by Joël Dicker
“What were you doing in the garage that day?”
“I was working on that motorcycle. The Harley you saw.”
“It’s a beautiful machine.”
“Thank you. I got it from an auto-body mechanic in Montburry who told me he’d stripped everything he could from it. He gave it to me for a song. So that’s what I’ve been doing since my daughter disappeared: working on that lousy motorcycle.”
“Do you live alone?”
“Yes. My wife died a long time ago …”
He got up and brought me a photo album. He showed me little Nola, and his wife, Louisa. They looked happy. I was surprised by how easily he trusted me, when he really didn’t know me at all. I think, deep down, he wanted to bring his daughter back to life a little bit. He told me that they had arrived in Somerset in the summer of 1969 from Jackson, Alabama. He had had a growing congregation there, but the call of the sea had been too strong: St James’s congregation was looking for a new pastor, and he was hired. The main reason for leaving Alabama was to find a peaceful place to raise Nola. The country was on fire back then with political conflicts, racial segregation, and the Vietnam war. The events of the 1960s in the South—police brutality, the Klan, the burning of black churches, rioting after the deaths of Martin Luther King Jr. and Bobby Kennedy—pushed them to begin searching for a place that was sheltered from all this unrest. So when his broken-down little car, before beginning the descent toward Somerset and worn out by the weight of the trailer it pulled, arrived on outskirts of Montburry, with its large ponds covered with water lilies, David Kellergan congratulated himself on his choice when he saw the beautiful, peaceful little town in the distance. How could he have imagined that it would be here, six years later, that his only child would disappear?
“I drove past your former church,” I said. “It’s been turned into a McDonald’s.”
“The whole world is being turned into a McDonald’s, Mr Goldman.”
“But what happened?”
“It all went so well for years. Then my Nola disappeared, and everything changed. Well, one thing changed: I stopped believing in God. If God really existed, children would not disappear. I started acting strangely, but nobody dared show me the door. Little by little the community broke up. Fifteen years ago the congregation of Somerset merged with that of Montburry, for financial reasons. They sold the building. Nowadays the faithful go to Montburry on Sundays. I was never able to work after the disappearance, even though it was not until six years later that I officially resigned. The parish still pays me a pension. And it sold me the house for a nominal sum.”
David Kellergan then told me about his earlier, carefree, happy years in Somerset—the best years of his life, according to him. He reminisced about those summer evenings when he would allow Nola to stay up so she could read on the porch—how he wished those summers could have gone on forever. He also told me how his daughter conscientiously put aside the money she earned at Clark’s every Saturday; she said she was going to use it to travel to California and become an actress. He was so proud when he went to Clark’s and heard how pleased the customers and Mrs Quinn were with her. For a long time after her disappearance, he wondered if she had gone to California.
“You mean if she had run away?”
“Run away?” he said indignantly. “Why would she run away?”
“What about Harry Quebert? How well do you know him?”
“Hardly at all. I met him a few times.”
“You hardly know him?” I said, surprised. “But you’ve been living in the same town for more than thirty years.”
“I don’t know everyone, Mr Goldman. And, you know, I live a fairly solitary life. Is it true, about Harry Quebert and Nola? Did he really write that book for her? What does that book mean, Mr Goldman?”
“I’ll be honest with you—I think your daughter loved Harry, and that her feelings were reciprocated. That book tells the story of an impossible love affair between two people who are not from the same social class.”
“I know,” he shouted. “I know! So what did Quebert do? Replace perversion with social class to give himself a little dignity and sell millions of books. A book that describes the obscene things he did with Nola—with my little Nola—which the whole country read and glorified for thirty years!”
These last words had been spoken with a violent anger I would never have suspected possible in such an apparently frail man. He was silent for a moment, pacing furiously around the room. I could still hear music howling in the background.
“Harry Quebert did not kill Nola,” I said.
“How can you be so sure?”
