by Joël Dicker
Ernie Pinkas arrived just after I did and sat at my table with his cup of coffee.
“I saw you on TV 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 happened 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 simple 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.”
“The girl went back to the house?”
“Yes. While we were in the forest, she reappeared, covered in blood and asking for help. But when we got back there, apart from Mrs. Cooper’s corpse, there was nobody left in the house.”
“And this girl, it was Nola?”
“Yes. We realized that pretty quickly. First, when her father called a little later to say she’d disappeared. And then when we found out that Deborah Cooper had identified her during her second call to the station.”
“What happened next?”
“After that second call from Mrs. Cooper, units from the area were on their way. When they reached the border of the forest, a sheriff’s deputy saw a black Chevrolet Monte Carlo racing north. The car was pursued, but it got away from us in spite of the roadblocks. We spent the weeks that followed searching for Nola; we turned the whole area upside down. Who would have thought she’d be at Goose Cove, Harry Quebert’s place? All the clues suggested she’d probably be found somewhere in that forest. We searched the woods endlessly. We never found the car and we never found the girl. We’d have dug up the whole country if we could, but the search was called off after three weeks because the bigwigs in the state police said it cost too much and there was no way of knowing if we’d ever find anything.”
“Did you have a suspect at the time?”
He hesitated for a moment, and then told me: “This was never official, but there was Harry. We had our reasons. I mean, the Kellergan girl disappeared three months after his arrival. Strange coincidence, isn’t it? Most of all there was the car he drove at the time: a black Chevrolet Monte Carlo. But there wasn’t enough evidence against him. Basically that manuscript is the proof we were looking for thirty-three years ago.”
“I don’t believe it, not Harry. And anyway, why would he leave such compromising proof with the body? And why would he hire gardeners to dig up the very place where he’d buried a corpse? It doesn’t make any sense.”
Travis shrugged. “If I’ve learned one thing as a cop, it’s this: you never know what people are capable of. Especially those you think you know well.”
With these words, he stood up. “If I can do anything for you, don’t hesitate to ask,” he told me before leaving. Pinkas, who had followed the conversation without saying a word, now expressed his incredulity. “Can you believe it? I never knew the police suspected Harry.”
I did not reply. I just tore off the front page of the newspaper and put it in my pocket. And, although it was still early, I left for Concord.
The New Hampshire State Prison for Men was at 281 North State Street, in northern Concord. Roth was waiting for me in the parking lot, smoking a cheap cigar. He looked unfazed. The only greeting he gave was a pat on the shoulder, as though we were old friends.
“First time in prison?” he asked me.
“Yes.”
“Try to relax.”
“What makes you think I’m not?”
There was a pack of journalists hanging around.
“They’re everywhere,” he told me. “Whatever you do, don’t reply when they greet you. They’re scavengers, Goldman. They’ll harass you until you give them something. You have to be tough and stay silent. The slightest thing you say could be misinterpreted and turned against us and ruin my defense.”
“What is your defense?”
He looked at me very seriously. “Deny everything.”
“Deny everything?” I repeated.
“Everything. Their relationship, the kidnapping, the murders. We’re going to plead not guilty, Harry will be acquitted, and I’m planning to get millions of dollars in damages from the
state of New Hampshire.”
“What about the manuscript the police found with the body? And Harry’s confession about his relationship with Nola?”
“That manuscript doesn’t prove anything! Writing is not killing. And anyway, Harry’s already given a plausible explanation for that: Nola took the manuscript before she disappeared. As for their relationship, it was just a fling. You see, the prosecutor can’t prove anything.”
“I talked to Somerset’s police chief, Travis Dawn. He says Harry was a suspect at the time.”
“Bullshit!” said Roth, who resorted to foul language easily when he was annoyed.
“Apparently the suspect at the time drove a black Chevrolet Monte Carlo. Travis says that was the model Harry drove.”
