by Joël Dicker
“So your friend is dead?” Ashcroft concluded.
“I don’t know. That’s what’s driving me crazy.”
“I don’t think you’re crazy, Mr. Quebert.”
“Sometimes I go to the beach and shout out her name. And when I don’t have the strength to shout anymore, I sit on the sand and cry.”
“I think you’re going through a grieving process. Your rational, lucid, conscious self is battling another part of you that refuses to accept something that is, for it, unacceptable. When reality is unbearable, we try to turn it away. Perhaps I could prescribe you some relaxants to help you calm down.”
“No, certainly not. I have to concentrate on my book.”
“Tell me about your book, Mr. Quebert.”
“It’s a love story. A beautiful love story.”
“What is it about?”
“A love affair between two people that should never have happened.”
“Is it about you and your friend?”
“Yes . . . I hate books.”
“Why?”
“They cause me pain.”
“It’s time to stop. I’ll see you again next week.”
“All right. Thank you, doctor.”
One day, from the parking lot, he saw Tamara Quinn coming out of the doctor’s office.
The manuscript was finished in mid-November, on an afternoon so dark you could hardly tell whether it was day or night. He straightened the sheaf of pages and carefully reread the title he had written in capital letters on the first page:
THE ORIGIN OF EVIL
by Harry Quebert
He suddenly felt the need to tell someone, so he went to Clark’s to see Jenny.
“I finished my book,” he told her, feeling euphoric. “I came to Somerset to write a book, and now I’ve done exactly that. It’s finished. Finished!”
“That’s wonderful,” Jenny replied. “I’m sure it’s a great book. What are you going to do now?”
“I’ll go to New York for a while. To try to get it published.”
He sent copies of the manuscript to five of the biggest literary agents in New York. Less than a month later, all five got back in touch with him, certain that the book was a masterpiece and offered to represent him. This was the beginning of a new life. A few days before Christmas his agent secured for him a six-figure deal. Fame and fortune were within his grasp.
• • •
He went back to Goose Cove on December 23, behind the wheel of a brand-new Chrysler Cordoba. He had been eager to spend Christmas in Somerset. In the doorframe he found another anonymous letter, evidently left there several days earlier. It was the last one he would ever receive.
The next day was devoted to the preparation of the evening meal: He roasted a gigantic turkey, sautéed some green beans in butter and some potatoes in oil, and made a chocolate cake. Madama Butterfly played on the stereo. He set the table for two, next to the Christmas tree. He did not notice Robert Quinn watching him through the steamed-up window and resolving, that day, not to leave any more letters.
After dinner Harry excused himself to the empty place that faced him and slipped away to his office for a moment. He returned with a large box.
“Is that for me?” Nola squealed.
“It wasn’t easy to find, but I found it in the end,” Harry said, placing the box on the floor.
Nola knelt next to the box. “What is it? What is it?” she said, lifting up the box’s flaps, which were not sealed. A muzzle appeared, quickly followed by a little yellow head. “A puppy! It’s a puppy! A dog the color of the sun . . . Oh, Harry, my darling! Thank you! Thank you!” She took the little dog out of the box and held it in her arms. It was a Labrador, no more than ten weeks old. “You’ll be called Storm,” she told the dog. “Storm! Storm! You’re the dog I always dreamed of.”
She put the puppy on the floor. Yapping, it began exploring its new home, while Nola hugged Harry.
“Thank you, Harry! I’m so happy. But I feel bad that I didn’t get you a gift.”
“All I want is your happiness, Nola.”
He held her in his arms, but she seemed to slip away from him, and soon he could no longer feel her, no longer see her. He called her, but she did not reply. He found himself alone, standing in the middle of the dining room, hugging himself. At his feet the puppy had escaped from its box and was playing with his shoelaces.
The Origin of Evil was published in June 1976. It was a huge success, right from the start. Acclaimed by the critics, the prodigious Harry Quebert, thirty-five years old, was from that point on considered the greatest writer of his generation.
Two weeks before the book came out, already aware of the impact it was going to have, Harry’s publisher came all the way to Somerset to see him.
“Harry, what’s this about your not wanting to come to New York?”
“I can’t leave,” Harry said. “I’m waiting for someone.”
“You’re waiting for someone? What are you talking about? The entire country is waiting to see you. You’re going to be famous.”
“I can’t leave. I have a dog.”
“Then let’s take it with us. Don’t worry: It’ll have its own nanny, its own chef, someone to take it for walks, someone to groom it. Come on—pack your suitcase.”
So Harry left Somerset for a nationwide book tour that lasted several months. All anyone talked about was him and his amazing novel. Jenny followed his success, on radio and television, from the kitchen at Clark’s or from her bedroom. She bought every newspaper she could find and religiously kept every article about him. Each time she saw his book in a store, she bought it. She had more than ten copies, and she had read every one. Sometimes she wondered if he would come back for her. Whenever the mailman came, she hoped there would be a letter from Harry. Whenever the telephone rang, she hoped it would be him.
She waited all summer. Whenever she passed a car that looked like his, her heart beat faster.
