Night Film(31)

I moved back over to the door, opened it, and looked out.

The hallway was empty, except for two nurses standing about halfway down in front of Dycon’s main entrance.

Nora is getting me thrown out anyway. I might as well go down like a kamikaze. Suddenly, Sweetie was gnawing the hotdog on my foot. A nurse stopped talking to glance curiously in our direction.

I reached down, launched the toy across the room—it lodged in the leaves of a giant potted corn plant by the window; Sweetie would have to scale the six-foot stalk to reach it—and checked outside again.

The nurses had quietly resumed talking. I slipped out, walking straight through the side door.

Outside, I headed toward Straffen.

The grounds were quiet again, a few stragglers making their way toward the dining hall. I hurried across the lawn, heading up the front steps, where patients were chatting and smoking cigarettes. They only glanced at me idly as I entered the building and headed straight for the elevator banks.

Stepping inside one, I pressed 3. But the number didn’t light.

I needed some type of code. I was about to exit when a gray-haired woman stepped in, her eyes glued to her BlackBerry. Without acknowledging me, she pressed a four-digit code into the panel. It didn’t work, clearly because I’d pressed a button. Frowning, she pressed reset, typed the code again, and the doors closed. We began to rise. She’d pressed 6. I stepped forward, tried 3 again. This time it lit up.

She turned to me, curiously looking me over.

The doors opened on 3. I exited, sensing the woman was now wondering who the hell I was, but before she could react, the doors closed.

I was alone.

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.