“More bullshit!” Roth said. “But useful to know. Good work, Goldman—that’s the kind of information I need. You know all those hicks in Somerset, so question them to find out what kind of crap they’ll tell the jury if they’re called as witnesses. And try to find out who drinks too much and who beats his wife; a witness who drinks or beats his wife is not a credible witness.”
“Kind of a despicable technique, isn’t it?”
“War is war, Goldman. Bush lied to the nation in order to attack Iraq, but it was necessary. You see, we kicked Saddam’s ass, we liberated the Iraqis, and the world has been a better place ever since.”
“The majority of this country was opposed to that war. It was a total disaster.”
“Oh no,” he said. “I knew it . . .”
“What?”
“Are you voting Democrat, Goldman?”
“Of course I’m voting Democrat.”
“You’ll see—they’re going to stick rich guys like you with stupendous tax hikes. Don’t come crying to me afterward. You need balls to govern America. And elephants have bigger balls than donkeys. That’s just how it is—it’s genetic.”
“It’s edifying to talk with you, Roth. Anyway, the Democrats have already won the presidency. Your wonderful war was unpopular enough to tilt the balance in our favor.”
His smile was mocking, almost incredulous. “Come on, don’t tell me you really believe that! A woman and a black, Goldman! A woman and a black! Come on—you’re an intelligent kid—let’s be serious: Who is going to elect a woman or a black to be the head of our country? Write a book about it—a nice science fiction adventure. What will it be next time? A Puerto Rican lesbian and an Indian chief?”
• • •
At my request, after going through the usual formalities, Roth left me alone with Harry for a while in the room where he had been waiting for us. He was sitting at a plastic table, dressed in a prisoner’s uniform, his face haggard. The moment I entered the room, his eyes lit up. He stood and we embraced for a long time, before silently taking our places on opposite sides of the table. Finally he said, “I’m scared, Marcus.”
“We’re going to get you out of here, Harry.”
“I’ve got a TV, you know. I see everything that’s being said. I’m finished. My career is over. My life is over. This is the beginning of my fall. I believe I’m falling.”
“You should never be afraid of falling, Harry.”
He gave a faint, sad smile.
“Thank you for coming.”
“That’s what friends do. I’ve moved into Goose Cove. I’ve fed the seagulls.”
“You know, I’ll understand if you want to go back to New York.”
“I’m not going anywhere. Roth is a strange bird, but I get the feeling he knows what he’s doing, and he says you’ll be acquitted. I’m going to stay here. I’m going to help you. I’ll do whatever it takes to find out the truth and I will clear your name.”
“What about your new novel? Your publisher’s expecting it at the end of the month, isn’t he?”
I bowed my head.
“There is no novel. I have no more ideas.”
“What do you mean, no more ideas?”
I didn’t reply. Instead, I changed the subject by reaching into my pocket and pulling out the front page of the newspaper I’d taken from Clark’s a few hours earlier.
“Harry, tell me. I need to understand. I need to know the truth. I can’t stop thinking about that phone call you made to me the other day. You asked what you had done to Nola . . .”
“It was the emotion talking, Marcus. I’d just been arrested, I had the right to one phone call, and the only person I wanted to tell was you. Not to tell you I’d been arrested, but to tell you she was dead. Because you were the only one who knew about Nola and I needed to share my grief with someone. Through all those years, I hoped she was alive somewhere. But she’d been dead the whole time. She was dead and I felt responsible for it, for all sorts of reasons. Responsible because I wasn’t able to protect her, I guess. But I never harmed her. I swear to you I am innocent; I didn’t do anything I’m accused of doing.”
“I believe you. What did you tell the police?”
“The truth. That I was innocent. Why would I have decided to plant bushes in that spot if I’d . . . it’s utterly grotesque! I told them I didn’t know how that manuscript came to be there, but that they should know I wrote that novel for and about Nola, before she disappeared. That Nola and I loved each other. That we’d had a love affair during the summer before her disappearance and that I’d written a novel about it, of which I possessed two manuscripts at the time: an original, handwritten, and a typed copy. Nola was very interested in what I was writing. She even helped me make a clean copy. And the typed version of the manuscript . . . one day I couldn’t find it. It was late August, just before she disappeared. I thought that Nola had taken it to read—she did that sometimes. She read what I’d written and then told me what she thought. She took my pages without asking me. But this time I wasn’t able to ask if she’d taken the manuscript because she disappeared. I still had the handwritten copy. You know all about the success it had a few months later.”