She waited all fall. Whenever the door of Clark’s opened, she imagined it was him, come to take her away. He was the love of her life. To occupy her mind while she waited, she remembered those glorious days when he would come to work at table 17. Right there, close to where she stood, he had written that great masterpiece. If he wanted to continue living in Somerset, he could keep coming here every day; she would stay here to work as a waitress, for the pleasure of being near him. She would save that table for him, always. And, ignoring her mother’s protests, she ordered, at her own expense, a metal plaque that she had screwed to the top of table 17, engraved with the words:
IT WAS AT THIS TABLE, IN THE SUMMER OF 1975, THAT HARRY QUEBERT WROTE HIS FAMOUS NOVEL, THE ORIGIN OF EVIL.
She celebrated her twenty-sixth birthday on October 13, 1976. Harry was in Philadelphia; she had read that in the newspaper. He had not been in touch at all since his departure. That evening Travis Dawn, who had been having Sunday lunch with the Quinns every week for the past year, got down on his knees—in the family living room, in front of her parents—and asked Jenny to marry him. And because she had no hope left, she accepted his proposal.
July 1985
Ten years on, the specter of Nola and her kidnapping had faded. In the streets of Somerset, life had long returned to normal: Children noisily played street hockey again, the jump-rope contests had restarted, and giant hopscotch courts had reappeared on the asphalt. On the main street, bicycles were once more blocking the storefront window of the Hendorf family store.
At Goose Cove, late one morning during the second week of July, Harry sat on the deck in the warm sun, correcting the proofs of his new novel; his dog, Storm, lay close by, asleep. A flock of seagulls passed overhead. He watched them as they swooped down and landed on the beach. Immediately he got up and went to the kitchen to look for the stale bread that he kept in a tin box emblazoned with the words SOU
VENIR OF ROCKLAND, MAINE, then walked down to the beach so he could toss it to the birds. Storm followed in his footsteps, the dog walking painfully due to its arthritis. Harry sat on the sand to watch the birds, and Storm sat next to him. He petted the dog for a long time. “Poor old Storm,” he said. “You can hardly walk now, can you? You’re not a young pup anymore. I remember the day I bought you; it was just before Christmas, 1975 . . . You were just a tiny ball of fur, no bigger than my two fists.”
Suddenly he heard someone calling him.
“Harry?”
On the deck of his house, a visitor was waving. Harry squinted and recognized Eric Rendall, the president of Burrows College in Massachusetts. The two men had met at a conference a year earlier, and they had kept in regular contact ever since.
“Eric? Is that you?”
“Yes.”
“Don’t move. I’m coming up.”
A few moments later, Harry, with the old Labrador hobbling behind, joined Rendall on the deck.
“I tried to get hold of you,” his friend explained, justifying his impromptu visit.
Harry smiled. “I rarely answer the phone.”
“Is this your new novel?” Rendall asked, spotting the pages scattered over the table.
“Yes. It’s coming out this fall. I’ve been working on it for two years. I still have to reread the proofs, but . . . you know, I don’t think anything I write will ever live up to The Origin of Evil.”
Rendall gave Harry a sympathetic look.
“Writers only really write one book in their life,” he said.
Harry nodded in agreement and got his visitor some coffee. Then they sat at the table, and Rendall explained the reason for his visit: “Harry, I came to see you because I remember your telling me you would like to teach at the college level. Well, there’s a position available in the English department at Burrows. I know it’s not Harvard, but we are a good school. If you’re interested, the position is yours.”
Harry turned toward the sun-colored dog and patted its neck. “You hear that, Storm?” he whispered. “I’m going to be a college professor.”
6
THE BARNASKI PRINCIPLE
“YOU SEE, MARCUS, WORDS are good, but sometimes they’re not enough. There comes a time when some people don’t want to hear you.”
“So what should you do?”
“Grab them by the collar and shove your elbow into their throat. Hard.”
“Why?”
“To throttle them. When words lose their power, you have to throw a few punches.”
AT THE BEGINNING OF AUGUST 2008, in light of the new evidence uncovered by the investigation, the DA presented the judge with a new report concluding that Luther Caleb was guilty of the murders of Deborah Cooper and Nola Kellergan, whom he had kidnapped, beaten to death, and buried at Goose Cove. Upon reading this report, the judge summoned Harry for an urgent hearing, during which the charges against him were finally dropped. This latest development turned the case into the great soap opera of the summer: Harry Quebert, the star author whose past had caught up with him and who had fallen into disgrace, was cleared at last, having seen his career destroyed and having nearly been convicted of murder.
Luther Caleb achieved a posthumous infamy, with his personal history recounted all over the newspapers and the Internet and his name added to the pantheon of notorious American criminals. Soon the nation’s attention was focused entirely on him. His past was ransacked, and the tabloid magazines told the story of his life, illustrated by old photographs purchased from friends and relatives: his early carefree years in Portland, his talent for painting, the horrific attack on him, and his descent into hell. The public was fascinated by his need to paint naked women, and psychiatrists were asked to provide explanations: Was this a known pathology? Could it have foretold the story’s tragic ending? A leak from the authorities enabled the press to publish photographs of the painting found in Elijah Stern’s house, paving the way for the most outrageous speculations. Everyone was left wondering why Stern, a powerful and respected man, should have allowed his disturbed employee to paint a nude fifteen-year-old girl.
