The Truth About the Harry Quebert Affair: A Novel

by Joël Dicker

  Sunday, September 14, 1975

  At lunch with the Quinns, Travis was bombarded with questions. Tamara wanted to know everything about the investigation, which was not progressing. Robert had a few interesting things to say, but on the rare occasions that he tried to speak, his wife interrupted him, saying: “Don’t talk, Bobbo. It’s not good for your cancer.” Jenny looked miserable and barely touched her food. While serving the apple pie, Jenny finally dared ask, “So, Travis, do you have a list of suspects?”

  “Not really. To be honest, we’re kind of floundering at the moment. It’s crazy—there’s not a single clue.”

  “Is Harry Quebert a suspect?” Tamara demanded suddenly.

  Jenny gasped. “Mom!”

  “What? I have good reasons for mentioning his name: He’s a pervert, Travis. A pervert! It wouldn’t surprise me at all if he were involved in that poor girl’s disappearance.”

  “That’s a serious accusation, Mrs. Quinn,” Travis replied. “You can’t say that kind of thing without proof.”

  “But I had proof!” she bellowed. “I had it! I had a highly compromising note written by him locked in my safe at the restaurant! And I’m the only one with a key! And you know where I keep that key? Around my neck. I never take it off. Never! And when I went to get that piece of paper so I could hand it over to Chief Pratt, it had vanished! It wasn’t anywhere in my safe anymore. How is that possible? I have no idea. It must be witchcraft.”

  “Maybe you just put it somewhere else,” Jenny suggested.

  “Shut your mouth, my girl. Are you trying to imply that I’m crazy? Bobbo, am I crazy?”

  Robert moved his head in a gesture that indicated neither yes nor no, which made his wife even more irritable.

  “Bobbo, why don’t you answer when I ask you a question?”

  “Because of my cancer,” he finally replied.

  “All right then, no pie for you. It was the doctor who said it: Desserts could kill you, just like that.”

  “I never heard the doctor say that!” Robert protested.

  “There you go—the cancer is making you deaf. Two months from now, you’ll be with the angels, my poor Bobbo.”

  Travis attempted to ease the tension by going back to the original topic of conversation. “Well, I’m afraid if you don’t have any proof, it won’t stick. Police investigations have to be precise and scientific. And I know what I’m talking about: I finished first in my class at the police academy.”

  The mere idea of having lost the piece of paper that could have caused Harry’s downfall sent Tamara into a frenzy. To calm herself, she grabbed the pie cutter and brutally slashed out a few slices of pie, while Bobbo sobbed because he really didn’t want to die.

  Wednesday, September 17, 1975

  Tamara Quinn was obsessed with the missing piece of paper. She had spent two days searching her house, her car, and even the garage, where she never went. She found nothing. That morning, after the early breakfast rush at Clark’s, she went into her office and emptied out the contents of her safe on the floor. No one else had access to the safe; it was impossible that the paper had disappeared. It had to be there. She checked the contents again, but no luck. Vexed, she put her belongings back. Poking her head into the office, Jenny found her mother reaching deep inside the huge steel box.

  “Mom? What are you doing?”

  “I’m busy.”

  “Don’t tell me you’re still looking for that stupid piece of paper!”

  “Mind your own business, my girl, if you wouldn’t mind! What time is it?”

  Jenny looked at her watch. “Almost eight-thirty.”

  “Goddamn it! I’m late.”

  “For what?”

  “I have a meeting.”

  “But you have to be here to sign off on the beverage delivery. Last Wednesday you—”

  “You’re a big girl, aren’t you?” her mother broke in coldly. “You have two arms. You know where the stock is kept. You don’t need a degree from Harvard to stack crates of Coca-Cola. I’m sure you’ll do a fine job. And don’t go making doe eyes at the deliveryman so he’ll do it for you!”

