Night Film(32)

17


They escorted me across the grounds to the Security Center, a boxy cinder-block bunker away from the other buildings at the edge of the woods. We entered a stark lobby, where a toad-faced guard sat behind glass. I was led down a hall past rooms buzzing with monitors, each displaying jumpy black-and-white shots of corridors and classrooms.

“Is this the part where I get waterboarded?” I asked.

They ignored me, stopping beside the open doorway at the end.

Nora was there, hunched on a metal folding chair at the center of a yellow-carpeted room with plywood walls. Thankfully, she appeared to be out of character, biting her nails, staring wide-eyed up at Elizabeth Poole—now so red-faced she appeared to be radiating thermonuclear heat. Beside her, perched on the edge of a desk, was a tall man with salt-and-pepper hair. He was wearing ironed khaki slacks and a bright Easter egg–blue sweater.

“Scott,” he said, rising and extending his hand. “I’m Allan Cunningham. President of Briarwood Hall. Very nice to meet you.”

“Pleasure’s all mine.”

He smiled. He was one of those beaming men not merely clean-cut but spick-and-span, with the unblemished complexion one usually finds on babies and nuns.

“So, Nora,” he said, looking down at her and smiling—she actually smiled back—“whose pseudonym today I understand has been Lisa. She’s been explaining that you guys aren’t potential guests, as you claimed, but here to dig illegally for information on a former patient.”

“That’s right,” I said. “Ashley Cordova. She escaped from your care and died ten days later. We’re trying to determine if there was misconduct on the part of the hospital, which directly resulted in her death.”

“There was no misconduct.”

“You admit, then, Ashley Cordova was a patient here.”

“Absolutely not.” It was taking considerable effort for Cunningham to keep that broad grin on his face. “But I will say there have been no breaches in patient safety.”

“If Ashley was authorized to leave with an unidentified male in the middle of the night, why did the hospital file a missing-person’s report the next day?”

He looked incensed, but didn’t answer.

“She was Code Silver. The acute-care unit. They’re not authorized to leave without a guardian. So someone at the hospital must have been asleep at the wheel.”

He took a deep breath. “Mr. McGrath, this is not a public hospital. You’re subject to trespass laws. I could have you both taken straight to jail.”

“Actually, you can’t.” I unzipped my pocket, handing him a folded brochure. “You’ll find that, in addition to our concerns about Ashley, Nora and I are here to distribute materials about our religion, as we are legally allowed to do under Marsh versus Alabama, the Supreme Court ruling that upholds, under constitutional Amendments One and Fourteen, state trespass statutes do not apply to those involved in the distribution of religious literature, even if it takes place on private grounds.”

Cunningham surveyed my old Jehovah’s Witness brochure.

“Cute. Very cute,” he said. “You’ll be escorted off the premises. I’ll file a complaint with police. If I hear you or your friends—including the person sleeping in your car—try to enter our grounds again, you’ll be arrested.”

He crumpled up the brochure, making a nice rim-shot with it in the trashcan by the door. I was about to thank him for his time, when sudden movement in the window behind him caught my attention.

A woman was racing through the woods along the dirt path encircling a deserted construction site, her red hair flashing in the sun. She was wearing pink nurse’s scrubs with a white cardigan and appeared to be in a serious hurry, heading straight for our building.

Cunningham glanced over his shoulder out the window, but then turned back, nonchalant.

“Do I make myself clear, Mr. McGrath?”

“Crystal.”

Cunningham nodded at the guards, and they escorted us outside.

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.