“We can never be sure of anything. That’s why life is so complicated sometimes.”
He frowned. “What do you want to know, Mr Goldman? If you’ve come here, it must be because you have questions to ask me.”
“I’m trying to understand what could have happened. You didn’t hear anything the evening your daughter disappeared?”
“Nothing.”
“Some of the neighbors said at the time that they heard shouting.”
“Shouting? There wasn’t any shouting. There was never any shouting in this house. Why would there have been? I was busy in the garage that day. For the whole afternoon. At 7 p.m., I began making dinner. I went to get Nola from her bedroom so she could help me, but she wasn’t there. At first I thought she’d maybe gone for a walk. I waited for a while and then, as I was beginning to worry, I walked around the neighborhood. I had not gone a hundred yards when I came upon a crowd of people. The neighbors were all talking about how a young woman had been seen at Side Creek, covered in blood, and that police cars from all over the area were coming into town and sealing off the exits. I ran to the nearest house to call the police, to warn them that it might be Nola. Her bedroom was on the ground floor. I have spent more than thirty years wondering what could have happened to my daughter. And I have often thought that if I’d had other children, I would have made them sleep in the attic. But there were no other children.”
“Did you notice your daughter behaving strangely the summer she disappeared?”
“No. I don’t know. I don’t think so. That’s another question I often ask myself, and I have no answer.”
He did recall, however, that when the summer vacation began that year, Nola had sometimes seemed sad. He’d put that down to adolescence. I asked him if I could see his daughter’s bedroom; he led me there like a museum guard, warning me sternly not to touch anything. He had left the room exactly as it was, he said. Everything was there: the bed, the shelf filled with dolls, the little bookcase, and the desk scattered with pens, a long metal ruler, and sheets of yellowed paper. It was writing paper—the very same paper on which the note to Harry had been written.
“She found that paper in a stationery store in Montburry,” her father explained to me when he saw I was interested in it. “She adored it. She always had some on her. She used it for writing letters, leaving notes. That paper was Nola. She always had several spare pads.”
There was also a portable Remington typewriter in a corner of the room.
“Was this hers?” I asked.
“Mine. But she used it too. The summer she disappeared, she used it a lot. She said she had important documents to type. In fact, she often took it with her away from the house. I offered to give her a ride, but she never accepted. She went on foot, carrying the typewriter in her arms.”
“So this room is just as it was the day your daughter disappeared?”
“Everything was exactly where it is now. When I came to get her for dinner, the window was open and the curtains were moving in the breeze.”
“Do you think someone came into her room that evening and took her away by force?”
“I don’t know what to tell you. I never heard anything. And the police never found any signs of a struggle.”
“The police found a bag with her. A bag with her name stitched inside it.”
“Yes, they ev
en asked me to identify it. It was the present I gave her for her fifteenth birthday. She saw that bag in Montburry one day when we were there together. I still remember the store, on the main street. I went back the next day to buy it. And I paid the store to stitch her name inside it.”
I was trying to back up a theory. “But if it was her bag, that means she took it with her. And if she took it, that means she was going somewhere, doesn’t it? Mr Kellergan, I know this is hard to imagine, but do you think Nola could have been running away?”
“I don’t know anymore. The police asked me that question thirty-three years ago, and they asked me again a few days ago. But she never lacked for anything here. Clothes, money—she had what she wanted. Look, her money box is there, on her shelf, still full.” He took a metal box from one of the higher shelves. “Look, there’s a hundred and twenty dollars here! A hundred and twenty dollars! Why would she have left that here if she was running away? The police said that damn book was in her bag. Is that true?”
“Yes.”
Questions continued to buzz around my head: Why would Nola run away without taking any clothes or money? Why would she have taken nothing but that manuscript?
In the garage, the record had finished playing its final track, and Nola’s father rushed off to reset the needle. I did not want to disturb him any longer, so I said goodbye and left, taking a photograph of the Harley-Davidson on my way out.
