by Joël Dicker
Betsy nodded as she took notes. She looked up at Brown.
“But if Gordon had planned to leave after the festival, why did he change his mind and decide to leave on opening night?”
Alan made a face. “It was Charlotte who told you that, wasn’t it? It could only have been her, she was the only person who knew. As the festival approached, I found it hard to live with the fact that Gordon was getting all the credit even though he didn’t have anything to do with creating or organizing it. All he’d done was put more money in his pocket, giving accreditation to vendors setting up stands on Main Street. I couldn’t bear it any longer. He’d even published a little book in praise of his work. Everyone was congratulating him. What a sham! The day before the festival, I went to see him in his office and demanded that he leave the following morning. I didn’t want him to be taking all the credit, I didn’t want him to make the opening speech. He was planning to leave, sneaking out quietly after getting all the prestige, leaving the memory of an outstanding politician, even though I was the one who’d done everything. It was intolerable to me. I wanted Gordon to run away like a dog, with his tail between his legs. I demanded that he take off on the night of July 29. But he refused. On the morning of July 30, there he still was, provoking me, parading up and down Main Street, pretending to check that everything was going well. I told him I was going straight to his house to talk to his wife. I jumped in my car and drove to Penfield Crescent. Just as his wife, Leslie, was opening the door of the house and greeting me in a friendly fashion, I heard Gordon drive up behind me at high speed. Leslie Gordon already knew everything. In the kitchen, I said to them: ‘If you haven’t left Orphea by tonight, I’ll tell everyone, on the stage of the Grand Theater, that Joseph Gordon is corrupt. I’ll let it all out! I don’t care about the consequences for myself. Today is your one chance to escape.’ Joseph and Leslie Gordon realized I wasn’t bluffing. I was about to explode. They promised me they’d get out that evening at the latest. I left their house and I went to the theater. It was late morning by now. I saw Charlotte, who’d gotten it into her head to recover something that Gordon had in his possession, some fucking play that Hayward had written. She was so insistent that I had to tell her Gordon was planning to take off in a few hours.”
“So you knew and Charlotte knew that the Gordons were going to leave that day?” Betsy said.
“Yes, we were the only people who knew. I can assure you of that. Knowing Gordon, I’m sure he didn’t tell anyone else. He didn’t like the unexpected. His method was to control everything. That’s why I can’t figure out how come he was killed at home. Who could have known he was there? By then, he was supposed to be at the Grand Theater, with me, shaking hands with the invited guests. It was in the program: 7.00 – 7.30, Official reception in the lobby of the Grand Theater with Mayor Joseph Gordon.”
“And what happened to the bank account?”
“It stayed open, I suppose. It had never been declared to the I.R.S., so far as I knew. It was as if it didn’t exist. I never touched it. That seemed the best way to bury the whole story. I guess there must still be quite a lot of money in it.”
“How about the anonymous phone call? Did you ever find out who made it?”
“No, I never did.”
* * *
That evening, Betsy invited Derek and me to dinner at her house.
The meal was excellent and so was her claret. As we were sipping liqueurs in her living room, she said:
“The two of you can sleep here if you want. The bed in the guest room is very comfortable. I have a new toothbrush for each of you, and a whole bunch of my ex-husband’s T-shirts that I kept, God knows why. They would fit you perfectly.”
“Now there’s a good idea,” Derek said. “We could take the oppor-tunity to tell each other our life stories. Betsy will tell us about her ex-husband, I can talk about my terrible life sitting behind a desk, and Jesse can talk about the restaurant he’s planning to open.”
“You’re planning to open a restaurant, Jesse?” Betsy said.
“Don’t listen to him, Betsy, the poor guy’s had far too much to drink.”
Derek noticed the copy of “The Darkest Night” on the low table. Betsy had brought it home to read. He picked it up.
“You really never stop, do you?” he said.
The atmosphere suddenly turned serious again.
