by Joël Dicker
“One of Nola’s friends told us she informed Pratt about what was going on with Stern.”
“Pratt never told me about that.”
“It’s hard not to think that he botched the investigation, then, isn’t it?” Gahalowood said.
“Don’t put words into my mouth, Sergeant.”
“What about Luther Caleb? What can you tell us about him?”
“Luther was a strange guy. He used to harass women. I even encouraged Jenny to file a complaint against him because he was aggressive toward her.”
“Was he never a suspect?”
“Not really. His name was mentioned, and we checked what vehicle he was driving: a blue Mustang, I seem to remember. Anyway, it seemed unlikely that he would be our man.”
“Why?”
“Just before Nola disappeared, I made sure he would never come back to Somerset.”
“What do you mean?”
Travis suddenly looked uncomfortable.
“Well … I saw him at Clark’s … This was mid-August, just after I had persuaded Jenny to file a complaint against him. He’d grabbed her and she’d been left with a huge bruise on her arm. I mean, it was pretty serious. He drove away when he saw me arrive. I chased him in my car, and I caught him on Shore Road. And … you know, Somerset is a peaceful town. I didn’t want him coming here and roaming around—”
“What did you do?”
“I gave him a beating. I’m not proud of it. And—”
“And what, Chief Dawn?”
“I stuck my gun in his privates. I beat the shit out of him, and when he was bent double on the ground, I held him down, took out my Colt, loaded it, and pressed the barrel to his balls. I told him I never wanted to see him again in my life. He was moaning. He said he would never come back, and he begged me to let him go. I know it wasn’t right, but I wanted to make sure we never saw him again in Somerset.”
“And you think he obeyed?”
“Without a doubt.”
“So you were the last person to see him in Somerset?”
“Yes. I passed on the order to my colleagues, with a description of his car. He never showed himself again. We found out that he had died in Massachusetts a month or so later.”
“How did he die?”
“He went straight at a bend, I think. I don’t know much more about it. To be honest I wasn’t really interested. At that time we had more important things deal with.”
When we came out of the diner, Gahalowood said, “I think that car is the key to the mystery. We have to find out who could have been driving a black Monte Carlo. Or rather, we should ask ourselves: Could Luther Caleb have been at the wheel of a black Chevrolet Monte Carlo on August 30, 1975?”
*
The next day I went back to Goose Cove for the first time since the fire. I went inside, ignoring the police tape marking off the porch. The house was in ruins. In the kitchen I found the box with the words SOUVENIR OF ROCKLAND, MAINE, still intact. I emptied out the stale bread inside and filled it with a few objects I found in other rooms. In the living room I discovered a small photo album that had miraculously escaped the flames. I took it outside and sat under a tall birch tree opposite the house to look through it. It was at that moment that Ernie Pinkas turned up. He said to me simply: “I saw your car in the driveway.”
He sat next to me.
“Are those photographs of Harry?” he asked, nodding at the album.
“Yeah. I found it in the house.”
There was a long silence. I turned the pages. The pictures dated from the early 1980s, I guessed. There was a yellow Labrador in several of them.
“Whose dog is that?” I said.
“Harry’s.”
“I didn’t know he used to have a dog.”
“His name was Storm. He must have lived twelve or thirteen years.”
Storm. The name was not unknown to me, but I couldn’t remember why.
“Marcus,” Pinkas said, “I didn’t mean to be cruel the other day. I’m sorry if I hurt you.”
“It’s O.K.”
“No, it’s not. I didn’t realize you’d received threats. Was that because of your book?”
“Probably.”
“But who did that?” he said angrily, pointing to what was left of the house.
“No-one knows. The police say an accelerant was used, like gasoline. An empty can was found near the house, but they couldn’t match the fingerprints they took from it.”
“So you received threats but you stayed anyway?”
“Yes.”
“Why?”
“Why should I have left? Out of fear? You can’t give in to fear.”
Pinkas told me I was an exceptional person, and that he too would have liked to become an exceptional person, to be somebody in life. His wife had always believed in him. She had died a few years before, of cancer. On her deathbed she had told him, as if he were a young man with his whole life ahead of him: “Ernie, you will do something great with your life. I believe in you.”
“I’m too old … My life is behind me,” he’d replied.
“It’s never too late, Ernie. Where there’s life, there’s hope.”
But all Ernie had managed to do since his wife’s death was land a job at the supermarket in Montburry so he could pay off her chemotherapy bills and maintain her headstone.
“I collect carts, Marcus. I walk around the parking lot, I hunt down the lonely, abandoned carts, I take them with me, I comfort them, and I put them away with all their cart friends in the cart station, for the next customers. The carts are never alone. Or, at least, not for long. Because in every supermarket in the world, there is an Ernie who comes to collect them and return them to their family. But who comes to collect Ernie and return him to his family? Why do we take better care of supermarket carts than we do of people?”
“You’re right, Ernie. What can I do for you?”