*
When I got back to Goose Cove, I went down to the beach to do some boxing. To my great surprise, I was soon joined by Sergeant Gahalowood, who had come to the house. I was wearing earphones and did not notice him until he tapped me on the shoulder.
“You’re a fit guy,” he said, looking at my bare chest and wiping his hand, covered in my sweat, on his pant leg.
“I try to stay in shape.”
I took the recorder from my pocket to turn it off.
“A minidisc player?” he said in his usual unpleasant tone. “Did you somehow miss the fact that Apple revolutionized the world and that you can now store an almost unlimited amount of music on a portable hard drive called an iPod?”
“I’m not listening to music, Sergeant.”
“So what do you listen to while you’re exercising?”
“Doesn’t matter. Why don’t you tell me instead to what I owe the honor of your visit? And on a Sunday too.”
“I received a call from Chief Dawn about the fire on Friday evening. He’s worried, and I have to admit I think he has a point. I don’t like it when things take this kind of turn.”
“Are you telling me you’re worried for my safety?”
“Not in the slightest. I simply want to make sure this doesn’t degenerate any further. We know that crimes against children always cause a big stir among the public. I can assure you that every time the dead girl is mentioned on T.V., there are thousands more perfectly civilized fathers out there who are ready to cut off Quebert’s balls.”
“Except that, in this case, I was the one who was targeted.”
“That’s precisely why I’m here. Why didn’t you tell me you’d received an anonymous letter?”
“Because you threw me out of your office.”
“True.”
“Can I get you a beer, Sergeant?”
He hesitated for a moment, then accepted. We walked up to the house together and I went to fetch two bottles which we drank on the deck. I told him how, coming back from Grand Beach two nights before, I had seen the arsonist.
“He was wearing some sort of mask. All I saw was his outline. And the message was the same as before: ‘Go home, Goldman.’ That’s the third.”
“Chief Dawn told me. Who else knows that you’re running your own investigation?”
“Everyone. I mean, I spend my days questioning everyone I see. It could be anybody. What are you thinking? You think it’s someone who doesn’t want me to dig into this story?”
“Someone who doesn’t want you to discover the truth about Nola. How’s your investigation going, by the way?”
“My investigation? So you’re interested in it now?”
“Maybe. Let’s just say that your credibility has skyrocketed since someone started threatening you.”
“I talked to David Kellergan. He’s a good guy. He showed me Nola’s bedroom. I imagine you’ve been to see it too.”
“Yes.”
“So if she was running away, how do you explain the fact that she didn’t take anything with her? No clothes, no money, nothing.”
“Because she wasn’t running away,” Gahalowood said.
“But if she was kidnapped, why weren’t there any signs of a struggle? And why would she take that bag containing the manuscript with her?”
“That could be explained by her knowing her murderer. Maybe they were even having an affair. In that case, he might have appeared at her window, as he sometimes did, and persuaded her to go with him. Maybe just for a walk.”
“You’re talking about Harry.”
“Yes.”
“So what happens? She takes the manuscript and escapes through the window?”
“Who says she took the manuscript? Who says she ever had the manuscript? That’s Quebert’s explanation, his way of justifying the presence of his manuscript with Nola’s corpse.”
For a fraction of a second I thought about telling him what I knew about Harry and Nola: that they had arranged to meet at the Sea Side Motel and elope. But I preferred not to mention it for the moment because I didn’t want to harm Harry’s case. Instead I asked, “So what is your theory?”
“Quebert killed the girl and buried the manuscript with her body. Maybe because he was feeling remorse. It was a book about their love, and their love had killed her.”
“What makes you say that?”
“There’s an inscription on the manuscript.”
“An inscription? What does it say?”
“I can’t tell you that. Confidential.”
“Oh, cut the crap, Sergeant! You’ve told me either too much or not enough. You can’t hide behind confidentiality just when it suits you.”
