The Disappearance of Stephanie Mailer: A gripping new thriller with a killer twist

by Joël Dicker

  “At least I learned a new word,” Carolina said philosophically. “I won’t make that mistake again. Can I go to the swimming pool?”

  “Yes, put your bathing suit on,” her mother said.

  Carolina let out a cry of joy and ran from the table. Tenderly, Eden watched her disappear into the hall and Cynthia took advantage of that moment of calm to go and sit on her husband’s knees.

  “Thank you, darling, for being such a wonderful husband and father.”

  “Thank you for being such an amazing woman.”

  “I never imagined I could be so happy,” Cynthia said, eyes shining with love.

  “Me neither. We’re so lucky.”

  JESSE ROSENBERG

  Sunday, July 13, 2014

  Thirteen days to opening night

  On that sweltering Sunday, Derek and Darla had invited Betsy and me to come and take advantage of their little swimming pool. It was the first time we had all gotten together like this outside the investigation. In fact, for me, it was the first time I had spent an afternoon at Derek’s house in a very long while.

  The main purpose of the invitation was so that we could relax over a few beers. But when Darla had to go off for a moment and the children were happily playing in the water, we could not resist the temptation to talk about the case.

  Betsy told us about her conversation with Sylvia, detailing how Ted Tennenbaum had come under pressure both from Mayor Gordon, trying to impose his choice of businesses, and from the local gangster Jeremiah Fold, who had decided to extort money from him.

  “‘The Darkest Night’,” Betsy said, “may be connected with this man Fold. He was the one who set fire to Café Athena in February 1994, to put the squeeze on Tennenbaum.”

  “Could ‘The Darkest Night’ be the name of a gang?” I said.

  “It’s worth checking out, Jesse. I didn’t have time to get back to the station to find out more about this Fold. But from what I gather, it was the fire that finally persuaded Tennenbaum to pay up.”

  “So the money transfers we saw in Tennenbaum’s bank statements were for Fold?” Derek said.

  “Yes. Tennenbaum wanted to make sure that Fold would let him continue with his work in peace and that Café Athena would open in time for the festival. And since we now know that Gordon was getting kickbacks from companies working on the project, it’s clear why he would have received transfers during the same period. He’s bound to have demanded commissions from the companies that were chosen, telling them it was thanks to him that they had the contracts.”

  “What if there was some connection between Mayor Gordon and Fold?” Derek said. “Do you think the mayor may have had links with the local underworld?”

  “Was that a lead you followed back then?” Betsy said.

  “No, it wasn’t. We thought the mayor was just a run-of-the-mill politician, not that he was taking kickbacks at all levels.”

  “Let’s suppose ‘The Darkest Night’ was the name of a criminal organization,” Betsy went on. “What if it was the murder of Mayor Gordon that was being predicted in the graffiti on the walls of Orphea? That would mean the murder was already signed off, in full view of everyone, but nobody saw it.”

  “What nobody saw!” Derek said. “What was in front of our eyes and we didn’t see! What do you think, Jesse?”

  “It would imply that Chief Hayward was investigating this organization at the time,” I said after a moment’s thought. “And that he knew the whole story. That might be the reason why he took his file with him.”

  “That’s what we’ll have to look into tomorrow. As a matter of priority,” Betsy said.

  “What I can’t figure out,” Derek said, “is why, in 1994, Tennenbaum never told us he was under pressure from this Fold when we questioned him about the bank transfers.”

  “Fear of reprisals?” Betsy said.

  Derek looked dubious. “Maybe. But if we missed this business with Fold, we may have missed something else. I’d also like to take another look at the context of the case and see what the local papers were saying about it at the time.”

  “I can ask Bird to let us see all he has on the murders in the archives.”

  “Good idea,” Derek said.

  When evening came, we stayed for dinner. As they did every Sunday, Derek and Darla ordered pizzas. When we were sitting in the kitchen, Betsy noticed a photograph pinned to the wall. It showed Darla, Derek, Natasha, and me, standing outside Little Russia while it was under construction.