“I don’t understand why this play was so precious to Gordon that he put it in a safe deposit box,” Betsy said.
“Along with the bank statements incriminating Mayor Brown,” I said. “Could it be he was keeping the play as a guarantee to protect himself from someone?”
“Do you mean from Kirk Hayward, Jesse?” Betsy said.
“I don’t know. The script doesn’t seem particularly interesting in itself. And Mayor Brown says he never heard Gordon talk about the play.”
“Can we believe Alan Brown after everything he hid from us?” Derek said.
“He’d have no reason to lie about that,” I said. “And besides, we’ve known from the start that at the time of the murders he was in the lobby of the Grand Theater, shaking hands with dozens of people.”
Derek and I had both read Hayward’s play, but, perhaps because we were tired, we had not seen what Betsy had picked up on.
“What if there was a connection with the underlined words?” she now said. “There are about ten words underlined in pencil.”
“I supposed they were notes made by Hayward,” Derek said. “Changes he might want to make in the play.”
“No,” Betsy said, “I think they’re something else.”
We sat down around the table. Derek picked up the script and Betsy noted down the underlined words as he read them out. The result was the following piece of gibberish:
jammed enough return event my interest
arrogant horizontal funny outside lake destiny
“What the hell does that mean?” I said.
“Maybe it’s a code,” Derek said.
Bent low over the sheet of paper, Betsy wrote the sentence out again, this time beginning each word with a capital letter:
Jammed Enough Return Event My Interest
Arrogant Horizontal Funny Outside Lake Destiny
J E R E M I A H F O L D
DEREK SCOTT
Mid-September 1994. Six weeks since the murders.
If what Special Agent Grace of the A.T.F. had told us was correct, then we had located the source of the murder weapon: the bar in Ridgesport, where you could acquire an army Beretta with its serial number filed off.
At the request of the A.T.F. (we characterized it as a sign of goodwill) Jesse and I suspended our stakeout. We only had to wait until the A.T.F. made up their minds to carry out a raid. In the meantime, we would occupy ourselves with other cases. Our patience and our diplomacy paid off. Late one afternoon in mid-September, Special Agent Grace invited Jesse and me to join the raid. They seized arms and ammunition, among them the latest Berettas from the stolen consignment, and arrested an infantry corporal who went by the name of Ziggy. This Ziggy wasn’t an especially bright spark, presumably more cog than mastermind in the arms trafficking operation.
Neither the A.T.F. nor the military police, who had joined in, thought Ziggy had obtained the weapons alone. As for us, we needed to know who he had sold his Berettas to. We ended up coming to an arrangement. The A.T.F. let us question Ziggy, and we made a deal with him: he would give the A.T.F. the names of his associates, and in return would receive a reduced sentence. Everyone was happy.
We showed Ziggy a whole bunch of photographs, including one of Ted Tennenbaum.
“I don’t remember any faces, I swear.”
Jesse showed Ziggy a photograph of an electric chair.
“This, Ziggy,” he said in a calm voice, “is what you can expect if you don’t talk.”
“What do you mean?” Ziggy whispered.
“One of those guns of yours was used to kill four people. You’re going to be charged
with their murders.”
“But I didn’t do anything!” Ziggy yelled.
“You can tell that to the judge.”
“Unless your memory comes back, you little prick,” Jesse said.
“Show me those pictures again,” Ziggy said. “Maybe I didn’t look at them closely enough.”
“Do you want to stand by the window so you get more light?” Jesse suggested.
“Yeah, maybe I didn’t have enough light.”
We went over to the window and he looked carefully at each of the photographs we had brought.
“I sold this guy a gun,” he said.
The photograph he held out to us was the one of Tennenbaum.
“Are you sure?” I said.
“I’m certain.”
“And when did you sell him that gun?”
“In February. I’d seen him in the bar before, but that was years ago. He needed a gun. He had cash on him. I sold him a Beretta and some ammunition. I never saw him again.”
