by Joël Dicker
I learned fast. Obviously there was no longer any question of my leaving the volleyball team, because my now sole obsession was to become the best, by any means necessary, to hog the spotlight, no matter what the cost. Soon afterward there was a science fair, won by an annoying little nerd named Sally. I finished sixteenth. At the awards ceremony, in the school auditorium, I arranged it so that I could give a speech—and made up a spiel about the weekends I had worked as a volunteer helping mentally handicapped people. This had, I explained, taken valuable time away from my science project. But, eyes shining with tears, I concluded: “Winning first prize doesn’t matter much to me, as long as I can provide my Down’s syndrome friends with even a glimmer of happiness.” Of course everyone was deeply moved by this, and I easily eclipsed Sally in the eyes of my teachers and classmates—and even in the eyes of Sally herself, who, having a severely handicapped little brother (something I was completely unaware of), refused her prize and demanded that it be given to me instead. This got my name displayed under the categories of Sport, Science and Good Citizenship on the Order of Merit, which—fully aware as I was of my duplicity—I had secretly renamed the Hoarder of Merit. But by now I was like someone possessed, and I couldn’t stop myself. One week later, I beat the record for raffle-ticket sales by buying them myself with the money I had saved during two years spent picking up litter from the lawn at the local swimming pool. This was all it took for a rumor to start circulating around the high school: Marcus Goldman was an exceptional human being. It was this observation that led students and teachers alike to call me Marcus the Magnificent. It was like a trademark, a guarantee of absolute success, and soon my fame spread all over our corner of Montclair, filling my parents with immense pride.
This scam led me to practice the noble art of boxing. I’d always had a weakness for the sport, and I’d always been a pretty good slugger, but in going off to train in secret at a Brooklyn gym—an hour by train from my home—where nobody knew me and Marcus the Magnificent did not exist, what I was seeking was the ability to be weak; I was claiming the right to be beaten by someone stronger than I was, the right to lose face. This was the only way I could escape the monster of perfection I had created. In that boxing gym, Marcus the Magnificent could lose; he could be bad at something. And the real Marcus could exist. Because, little by little, my obsession with being number one was growing beyond imagining. The more I won, the more terrified I became of losing.
During my junior year, budget cuts forced the principal to get rid of the volleyball team. So, to my great dismay, I had to choose a new sport. Both the football and soccer teams were now making eyes at me, of course, but I knew that if I joined one of them, I would be confronted with players who were much more gifted and determined than my old volleyball teammates. If I did that, I risked being eclipsed, becoming anonymous again … or worse. What would people say when Marcus Goldman—Marcus the Magnificent, former volleyball captain and team record holder for the number of kills made in the past twenty years—found himself the football team’s water boy? For two weeks I was in a state of anxiety, until I heard about the high school’s little-known cross-country team, which consisted of two stumpy-legged fat kids and one scrawny wimp. Moreover, it turned out to be the only sports team at Felton that did not participate in any interscholastic competition. This ensured that I would never have to measure myself against anyone who might prove dangerous to me. It was, then, with relief and without the slightest hesitation, that I joined Felton’s cross-country team, where—from the very first training session, under the infatuated gaze of the principal and a few groupies—I easily beat the times set by my teammates.
Everything might have gone swimmingly had not the principal, inspired by my results, come up with the absurd idea of organizing a major cross-country meet featuring all the schools of the region in order to boost Felton’s image, confident that Marcus the Magnificent would win easily. Panicking at this news, I trained relentlessly for a whole month, but I knew there was nothing I could do against the other schools’ race-hardened runners. I was nothing but a flimsy façade; I was going to make a fool of myself, and on home turf too.