“I would like to be listed in the Acknowledgments of your book. I would like you to mention my name on the last page, the way writers often do. And I would like it to be the first one. In big letters. Because I did help you get information, didn’t I? Do you think that would be possible? My wife would be proud of me. Her husband would have contributed to the huge success of Marcus Goldman, the famous writer.”
“You can count on me, Ernie,” I told him.
“I’ll read your book to her, Marc. Every day I’ll sit next to her grave, and I’ll read her your book.”
“Our book, Ernie. Our book.”
Suddenly we heard footsteps behind us. It was Jenny.
“I saw your car in the driveway, Marcus,” she said.
Hearing those words, Ernie and I exchanged a smile. I stood up, and Jenny embraced me like a mother. Then she looked at the house and began to cry.
*
On my way back to Concord that day, I stopped by the Sea Side Motel to see Harry. He was standing in front of the door to his room, stripped to the waist, practicing boxing moves. When he saw me, he called out, “Come and box, Marcus.”
“I’ve come to talk.”
“We can talk while we box.”
I handed him the SOUVENIR OF ROCKLAND, MAINE box that I had found in the house.
“I brought you this,” I said. “A lot of your belongings are still in the house. Why don’t you go see what you can salvage?”
“What is there to salvage?”
“Memories?”
He frowned. “Memories only make you sad. Just looking at this box, I feel like crying.”
He held the box in his hands and pressed it to him.
“When she disappeared, I didn’t take part in the search,” he told me. “You know what I did?”
“No …”
“I waited for her. Searching for her would have meant she wasn’t there anymore. So I waited for her, convinced she would come back to me one day. And when that day came, I wanted her to be proud of me. I spent thirty-three years preparing for her return. For thirty-three years I bought
chocolate and flowers for her. I knew she was the only person I would ever love. And love, Marcus, comes only once in a lifetime. And if you don’t believe me, that means you have never loved. In the evenings I lay on my couch and watched out for her, thinking she would appear the way she always used to. When I started traveling all over the country to give speeches, I would leave a note on my door: Giving a speech in Seattle. Back next Tuesday. In case she returned while I was away. And I always left my door unlocked. Always! I never once locked it, in thirty-three years. People said I was crazy, that I would come back one day and find the house had been robbed, but nobody robs anybody in Somerset, New Hampshire. Do you know why I spent so many years on the road, accepting every invitation I was offered? Because I thought I might find her that way. I roamed all over this country, from east to west and north to south, in big cities and little towns, and each time I made sure that the local papers announced my arrival. Sometimes I even bought an ad myself. And why did I do all that? For her. So that we could find each other again. And during each speech I scanned the audience, looking for young blond women of her age, searching for anyone who resembled her. Each time I thought maybe she’ll be here. And after my speech, I would answer every question, agree to every request, hoping she might come to me. I spent years searching for her, looking first for fifteen-year-old girls, then sixteen-year-olds, then twenty-year-olds, then twenty-five-year-olds. The reason I stayed in Somerset is that I was waiting for Nola. And then, a month and a half ago, they found her, dead. Buried in my yard! I had been waiting for her all that time, and she was right there, next to me. In the place where I had always wanted to plant hydrangeas—for her! My heart’s been breaking ever since they found her, Marcus. Because I lost the love of my life, and because if I hadn’t arranged to meet her in this goddamn motel, maybe she would still be alive. So don’t come here with your memories, because those memories are tearing out my heart. Stop, I’m begging you, please stop.”
He walked toward the stairs.
“Where are you going, Harry?”
“To box. That’s all I have left—boxing.”
He went down to the parking lot and began making warlike movements under the worried gaze of customers in the neighboring restaurant. I followed him and stood opposite him in the guard position. He tried a flurry of punches, but even when boxing, he was no longer the same.
“Why did you come here, really?” he asked between two right-hand attacks.
“To see you.”
“And why do you want to see me so badly?”
“Because we’re friends!”
“But that’s the point. You don’t seem to understand this, but we can’t be friends anymore.”
“Why?”
“I love you like a son. And I will always love you. But we can no longer be friends.”
“Because of the house? I’ll pay for it, I told you. I’ll pay for it all!”
“You still don’t understand. It’s not because of the house.”
I lowered my guard for an instant, and he hit me with a series of punches to my right shoulder.
“Don’t let your guard down, Marcus! If that had been your head, you’d have been knocked out.”
“Fuck my guard! I want to know! Tell me what the hell you’re getting at with all these riddles.”
“They’re not riddles. The day you understand, you’ll have solved this whole case.”
I stopped dead.
“For God’s sake, what exactly are you trying to tell me? Are you hiding something from me? You haven’t told me the whole truth?”
“I’ve told you everything. The truth is in your hands.”
“I don’t understand.”
“I know. But when you do understand, everything will be different. You’re going through a crucial phase of your life.”
Pissed off, I sat down on the asphalt.
“Get up! Get up!” he shouted. “We’re practicing the noble art of boxing!”
But I’d had enough of his noble art of boxing.
“Boxing only means something to me because of you, Harry. You remember the boxing championship of 2002?”