  “What’s Little Russia?” Betsy said innocently.

  “The restaurant I never opened,” Darla said.

  “You wanted to be a professional chef?”

  “There was a time when it was my whole life.”

  “And who’s the girl with you, Jesse?” Betsy asked me, pointing to Natasha.

  “Natasha,” I said.

  “Natasha, your fiancée at the time?”

  “Yes.”

  “You never told me what happened between you.”

  Shaking her head, Darla said:

  “My God, Jesse, haven’t you told her?”

  * * *

  After the press conference on Friday, Bergdorf had booked himself into a hotel just off Main Street. He had considered taking a room in the Lake Palace, but with a sigh he had decided that the New York Literary Review’s expense account could not stretch that far. On Saturday, he had followed Kirk Hayward from a distance as he pasted up posters for his auditions around town. On Sunday, on his way back to his hotel, he bumped into Ostrovski.

  “Bergdorf!” the critic said, unable to hide his dismay. “What are you doing here? I leave the city to get a bit of peace and quiet, and who do I run into?”

  “I came to find out more about this mysterious play that’s going to be performed.”

  “I was here first, Steven, so why don’t you just go back to New York?”

  “Look, Meta.” Bergdorf said. “I’ve been meaning to write to you to tell you again just how sorry I am for what happened. The fact is that the Review has been really struggling and you were on the highest wage.”

  Ostrovski had the impression that Bergdorf was sincere and he was moved by his apology. “Thank you, Steven,” he said.

  “I really mean it, Meta. Is it the New York Times that sent you here?”

  “Far from it. I’m unemployed. Who would want to hire an obsolete critic?”

  “You’re a great critic, Meta. Any newspaper would hire you.”

  Ostrovski sighed. “Maybe that’s the problem.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Since yesterday, I’ve been obsessed with one idea: I’d like to audi-tion for ‘The Darkest Night’.”

  “Why don’t you?”

  “It’s out of the question. I’m a critic of literature and drama. That means I can’t write books and I can’t act in plays.”

  “Meta, I’m not sure I follow you.”

  “Come on, Steven, make a little effort, for heaven’s sake! Explain to me by what miracle a theater critic could act in a play? Can you imagine if literary critics started writing books or writers became literary critics? Can you imagine Don DeLillo reviewing David Mamet’s new play for the New Yorker? Can you imagine Jackson Pollock having reviewed the latest exhibition by Mark Rothko in the Times? Could you see Jeff Koons tearing Damien Hirst’s new offering to shreds in the Washington Post? Could you imagine Spielberg reviewing the latest Coppola in the L.A. Times, saying, ‘Don’t go to see this shit, it’s terrible’? Everyone would cry foul and accuse them of bias, and with good reason. You can’t criticize an art you practice.”

  “Technically, Meta, you’re not a critic anymore,” Bergdorf said.

  Ostrovski’s face lit up: Bergdorf was right. The former critic went straight back to his room. Once there, he laid out the copies of the Chronicle with reports of the disappearance of Stephanie Mailer.

  What if it was written somewhere that I had to go over to the other side? Ostrovski thought. And what if Bergdor
f had actually given him back his freedom? What if, in all this time, he had been a creative artist without realizing it?

  He cut out the articles and spread them on the bed. On the night table, the photograph of Meghan Padalin was watching.

  * * *

  After dinner, at Derek and Darla’s

  Night had fallen. Betsy and Derek cleared the table. Darla was outside, smoking by the pool. I joined her there. It was still very warm. The crickets were singing.

  “Look at me, Jesse,” Darla said in a sarcastic tone. “I wanted to open a restaurant and here I am ordering pizzas every Sunday.”

  I felt her dismay and tried to comfort her. “Pizza is a tradition.”

  “No, Jesse, it isn’t. And you know it. I’m tired. Tired of this life, tired of a job I hate. Every time I pass a restaurant, you know what I say to myself? ‘That could have been mine.’ Instead of which, I work myself to the bone as a medical assistant. Derek hates his job, too. He’s hated it for twenty years. And in the last week, since he got back together with you and went back out into the field, he’s been happy as a lark.”

