by Joël Dicker
“Jenny! Stop!” her father yelled.
She hurriedly lit a match and threw it to the ground. The front door went up in flames. She was surprised by the intensity of the flames and had to walk back about ten feet, with her hands over her face. Her father grabbed her by the shoulders.
“Jenny! This is crazy!”
“You don’t understand, Dad! What are you doing here? Go away, go away!”
He took the gas can from her hands.
“Run!” he ordered her. “Run before they catch you!”
She disappeared into the forest and got back in her car. He had to get rid of the gas can, but he was panicking and couldn’t think straight. In the end he ran down to the beach and hid it in the bushes.
Extract from the Interrogation of Jenny Q. Dawn
Sergeant P. Gahalowood: And after that?
Jenny Q. Dawn: I begged my father not to get involved in all this. I didn’t want him to get in trouble.
Sergeant P. Gahalowood: But he already was. So what did you do?
Jenny Q. Dawn: The pressure was mounting on Chief Pratt after he’d confessed to forcing Nola to go down on him. He’d been so confident before, but now he was close to cracking. He would have told them everything. We had to get rid of him. And get hold of the gun.
Sergeant P. Gahalowood: He’d kept the gun, damn it.
Jenny Q. Dawn: Yes. It was his service pistol. He was never without it.
Extract from the Interrogation of Travis S. Dawn
Travis S. Dawn: I will never forgive myself for what I did, Sergeant. It’s haunted me now for thirty-three years.
Sergeant P. Gahalowood: What I don’t understand is that you’re a cop, and yet you kept that necklace, which was a damning piece of evidence.
Travis S. Dawn: I couldn’t get rid of it. That necklace was my punishment. It reminded me of the past. Ever since August 30, 1975, not a day has passed that I haven’t shut myself away somewhere to look at that necklace. And anyway, it seemed so unlikely that anyone would ever find it.
Sergeant P. Gahalowood: Tell me about Pratt.
Travis S. Dawn: He was going to talk. He’d been terrified ever since you found out about him and Nola. He phoned me one day: He wanted to see me. We met on a beach. He said he was going to tell all, that he was going to make a deal with the DA and that I should do the same because the truth would come out in the end. That night I went to see him at his motel. I tried to reason with him. But he wasn’t having it. He showed me his old Colt .38, which he kept in a drawer in his nightstand. He said he was going to give it to you the next day. He was going to talk, Sergeant. So I waited for him to turn his back on me, and I hit him with my nightstick. I picked up the Colt and got the hell out of there.
Sergeant P. Gahalowood: A billy club? The same as for Nola.
Travis S. Dawn: Yes.
Sergeant P. Gahalowood: The same one?
Travis S. Dawn: Yes.
Sergeant P. Gahalowood: Where is it?
Travis S. Dawn: It’s my service club. That’s what Pratt and I decided back then: He said the best way of hiding the murder weapons was to leave them in clear view of everyone. The Colt and the billy club that we wore on our belts as we searched for Nola were the murder weapons.
Sergeant P. Gahalowood: So why did you get rid of it in the end? And how did Robert Quinn end up in possession of the Colt and the necklace?
Travis S. Dawn: Jenny pressured me into it, and I gave in. She hadn’t been able to sleep since Pratt’s death. She was at wit’s end. She said we shouldn’t keep them at home, that if the investigation into Pratt’s murder turned to us, we were screwed. I wanted to throw them in the middle of the ocean, where no one would ever find them. But Jenny panicked, and she made the first move without consulting me. She asked her father to take care of it.
Sergeant P. Gahalowood: Why her father?
Travis S. Dawn: I don’t think she trusted me. I hadn’t managed to get rid of the necklace in thirty-three years, so she was afraid I wouldn’t go through with it. She’s always had absolute faith in her father. She thought he was the only person who could help her. And of course no one would suspect him—kind old Robert Quinn.
November 10, 2008
Jenny burst into her parents’ house. She knew her father would be alone.
“Dad!” she cried. “Dad, I need your help!”
“Jenny? What’s the matter?”
“No questions. I need you to get rid of this.”
She handed him a plastic bag.
“What is it?”
“Don’t ask. Don’t open it. This is serious. You’re the only one who can help me. I need you to throw this someplace where no one will ever look for it.”
“Are you in trouble?”
“Yes. I think so.”
“All right, I’ll do it, darling. Don’t worry. I’ll do everything I can to protect you.”
“Whatever you do, don’t open that bag, Dad. Just get rid of it.”
But as soon as his daughter had left, Robert opened the bag. Shocked by what he saw, and fearing that his daughter was guilty of murder, he decided that as soon as night fell he would throw the bag’s contents into Montburry Lake.
Extract from the Interrogation of Travis S. Dawn
Travis S. Dawn: When I learned that my father-in-law had been arrested, I knew the game was up. I knew I had to do something. I decided I had to let him take the blame. At least for a while. I knew he would want to protect his daughter, that he would give us a day or two: enough time for us to reach a country with no extradition treaty. I went in search of evidence I could use against Robert. I looked through Jenny’s family albums, hoping I could find a photo of Robert and Nola so I could write something compromising on the back. But then I found that picture of him and the black Monte Carlo. I couldn’t believe my luck! I wrote the date, August 1975, in ballpoint pen, and when the time was right, I gave it to you.
Sergeant P. Gahalowood: Chief Dawn, it’s time to tell us what really happened on August 30, 1975 . . .
“Turn it off, Marcus!” Harry shouted. “I’m begging you, turn it off. I can’t bear to hear that.”
I pressed the power button on the remote, and the screen went black. Harry was crying. He got up from the couch and stood by the window. Outside, large snowflakes were falling. The city, all lit up, was beautiful.
“I’m sorry, Harry.”
“New York’s an amazing place,” he whispered. “I often wonder what my life would have been like if I’d stayed here instead of going to Somerset.”
“You would never have found love,” I said.
He stared out into the night. “How did you work it out, Marcus?”
“Work what out? That you didn’t write The Origin of Evil? It was just after Travis Dawn was arrested. The press was all over the case again, and a day or two later I received a call from Elijah Stern. He said he desperately needed to see me.”
Friday, November 14, 2008
Elijah Stern’s estate, near Concord, New Hampshire
Elijah Stern received me in his office.
“Thank you for coming, Mr. Goldman.”
“I was surprised by your call, Mr. Stern. I thought you didn’t like me very much.”
“You’re a talented young man. Is it true what they say in the papers, about Travis Dawn?”
“Yes, sir.”
“It’s so awful . . .”
I nodded, then said, “I was wrong all along about Caleb. I regret that.”
“But if I understand correctly, it was your tenacity that finally enabled the police to solve the case. That policeman keeps praising you to the skies. Gahalowood is his name, isn’t it?”
“I asked my publisher to withdraw The Harry Quebert Affair from sale.”
“I’m glad to hear that. Are you going to write a corrected version?”<
br />
“Probably. I don’t know what it will be like yet, but justice will be done. I fought to clear Quebert’s name, and I will fight to clear Caleb’s too.”
He smiled.
“Actually, Mr. Goldman, that’s why I asked you here. I have to tell you the truth. And perhaps you will understand why I don’t blame you for having thought Luther was guilty these past few months: I myself spent thirty-three years convinced that Luther had killed Nola Kellergan.”
“Never a doubt?”
“I was always sure of it. One hundred percent.”
“Why didn’t you ever say anything to the police?”
“I didn’t want to kill Luther a second time.”
“I don’t understand what you mean, Mr. Stern.”
“Luther was obsessed with Nola. He spent his time in Somerset, watching her.”
“I know. I know you found him at Goose Cove. You told Sergeant Gahalowood about it.”