  Without another look at her daughter, Tamara picked up her car keys and left. Thirty minutes later, a large truck parked behind Clark’s. The deliveryman dumped a heavy pallet filled with crates of Coca-Cola in front of the service entrance.

  “Need a hand?” he asked Jenny, after she signed for it.

  “No, sir. My mother wants me to do it myself.”

  “As you like, ma’am. Have a good day.”

  The truck drove away, and Jenny began lifting the heavy crates one by one and carrying them into the stockroom. She felt like crying. Just then Travis drove past in his patrol car and spotted her. He immediately parked and got out of the car.

  “Need some help?” he asked.

  “I’m okay. I’m sure you have better things to do,” she said, without pausing from her work.

  He grabbed a crate and tried to make conversation.

  “Apparently the recipe for Coca-Cola is a secret. They keep it in a safe in Atlanta.”

  “I didn’t know that.”

  He followed Jenny into the stockroom, and they stacked the crates. She didn’t say anything, so he kept talking.

  “I also heard that Coke is good for the morale of our troops, so ever since World War Two the government has been sending crates of the stuff to American soldiers stationed abroad. I read that in a book about Coke. But, I mean, I do read serious books too.”

  They came out into the parking lot. She looked deep into his eyes.

  “Travis . . .”

  “Yes, Jenny?”

  “Hold me. Take me in your arms and hold me tight! I feel so lonely! I feel so miserable! I feel cold to the depths of my soul.”

  He took her in his arms and hugged her as tightly as he could.

  • • •

  “My daughter is starting to ask questions, Doctor. Just now she asked where I was going every Wednesday.”

  “What did you say to her?”

  “That it was none of her business! And that she could take care of the Coke delivery. I don’t see what it has to do with her, where I go.”

  “I sense from your tone of voice that you’re angry.”

  “Yes! Yes! Of course, I’m angry, Dr. Ashcroft!”

  “Angry with whom?”

  “With . . . with myself.”

  “Why?”

  “Because I yelled at her again. You know, when you have children, you want them to be the happiest kids in the world. And then life gets in the way . . .”

  “Tell me what you mean by that?”

  “She always asks my advice, about everything! She’s always trailing after me, saying: ‘Mom, how do you do this? Mom, where does that go? Mom this and Mom that! Mom! Mom! Mom!’ But I won’t always be there for her. One day I won’t be there to look after her anymore. And when I think about that, I feel it here, in my belly. As if my whole stomach is tied up in knots. It’s physically painful, and it ruins my appetite.”

  “Are you saying you suffer from anxiety, Mrs. Quinn?”

  “Yes! Yes! Anxiety. Terrible anxiety. We try to do everything right; we try to always do our best for our children. But what will our children do when we’re no longer here? What will they do? How can we be sure they’ll be happy and that nothing will happen to them? It’s like with that poor girl, Dr. Ashcroft. That poor Nola—what happened to her? Where could she be?”

  Where could she be? She was not in Rockland. She was not on any of the beaches or in any of the restaurants or stores. He called the hotel on Martha’s Vineyard to find out whether anyone had seen a young blond girl, but the receptionist he spoke to thought he must be a madman. So he waited, every day and every night.

  He waited frantically and hopefully. She would come bac
k, and they would go away together. They would be happy. She was the only person who had ever given any meaning to his life. Let all the books and houses burn, to hell with all music and all men—nothing mattered as long as she was with him. He loved her, and loving meant that, with her beside him, he didn’t fear death or adversity. So he waited for her. And when night fell, he swore to the stars that he would wait forever.

  • • •

  While Harry refused to lose hope, Captain Rodik could not help noticing the total failure of the police operations in spite of the scale of the resources deployed. During a meeting with the FBI and Chief Pratt, Rodik remarked bitterly: “The dogs aren’t finding anything. The men aren’t finding anything. I don’t think we’re going to find her.”