  “His place is out in the field, Darla. Derek is an incredible policeman.”

  “He can’t be out in the field, Jesse. Not after what happened.”

  “Then let him quit. Let him do something else. He’s entitled to his pension.”

  “The house isn’t paid off.”

  “Then sell it! In two years’ time, your kids will have gone off to college anyway. Go find yourselves a quiet spot, far away from it all.”

  “And do what?” Darla said in a desperate tone.

  “Live,” I said.

  She stared into the distance. I could only see her face by the light from the pool.

  “Come,” I said. “I’d like to show you something.”

  “What?”

  “The project I’m working on.”

  “What project?”

  “The project I’m quitting the police for. I didn’t want to tell you about it because I wasn’t ready yet. Come.”

  We left Derek and Betsy and set off in the car. We drove to Queens, then to Rego Park. When I parked in that side street, Darla understood. She got out of the car and looked at the single-story building.

  “Did you rent it?” she said

  “Yes. It was a dry goods store and wasn’t doing well. I got it for a good price. I’m about to start work.”

  She looked up at the sign, which was covered with a sheet. “Don’t tell me . . .”

  “Yes,” I said. “Wait here a minute.”

  I went inside to light the sign and find a ladder, then came back out, climbed up, and lifted off the sheet. The letters shone in the dark.

  LITTLE RUSSIA

  Darla didn’t say anything. I felt ill at ease.

  “Look, I still have the red book with all your recipes,” I said, showing her the treasured collection, which I had brought out with the ladder.

  Darla still said not a word. Trying to get a reaction, I continued:

  “True, I’m a lousy cook. I’ll make hamburgers. That’s all I can do. Hamburgers in Natasha’s Sauce. Unless you want to help me, Darla. Set this thing up with me. I know it’s a little bit crazy, but—”

  “A little bit crazy!” she cried out at last. “Totally insane, you mean! You’ve lost your mind, Jesse! Why did you do something like this?”

  “For redemption,” I said quietly.

  “But Jesse,” she shouted, “none of it is redeemable! Do you hear me? What happened can never be redeemed!”

  She burst into tears and ran off into the darkness.

  -3

  Auditions

  MONDAY, JULY 14 – WEDNESDAY, JULY 16, 2014

  JESSE ROSENBERG

  Monday, July 14, 2014

  Twelve days to opening night

  That morning the three of us began looking into the records to see what we could learn about Jeremiah Fold. It turned out that he had died in a road accident on July 16, 1994, in other words, two weeks before the death of Mayor Gordon.

  Much to our surprise, Fold did not have a criminal record. The only thing in his file was an investigation opened by the A.T.F.—the Federal Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives—that had apparently led nowhere. We contacted the police in Ridgesport to try to learn more, but the officer we spoke with was no help. “There’s nothing on Jeremiah Fold here,” he assured us. That meant that Fold’s death had not been considered worth recording or suspicious.

  “If Fold died before the Gordon murders,” Derek said, “it rules out his involvement in them.”

  “I checked the F.B.I. files,” I said. “There’s no criminal organization called ‘The Darkest Night’. It wasn’t some kind of premature claiming of responsibility on the part of organized crime.”

  So we could rule out Fold. But we had another lead we needed to look into. Who had commissioned Stephanie’s book?

  Derek had brought cardboard boxes filled with newspapers. “The small ad that attracted Stephanie Mailer’s attention must have appeared in a newspaper,” he said. “In the conversation she reports, the man says he’s been advertising for twenty years.”

  He read from Stephanie’s first chapter again:

  The ad was in between one for a shoe repairer and another for a Chinese restaurant offering an all-you-can-eat buffet for less than $20.

  DO YOU WANT TO WRITE A BESTSELLER?

  MAN OF LETTERS SEEKS AMBITIOUS WRITER

  FOR SERIOUS WORK. REFERENCES ESSENTIAL.

