by Joël Dicker
• • •
This information left me speechless. I went to fetch us two more beers from the minibar and plugged in my recorder.
“You have to repeat all of that, Sergeant,” I told him. “I have to record you, for my book.”
He accepted with good grace. “If you like, writer.”
I turned on the recorder. It was then that Gahalowood’s cell phone rang. He answered, and I have his words on tape: “Are you sure?” he said. “You’ve checked everything? This is completely nuts!” He asked me for a pen and a piece of paper; he wrote down the information and hung up. Then he looked at me strangely and said: “That was an intern at the police station . . . I’d asked him to find me Luther Caleb’s accident report.”
“And?”
“According to the report, Luther Caleb was found in a black Chevrolet Monte Carlo registered to Stern’s company.”
Friday, September 26, 1975
It was a misty day. The sun had risen a few hours earlier, but the light was still gray and the landscape clouded by opaque smears. It was 8 a.m. when George Trent, a lobsterman, left the harbor of Plymouth, Massachusetts, by boat, accompanied by his son. His fishing zone was concentrated largely along the coast, but he was one of the few lobstermen to also leave traps in certain inlets neglected by others, because they were generally considered difficult to access or too dependent on the whims of the tide to be profitable. It was to one of these inlets that George Trent was headed that day, to pick up two traps. As he maneuvered his boat toward Ellisville Harbor, his son was suddenly distracted by a flash of light. A ray of sunlight had escaped through a gap in the clouds and reflected off something. This had lasted only a fraction of a second, but it had been so bright that the young man was intrigued. So he got out a pair of binoculars and scanned the coastline.
“What’s up?” his father asked.
“There’s something over there on the shore. I don’t know what it is, but I saw something shining.”
Gauging the level of the ocean in relation to the rocks, Trent decided that the water was deep enough to approach the shore. He moved the boat very slowly through the shallows.
“Tell me again what you saw,” he said to his son.
“A reflection, definitely. But it must have been reflected off something unusual, like metal or glass.”
They moved farther forward, and, on the rocks in front of them, they suddenly saw what it was that had grabbed their attention. “Jesus Christ!” said George Trent, wide-eyed. He rushed to the onboard radio to call the Coast Guard.
• • •
At 8:47 a.m., the Sagamore police were informed by the Coast Guard that a car had gone off the road that hugs the hills overlooking Ellisville Harbor and crashed onto the rocks below. Officer Darren Wanslow went to take a look. He knew the place well: a narrow road perched above steep sand dunes, offering a spectacular view. A small parking area had even been built on the end point to allow tourists to admire the vista. It was a beautiful place, but Officer Wanslow had always thought it dangerous because there was no guard rail. He had asked the county authorities to erect one on several occasions, but without success, in spite of the heavy traffic here on summer evenings. All they had put up was a warning notice.
As he neared the parking area, Wanslow saw a forest ranger’s pickup truck, so he knew this must be where the accident had occurred. He turned off the car’s siren and parked. Two rangers were looking out at the scene below: A Coast Guard boat was busy near the rocks, using an articulated arm.
“They say there’s a car down there,” one of the rangers told Wanslow. “But you can’t see shit.”
The policeman approached the edge. The slope was steep and covered in brambles, tall grass, and folds of rock. The ranger was right: It was impossible to make anything out.
“You think the car is just below?” he asked.
“That’s what they said on the emergency channel. Given where the Coast Guard’s boat is, I’d say the car was parked and then, for whatever reason, hurtled down the slope. I hope it wasn’t teenagers coming to make out at night who forgot to put the hand brake on.”
“Jesus, yeah,” Wanslow whispered. “It’d be terrible if there were kids down there.”
He inspected the part of the parking area closest to the dunes. There was a long grassy strip between where the asphalt ended and the slope began. He searched for signs of the car’s path: weeds and brambles that might have been torn out as the car hurtled down the slope.
“You think the car went straight over?” Wanslow asked the forest ranger.
“Probably. How long have we been saying that we need guard rails here? It’s kids, I’m telling you. They probably drank one beer too many and drove straight over. Because if you haven’t had too much to drink, you’d need a damn good reason not to stop after reaching the end of the parking area.”
Down below, the boat performed a maneuver and moved away from the shore. The three men were then able to see a car swinging on the end of the articulated arm. Wanslow returned to his car and radioed the Coast Guard.
“What kind of car is it?” he asked.
“It’s a Chevrolet Monte Carlo,” came the answer. “Black.”
“A black Monte Carlo? Can you confirm that it’s a black Monte Carlo?”
“Affirmative. New Hampshire registration. There’s a stiff inside. Doesn’t look too good.”
We had been driving for nearly two hours in Gahalowood’s police car, a dusty Chrysler.
“You want me to drive, Sergeant?”
“Certainly not.”
“You drive too slowly.”
“I drive carefully.”
“Your car is a trash can, Sergeant.”
“It’s a state police vehicle. Kindly show some respect.”
“All right, then it’s a state trash can. How about we put some music on?”