He sighed with resignation. “Fine. It says: Goodbye, darling Nola.”
“What are you going to do with that note?” I asked.
“It’s being examined by a handwriting expert. Hopefully we can get something from it.”
I was deeply disturbed by this “darling Nola.” Those were the exact words spoken by Harry himself, words I had recorded.
*
I spent part of my evening thinking this over, with no idea what I should do. At 9 p.m., I received a call from my mother.
“For God’s sake, Markie,” she said. “It’s two days that I can’t reach you. Are you going to die trying to save that Prince of Darkness?” Apparently, news of the fire had appeared on T.V.
“Relax, Mom. Relax.”
“Everyone is talking about you here, and it’s not all flattering, if you know what I mean. In the neighborhood everyone’s asking questions. They wonder why you insist on staying with that Harry.”
“Without Harry I would never have become the Great Goldman, Mom.”
“You’re right: Without that guy, you would have become the Very Great Goldman. As soon as you started hanging around with that man in college, you changed. You’re Marcus the Magnificent, remember? Even old Mrs Lang, the supermarket cashier, still asks me, ‘How is Marcus the Magnificent?’”
“Mom, there never was a Marcus the Magnificent.”
“Never was a Marcus the Magnificent?” I heard her call my father over. “Nelson, come here, will you? Markie says there never was a Marcus the Magnificent.” My father mumbled something indistinct in the background. “You see, your father says the same thing: In high school, you were Marcus the Magnificent. I bumped into your former principal yesterday. He told me he had such memories of you … I thought he was going to cry, he was so emotional. And afterward he told me, ‘Oh, Mrs Goldman, I don’t know what kind of trouble your son has gotten mixe
d up in now.’ You see how bad things are? Even your old principal is asking questions. And what about us? Why do you rush to take care of an old teacher instead of looking for a wife? You’re nearly thirty years old and you still haven’t married anyone! Do you want us to die without seeing you married?”
“You’re fifty-two, Mom. We still have a little time.”
“Stop splitting hairs! Who taught you to do that, huh? Something else we can thank that damn Quebert for. Why don’t you concentrate on bringing us home a nice young woman? Why? Aren’t you going to say anything?”
“I haven’t met anyone I like recently. Between my book, my publicity tour, the next book—”
“Excuses! Those are nothing but excuses! And the next book? What is that going to be about? Sexual perversion? I don’t know you anymore, Markie … Markie, darling, listen: I have to ask you. Are you in love with this Harry? Are you homosexualizing with him?”
“No! Not at all!”
I heard her say to my father: “He says no. That means yes.” Then, in a whisper, she asked me, “Do you have the disease? Your mother will love you even if you’re sick.”
“What? What disease are you talking about?”
“The disease that men who are allergic to women get.”
“Are you asking me if I’m homosexual? No! And even if I was, there’s nothing wrong with that. But I like women, Mom.”
“Women? What do you mean, women? Can’t you just concentrate on loving one woman and marrying her? Women! Aren’t you capable of being faithful? Is that what you’re trying to tell me? Are you one of those sex addicts, Markie? Do you want to go to a psychiatrical doctor to get some mental work done?”
Finally I hung up, dejected. I felt very alone. I sat in Harry’s office, started up the recorder, and listened to his voice again. I needed new evidence, some tangible proof that would change the course of the investigation, something that would shine a new light on this mind-numbing puzzle I was attempting to solve, which at the moment went no further than Harry, a manuscript, and a dead girl. As I thought about it, I was overcome by a feeling I had not experienced for a long time: the desire to write. I wanted to write about what I was going through, what I was feeling. Soon my head was overflowing with ideas. It was more than a mere desire; I needed to write. This had not happened to me in more than a year and a half. I felt like a volcano suddenly waking and preparing to erupt. I rushed to my laptop and, after wondering for a moment how I could begin, I typed the opening lines of what would become my next book: