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

by Joël Dicker

  Sitting in the interrogation room, her cup of coffee in front of her, she seemed in a feverish state.

  “Mrs Brown,” I said, “a witness has formally identified you as leaving the Grand Theater just before seven o’clock on the evening of Saturday, July 30, 1994, on board a vehicle belonging to Ted Tennenbaum. That same vehicle was seen a few minutes later outside Mayor Gordon’s house, around the time he and his family were murdered.”

  Charlotte Brown lowered her eyes. “I didn’t kill the Gordons,” she said.

  “Tell us what did happen that evening.”

  There was a moment’s silence. She sat there impassively, then said, “I knew this day would come. I knew I couldn’t keep the secret to the end of my life.”

  “What secret is that, Mrs Brown?” I said. “What have you been hiding for twenty years?”

  After a hesitation, she said in a low voice:

  “Yes, I did take Ted Tennenbaum’s van on opening night. I’d seen it parked outside the stage door. You couldn’t miss it, with that owl on the rear window. I knew it was his because some of the other actors and I had spent the previous few evenings at Café Athena and Ted had driven us back to the hotel. So that day, when I needed to be absent for a while, just before seven, I immediately thought to borrow it from him. To save time. Nobody in the company had a car in Orphea. Obviously, I’d planned to ask his permission. I went to look for him in the little room he had as fire officer, next to our dressing rooms. But he wasn’t there. I had a quick look around the backstage area, but I couldn’t find him. There’d been a problem with the fuses, so I assumed he was busy with that. I saw the keys in his room, lying there on the table in full view. I didn’t have much time. The official part of the evening was going to begin in half an hour and Buzz, the director, obviously didn’t want us to leave the theater. So I took the keys. I didn’t think anyone would notice. And besides, Tennenbaum was on duty for the show, so he wouldn’t be going anywhere. I snuck out of the theater by the stage door and got in his van.”

  “But what did you have to do that was so urgent you needed to be away just half an hour before the opening?”

  “I absolutely had to speak to Mayor Gordon. A few minutes, as it turned out, before he and his family were murdered, I dropped by his house.”

  * * *

  Orphea, July 30, 1994, 6.50 p.m.

  The evening of the murders

  Charlotte Brown started Tennenbaum’s van and drove out of the dead-end lane onto Main Street. She was astonished by the indescribable bustle there. The street was full of people and closed to traffic. When she had arrived with the cast that morning, the place had been deserted. Now a dense crowd filled the street.

  At the intersection, a volunteer in charge of traffic was busy giving directions to families who were clearly lost. He pushed open the police barrier to allow Charlotte through, signaling to her that she could only go up the street along a corridor left free to allow access to emergency vehicles. She obeyed—she had no choice. She did not know Orphea, and all she had to orientate herself was a rough map on the back of a booklet published by the tourist office for the festival. Penfield Crescent wasn’t on it, although she could see the Penfield neighborhood. She decided to head there and then ask a passer-by for directions. So she drove as far as Sutton Street, then followed the street until she came to Penfield Road, which marked the entrance to the residential neighborhood of the same name. But the place was like a maze, with streets going off in all directions. Charlotte wandered, making U-turns, and even got lost for a brief while. The streets were deserted, almost ghostly: there wasn’t anyone out of doors. Time was passing, she had to hurry. Finally, she got back onto Penfield Road, the main thoroughfare, and drove quickly along it. She had to come across someone in the end. It was then that she spotted a young woman doing exercises in a park. Charlotte immediately pulled up at the side of the road, got out of the van, and walked across the grass.

  “Excuse me,” she said to the young woman. “I’m lost. I need to get to Penfield Crescent.”

  “You’ve reached it,” the woman said, smiling. “It’s that semicircle on the edge of the park. What number are you looking for?”

  “I don’t even know the number,” Charlotte admitted. “I’m looking for Mayor Gordon’s house.”

  “Oh, it’s right there,” the young woman said, pointing to a cozy-looking house on the other side of the park.