“Forget it, writer. We’re conducting an investigation—we’re not on a day trip.”
“I’ll put it in my book, you know—that you drive like an old lady.”
“Put some music on, writer. And turn up the volume. I don’t want to hear you again until we’re there.”
I laughed.
“So remind me who this guy is,” I said. “Darren . . .”
“Wanslow. He was a police officer in Sagamore. He was the one called to the scene when the lobstermen found Luther’s car.”
“This is crazy! Why didn’t anyone make the connection?”
“No idea. That’s what we need to find out.”
“What is this Wanslow guy doing now?”
“He retired from the force a few years ago. He runs a garage now, with his cousin. Are you recording this?”
“Yes. What did you say to Wanslow on the phone yesterday?”
“Not much. He seemed surprised by my call. He said we’d find him in his garage during the day.”
“Why didn’t you just question him over the phone?”
“Nothing beats a face-to-face meeting, writer. The telephone is too impersonal. It’s for pussies like you.”
The garage was located on the way into Sagamore. Wanslow, when we found him, had his head under the hood of an old Buick. Inviting us inside, he kicked his cousin out of the office, cleared piles of binders full of accounts off the chairs so we could sit, spent a long time washing his hands at the sink, then poured us some coffee.
“So what brings New Hampshire State Police down here?” he asked.
“As I told you yesterday, we’re investigating the death of Nola Kellergan,” Gahalowood replied. “And in particular a car accident that happened here on September 26, 1975.”
“The black Monte Carlo, huh?”
“Exactly. How did you know that’s what we’re interested in?”
“You’re investigating the Kellergan case. I thought there must have b
een a link to it back then.”
“Really?”
“Oh yeah. That’s why I remember it. I mean, over the years there are cases you forget and others that remain engraved in your memory. That accident was one of the memorable cases.”
“Why?”
“When you’re a cop in a small town, car accidents are among the bigger cases you have to deal with. I mean, the only dead bodies I saw, in my whole career, were due to car accidents. But this one was different. For weeks before this, we’d all been alerted to the kidnapping in New Hampshire. The feds were actively searching for a black Chevrolet Monte Carlo, and they’d told us to keep an eye out. I remember spending those weeks looking for Chevys similar to that model, in all different colors, and flagging them down so I could check them out. I figured it was pretty easy to repaint a car. Anyway, I felt involved in that case, like every other cop in the area. We desperately wanted to find that girl. And then one morning, while I was in the station, the Coast Guard told us they were recovering a crashed car from the dunes at Ellisville Harbor. And guess what it was . . .”
“A black Monte Carlo.”
“Bull’s-eye. With a New Hampshire registration and a corpse inside. I still remember inspecting that car. It had been completely crushed in the fall, and there was a guy inside, smashed to a pulp. We found his papers on him: Luther Caleb. I remember that clearly. The car was registered in the name of a big company in Concord—Stern Limited. We made a really careful search of the interior. There wasn’t much; the water had caused a lot of damage. We did find the remains of some bottles of alcohol, smashed into a thousand pieces, but there was nothing in the trunk except a bag with a few clothes.
“You mean like a suitcase?”
“Yeah, that’s it. Like a small suitcase.”
“What did you do next?” Gahalowood asked.
“My job. I spent the rest of the day investigating. I wanted to know who this guy was, what he was doing there, and when the crash had occurred. I did some research on this Caleb, and guess what I found?”
“That a harassment complaint had been filed against him with the police in Somerset,” Gahalowood said, almost casually.
“Exactly! How did you know?”
“That’s my job.”
“At that point I figured it couldn’t be a coincidence. So the first thing I wanted to find out was if anyone had reported him missing. I mean, in my experience, when there’s a car accident, there are usually loved ones worried about the victims; that’s often what allows us to make an identification. But no one had reported this guy missing. Strange, huh? So I called Stern Limited to find out more. I told them I had found one of their vehicles, and I was put on hold. Before I knew it I found myself talking to Mr. Elijah Stern himself, the heir to the Stern family fortune. I explained the situation to him; I asked if one of his vehicles had disappeared, and he said no. I told him about the black Chevrolet, and he explained that it was the vehicle generally used by his chauffeur when he was off duty. I then asked him when the last time was that he had seen his chauffeur, and he told me that he had gone on vacation. ‘How long has he been on vacation?’ I asked. ‘Several weeks,’ he replied. ‘And where did he go?’ He said he had no idea. I thought that was very strange.”
“So what did you do?” Gahalowood asked.
“As far as I was concerned, we had found the number one suspect in the abduction of the Kellergan girl. So I immediately called the chief of police in Somerset.”
“You called Chief Pratt?”
“Yes. I informed him of my discovery.”
“And?”
“He came that day. He thanked me and carefully studied the case file. He was very friendly. He inspected the car and said that unfortunately it did not match the model he had seen during the pursuit, and now he was wondering if it really had been a Monte Carlo he had seen, or maybe it was something similar, like a Nova, and that he would check this out with the sheriff’s office. He added that he had already investigated this Caleb guy and that there had been enough exculpatory evidence to rule him out. He told me to send him the report anyway, though, which I did.”