  “I’m largely in agreement with you,” said the FBI officer. “Generally, in cases like this, you either find the victim right away, dead or alive, or you receive a ransom demand. And if that doesn’t happen, then the case joins the ever-growing list of unresolved missing-persons cases. Last week, as it happens, the FBI received five reports of missing children nationwide. We can’t deal with everything.”

  “But what could have happened to this kid?” asked Pratt, who could not face the idea of simply giving up. “Did she run away?”

  “No. If she ran away, then why was she seen covered in blood and screaming?”

  Rodik shrugged, and the FBI man suggested they go for a beer.

  • • •

  At the final joint press conference the next day, the evening of September 18, Chief Pratt and Captain Rodik announced that the search for Nola Kellergan was being called off. In nearly three weeks they had found no evidence at all, not even the smallest clue.

  Volunteers, led by Chief Pratt, continued searching for several weeks after this, all the way out to the state borders. But she was never found. It was as if Nola Kellergan had flown away.

  9

  A BLACK MONTE CARLO

  “THE WORDS ARE GOOD, Marcus. But don’t write in order to be read; write in order to be heard.”

  MY BOOK WAS PROGRESSING. LITTLE by little, the hours spent writing were producing results, and I began to feel again the indescribable sensation that I had believed was lost forever. It was as if I had at last recovered a vital sense that, when it had failed, had made my entire being dysfunctional, as if someone had pressed a button in my brain, and suddenly it had started working again. It was as if I had come back to life. It was the feeling of being a writer.

  My days began before dawn. I went running from one end of Concord to the other, while listening to my minidisc recorder. Back in my hotel room, I ordered a pot of coffee and got to work. I was aided once again by Denise, whom I had taken back from Schmid and Hanson; she had agreed to start work again in my office near Central Park. I sent her my pages by e-mail as I wrote them, and she corrected them. When a chapter was finished, I sent it to Douglas, to get his opinion. It was funny to see how completely he was throwing himself into this book; I know for a fact that he sat by his computer all day, waiting for my chapters. Nor did he fail to remind me of my rapidly approaching deadline, telling me over and over: “If we don’t get this done in time, we’re screwed!” He said “we,” though, theoretically, he was not at any risk himself. But he felt just as involved in the book as I did.

  I think Douglas was taking a lot of heat from Barnaski and trying to protect me from it: Barnaski feared I would not be able to meet my deadline without outside help. He had already called me several times to say this himself.

  “You have to use ghostwriters to get this done,” he told me. “I have teams of them ready to work for you. Just give them the gist, and they’ll write it for you.”

  “Never,” I replied. “It’s my responsibility to write this book. Nobody is going to do it for me.”

  “Oh, Goldman, I’m so sick of your morals and lofty principles. Many authors get their books written by other people these days. Untel, for example: He never refuses help from my teams.”

  “Untel doesn’t write his own books?”

  He gave his usual snigger. “Of course not! How the hell could he write that quickly? The readers don’t want to know how Untel writes his books, or even who writes them. All they want, each summer, is to have a new Untel to read on their vacation. So we give it to them. It’s called business.”

  “It’s called cheating the public,” I said.

  “‘Cheating the public’—Jesus, you’re such a drama queen!”

  I made him understand that it was out of the question that my book be written by anyone else but me. He had lost his patience.

  “Goldman, I paid you three million dollars for this fucking book, so it would be nice if you could be a little more cooperative. If I think you need help from my writers, just fucking use them!”

  “Calm down, Roy. You’ll have the book by the deadline. At least you will if you stop calling me all the time.”

  “For fuck’s sake, Goldman, I hope you’re aware that I have my balls on the goddamn chopping block. My balls! On the goddamn chopping block! I’ve invested a huge amount of money in this book, and the credibility of one of America’s biggest publishing companies is on the line. So if you fuck this up—if there’s no book because of you and your morals or God knows what other bullshit—and I have to walk the plank, you’d better know that you’ll be walking it with me. And I’ll make damn sure the sharks eat you first, you fucker!”