Tennenbaum was well and truly caught.
-1
Dies Irae: Day of Wrath
MONDAY, JULY 21 – FRIDAY, JULY 25, 2014
JESSE ROSENBERG
Monday, July 21, 2014
Five days to opening night
Orphea was in a state of high tension. The news that the play was going to reveal the identity of a murderer who had gone unpunished had spread like wildfire. In the space of a weekend, the media had arrived en masse, as well as a horde of tourists in search of sensation. The townspeople, too, were agog. Main Street was almost overrun with vendors from out of town who were seizing the opportunity to sell drinks, food, and even T-shirts with the slogan I WAS IN ORPHEA, I KNOW WHAT HAPPENED IN 1994. The crush was at its greatest around the Grand Theater. Access had been blocked by the police, and dozens of T.V. reporters were lined up outside, broadcasting regular updates.
“Who killed the Gordon family, a jogger, and a reporter who was about to publish the answer? We’ll know in five days’ time, here in Orphea, New York State . . .”
“. . . In five days’ time, one of the most remarkable plays in a long while will reveal the secrets of . . .”
“. . . A killer is on the prowl in a quiet town in the Hamptons, and a play will reveal his name . . .”
“. . . Truth is stranger than fiction here in Orphea, where the authorities have announced that the town will be cordoned off on opening night. Reinforcements are expected from the region, while the Grand Theater, where the play is currently being rehearsed, is under twenty-four-hour surveillance . . .”
To add to this unreal atmosphere, the excitement was also political. Following the latest revelations, Sylvia Tennenbaum was demanding that her brother be formally exonerated. She had gathered a support com-mittee that paraded in front of the T.V. cameras with banners saying JUSTICE FOR TED. Sylvia Tennenbaum was also demanding the resignation of Mayor Brown and for the municipal elections to be brought forward: “Mayor Brown has been questioned by police in relation to the 1994 murders. He has lost all credibility.”
But Mayor Brown, being the experienced political animal he was, had no intention of abandoning his job. This turmoil served his cause. Now more than ever, Orphea needed someone in charge. In spite of the doubts raised by his being taken in for questioning by the police, Brown was still widely trusted, and those townspeople worried about the situation certainly did not want to lose their mayor at a time of crisis. As for the town’s merchants, they could hardly have been happier. Restaurants and hotels were packed, souvenir shops were running out of stocks, and advance ticket sales for the festival looked likely to break records.
We knew more than most about what was going on in the Grand Theater, thanks to Michael Bird, who had become an indispensable ally in our investigation. Because he was trusted by Hayward, Bird was the only person outside the company able to get inside the Grand Theater. In return for Bird’s promise to reveal nothing of the content of his play before opening night, Hayward had granted him special access. “It’s essential that one day a journalist can bear witness to what happened in Orphea,” Hayward had said. So we had appointed Bird to be our eyes inside the theater and, if possible, to occasionally film the rehearsals for us. That morning, he invited us to his house to show us what he had recorded the day before.
He and his family lived in a very pretty house outside Orphea, on the road to Bridgehampton.
“He can afford this on his salary as the editor of a local paper?” Derek said as we pulled up outside the house.
“His wife’s father has money,” Betsy said. “Clive Davis, you may know him. He ran for mayor of New York a few years ago.”
And it was Michael’s wife who greeted us: a very beautiful blonde, who must have been under forty, in other words a lot younger than her husband. She offered us coffee and led us into the living room, where we found Bird connecting his T.V. to a computer.
“Thanks for coming,” he said.
We watched his video scenes for a short while, but there was predictably nothing in them of interest to our investigation. That left Jeremiah Fold as our only lead. We mentioned the name to Bird, but it meant nothing to him.
I asked Betsy, “Do you think it could be something other than Jeremiah Fold?