  Charlotte thanked her and got back in the van. She turned onto Penfield Crescent and pulled up outside the mayor’s house, leaving the vehicle on the street, with the engine on. According to the dashboard it was 7.04. She had to be quick. She ran to the door of the house and rang the bell. No response. She rang again and stuck her ear to the door. She thought she could make out some sounds inside. She banged on the door with her fist. “Is there anybody there?” she shouted. But there was no response. As she walked back down the porch steps, she noticed that the drawn curtains at one of the windows in the house were moving slightly. She saw a boy looking at her. He immediately pulled back the curtain. She called out: “Hey, you, wait!” and made to run across the lawn to the window. But the lawn was flooded, and Charlotte found herself up to her ankles in water. When she got to the window, she called the boy again, but to no avail. She didn’t have time to keep on with this. She had to get back to the theater. She tiptoed back across the lawn to the sidewalk. What rotten luck! Her stage shoes were soaked. She got back in the van and set off at high speed. According to the dashboard it was 7.09.

  * * *

  “So you left Penfield Crescent just before the murderer got there?” I said.

  “Yes, Captain Rosenberg,” Charlotte said. “If I’d stayed a minute longer, I’d have been killed, too.”

  “Maybe he was already there somewhere,” Derek suggested, “waiting for you to leave.”

  “Maybe.”

  “Did you notice anything?” I said.

  “No, nothing. I got back to the theater as rapidly as I could. There were so many people on Main Street, everything was blocked, I didn’t think I’d get back in time for the play. I’d have been quicker on foot, but I couldn’t abandon Tennenbaum’s van. I finally got to the theater at 7.30. The official part had already begun. I put back the keys to the van and ran to my dressing room.”

  “And Tennenbaum didn’t see you?”

  “No, and I didn’t say anything to him later either. But in any case, my little escape had been a total fiasco. I hadn’t seen Gordon. And Buzz, the director, had discovered my absence because of my hair dryer catching fire. But he didn’t hold it against me. We were about to start, and he was mainly relieved to see me backstage. And the play was a success. We never spoke about it again.”

  “Charlotte,” I said, finally coming to what mattered most to us, “why did you have to speak with Mayor Gordon?”

  “I had to recover Kirk Hayward’s play, ‘The Darkest Night’. He’d been pestering me about it for days. He said the mayor had his play and would not give it back. The day the festival was due to start he came to see me in my dressing room.”

  “By this point you had broken up with Hayward, is that right?” I said.

  “I was already seeing Alan and had split up with Kirk, but he wouldn’t let go. He was making my life a misery.”

  * * *

  Orphea, July 30, 1994, 10.10 a.m.

  Nine hours before the murders

  Walking into her dressing room, Charlotte Brown was startled to see Hayward, in his uniform, sprawled on the couch.

  “What are you doing here?”

  “If you leave me, Charlotte, I’ll kill myself.”

  “Oh, for God’s sake, Kirk, grow up!”

  “Grow up, you say?” Leaping off the couch, he pulled out his gun and stuck it in his mouth.

  “Kirk, stop this, for heaven’s sake!” Charlotte was in a state of panic.

  He put his gun back in his belt. “You see,” he said, “I’m not joking.”

  “I know, Kirk. Bu
t you have to accept that it’s over between us.”

  “What does Alan Brown have that I don’t?”

  “Everything.”

  He sat down again.

  “Kirk, it’s the opening of the festival, shouldn’t you be at the station? You must be snowed under with work.”

  “I didn’t dare say anything, Charlotte, but things are going badly at work. Very badly, in fact. It’s now that I need moral support. You can’t leave me now.”

  “It’s over, Kirk. Once and for all.”

  “Charlotte, nothing’s going right in my life anymore. I need your help.”

  “Help with what?”

  “Mayor Gordon has what is literally the only script of my play and he’s refusing to let me have it back. Please help me get it back.”

  “What do you mean, he has your play? Why on earth don’t you have a copy?”