  “Okay, I think I’ve got that, Roy, thanks.”

  For all his failings as a human being, Barnaski had an inborn talent for marketing: My book was already the biggest sensation of the year, despite the fact that its promotional campaign was only just beginning. Soon after the house at Goose Cove had burned down, he had made a solemn declaration. “There is, hidden somewhere in America,” he said, “a writer who is determined to tell the truth about what happened in Somerset in 1975. And because the truth sometimes hurts, there is somebody ready to do whatever it takes in order to keep him quiet.” The next day an article appeared in the New York Times under the headline: WHO WANTS MARCUS GOLDMAN DEAD? My mother read it, of course, and called me right away.

  “For the love of God, Markie, where are you?”

  “I’m in my hotel suite in Concord.”

  “Stop!” she yelled. “Don’t tell me! I don’t want to know.”

  “But you asked—”

  “If you tell me, I won’t be able to resist telling the butcher, who will tell his assistant, who will tell his mother, who is none other than the cousin of the registrar at Felton High School and who will of course tell him, and that devil will tell the principal, who will talk about it in the teachers’ lounge, and soon all of Montclair will know exactly where my son is, and the guy who wants you dead will sneak up and strangle you in your sleep. Why are you staying in a suite, anyway? Do you have a girlfriend? Are you planning to get married?”

  She then called my father over. I heard her shouting: “Nelson, come and listen. Markie’s on the phone, and he’s going to get married!”

  “Mom, I’m not getting married. I’m on my own in the suite.”

  Gahalowood, who was in my room and had just eaten a very large breakfast on my tab, then amused himself by calling out: “Hey, what about me? I’m here!”

  “Who is that?” my mother demanded.

  “No one.”

  “Don’t lie to your mother! I heard a man’s voice. Marcus, I’m going to ask you an extremely important medical question, and you have to be honest with the woman who carried you in her belly for nine months: Is there a homosexual man secretly hidden in your room?”

  “No, Mom. It’s just Sergeant Gahalowood. He’s a policeman. We’re investigating this case together, and he’s also trying to add a couple of zeroes to my hotel bill.”

  “Is he naked?”

  “What? Of course not! He’s a policeman, Mom. We’re working together
.”

  “A policeman . . . I wasn’t born yesterday, you know. I’ve seen that musical group, those men who sing together: a motorcyclist in leather, a plumber, an Indian, and a policeman . . .”

  “Mom, this is a real policeman.”

  “Markie, in the name of your ancestors who fled the pogroms and for the love of your sweet mother, chase that naked man out of your room.”

  “I’m not going to chase anyone.”

  “Oh, Markie, why call me at all if you just want to make me suffer?”

  “You called me, Mom.”

  “Yes, because your father and I are frightened about that criminal maniac who’s after you.”

  “No one is after me. The media just exaggerates.”

  “I check the mailbox every morning and every evening.”

  “Why?”

  “Why? Why? He asks his mother why! For a bomb, of course!”

  “I don’t think anyone’s going to put a bomb in your mailbox, Mom.”

  “We’ll be killed by a bomb! And without ever having known the joy of being grandparents. Are you pleased with yourself? Just the other day, your father was followed by a big black car all the way home. Daddy ran inside, and the car parked in the street, right next to his.”

  “Did you call the police?”

  “Of course. Two cars turned up, sirens screaming.”

  “And?”

  “It was the neighbors. They’d gone and bought a new car! Without even telling us. A new car—can you imagine? When everyone is talking about how there’s going to be a huge financial crisis, they go buy a new car. Don’t you think that’s suspicious? I think the husband must be involved in drug dealing or something like that.”

  “Mom, please stop talking shit about the neighbors.”

  “I know what I’m talking about. And don’t talk like that to your poor mother, who might be killed at any moment by a bomb! How’s your book?”

  “It’s going very well. I should have it finished in time.”

  “And how will it end? Maybe the man who killed the girl is trying to kill you.”