“But I think you underestimate the scale of Luther’s obsession. That August, in 1975, he spent his days at Goose Cove, hidden in the woods, spying on Harry and Nola as they walked on the beach or sat on the deck, wherever they went. Everywhere! He was going completely crazy. He knew everything about them. Everything! He told me about it all the time. Day after day he would describe what they had done, what they had said. He told me their whole story: how they met on the beach, that they were working on a book, that they had been away together for a week. He knew it all. Gradually I understood that he was living a love affair through them. The love he could not experience himself, because of his repulsive physical appearance, he experienced vicariously. So much so that I hardly ever saw him at all most days. I ended up having to drive myself to all my meetings!”
“Excuse me for interrupting, Mr. Stern, but there’s something I don’t understand: Why didn’t you just fire him? I mean, it seems insane to me. It’s as if you were obeying your own employee, the way you let him paint Nola or the way you let him spend all his time in Somerset. I realize this is a personal question, but what was there between the two of you? Were you—”
“In a relationship? No.”
“So what was behind the strange dynamic between you? You’re a powerful man. You don’t seem the type to let people walk all over you. And yet—”
“Because I was in his debt. I . . . I . . . Just let me finish, and you’ll soon understand. So Luther was obsessed with Harry and Nola. And little by little, things began to degenerate. One day he came back, and he was badly beaten up. He told me that a cop in Somerset had attacked him because he’d been hanging around, and that a waitress at Clark’s had even filed a complaint against him. The whole thing was a mess. I told him I didn’t want him to go to Somerset anymore. I said I wanted him to take some time off; go away for a while; visit his family in Maine, maybe; go anywhere, really. I said I would pay for it all.”
“But he refused,” I said.
“Not only did he refuse, he even asked me to lend him a car. He said his blue Mustang was now too easily recognizable. I turned him down, of course. I told him enough was enough. And then he started screaming: ‘You don’t understand, Eli! They’re going to leave! In ten days they’ll be gone, and they’ll never come back! Never! They made the decision on the beach! They decided to leave on the thirtieth! On the thirtieth they’ll leave forever. I just want to be able to say good-bye to Nola. These are my last days with her. You can’t deprive me of her when I already know I’m going to lose her.’ I didn’t give in. I kept an eye on him. And then it was August 29. That day I looked everywhere for him. He was nowhere to be found, although his Mustang was parked in its usual place. Finally one of my employees spilled the beans and told me that Luther had left in one of my cars, a black Monte Carlo. Luther had said that I’d given my approval, and because everyone knew I let him do what he wanted, no one questioned him. That made me mad. I immediately went to search his room. I found that portrait of Nola, which made me want to throw up, and then, in a box under his bed, I found all those letters, letters he had stolen . . . letters between Harry and Nola that he must have taken from their mailboxes. So I waited for him, and when he came back, late that evening, we had a terrible argument.”
Stern went silent and stared into space.
“What happened?” I asked.
“I . . . I wanted him to stop going there, you see. I wanted his obsession with Nola to end. But he wouldn’t listen to me! He said it was stronger than ever between him and Nola, that no one could prevent their being together. I lost my temper. We grappled with each other, and I hit him. I grabbed him by the collar, I yelled, and I hit him. I called him a fucking redneck. He was lying on the ground. He put his hand to his nose, which was bleeding. I was frozen to the spot. And he said . . . he said to me . . .”
Stern could no longer speak. His face crumpled.
“Mr. Stern,” I said, not wishing him to lose the thread of his story, “what did he say?”
“He said to me: ‘It was you!’ He yelled: ‘It was you! It was you!’ I was in shock. I couldn’t move. He went to get a few things from his room, and he fled in the Monte Carlo before I could react. He had . . . he had recognized my voice.”
Stern was crying now. His fists were clenched.
“He’d recognized your voice?” I repeated.
