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

by Joël Dicker

  It was a comedy. I was passionate about it. I spent a whole year writing it. Whenever my parents looked for me, they’d find me at my computer.

  “You’re working too hard!” they would say.

  “I’m not working, I’m enjoying myself,”

  “Then you’re enjoying yourself too much!”

  I took advantage of the summer of 2011 to finish “Mr Constantine”, and when school restarted I showed it to my English teacher, whom I admired a lot. Her first reaction, when she had finished reading it, was to send for me along with my parents.

  “Have you read your daughter’s play?” she asked my parents.

  “No,” they replied. “She wanted you to read it first. Is there a problem?”

  “A problem? Are you kidding? It’s wonderful! What an amazing play! I think your daughter has a real gift. That’s why I wanted to see you. As you may know, I’m involved with the school drama club. Every year, in June, we put on a play, and I’d like this year’s play to be Carolina’s.”

  I couldn’t believe it: my play was going to be performed. Soon that was the only thing anyone talked about in the school. I’d always kept a low profile, but now my reputation went through the roof.

  Rehearsals were due to start in January. I still had a few months to refine the script. That was all I did, including during the winter vacation. I really wanted it to be perfect. Tara would come over every day, and we’d shut ourselves in my room. Sitting at my desk, eyes glued to the screen, I would read the lines out loud. Tara, lying on my bed, would listen thoughtfully and give me her opinion.

  Everything changed on the last Sunday of the vacation. The day before I was due to hand in my script. Tara was with me, as she had been on all the previous days. It was late afternoon. She told me she was thirsty, and I went to the kitchen to fetch her some water. When I got back to my room, she was getting ready to leave.

  “Are you going already?” I said.

  “Yes, I didn’t notice what time it was. I have to get home.”

  She seemed strange all of a sudden.

  “Is everything O.K., Tara?”

  “Yes, everything’s fine. See you at school tomorrow.”

  I walked her to the door. When I got back to my computer, my play was no longer on the screen. I thought there was a technical glitch, but when I tried to reopen the file I realized it had vanished. Then it occurred to me I was looking in the wrong folder. But I soon discovered that my play was nowhere to be found. When I tried looking in the computer’s trash and saw that it had been emptied, I finally understood: Tara had deleted my play, and there was no way to get it back.

  I burst into tears, which became hysterics. My parents came running to my room.

  “Don’t worry,” my father said. “You have a copy somewhere, don’t you?”

  “No!” I screamed. “Everything was there! I’ve lost everything.”

  “Carolina,” he said, starting to lecture me, “I did tell you—”

  “Jerry,” my mother cut in, having understood the gravity of the situation, “I think now’s not the time.”

  I told my parents what had happened: Tara asking me for water, me going out of the room for a moment, then her hurried departure and the play gone. My play could not have simply flown away. It could only have been Tara.

  “But why would she have done something like that?” my mother said, trying to take it in.

  She telephoned the Scalinis and told them what had happened. They defended their daughter, swore she would never have done anything like that, and rebuked my mother for making such accusations.

  “Gerald,” my mother said on the telephone, “this play didn’t get deleted by itself. May I talk with Tara, please?”

  But Tara did not want to talk with anyone.

  My last hope was the printed copy of the play I had given my English teacher in September. But she couldn’t find it. My father took my computer to one of Channel 14’s I.T. specialists, but the man confessed himself powerless to do anything. “When the trash is emptied, it’s emptied,” he told my father. “Didn’t you make a copy of the file?”

  My play had ceased to exist. A year’s work trashed. A year’s work gone up in smoke. It was an indescribable feeling. As if a light had gone out inside me.

  My parents and my English teacher could only make stupid suggestions. “Try to rewrite your piece from memory. You knew it by heart.” It was obvious they had never written anything. It was impossible to bring a year’s work back to life in a few days. They suggested I should write another play for the following year. But I didn’t want to write anything more. I was too depressed.

  Of the months that followed, all I remember is a feeling of bitterness. A pain deep in my soul. A sense of profound injustice. Tara must pay the consequences. I didn’t even want to know why she had done it, I just wanted reparation. I wanted her to suffer as I was suffering.

  My parents went to see the principal of the school, but he would accept no responsibility.

  “From what I understand,” he said, “this took place outside the school environment so there is nothing I can do. This little difference of opinion must be settled directly with Tara Scalini and her parents.”

  “A little difference of opinion?” my mother said. “Tara ruined a year’s work by my daughter! They’re both pupils here, you have to do something.”

  “Listen, Mrs Eden, maybe the two girls need to put some distance between them. They never stop playing dirty tricks on each other. First Carolina steals Tara’s computer—”

  “She didn’t steal that computer!” my mother said, getting carried away. “Tara plotted the whole thing!”

  The principal sighed. “Mrs Eden, it would be better if you settled this directly with Tara’s parents.”

  Tara’s parents didn’t want to know. They defended their daughter tooth and nail and called me a compulsive liar.

  Months went by, and everyone forgot the incident, except me. I carried this wound in my heart, a deep gash that would not heal. I talked about it endlessly. Even my parents ended up telling me that I had to stop going over it, that I had to move on.

