by Joël Dicker
“Don’t do that!”
The voice, bursting from the void, made him jump. He turned around and saw a short, plump man emerge from the darkness.
“Don’t do that,” he repeated. “The stairs are worm-eaten. You could break your neck. Are you the Reverend David Kellergan?”
“Yes,” replied Kellergan, feeling ill at ease.
“Welcome to your new parish, Reverend. I’m Pastor Jeremy Lewis; I run the Community of the New Church of the Savior. I was asked to look after this congregation when your predecessor left. It’s all yours now.”
The two men shook hands warmly. Kellergan shivered.
“You must be freezing!” Lewis said. “Come with me—there’s a coffee shop on the corner.”
That was how Jeremy Lewis first met David Kellergan. Sitting in the coffee shop, they waited for the storm to pass.
“I’d heard that Mount Pleasant wasn’t doing well,” Kellergan said, somewhat disconcerted, “but I have to admit I wasn’t expecting that.”
“Yes. I won’t hide the fact that you’re about to take over a parish in a pitiful state. The parishioners no longer attend services or make donations. The building is in disrepair. There’s a lot of work to do. I hope you’re not discouraged.”
“It would take a lot more than that to discourage me, Pastor Lewis.”
Lewis smiled. He was already under the spell of his charismatic colleague.
“Are you married?” he asked.
“No, I’m still single.”
• • •
The new pastor spent six months visiting every household in the parish, introducing himself and persuading people to return to church on Sunday mornings. He raised funds for a new roof and, because he had not served in Korea, took part in the war effort by setting up a program to help veterans find jobs. Then some volunteers helped to refurbish the parish hall. Little by little, community spirit returned; Mount Pleasant Church regained its luster; and David Kellergan was soon considered a rising star in Jackson. Local bigwigs and members of the congregation saw a future for him in politics. A position in local government seemed his for the taking, and perhaps afterward a statewide one. Who knew—he might even become a senator.
• • •
One night in late 1953, David Kellergan went to eat dinner at a small restaurant close to the church. He sat at the counter, as he often did. Next to him a young woman he hadn’t noticed turned around and smiled as if she recognized him.
“Hello, Reverend,” she said.
He smiled back somewhat awkwardly.
“Excuse me, ma’am, but do we know each other?”
She laughed, throwing back her blond hair.
“I’m a member of your congregation. My name is Louisa. Louisa Bonneville.”
Embarrassed at his failure to recognize her, he blushed, and she laughed even harder. He lit a cigarette in an effort to compose himself.
“Could I have one?” she asked.
He handed her the pack.
“You won’t tell anyone I smoke, will you, Reverend?” Louisa said.
He smiled. “I promise.”
Louisa was the daughter of a prominent member of the congregation. She and David began dating. Everyone thought they made a wonderful couple. They were married in the summer of 1955. Both of them were so happy. They wanted lots of children, at least six—three boys and three girls, cheerful, laughing children who would bring life into the house on Lower Street, where the Kellergans had just moved. But Louisa was having trouble getting pregnant. She consulted several specialists, unsuccessfully at first. Finally, in the late summer of 1959, her doctor gave her the good news: She was going to have a baby.
On April 12, 1960, Louisa Kellergan gave birth to her first and only child.
“It’s a girl,” the doctor told David Kellergan, who had been pacing the hospital corridor.
“A girl!” Kellergan exclaimed, his face beaming.
He rushed to join his wife, who was holding the newborn in her arms. They hugged and looked at the baby, whose eyes were still closed. You could already see she would have blond hair like her mother.
“What do you think of the name Nola?” Louisa asked her husband.
The pastor thought this was a very pretty name.
“Welcome to the world, Nola,” he said to his daughter.
• • •
In the years that followed, the Kellergans were often held up as a model family: the goodness of the father, the sweetness of the mother, and their beautiful little daughter. David Kellergan threw himself into his work. He was full of ideas and always enjoyed the support of his wife. On Sundays in summer they would regularly picnic at the Community of the New Church of the Savior; David Kellergan had been close friends with its pastor, Jeremy Lewis, since the two first met on that stormy day almost ten years earlier.
“I’ve never met anyone who seemed happier than the Kellergans,” Pastor Lewis said. “David and Louisa were madly in love. It was incredible, as if the Lord Himself had made them just so they could love each other. And they were excellent parents. Nola was an extraordinary little girl, lively and gorgeous. It was the kind of family that made you want to have children and gave you an undying hope in humanity. It was wonderful to see.”
“But it all went wrong,” Gahalowood prompted.
“Yes.”
“How?”
There was a long silence. The pastor grimaced in discomfort. He got up and walked restlessly around the room.
“Why do we have to talk about all that?” he asked. “It was so long ago . . .”
“Reverend Lewis, what happened in 1969?”
The pastor turned toward a large cross on the wall and said: “We exorcised her. But it didn’t go as planned.”
“What?” Gahalowood said, taken aback. “What are you talking about?”
“The little girl . . . little Nola. We exorcised her. But it was a disaster. I think there was just too much evil in her.”
“Please explain what you mean.”