“So you really wrote The Origin of Evil for Nola?”
“Yes. I saw on TV that they’re talking about withdrawing it from stores.”
“But what happened between you and Nola?”
“I told you—a love affair. I fell madly in love with her. And I think that was my downfall.”
“What else do the police have against you?”
“I don’t know.”
“And the box? Where is that box with the letter and the photographs? I couldn’t find it in your house.”
He didn’t have time to reply. The door to the room opened, and he gestured to me to keep quiet. It was Roth. He joined us at the table and, while he was sitting down, Harry discreetly picked up the notebook I’d placed in front of me and wrote a few lines that I was unable to read at that moment.
Roth began by giving a long description of how he expected the proceedings to unfold. Then after a thirty-minute soliloquy he asked Harry: “Is there anything you haven’t yet told me about Nola? I have to know everything.”
There was a silence. Harry stared at us for a long time and then said, “Actually, there is something you should know. It’s about the day she disappeared. That evening, she was supposed to meet me . . .”
“Meet you?” Roth repeated.
“The police asked me what I was doing on the evening of August 30, and I told them I was out of town. I lied. That is the only point on which I did not tell the truth. That night I was close to Somerset, in a room of a motel next to Shore Road, on the way to Maine. The Sea Side Motel. It still exists. I was in room eight, lying on the bed, waiting, wearing cologne like a teenager, holding a bouquet of blue hydrangeas, her favorite flowers. We were supposed to meet at seven p.m., and I remember that I was waiting and she didn’t come. At nine p.m. she was still not there. Nola was never late. Never. I put the hydrangeas in the sink to soak, and I turned on the radio to distract myself. It was a humid, stormy nig
ht. I felt as if I were suffocating in my suit. I took her letter from my pocket and reread it ten times, maybe a hundred. That letter she’d written to me a few days earlier, that brief love letter I could never forget, it said she would meet me there in that room, at seven p.m., and we would go away forever.
“I remember the radio announcer saying it was ten p.m. Ten o’clock, and still no Nola. I ended up falling asleep fully clothed, stretched out on the bed. When I opened my eyes again, it was morning. The radio was still on, and I heard the seven o’clock news: ‘Police issued a general alert in the Somerset region after the disappearance of fifteen-year-old Nola Kellergan yesterday evening, around seven p.m. Police would like to hear from anyone with information about the girl’s whereabouts [ . . . ] At the time she disappeared, Nola Kellergan was wearing a red dress.’ I leaped out of bed in panic. I quickly got rid of the flowers, then left right away for Somerset, with my clothes all creased and my hair a mess. The room had been paid for in advance.
“I had never seen so many police in Somerset. There were vehicles from all the surrounding counties. On Shore Road, a large roadblock was checking every car entering and leaving the town. I saw the chief of police, Gareth Pratt, holding a pump-action shotgun.
“‘Chief, I just heard the news on the radio,’ I said.
“‘Filthy business,’ he replied.
“‘What happened?’
“‘Nobody knows. Nola Kellergan disappeared from home. She was seen near Side Creek Lane last night, and since then, there hasn’t been a trace of her. We’ve secured the whole area and we’re searching the forest.’
“Her description was being broadcast over and over again on the radio: ‘Young girl, white, five foot two, one hundred pounds, long blond hair, green eyes, red dress. She is wearing a gold necklace with the name Nola engraved on it.’ Red dress, red dress, red dress, the radio repeated. That red dress was her favorite. She’d put it on for me. So there you go—that’s what I was doing on the night of August 30, 1975.”
Roth and I were speechless.