“Of course I remember. How could I forget?”
“So why can’t we be friends anymore?”
“Because of books. Books brought us together, and now they’re driving us apart. It was written.”
“It was written? What’s that supposed to mean?”
“It’s all in the books. I knew this moment would come the day I first saw you.”
“What moment?”
“It’s because of the book you’re writing now.”
“This book? But I’ll stop writing it, if that’s what you want. Do you want me to give it up? Alright then, I’ll give it up! No more book. No more nothing.”
“Unfortunately that would make no difference. If it’s not this one, it will be another.”
“What are you trying to tell me? I don’t understand.”
“You are going to write this book, Marcus, and it will be wonderful. I’m very happy about that; don’t get me wrong. But the time has come for us to separate. One writer leaves, and another is born. You’re going to carry the torch. You’re going to become a great writer. You’ve sold the rights to your manuscript for two million dollars! Three million! You’re going to become someone very important. I always knew it.”
“For God’s sake, what are you trying to say?”
“Marcus, the key is in the books. It’s right there in front of you. Look for it—look closely. Can you see where we are?”
“We’re in a motel parking lot!”
“No! No, Marcus. This is the origin of evil. I have been dreading this moment for more than thirty years.”
The boxing gym on the Burrows College campus, February 2002
“Your punches are badly placed, Marcus. You hit well, but the first phalanx of your middle finger sticks out too far, so it’s grazed on impact.”
“I don’t feel it when I wear gloves.”
“You should know how to box with bare hands. The gloves are only there so you don’t kill your opponent. You would know it if you hit anything other than this bag.”
“Harry … Why do you think I always box alone?”
“Ask yourself that question.”
“I think it’s because I’m afraid. I’m afraid of failing.”
“But when you went to that gym in Lowell, on my advice, and you got smashed to pieces by that big black guy, how did you feel?”
“Proud. After the fight I felt proud. The next day, when I looked at my bruises I liked them. I had surpassed myself. I had shown balls. I had dared to fight.”
“So you felt like you’d won?”
“Yes, I did. Even if, technically, I lost the match, I felt as if I had won.”
“Well, there’s your answer: It doesn’t matter if you win or lose. What matters is how you fight between the first bell and the last one. The result of the match is just a piece of news for the public. Who can say you lost if you feel like you’ve won? Life is like a foot race, Marcus: There will always be people who are faster than you, and there will always be those who are slower than you. What matters, in the end, is how you ran your race.”
“Harry, I found this poster on a wall …”
“The university boxing championship?”
“Yes, all the best universities will be represented—Harvard, Yale—I … I want to take part.”
“Then I’ll help you.”
“Really?”
“Of course. You can always count on me, Marcus. Never forget that. We’re a team, you and I. For life.”
10
In Search of a Fifteen-Year-Old Girl
(Somerset, New Ham pshire, September 1–18, 1975)
“Harry, how can you communicate emotions that you have not felt yourself?”
“That’s your job as a writer. Writing means being able to feel things more strongly than other people do and to communicate those feelings. Writing means allowing your reade
rs to see things they sometimes can’t see. If only orphans wrote books about orphans, we’d never get anywhere. That would mean you’d never be able to write about a mother, a father, a dog, an airplane pilot, or the Russian Revolution unless you happened to be a mother, a father, a dog, an airplane pilot, or a witness to the Russian Revolution. You are only Marcus Goldman. And if every writer had to limit his writing to his own experiences, literature would be impoverished and would lose all its meaning. We’re allowed to write about anything that affects us. And no-one can judge us for that. We’re writers because we do one thing differently, one thing that everyone around us knows how to do: write. All the nuances reside there.”
At one time or another, everyone thought he or she had seen Nola somewhere. In the general store of a neighboring town, at a bus stop, at the counter of a restaurant. One week after her disappearance, while the search continued, the police were having to deal with a vast array of erroneous witness statements. In Cheshire County a movie was interrupted after one of the moviegoers thought she had recognized Nola Kellergan in the third row. Near Manchester, a father accompanying his (blond, fifteen-year-old) daughter to a carnival was taken to the police station so their identities could be verified.
The search was intense but in vain. People from all over the region had joined in, but still no traces of the girl were found. F.B.I. specialists came to optimize the police work by pointing out the places that ought to be searched first, on the basis of experience and statistics: streams and rivers, the edges of forests near parking lots, garbage dumps where putrid waste rotted. The case seemed so complex that they even enlisted the aid of a medium, who had proved her abilities with two murder cases in Oregon, but she was unsuccessful this time.
The town of Somerset was in turmoil, invaded by onlookers and journalists. On the main street, the police station was a hive of activity. The search was being coordinated from there, and all information regarding the case was routed there to be sorted. The telephone lines were overloaded: The telephone rang constantly, often for nothing, and each call required attention. Teams with dogs had been sent to Maine and Massachusetts, again without success. The press conference given twice daily by Chief Pratt and Captain Rodik in front of the police station came to seem increasingly like a confession of helplessness.