilson; Morgan Devold had mentioned it.

“Genevieve Wilson was a student nurse in our central administration for three months,” a man in the nursing department explained.

“Can I speak to her?”

“Her last day was November third.”

That was more than three weeks ago.

“Is there a number where I can reach her? A home address?”

“That’s not available.”

Was this somehow my doing? Had I lost my mind? The primary symptom of madness was near-constant amazement at the world and a suspicion of all people from strangers to family and friends. I had both symptoms in spades. Why wouldn’t I? Every witness, every stranger and bystander who’d encountered Ashley, was extinct now. They’d silently receded like a fog I hadn’t noticed was lifting until it was gone. It was what had actually happened to my anonymous caller, John, years ago.

Or did I have it all wrong? Had these people run for their lives, going missing, absconding to the outer reaches of the world—like Rachel Dempsey and the countless other actors who’d worked and lived with Cordova—because they were fleeing something? Were they afraid of him, Cordova, because they’d talked to me about his daughter? With my notes stolen, there was no record of what they’d told me about Ashley. Their testimony now existed solely in my head—and Hopper’s and Nora’s.

But even they were gone now.

Then, it existed solely in my head.

Filled with sudden worry that Nora and Hopper might have vanished in the same way as the others, I called both of them, leaving messages to call me back. I then phoned Cynthia, suddenly wanting to hear Sam’s voice, irrationally worried she, too, was gone. It went to voicemail. I left a terse message, threw on my coat, and left the apartment.





106


In the fading daylight, Morgan Devold’s driveway looked so different from the night the three of us drove up here, I hardly recognized it. I pulled over to the shoulder, cut the engine, and climbed out.

Immediately I was hit by a smell: smoke.

I started up the drive. Some overgrown branches had been split backward and broken in half—as if a large truck had driven up here. The charred smell grew stronger, and when I crested the top I stopped, staring out at the lawn in front of me.

Morgan Devold’s ramshackle house had burned to the ground.

I headed toward it, light-headed with shock. Both cars were gone. All that remained was a charred air conditioner and half a splintered swing.

My guess was the fire had happened a week ago, maybe longer, and it wasn’t an accident. I climbed through it, looking for evidence, but the only identifiable objects I found were a blackened ceramic bathtub, the burnt base of a La-Z-Boy, and a plastic doll’s arm reaching out from the rubble. Seeing it made me wonder if it belonged to Baby, the doll Morgan had fished out of the kiddie pool. Immediately, I made my way across the overgrown grass toward the far corner of the yard.