Night Film

18

A stone-faced guard opened the electronic gate and we accelerated through, the Lincoln behind us doing a U-turn, heading back to the hospital.

“Oh my God,” said Nora, exhaling, pressing a hand to her chest.

“What was the name she said?” I asked.

“Morgan Devold?”

“Write it down. D-E-V-O-L-D.”

Nora hurriedly dug through her purse for a pen and bit off the cap, scribbling the name on the top of her hand.

“I saw her before when we were in the Security Center,” she said. “And then she passed us on our way out. She wanted to talk to us.”

“Apparently so.”

“What’s going on?” mumbled a hoarse voice from the backseat.

Hopper was up, yawning. He rubbed his eyes, staring out at the rural landscape speeding by, unsurprised.

I handed Nora my phone. “Google Morgan Devold and New York. Tell me what you get.”

It took a few minutes, due to the patchy cell service.

“There’s nothing much,” she said. “Just one of those genealogy websites. A man named Morgan Devold lived in Sweden in 1836. He had a son named Henrik.”

“Nothing else?”

“The name turns up on a site called Lawless Legwear.”

We accelerated past another road sign. BIG INDIAN 5.

“Where the hell are we?” asked Hopper, rolling down the window.

Nora turned around, eagerly filling him in on what had transpired in the last four hours.

“We were about to be arrested,” she went on. “But Scott was a total rock star. He whipped out this brochure that read across the front, ‘The Greatest Man Who Ever Lived. Questions About Jesus Christ for Young People.’ ” She giggled. “It was classic.”

As she explained what had just happened with the nurse, I spotted a Qwik Mart approaching on our right. I braked and made the turn.

“Go inside,” I said to Nora, pulling up beside a gas tank and cutting the engine. “Ask if we can borrow a phone book. And pick up some snacks.” I handed her twenty bucks and set about filling the tank.

Hopper emerged from the backseat, stretching.

“What’d you find out about Ashley?” he asked hoarsely.

“Not much. Apparently, she was a Code Silver patient, which is the most critical level of care.”

“But you didn’t find out what was wrong with her.”

“No.”

He seemed about to ask me something else, but instead turned, strolling across the parking lot, pulling out his cigarettes.

It was after four o’clock. The sun had loosened its grip on the world, letting the shadows get sloppy, the light, thawed and soft.

Directly across the street, a white farmhouse stood in the middle of a wild lawn, the grass strewn with garbage. On a drooping telephone wire sat two black birds, too tiny and fat to be crows. The Qwik Mart door dinged behind me and I turned to see an old man in a green flannel shirt and workman’s boots, heading to a pickup, a brown mutt in the bed. The man climbed behind the wheel and they pulled out, swerving to make a right extremely close to Hopper, the muffler backfiring.

Hopper didn’t react. He was staring in a sort of melancholic trance out at the middle of the road, oblivious to the cars speeding by.

Maybe that was the point — he was imagining stepping in front of one. He looked like he was at a river’s edge, about to throw himself in. It was a melodramatic thought — probably residual paranoia from the appearance of that nurse. I could still see her anxious, freckled face staring at me, her lips chapped, the window clouding over from her breath, erasing her mouth.

Hopper took a drag of his cigarette, brushing his hair from his eyes, and looked up at the sky, squinting at those birds on the telephone wires. More had appeared out of nowhere. Now there were seven — seven tiny black notes on an otherwise empty piece of sheet music, the lines and bars sagging, giving up as they stretched between poles and twisted on down the road.

Another ding and Nora emerged, her arms laden with coffee cups, jelly beans, Bugles, and a phone book. She spread it all out on the hood.

“I got Hopper some coffee,” she whispered, holding up the jumbo-sized cup and squinting worriedly across the parking lot at him. “He looks like he needs caffeine.”

“He looks like he needs a hug.”

She set the cup down, flipping through the phone book.

“It’s here,” she whispered in amazement.

I walked over, staring down at the page.