Disapproval was directed at the DA, whom certain people held responsible for having rushed to judgment, thus causing the Quebert fiasco. Some even believed that by signing the August report, the DA had signed off on his own career. He was saved in part by Gahalowood, who, having led the police investigation, fully accepted responsibility for it, holding a press conference to explain that he was the one who had arrested Harry Quebert, but that he was also the person who had freed him, and that this was neither a paradox nor a failure, but was in fact proof that the justice system was functioning correctly. “We did not wrongly imprison anyone,” he told the room packed with reporters. “We had suspicions, and we cleared them up. We acted consistently in both cases. That is the job of the police.” And to explain why it had taken so many years to identify the culprit, Gahalowood mentioned his theory: Nola was the central piece of evidence toward which many others gravitated. All of these had to be examined in order to discover her murderer. But that work had been possible only after her body had been found. “You say it took us thirty-three years to solve this murder,” he told his audience, “but in fact it took us only two months. The rest of the time there was no body, and therefore no murder. Just a girl who had disappeared.”
The man left most confused by the situation was Benjamin Roth. One afternoon I bumped into him in the cosmetics aisle of one of Concord’s big drugstores.
“It’s crazy,” he told me. “Yesterday I went to see Harry at his motel. He didn’t even seem happy that the charges had been dropped.”
“He’s sad,” I explained.
“Sad? We won, and he’s sad?”
“He’s sad because Nola is dead.”
“But she’s been dead for thirty-three years.”
“But now she’s really dead.”
“I have no idea what you’re talking about, Goldman.”
“That doesn’t surprise me.”
“Anyway, I went to see him so I could make arrangements for the house. I’ve been talking to the insurance people, and they’re going to pay for everything, but he has to get in touch with an architect and decide what he wants to do. But he seemed completely indifferent. All I managed to get out of him was: ‘Take me there.’ So we went to the house. It’s still full of crap—did you know that? He left everything inside, furniture and other undamaged items. He says he no longer needs any of it. We stayed there for over an hour. An hour to ruin my expensive shoes. I showed him what he could recover, especially the old furniture. I suggested he knock down one of the walls to expand the living room, and I also reminded him that we could sue the state for compensatory damages over this whole affair and that we could probably get a nice payoff. But he didn’t even react. I offered to contact a moving company to take away everything that was undamaged and put it in storage. I told him he’d been lucky so far because it hadn’t rained and no one had stolen anything, but he told me there was no point. He even said it didn’t bother him if anything was stolen, because at least that way the furniture would be of use to someone. Does any of this make sense to you?”
“Yes. He no longer has any need for the house.”
“Why not?”
“Because there’s no longer anyone to wait for. Nola’s dead.”
Roth shrugged. “Basically,” he said, “I was right all along. That Kellergan girl was a slut. The whole town had her, and Harry was just the butt of the joke, a sweet and slightly stupid romantic who shot himself in the foot by writing a love letter to her. Well, a whole book of love letters, in fact!”
He laughed heartily.
This was too much for me. With one hand I grabbed him by the collar and smashed him against a wall, causing bottles of perfume to rain down and crash to the floor. Then I shoved my free forearm into his throat.
/>
“Nola changed Harry’s life!” I shouted. “She sacrificed herself for him. I will not let you go around telling everyone that she was a slut.”
He tried to free himself, but he couldn’t move. I heard him gasping. People crowded around, and security guards came running in our direction. Finally I let him go. His face was bright red like a tomato, his shirt rumpled.
“You . . . you . . . you’re crazy, Goldman,” he stammered. “You’re insane! As crazy as Quebert. I could file a complaint against you for this, you know.”
“Do what you want.”
He stalked off angrily, and when he was a safe distance away, he yelled: “You were the one who said she was a slut, Goldman! It’s in the pages you wrote. All of this is your fault!”
• • •
Roth was right about that last point, at least, and I was hoping my book would repair the damage caused by the publication of my notes. A month and a half remained before its official publication, and Roy Barnaski called me several times a day to share his enthusiasm about it.
“Everything’s perfect!” he told me during one of our conversations. “Perfect timing. The DA’s report coming out now, all this commotion—it’s an incredible stroke of luck, because three months from now it’ll be the presidential election, and no one will give a flying fuck about your book or this case. You know what information is, Goldman? It’s a limitless flow in a limited space. The mass of information is exponential, but the time that each person gives it is very limited. The average person devotes—what—one hour a day to the news? Twenty minutes reading the free paper on the subway in the morning, maybe half an hour on the Internet at the office, and fifteen minutes of CNN in the evening before switching to their favorite TV show. And yet there is an endless amount of material competing to fill this small space! So many terrible things are happening in the world, but most of them never get mentioned because there isn’t time. The news can’t cover Nola Kellergan and Sudan, there’s not enough time. Life is about priorities.”