Night Film

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.