Night Film

22

“That’s what happens when you marry the wrong woman,” I said. “A wife sets the ambience of a man’s life. He can very easily get stuck listening to Michael Bolton Muzak droning in a loop from tin-sounding speakers for the rest of his life, if he doesn’t keep his wits about him. You can’t blame the guy for wanting to run.”

“He was a total loser,” said Hopper from the backseat.

“That’s another way to put it.” We were hashing over Morgan Devold and all we’d learned about Ashley at Briarwood, now driving down the New Jersey Turnpike, minutes from the city.

That was the wonderful thing about New York: You might spend a few nervous hours in rural landscapes with nurses who threw themselves in front of your car and strange families, but the closer you came to Manhattan and took one look at that bristling skyline—then took a look at the guy who just cut you off in a pimped-out Nissan blasting Tejano-polka — you realized that all was right with the world.

“Ash played him,” Hopper went on, without looking up from his phone, buzzing with texts. “She knew someone was watching her on the camera. So, she decided, whoever he was, he was her best bet for breaking out of there.”

“What about this fear of the dark?” I asked, glancing at Nora. “Which reminds me. How did you know that term, nyctophobia?”

She’d dismantled her hair from those long braids and was absentmindedly staring out the window, untangling the ends. “Terra Hermosa,” she said. “A gentleman on the second floor named Ed. He used to go down this phobia list and boast about all the ones he’d had. He’d never had nyctophobia. But he had automatonophobia.”

“What’s that?”

“Fear of ventriloquist dummies. Anything with a waxy face. He went to see Avatar and had to be hospitalized.”

“He should definitely stay away from the Upper East Side.”

“It’s bullshit,” said Hopper, shoving his hair out of his eyes. “Ash wasn’t scared of the dark. She probably just put that act on for the doctors, so they’d leave her alone.”

“What about the way she looked at Morgan from the train?” asked Nora. “Maybe she didn’t know him. Maybe she had amnesia or short-term memory loss.”

“No,” Hopper said. “He’d served his purpose and she was done with him. That was it.”

“One other thing kind of worried me,” Nora added.

“Only one other thing?” I asked.

“Morgan said Ashley read his daughter a bedtime story.”

“So?”

“You don’t let a stranger you just broke out of a mental hospital spend time with your child. Do you?”

“He’s not winning any awards for Father of the Year. What about that Bride of Chucky he fished out of the kiddie pool? Baby. Not to mention that little tyke that tailed me down the drive. When she grows up she’s going to need a long sojourn at Briarwood.”

Nora tilted her head. “You don’t think Morgan hurt Ashley, do you? When he took her to his house to change clothes — there was something about the way he described it, it gave me the creeps.”

“He didn’t lay a hand on her,” interjected Hopper.

“How do you know?” asked Nora, turning around to him.

“Because if he had, he’d be severely maimed right now.”

I glanced at him in the rearview mirror, startled by his tone of voice. He was staring out the window, his face gilded by lights of the passing cars. One thing I’d gathered in the past few hours was that his knowledge of Ashley—Ash, he’d called her — was significantly more intense than the casual acquaintance of years ago he’d claimed. He knew her better than he let on, or else he’d once observed her carefully, maybe even from a distance like Devold. I was tempted to press him on it, try and get him to admit he hadn’t been forthcoming, but decided against it — for the time being. He’d probably only glower and become defensive, and that wouldn’t get me anywhere.

I checked the clock on the dashboard: 9:42 P.M.

“So, where am I dropping you two off?” I asked.

Nora turned to me. “We’re not done yet. We still have to go to that hotel, the Waldorf, see if somebody noticed Ashley. He said she was going there. So we should go.”

“Sounds like a plan,” muttered Hopper, meeting my eyes in the rearview mirror.

“It’s a long shot,” I said. “But sure. Let’s check it out.”