The day of the race, all of Felton, along with half of my neighborhood, was there to cheer me on. The race began and, as I feared, I was immediately left in the wake of the other runners. This was the crucial moment; my reputation was at stake. It was a six-mile race. I was going to finish last, defeated and disgraced. I had to save Marcus the Magnificent at all costs. So I gathered all my strength, all my energy, and desperately launched myself into an insane sprint. Cheered on by a few supporters, I took the lead. It was at this point that I resorted to the Machiavellian plan I had devised. Leading the competition and sensing that I had reached my physical limit, I pretended to trip and threw myself to the ground, rolling spectacularly and howling as the crowd erupted. It turned out I had broken my leg, which had certainly not been my intention, but which—for the price of an operation and two weeks in the hospital—saved my reputation. The next week, the high school newspaper reported it this way:
During this historic race, Marcus “the Magnificent” Goldman was easily dominating his opponents on his way to what promised to be a crushing victory, when he became the unwitting victim of the poor quality of the track: He fell heavily and broke a leg.
This was the end of my running career and my sports career in general. Due to serious injury, I was exempted from sport during the rest of my time in high school. As a reward for my commitment and sacrifice, a plaque inscribed with my name was displayed on the Wall of Honor, alongside my volleyball jersey. The principal, cursing the poor quality of the facilities at Felton, had the entire track resurfaced at great cost, paying for it by draining the budget for school outings and thus depriving every student in the school of any kind of extracurricular activity the following year.
In the spring of my senior year, bedecked with perfect grades, certificates, awards and letters of recommendation, I had to make the fateful decision of where to go to college. So when one afternoon, lying on my bed and reading the three acceptance letters I’d received—one from Harvard, another from Yale, and the third from Burrows, a small, little-known school in Massachusetts—I did not even hesitate; I chose Burrows. Entering a great university meant risking my reputation as Marcus the Magnificent. At Harvard or Yale the bar would have been set too high. I had no desire to face the nation’s elite, who would insatiably monopolize the deans’ lists. The dean’s list at Burrows seemed much more accessible to me. Marcus the Magnificent did not want to burn his wings. Marcus the Magnificent wished to remain Magnificent. Burrows was perfect: a modest campus where I would be bound to shine. I had no trouble convincing my parents that the English department at Burrows was superior in every respect to that of Harvard and of Yale, and that is how, in the fall of 1998, I came to leave Montclair for the small industrial town in Massachusetts where I would make the acquaintance of Harry Quebert.
*
In the early evening, while I was still out on the deck, looking through photo albums and brooding over memories, I received a call from my panic-stricken agent.
“Marcus, for God’s sake! I can’t believe you went to New Hampshire without telling me! I’ve had journalists calling, asking what you were doing, and I didn’t even know you were there. Come back to New York. Come back while there’s still time. This case is completely beyond you! Quebert has an excellent lawyer. Let him do his job, and you concentrate on your book. You have to deliver your manuscript to Barnaski in two weeks.”
“Harry needs a friend to stand by him,” I said.
There was a silence and then Douglas began muttering, as if he had only now realized what he’d been missing for months. “You don’t have a book, do you? You’re two weeks from Barnaski’s deadline and you haven’t even bothered to write this goddamn book! Is that it, Marc? Are you there to help a friend, or are you escaping New York?”
“Shut up, Doug.”
There was another long silence.
<
br /> “Tell me you have an idea, at least. Tell me you have a plan and that there’s a good reason you’ve gone to New Hampshire.”
“Isn’t friendship enough?”
“Jesus Christ, what do you owe this guy that you have to go there for him?”
“Everything. Absolutely everything.”
“What do you mean, everything?”
“It’s complicated, Douglas.”
“For God’s sake, what are you trying to say?”
“Doug, there was an episode of my life that I’ve never told you about. When I got out of high school, I might easily have taken a wrong turn. And then I met Harry. In some ways, he saved my life. Without him, I would never have become the writer I am now. It happened in Burrows, Massachusetts, in 1998. I owe him everything.”
29
Is It Possible to Fall in Love with a Fifteen-Year-Old Girl?
“I would like to teach you writing, Marcus—not so that you know how to write, but so that you become a writer. Because writing books is no small feat. Everyone knows how to write, but not everyone is a writer.”