“The fire . . . the night of the fire. It’s true that David Kellergan went to see a dying parishioner and that when he got back at one a.m. he found the house in flames, but—I don’t know how to say this—things didn’t happen quite the way David Kellergan told the police.”
August 30, 1969
Deeply asleep, Jeremy Lewis did not hear the doorbell ring. His wife, Matilda, answered the door and then came to wake him. It was 4 a.m. “Jeremy, wake up!” she said, her eyes bright with tears. “Something terrible has happened. David Kellergan is here . . . There was a fire. Louisa is . . . she’s dead!”
Lewis leaped out of bed. He found the pastor in the living room, weeping and wild-eyed with grief. His daughter was with him. Matilda escorted Nola to the spare bedroom so she could sleep.
“My God! David, what happened?” Lewis asked.
“There was a fire. The house burned down. Louisa is dead. She’s dead!”
David Kellergan could no longer contain himself. Slumped in a chair, he let the tears roll down his cheeks. His whole body trembled. Jeremy Lewis gave him a large glass of whiskey.
“And Nola? Is she all right?” he asked.
“Yes, thank God. The doctors examined her. She escaped without a scratch.”
Jeremy Lewis’s eyes welled up with tears.
“My God . . . David, what a tragedy. What an awful tragedy!”
He put his hands on his friend’s shoulders to comfort him.
“I don’t understand what happened, Jeremy. I had gone to see a member of the congregation who was dying. When I got back, the house was on fire. The flames were enormous.”
“Was it you who saved Nola?”
“Jeremy . . . I have to tell you something.”
“What is it? You can tell me anything, David—you know that.”
<
br /> “Jeremy . . . when I got home, there were those flames. The entire second floor was on fire. I wanted to go upstairs to save Louisa, but the staircase was already ablaze. I couldn’t do anything. Nothing!”
“Heavens above! And Nola?”
David Kellergan choked.
“I told the police that I went upstairs and carried Nola from the house, but that I couldn’t go back for my wife . . .”
“And that’s not true?”
“No, Jeremy. When I got home, the house was burning. And Nola . . . Nola was on the porch, singing.”
• • •
The next morning David Kellergan went to see his daughter alone in the spare bedroom of Jeremy Lewis’s house. First of all he wanted to explain to her that her mother was dead.
“Sweetie,” he said, “do you remember last night? There was a fire—you remember?”
“Yes.”
“Something very serious happened. Something very serious and very sad that’s going to make you upset. Mommy was in her bedroom when the fire started, and she wasn’t able to get out of the house.”
“Yes, I know. Mommy is dead,” said Nola. “She was wicked. So I set fire to her bedroom.”
“What? What did you say?”
“I went into her room. She was asleep. I thought she looked wicked. Wicked Mommy! Wicked! I wanted her to die. So I picked up the box of matches on her chest of drawers, and I lit the curtains on fire.”
Nola smiled at her father, who asked her to repeat what she had said. Nola repeated it. David Kellergan heard the floorboards creak, and he turned around. Pastor Lewis, who had come to look in on Nola, had overheard their conversation.
• • •
They went into the office and closed the door.
“Nola set fire to your house? Nola killed her mother?” Lewis said in disbelief.
“Shh. Not so loud, Jeremy! She . . . she . . . says she set fire to the house, but . . . God, surely that can’t be true!”
“Does Nola have demons?” Lewis asked.
“Demons? No, no! It’s true that her mother and I sometimes noticed that she acted a little strangely, but it was never anything really bad.”
“Nola killed her mother, David. Do you realize how serious this is?”
David Kellergan was trembling and felt sick to his stomach. Jeremy Lewis gave him a wastepaper basket so he could throw up.
“Don’t tell the police, Jeremy! Please, I’m begging you.”
“But this is serious, David.”
“Don’t say anything! Please, in the name of God, don’t say anything. If the police find out about this, Nola could end up in a reformatory or God knows what. She’s only nine years old . . .”
“Then we have to cure her,” Lewis said. “Nola is possessed by the Devil. She has to be cured.”
“No, Jeremy! Not that!”
“I have to exorcise her, David. It’s the only way to deliver her from evil.”
“I exorcised her,” Pastor Lewis told us. “For several days we attempted to force the demon from her body.”
I shook my head in disgust.
Lewis looked at me intently. “Why are you so skeptical? Nola was not Nola: The Devil had taken possession of her body.”
“What did you do to her?” Gahalowood asked roughly.
“Normally prayers are enough, Sergeant.”
“Let me guess: They weren’t enough in this case.”
“The Devil was strong. So we submerged her head in a tub of holy water to finish him off.”
“The waterboard torture,” I said.
“But that wasn’t enough either. So to bring down the Devil and force him to abandon Nola’s body, we beat her.”
“You beat a little girl?” Gahalowood shouted.
“No, not the little girl—the Devil!”
“You’re crazy, Lewis.”
“We had to liberate her! And we thought we had succeeded. But Nola started having some sort of . . . problems. She and her father stayed with us for a while, and she became uncontrollable. She started seeing her mother.”
“You mean Nola was hallucinating?” Gahalowood asked.