  “It must be a regular publication. Apparently, Stephanie only had one subscription, and that was for the magazine of the literature faculty of Notre Dame, where she studied. So we got hold of all the issues from the past year.”

  “She could have read the ad in any magazine she came across,” Betsy said. “In a coffee shop, on a subway seat, in a doctor’s waiting room.”

  “Maybe,” Derek said, “maybe not. If we find the ad, it might lead us to the man who commissioned the book and we’ll finally find out who was at the wheel of Tennenbaum’s van on the evening of the murders.”

  * * *

  At the Lake Palace, in the sitting room of Suite 308, Carolina sprawled on the couch while her father opened his laptop on the desk.

  “We should go to this audition,” he said. “It’ll give us something to do together.”

  “The theater’s a drag!” Carolina said.

  “How can you say such a thing? What about that wonderful play you wrote that was supposed to be performed in your school?”

  “But it never was. I don’t give a damn about the theater anymore.”

  “When I think how curious you were about this when you were younger!” Eden said. “What a curse it is, this generation’s obsession with cell phones and social networks! You don’t read anymore, any of you, you’re not interested in anything except taking photographs of your lunch. What a time we live in!”

  “Where do you get off lecturing me?” Carolina complained. “It’s your lousy T.V. shows that turn people into dickheads!”

  “Don’t be vulgar, Carolina, please.”

  “I’m just saying, forget about those auditions. If they take us, we’ll be stuck here till August.”

  “What do you want to do, then?”

  Carolina pouted. “Nothing.”

  “Shall we go to the beach?”

  “No. When are we going back to the city?”

  “I don’t know, Carolina,” Eden said wearily. “I’m prepared to be patient, but can you at least make a small effort? I have other things to do than be here. Channel 14 doesn’t have a flagship show for the fall and—”

  “Then let’s get out of here, and you can do what you have to do.”

  “No. I made arrangements to run everything from here. In fact, I have a video conference call starting now.”

  “Obviously, there’s always a call, always work! That’s the only thing that interests you.”

  “Carolina, it’ll only take ten minu
tes! I’m giving you all the time I can, you could at least acknowledge that. Just give me ten minutes and then we’ll do whatever you want.”

  “I don’t want to do anything,” Carolina muttered, and went and locked herself in her room.

  Eden sighed and switched on the camera of his laptop to start the conference call with his team. Ten minutes in, eyes fixed to the screen, he did not notice that Carolina had left her room. She looked at him, saw he was engrossed in his call, and left the suite. She walked up and down the corridor, not knowing what to do with herself. She passed Room 310, in which Ostrovski was preparing to go to the audition by reciting classics of the theater. She made up her mind to leave the Palace. She asked the parking valet for her father’s Porsche, and set off for Orphea. When she got to Ocean Road, she drove past the beachfront houses. She was nervous. She soon came to what had been their vacation home, the house where they had been so happy together. She parked by the gate and sat there gazing at the wrought-iron inscription: the garden of eden.

  She could not hold back for much longer. Clutching the wheel, she burst into tears.

  * * *

  “Jesse,” Bird said to me with a smile when he saw me put my head around the door of his office, “to what do I owe the pleasure?”

  Back at the station Betsy and Derek were still looking through the issues of the Notre Dame college magazine, and I had gone to the offices of the Chronicle to collect the articles about the Gordon murders that the editor had put together for us.

  “I need access to the newspaper’s archives,” I told him. “Would you be able to help me with that without it appearing in tomorrow’s issue?”

  “Of course, Jesse. I still feel bad about betraying your trust. It wasn’t professional of me. You know, I can’t stop playing it in my head—could I have protected Stephanie?”

  I saw him stare at Stephanie’s desk, which faced his and had stayed as it was. He looked sad.

  “There’s nothing you could have done,” I said, hoping to comfort him.

  He shrugged and took me down to the basement, where the archives were kept.

  Bird was proving to be a valuable support. He helped me to sort through the issues of the Orphea Chronicle, find the articles that seemed pertinent, and photocopy them. I also took advantage of the immense knowledge that he had of the community to question him about Jeremiah Fold.