“I doubt it, Jesse. I spent the whole day yesterday rereading ‘The Darkest Night’. I tried every possible combination and, from what I could see, nothing else makes sense.”
Why had a code been hidden in the script of “The Darkest Night”? And by whom? Hayward himself? What did Hayward really know? What kind of game was he playing with us and the whole town of Orphea?
Just then, Betsy’s cell phone rang. It was Montagne.
“Betsy, we’ve been looking for you everywhere. We need you at the station right now. Your office was burglarized during the night.”
When we got to the station, some of Betsy’s colleagues were gathered in the doorway of her office, looking at the fragments of glass on the floor and the smashed-in shutter, and trying to figure out what had happened. The answer, though, was simple. The station was all on one story. The offices were all at the rear of the building and looked out on a patch of lawn surrounded by a picket fence. The only security cameras were in the parking lot and at the main entrance. The intruder would have had no difficulty in climbing over the fence, crossing the lawn, and getting to the window of the office. He had then forced up the roll-down shutters, broken the window, and climbed into the room. The officer who had delivered her mail had been the one to discover the break-in.
Another officer had been in there the previous afternoon, when everything had been intact. So this had happened during the night.
“How come nobody realized what was going on?” I said.
“If all the officers are on patrol at the same time, there’s nobody in the station,” Betsy said. “It sometimes happens.”
“What about the noise?” Derek said. “It must make a lot of noise lifting those shutters. Didn’t anybody hear?”
All the buildings in the immediate vicinity of the station were offices or municipal warehouses. The only likely witnesses might have been the firefighters in the next-door fire station. But when a police officer informed us that during the night, around one in the morning, a major traffic accident had necessitated the intervention of all patrol cars and firefighters from the fire station, we realized that the intruder had had free rein.
“He was hiding somewhere,” Betsy said, “waiting for the right moment to do what he did. He might even have been waiting for several nights in a row.”
A viewing of the footage from security cameras inside the station allowed us to confirm that there had in fact been no break-in at the front of the office. There was one camera in the hallway, aimed straight at the door of Betsy’s office. The door had remained closed. It was clearly her room that had been the target.
“I don’t understand,” Betsy said. “There’s really nothing to steal. In fact, so far as I can see, nothing’s
missing.”
“There’s nothing to steal, but there is something to see,” I said, pointing to the whiteboard and the walls covered with papers connected with the case. “Whoever got in here wanted to know what stage the investigation had reached. And he had access to Stephanie’s work and ours.”
“Our killer is taking risks,” Derek said. “He’s starting to panic, exposing himself. Who knows your office is here, Betsy?”
Betsy shrugged. “Everyone. I mean, it’s no secret. Even people who come to the station to lodge a complaint have to come along this corridor and they see my office. My name’s on the door.”
Derek drew us aside and whispered in a grave tone:
“Whoever broke in here knew what he was doing when he took that risk. He knew perfectly well what was in that office. It’s someone on the inside.”
“Oh, my God,” Betsy said, “you mean it’s one of our colleagues?”
“If it was anyone on the force,” I objected, “all he’d have to do would be to go into the office when you weren’t there, Betsy.”
Derek said, “He’d have been caught by the camera in the corridor. If he thinks he’s under surveillance, he’s definitely not going to make that mistake. But by breaking in, he puts us off the scent. There may be a rotten element inside the station.”
That meant we were no longer safe there. But where could we go? I no longer had an office at troop headquarters and Derek’s office was open-plan. We needed somewhere where nobody would come looking for us. That was when I thought of the archive room of the Chronicle, which we could access by going through the back door of the offices.
Bird was pleased to welcome us.
“Nobody will know you’re here,” he assured us. “The reporters never come to the basement. I’ll leave you a key, along with a duplicate, so you’ll be the only ones to have access. And the key to the back door, too, so you can come and go at any hour of the day or night.”
Within a few hours, in the greatest secrecy, we had set up a reconstruction of our investigation wall.