“Worse than that. She developed a sort of split personality. She would become her mother, and she would punish herself for what she had done. One day I found her screaming in the bathroom. She had filled the bathtub and was grabbing herself by her hair and shoving her own head into the cold water. It couldn’t go on like that. So David decided to move away. Far away. He said he had to leave Jackson, leave Alabama. He thought the distance, coupled with time, would help Nola to get better. Then I heard that St. James’s in Somerset was looking for a new pastor, and David did not hesitate for a second. That was how he came to move to New Hampshire.”
3
ELECTION DAY
“YOUR LIFE WILL BE punctuated by a succession of major events. Mention them in your books, Marcus. Because if the books turn out to be bad, they will at least have the merit of recording a few pages of history.”
Extract from the Concord Herald,
November 5, 2008
BARACK OBAMA ELECTED 44TH PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES
Democratic nominee Barack Obama has won the presidential election against Republican nominee John McCain, and becomes the 44th President of the United States. New Hampshire, which voted for John Kerry in 2004 [ . . . ]
November 5, 2008
The day after the election, New York was in a state of jubilation. People celebrated Obama’s victory in the streets until late at night. I watched the festivities on television in my office, where I had been living for three days.
That morning Denise arrived at the office at 8 a.m., carrying an Obama sweatshirt, an Obama pin, an Obama cup, and a pack of Obama bumper stickers. “Oh, here you are, Marcus!” she said as she passed my door and saw the lights on. “Did you go out last night? What a victory, huh? I brought you some bumper stickers as mementos.” While she talked to me, she placed her Obama paraphernalia on her desk, turned on the coffeemaker, and unplugged the answering machine, then entered my office. When she saw the state the room was in, she stared wide-eyed and cried out: “My God, Marcus, what the hell happened here?”
I was sitting in my chair and looking at one of the walls, which I had spent half the night covering with my notes and diagrams from the investigation. I had listened to the recordings of Harry, Nancy Hattaway, and Robert Quinn over and over again.
“There’s some aspect of this case that I just don’t understand,” I said. “It’s driving me crazy.”
“Were you here all night?”
“Yes.”
“Oh, Marcus. And I thought you must be out somewhere enjoying yourself. How long is it since you last had any fun? Are you worrying about your book?”
“I’m worrying about what I discovered last week.”
“What’s that?”
“I’m not sure—that’s the problem. Denise, what do you do when you discover that someone you have always admired has betrayed you and lied to you?”
She thought for a moment, and then said: “It happened to me. With my first husband. I found him in bed with my best friend.”
“What did you do?”
“Nothing. I didn’t say anything. I didn’t do anything. It was in the Hamptons. We’d gone for the weekend to an oceanfront hotel with my best friend and her husband. On Saturday evening I went for a walk on the beach. Alone, because my husband had told me he was tired. I came back much earlier than I’d intended to: Walking on my own turned out not to be much fun. I went up to our room, opened the door with my key card, and there they were in bed. He was on top of her, my best friend. It’s funny . . . with those key cards you can enter a room without making any noise. They didn’t see me or hear me. I watched them for a few moments—watched my husband shaking his butt like crazy to make her moan
like a little dog—and then I silently left the room, went to vomit in the lobby bathroom, and started off on my walk again. I came back an hour later: My husband was at the hotel bar, drinking gin and having a good laugh with my best friend’s husband. I didn’t say anything. We all ate dinner together. I pretended nothing had happened. That night he slept like a log; he told me it was exhausting, doing nothing. I didn’t say anything. I didn’t say anything for six months.”
“And in the end you asked for a divorce . . .”
“No. He left me for her.”
“Do you regret not doing anything?”
“Every day.”
“So I should do something. Is that what you mean?”
“Yes. Do something, Marcus. Don’t be a pathetic dope like I was.”
I smiled.
“You’re definitely not a dope, Denise.”
“Marcus, what happened last week? What did you discover?”
Five days earlier
On October 31, Dr. Gideon Alkanor, one of the most respected child psychiatrists on the East Coast and a man Gahalowood knew well, confirmed what now seemed obvious: Nola had been suffering from serious psychological problems.
The day after our return from Jackson, Gahalowood and I drove down to Boston, where Alkanor met us in his office at Children’s Hospital. On the basis of the evidence that had been sent to him the day before, he believed it was possible to diagnose infantile psychosis.
“So what does that mean in layman’s terms?” Gahalowood asked impatiently.
Alkanor took off his glasses and slowly cleaned the lenses while he considered what he would say. Finally he turned toward me.
“It means that I think you are right, Mr. Goldman. I read your book a few weeks ago. Considering what you describe and the evidence that Perry has provided me with, I would say that Nola sometimes lost her grip on reality. It was probably during one of those fits that she set fire to her mother’s bedroom. That night of August 30, 1969, Nola had a skewed view of reality: She wanted to kill her mother, but for her, at that particular moment, killing meant nothing. She performed an act without any understanding of its significance. On top of that first traumatic incident, there was also the exorcism, the memory of which could easily trigger the split-personality fits in which Nola becomes the mother she killed. And that’s where it gets complicated. When Nola lost touch with reality, the memory of her mother and what she did to her came back to haunt her.”