  “Well, about two weeks ago there was a little misunderstanding with the guys at the station. In someone’s idea of a prank they turned my office upside down and destroyed all my scripts. I had everything there, Charlotte. Everything I had of ‘The Darkest Night’ has disappeared. The only copy left is the one that’s in Gordon’s possession. If he doesn’t give it back, well, I can’t answer for my actions!”

  Charlotte looked at the man standing before her, this unhappy man she had once loved. She knew how hard he had worked on the play.

  “Kirk,” she said, “if I get the script back from Gordon, do you promise you’ll leave Alan and me alone?”

  “Oh, Charlotte, you have my word!”

  “Where does Mayor Gordon live? I’ll go there tomorrow.”

  “On Penfield Crescent. But you have to go today.”

  “Kirk, that’s just not possible, we’re rehearsing until at least 6.30.”

  “Charlotte, I beg you. I’m having a drink with a Broadway producer this evening. With a little luck I can persuade him to read my play. But not if you don’t get that copy! I’ll come to see you during intermission to collect it. Promise me you’ll go to see Gordon today.”

  Charlotte sighed. She felt genuinely sorry for him.

  “I promise, Kirk. Come backstage during intermission. I’ll have your play.”

  * * *

  In the interrogation room, Derek interrupted Charlotte’s account. “Why didn’t you tell us at the time that it was you in the van?”

  “Because you only latched on to Tennenbaum after the festival, and I didn’t hear about it immediately. I’d gone back to Albany, then did an internship for several months with a vet in Pittsburgh. I didn’t get back to Orphea until six months later, to settle down with Alan, and it was only then that I heard about what had happened. In any case, you had tracked down Tennenbaum. He was the murderer, wasn’t he?”

  No-one answered.

  “What about Hayward?” I said. “Didn’t he talk to you about it?”

  “No. After the festival, I didn’t hear from him. When I moved to Orphea in January 1995, I was told he had left very abruptly and nobody ever found out why.”

  “I think he left because he thought you were guilty of the murders, Charlotte.”

  “What?” she said. “He thought I’d seen the mayor, the mayor had refused to give me the play, and I’d killed all those people out of revenge? That would be insane.”

  “I can’t be as certain as that,” I said, “but what do I know is that you were seen leaving the theater driving Tennenbaum’s van, just before the murders. The same witness has told us that he learned that Tennenbaum had been the chief suspect because of that very van. He went to see Chief Hayward to talk to him about it. That was in October 1994. My belief is that Hayward was so upset that he preferred to resign and leave Orphea.”

  So Charlotte Brown was out of the frame. After leaving the station, she went with Mayor Brown immediately to the Grand Theater. We found that out thanks to Michael Bird, who was there and reported the scene to us.

  As soon as Charlotte entered the auditorium, Hayward cried out cheerfully:

  “Charlotte is here early! This day can’t get any better.”

  Charlotte advanced down the aisle in silence.

  “Is everything alright, Charlotte?” Hayward said. “You look strange.”

  She looked him up and down for a long time, then said, “Did you run away from Orphea because of me, Kirk?”

  He did not reply. She went on:

  “You found out it was me driving Tennenbaum’s van. Did you think I’d killed four people?”

  “It doesn’t matter what I think, Charlotte, the only thing that matters is what I know. As I promised your husband, on opening night, you’ll discover everything.”

  “Kirk, a woman is dead. And the person who killed her is probably the same person who killed the Gordon family. We can’t wait for July 26, you have to tell us everything now.”

  “On opening night, you’ll discover,” Hayward repeated.

  “But that’s insane, Kirk! Why are you behaving like this? People have died, don’t you understand?”

  There was a long silence. All eyes were on Hayward and Charlotte.

  “So next Saturday,” Charlotte said, exasperated and on the verge of tears, “the police will have to wait quietly for the end of the show before you deign to reveal what you know?”

  Hayward looked at her in surprise. “The end of the show? No. It will be more toward the middle.”

  “The middle? Kirk, what are you talking about?” She seemed lost. Hayward, grim-faced, declared:

  “I said you’ll discover everything on opening night, Charlotte. That means the answer is in the play. ‘The Darkest Night’ contains the solution to the case.”