“There . . . there had been a time in my life when I used to meet up with some old Harvard friends. A sort of stupid fraternity. We would go to Maine for the weekend and stay in expensive hotels, drinking, eating lobster. We liked fighting. We liked beating up poor people. We said that people from Maine were rednecks and it was our mission on earth to beat them up. We were in our twenties, we were rich kids. We were arrogant and somewhat racist, we were miserable and violent. We had invented a game, the Field Goal, which consisted of kicking our victims in the head as if we were kicking a football. One day in 1964 we were up near Portland, very drunk. We drove past a young guy walking along the road. I was driving . . . I stopped and suggested we have a little fun . . .”
“You were Caleb’s attacker?”
“Yes! Yes!” he exploded. “I have never forgiven myself! We woke up the next morning in our luxury hotel suite with massive hangovers. The attack was in all the papers: The boy was in a coma. The police were looking for us; we had been nicknamed the Field Goals Gang. We decided we would never talk about it again, that we would expunge that night from our memories. But I was haunted by it. In the days and months that followed, it was all I could think of. It was making me ill. I started going to Portland to find out what had happened to that kid we had battered. Two years had passed when, one day, unable to take it anymore, I decided to give him a job, a chance to get over it. I put a nail in my tire, I asked him to help me fix it, and I hired him as my chauffeur. I gave him everything he wanted. I made an artist’s studio for him on the house’s veranda; I gave him money; I gave him a car; but none of it was enough to release me from my guilt. I always wanted to do more for him. I had ruined his career as an artist, so I funded every exhibition I could, and I often let him spend whole days painting. And then he started saying he felt lonely, that nobody wanted him. He said the only thing he could do with a woman was paint her. He wanted to paint blondes; he said they reminded him of the girl he had been intending to marry before the attack. So I hired carloads of blond prostitutes to pose for him. But then one day in Somerset he met Nola. And he fell in love with her. He said it was the first time he had loved anyone since his fiancée. And then Harry turned up, a brilliant writer and a handsome man. The man Luther wanted to be. And Nola fell in love with Harry. So Luther decided that he also wanted to be Harry. What was I supposed to do? I had stolen his life, I had taken everything from him. Who was I to stop his loving someone?”
“So all of that was to relieve your sense of guilt?”
“Call it what you want.”
“So August 29 . . . what happened next?”
“When Luther realized that I was the one who . . . He packed his suitcase and drove away in the black Monte Carlo. I immediately set off in pursuit. I wanted to explain to him. I wanted him to forgive me. But I couldn’t find him anywhere. I searched all day for him and part of the night too, but nothing. I was so angry with myself. I hoped he would soon be his old self again. But the next night the radio announced the disappearance of Nola Kellergan. The suspect was driving a black Monte Carlo. You can imagine what I thought. I decided never to speak about it to anyone at all, so that Luther would never be suspected. Or perhaps because, when it came down to it, I was just as guilty as Luther was. That was why I was so upset with you for dredging up the past. But it’s thanks to you that I’ve finally learned that Luther didn’t kill Nola. I feel as if I, too, were suddenly found not guilty of her murder. You’ve eased my conscience, Mr. Goldman.”
“And the Mustang?”
“It’s in my garage, under a tarp. I’ve been hiding it in my garage for thirty-three years.”
“What about the letters?”
“I kept those too.”
“I would like to see them, if I could.”
Stern removed a picture from the wall, revealing a safe that he then opened. He took out a shoebox filled with letters. That was how I came to discover the correspondence between Harry and Nola, which had been the inspiration for The Origin of Evil. I recognized the first one right away: It was the letter with which the book began, the one from July 5, 1975, so full of sadness, the one that Nola had written to Harry when he had rejected her and she had learned that he was with Jenny Dawn on the night of July 4. That day she had left him an envelope containing the letter and two photographs taken in Rockland. One showed a flock of seagulls; the other was of the two of them during their picnic.
“How the hell did Luther get all of these?” I asked.
“I don’t know,” Stern said. “But it wouldn’t surprise me if he had gone into Harry’s house.”