“And how do you know when you’re a writer, Harry?”
“Nobody knows he’s a writer. It’s other people who tell you.”
Everyone who remembers Nola says she was a wonderful girl. One of those girls who leaves an impression on people: gentle and considerate, radiant and good at everything. Apparently, she had a unique joie de vivre that could light up even the dreariest days. She worked at Clark’s on Saturdays; she would twirl lightly between the tables, her wavy blond hair dancing in the air. She always had a kind word for every customer. She was all you saw. Nola was a world in herself.
She was the only child of David and Louisa Kellergan, southern evangelicals from Jackson, Alabama, where she herself was born on April 12, 1960. The Kellergans moved to Somerset in the summer of 1969, after the father had been hired as pastor for the congregation of St James’s Church in Somerset. The church, located on the south side of town, was an impressive wooden building of which nothing remains today, because it was eventually merged with the main church in Montburry due to dwindling budgets and attendances. A McDonald’s had been built in its place. Upon their arrival, the Kellergans moved into a nice one-story house belonging to the parish, located at 245 Terrace Avenue. It was, in all probability, through her bedroom window that Nola disappeared into the woods six years later, on August 30, 1975.
These details were among the first given to me by the regulars at Clark’s, where I went the morning after my arrival in Somerset. I woke spontaneously at dawn, tormented by the unpleasant feeling that I was not really sure what I was doing here. After I went running on the beach, I fed the seagulls, and it was then that I wondered if I had really come all the way to New Hampshire just to give bread to seabirds. My meeting in Concord with Benjamin Roth, who would take me to visit Harry, was not until 11 a.m.; in the meantime, because I did not want to be alone, I went to eat pancakes at Clark’s. Harry used to take me there early in the mornings when I was a student and staying with him. He would wake me before dawn, unceremoniously shaking me and explaining that it was time to put on my running gear. Then we would go down to the beach to run and box. When he got tired, he would coach me, interrupting what he was doing supposedly in order to correct my movements and positions, although it was really so he could catch his breath. Jogging and exercising, we would cover the few miles of beach that link Goose Cove to Somerset. Then we would climb up the rocks of Grand Beach and pass through the still-sleeping town. On the main street, which was still plunged in darkness, we would see from afar the bright light that poured through the bay window of the diner, the only place open at such an early hour. Inside, all was perfectly calm; the few customers were truck drivers or farm hands eating their breakfast in silence. In the background, we could hear the radio, always tuned to a news channel but with the volume turned so low that it was impossible to understand all the newscaster’s words. On hot mornings, the ceiling fan creaked metallically as it beat the air, making dust motes dance around the lamps. We would sit at Table 17, and Jenny would appear instantly to serve us coffee. She always smiled at me with a gentleness that was almost maternal. She said, “Poor Marcus—is he making you get up at dawn? He’s done that ever since I’ve known him.” And we would laugh.
But on June 17, 2008, despite the early hour, Clark’s was already bustling. Everyone was talking about the case, and when I entered, the regulars crowded around me to ask if it was true, if Harry had had an affair with Nola, and if he had killed her and Deborah Cooper. I avoided their questions and sat down at Table 17, which was still free. That was when I discovered that the plaque in honor of Harry had been removed. All that remained were two screw holes in the wood of the table and the shape where the metal had discolored the varnish.
Jenny came to serve me coffee and greeted me kindly. She looked sad.
“Are you staying at Harry’s place?” she said.
“Yes. You took off the plaque?”
“Yes.”
“Why?”
“He wrote the book for that girl, Marcus. For a fifteen-year-old girl. I can’t leave the plaque there. That’s not love—it’s disgusting.”
“I think it’s a little more complicated than that,” I said.
“And I think you should keep your nose out of this, Marcus. You should go back to New York and stay far away from all of this.”