  DEREK SCOTT

  Early September 1994. It was one month since the Gordon murders, and Jesse and I were in no doubt about Tennenbaum’s guilt. The case was almost wrapped up.

  Tennenbaum had killed Mayor Gordon because the mayor had been putting pressure on him because of his urgent need to get on with the work on Café Athena. The sums of money exchanged corresponded to the withdrawals and payments in their several accounts, a witness stated he had deserted his post at the Grand Theater at the very time the murders had taken place, and his van had been seen outside the mayor’s house. In addition, we had established that he was a good shot.

  Other officers would have already put Tennenbaum in preventive detention and let the law finish the job. There was enough evidence to charge him with homicide in the first degree and to get the legal process going, but that was the problem. Knowing Tennenbaum and his fiend of a lawyer, they might well manage to convince a jury that there was reasonable doubt, and Tennenbaum would be acquitted.

  So we did not want to rush in and make an arrest. Our progress had impressed the major, and we had decided to wait a little. Time was on our side. Tennenbaum was bound to lower his guard eventually and make a mistake. Our reputations, Jesse’s and mine, depended on our being patient. Our colleagues and our superiors were watching us closely and we knew it. We wanted to be the tireless young detectives who had sent a quadruple murderer to prison, not a couple of amateurs crushed by Tennenbaum getting acquitted and being awarded damages, his legal costs paid by the State.

  Furthermore, there was one element of the investigation that remained unexplored: the murder weapon. A Beretta with a filed-off serial number. A professional criminal’s weapon. That was what intrigued us: how had a man from a respectable Manhattan family procured that kind of gun?

  The question led us to crisscross the Hamptons, discreetly. We ended up focusing on a disreputable bar in Ridgesport, where Tennenbaum had been arrested for a violent brawl a few years earlier. We staked the place out for four days, hoping Tennenbaum would show up. It was because of that stakeout that we were called to Major McKenna’s office early one morning. There was another man there, who immediately started bawling us out.

  “I’m Special Agent Grace, A.T.F. So you’re the two assholes who are sabotaging a federal investigation.”

  “
Good morning to you, too,” I said. “I’m Sergeant Derek Scott and this is—”

  “I know who you two clowns are!” Grace cut in.

  The major explained the situation more diplomatically. “The A.T.F. spotted the two of you outside a bar in Ridgesport that they already have under surveillance.”

  “We rented a house opposite the bar. We’ve been there for months,” Grace added.

  “Special Agent Grace, are we allowed to know why you’re interested in that bar?” Jesse said.

  “Because of a guy who was arrested holding up a bank on Long Island in February, and who started talking in return for a reduced sentence. He told us he’d bought his gun in that bar. When we looked into it, we found it was a place where stolen army weapons are being resold. And these thefts are inside jobs, if you see what I mean. In other words, military personnel are involved. So you won’t be upset if I don’t tell you more. It’s sensitive.”

  “Could you at least tell us what kind of weapons we’re talking about?” Jesse said.

  “Berettas, with the serial numbers filed off.”

  Jesse threw me a startled look. Maybe we were on the verge of playing our match ball. It was in that bar that the murderer had acquired the murder weapon.

  JESSE ROSENBERG

  Friday, July 18, 2014

  Eight days to opening night

  The announcement made by Kirk Hayward the day before at the Grand Theater, that the name of the killer from 1994 would be revealed in the course of his play, had caused a great stir. Orphea was seething with excitement. In my opinion, Hayward was bluffing.

  One point bothered us, however: “The Darkest Night”. How could Mayor Gordon, having, as we knew, torn up his copy, still have been in possession of a copy of the script? To try to answer this question, Betsy, Derek and I were on board the ferry that ran from Port Jefferson in the Hamptons to Bridgeport, Connecticut. We were on our way to New Haven to question Mayor Gordon’s brother Ernest, who was a professor of biology at Yale. With his brother’s family all dead, he had inherited everything. It was he who had sorted through his brother’s affairs at the time, so maybe he had come across that playscript. He was our last hope.