“So you told Chief Pratt about this, and he decided not to investigate it any further?”
“Yes. He assured me I was wrong. He seemed convinced, and he was the one running the investigation. He knew what he was doing. He concluded it was just a normal car accident, and that is what I put in my report.”
“And that didn’t seem strange to you?”
“At the time, no. I figured I must have gotten carried away. But even so, I didn’t leave it there. I sent the corpse to forensics because I wanted to understand what could have happened, and to learn if the accident might have been caused by alcohol consumption—because of the bottles we found. Unfortunately the body had been so mangled by the violence of the fall and then decomposed by the seawater that we weren’t able to confirm anything. As I said, the guy was really smashed up. The only thing forensics could tell me was that the body had probably been there for several weeks before we found it. And God knows how much longer it might have stayed there had that lobsterman not seen the reflection of light. After that the body was returned to the family, and that was the end of the story. As I said, everything led me to believe it was just a regular car accident. Obviously now, with everything we’ve learned, especially about Pratt and the girl, I’m no longer sure about anything.”
The scene as described by Darren Wanslow was indeed intriguing. When our interview was over, Gahalowood and I went to the marina in Sagamore to get a bite to eat. There was a tiny dock with a general store and a postcard seller. It was a beautiful day: The colors were bright, and the ocean seemed to go on forever. Around us we could make out a few pretty-colored houses, some of them right on the beach, bordered by small, well-kept gardens. We had a lunch of burgers and beer in a little restaurant that had a deck perched on stilts over the ocean. Gahalowood looked thoughtful as he chewed.
“What are you thinking?” I asked.
“That everything seems to point to Luther. He had a suitcase with him. He had prepared to run away, maybe taking Nola with him. But his plans went awry: Nola got away from him; he had to kill Deborah Cooper; and afterward he beat Nola so badly that she died.”
“You think it’s him?”
“I think so. But there are still unanswered questions. I don’t understand why Stern didn’t mention the black Chevy when he talked to us. That’s a pretty important detail. Luther disappeared with a company car, and he didn’t worry? And why the hell didn’t Pratt pursue this lead?”
“You think Chief Pratt was involved in Nola’s disappearance?”
“Let’s just say I’d like to ask him why he gave up investigating Caleb in spite of Wanslow’s report. I mean, he’s given a prime suspect on a plate, in a black Monte Carlo, and he decides there’s no connection. Don’t you think that’s strange? And if there really had been any doubt about the model of the car, if it was a Nova rather than a Monte Carlo, he should have made that known. Whereas in the report, the only car mentioned is a Monte Carlo.”
• • •
We went to Montburry that afternoon, to the small motel where Chief Pratt was staying. It was a single-story building, with about a dozen rooms and a parking space in front of each door. The place was not exactly packed: There were only two vehicles parked out front, one of them presumably his. Gahalowood knocked on the door. No response. He knocked again. Still nothing. A maid went past, and Gahalowood asked her to open the door for us.
“I can’t,” she replied.
“Yes, you can,” said Gahalowood irritably, showing his badge.
“I’ve already tried several times today so I could clean the room,” she explained. “I thought the guest must have gone out without my seeing him, but he left his key in the lock on the inside. It’s impossible to get it open. That means he’s in there. Unless he left and
closed the door with the key still in the lock. That happens sometimes, with guests in a rush. But his car is here.”
Gahalowood frowned. He banged hard on the door and ordered Pratt to open up. He tried looking through the window, but the curtain was drawn and he couldn’t see anything. So he decided to force the door open. The lock gave way after his third try.
Chief Pratt lay stretched out on the floor, blood all around him.
8
THE IDENTITY OF ANONYMOUS
“WHO DARES, WINS. THINK about that motto, Marcus, whenever you are faced with a difficult choice. Who dares, wins.”
EXTRACT FROM
THE HARRY QUEBERT AFFAIR
On Tuesday, July 22, 2008, it was the small town of Montburry’s turn to undergo the same kind of turmoil that just weeks earlier had seized Somerset upon the discovery of Nola’s body. Police cars came from all over the region, converging on a motel near the town’s industrial zone. The rumor was that there had been a murder, and that the victim was the former police chief of Somerset.
Sergeant Gahalowood stood calmly in front of the door to the room. Several forensics officers were busy at the crime scene, but the sergeant was content to watch. I wondered what he was thinking. Finally he turned around and noticed me watching him, sitting on the hood of a police car. He gave me his enraged-bull look and came toward me.
“What are you doing with that recorder, writer?”
“Dictating the scene for my book.”
“You realize you’re sitting on the hood of a police car?”
“What are you doing with that recorder, writer?”
“Dictating the scene for my book.”
“You realize you’re sitting on the hood of a police car?”
“Oh, sorry, Sergeant. So what do we have?”
“Turn off the recorder, please.”
I did what he told me.
“The initial evidence suggests that Chief Pratt was hit on the back of the head. Once, or more than once, with a heavy object.”