I ordered pancakes and sausage. A grease-stained copy of the Somerset Star was on the table. On the front page there was a large photograph of Harry at the peak of his fame, with that respectable air and profound, self-assured look. Just below was a picture of him entering the hearing room of the Concord courthouse, the fallen angel, handcuffed, his hair a mess, his face drawn and haggard. There were inset photographs of Nola and Deborah Cooper, and the headline read: WHAT HAS HARRY QUEBERT DONE?
Ernie Pinkas arrived just after I did and sat at my table with his cup of coffee.
“I saw you on T.V. last night,” he said. “Have you moved here?”
“Yeah, maybe.”
“Why?”
“I don’t know. For Harry.”
“He’s innocent, huh? I can’t believe he would have done such a thing. It’s insane.”
“I don’t know anymore, Ernie.”
At my request Pinkas recounted how, after the police had unearthed Nola’s remains at Goose Cove, everyone in Somerset had been alerted by the sirens of the police cars that had converged from all over the county, from highway patrols to unmarked Investigative Services Bureau cars, and even a forensics van.
“When we learned that it was probably Nola Kellergan’s body, it was a shock for everyone,” Ernie Pinkas said. “None of us could believe it: After all this time, the poor girl was just there, under our noses. I mean, how many times have I been to Harry’s place, and drunk a Scotch on that deck? Practically right next to her … Say, Marcus, did he really write that book for her? I can’t believe there was anything between them. Do you know anything about it?”
To avoid having to reply, I stirred my spoon around inside my cup until I had created a kind of whirlpool. All I said was, “It’s a big mess, Ernie.”
Soon afterward Travis Dawn, Somerset’s chief of police and Jenny’s husband, sat at my table. He was a mild-mannered man in his sixties whose hair was going white, the kind of nice-guy country cop who had not scared anyone for a long time.
“I’m sorry, son,” he said as he greeted me.
“Sorry for what?”
“This case that’s blown up in your face. I know you’re very close to Harry. It can’t be easy for you.”
Travis was the first person to show concern about how I might be feeling. I nodded, and asked him: “How come I’d never heard of Nola Kellergan before, in all the time I’d been coming here?”
“Because until we found her corpse at Goose Cove, it was ancient history. The kind of history people don’t like to remember.”
“So what hap
pened on August 30, 1975? And what’s the story with Deborah Cooper?”
“It’s a nasty business, Marcus. A very nasty business. And I experienced it firsthand because I was working that day. I was just a junior police officer at the time. I was the one who took the call from the station. Deborah Cooper was a kind woman who’d been living alone, since the death of her husband, in a house on Side Creek Lane. You know where Side Creek is? That’s where the huge forest begins, two miles beyond Goose Cove. I remember Mrs Cooper well. I hadn’t been a police officer for long back then, but she called regularly. Especially at night, to report any suspicious noises near her house. She was scared stiff, living out there in that big house on the edge of the forest, and she needed someone to go over and reassure her from time to time. Each time, she would apologize for bothering us and would offer cake and coffee to the officers who went to check on her. And the next day she’d come to the station to bring us something. Just a kind woman, you know? The type you’re always happy to serve. So anyway, on that day Mrs Cooper called the police and said she’d seen a girl being chased by a man in the forest. I was the only officer on patrol in Somerset and I went to her house immediately. This was the first time she’d called in the daytime. When I got there, she was waiting in front of her house. She told me, ‘Travis, you’re going to think I’m crazy, but I really did see something strange.’ I went to look about at the edge of the forest, where she’d seen the girl, and I found a piece of red fabric. I immediately decided we had to take this thing seriously, so I called Chief Pratt, who was Somerset’s chief of police at the time. He was off-duty, but he came right away. The forest is huge, even with two of us to look around it. We went deep into the woods. After a mile or so, we found traces of blood, blond hairs, and more scraps of red fabric. But we didn’t have time to think this through any further, because at that moment we heard a gunshot from the direction of Deborah Cooper’s house. We ran over there and found Mrs Cooper in her kitchen, lying in a pool of her own blood. Afterward we found out that she’d called the station again to tell them that the girl she’d seen earlier had come to her house to take refuge.”