  In June, the school drama club finally performed a Jack London adaptation. I refused to attend the first night. I locked myself in my room and cried the whole evening. My mother, instead of comforting me, said, “Carolina, it’s been six months now, you have to live your life.”

  But I could not. I sat there in front of my computer screen, not knowing what to write. I felt drained. Drained of all desire and all inspiration.

  I was bored to death. I demanded attention from my parents, but my father was busy with his work and my mother was never there. I had never before realized how busy they were.

  At The Garden of Eden that summer, I spent my time on the Internet. I devoted my days to surfing, especially on Facebook. It was that or boredom. I became aware that, apart from Tara, I hadn’t made many friends lately. I guess I’d been too busy writing. Now I was trying to make up for lost time, virtually.

  Several times a day, I’d take a look at Tara’s Facebook page. I wanted to know what she was doing, who she was seeing. Since that Sunday in January when she had come over for the last time, we hadn’t spoken. But I spied on her through her Facebook account, and I hated everything she put on it. It might have been my way of exorcizing all the hurt she had caused me. Or was I just feeding my resentment?

  By November 2012, we had not spoken in ten months. One evening, as I was shut up in my room chatting on Facebook, I received a message from Tara. It was a long letter.

  I soon understood that it was a love letter.

  Tara told me how much she had suffered, how it had gone on for years. She told me that she could not forgive herself for what she had done to me. That since the spring she had been seeing a psychiatrist who was helping her to get a clearer picture of the matter. She said it was time for her to accept herself as she was. She told me she was gay and that she loved me. That she had said it to me many times, but I h
ad never understood. She explained that she had ended up by being jealous of the play I was writing, because she was on my bed, offering herself to me, while I had eyes only for my script. She told me how difficult it was for her to express her true identity and asked me to forgive her for her behavior. She said she wanted to make amends, and she hoped that this confession of her feelings would allow me to understand that senseless act, for which, she said, she hated herself every day. She was sorry that her love for me, which was so strong, such a burden, so hard to confess, had made her lose her head.

  I reread the letter several times. I was troubled, ill at ease. I did not want to forgive her. I think I had carried this anger inside me too long for it to vanish all at once. So, after a brief hesitation, I passed Tara’s letter on to all my classmates via Facebook Messenger.

  By the following morning, the whole school had read the letter. Tara was now Tara the lesbian, with all the pejorative derivatives of the term that could be imagined. I don’t think it was what I originally intended, but I realized that it did me good to see Tara pilloried like this. After all, she had admitted that she had destroyed my play. At last the truth was coming out. The culprit had been exposed and the victim justified. But what everyone remembered about the letter was Tara’s sexual orientation.

  That very evening, Tara messaged me: Why did you do that? Straightaway I replied: Because I hate you. I think at that moment I really did feel hate. And that hate consumed me. Tara was soon the object of everyone’s mockery, and passing her in the corridors of the school I told myself it served her right.

  It was at this time that I became friendly with Leyla. She wasn’t in my class, but she was in the same grade. She was the center of attention, charismatic, always well dressed. She sat at my table one day in the cafeteria. She told me she thought it was great that I had passed on Tara’s letter. She had always found Tara pretentious, she said. “What are you doing on Saturday night? Want to hang out at my place?”

  Saturdays at Leyla’s became a ritual. Several girls from the school would be there, we’d shut ourselves in her room, drink alcohol she stole from her father, smoke cigarettes in the bathroom, and send Tara insulting messages on Facebook. Bitch, whore, muff diver. Everything got thrown in. We told her we hated her and called her every name under the sun. We reveled in it. We’re going to kill you, you bitch. You slut. You whore.

  That was the kind of girl I had become. A year earlier, my parents had been urging me to go out and make friends, but I preferred to spend my weekends writing. Now I was spending my evenings in Leyla’s room, insulting Tara. The more I attacked her, the smaller she became in my eyes. I had once admired her so much, now I enjoyed dominating her. In the corridors at school, I started jostling her. One day, Leyla and I dragged her into the toilets and beat her up. I had never hit anyone before. When I landed the first blow, I was afraid of her reaction, afraid she would defend herself and overcome me. But she let herself be beaten. I felt strong, seeing her cry, seeing her begging me to stop hitting her. I liked that. That feeling of power. Seeing her reduced to nothing. The punishments resumed every time we had the opportunity. One day, while I was hitting her, she pissed herself. And that evening on Facebook, I bombarded her with more insults. The best thing you can do is die, you bitch. That’s the best thing that could happen to you.

  This lasted three months.

  One morning in mid-February, there were police cars outside the school. Tara had hanged herself in her room.

  *

  It didn’t take long for the police to get to me.

  A few days after the tragedy, as I was getting ready for school, some detectives came looking for me at home. They showed me dozens of pages containing the messages I had sent to Tara. Daddy contacted his lawyer, Benjamin Graff. When the police officers left, he said we could rest easy: the police wouldn’t be able to prove a direct causal link between my messages on Facebook and Tara’s suicide. I remember he said something like:

  “It’s a good thing the Scalini girl didn’t leave a farewell note explaining why she was doing what she did, or Carolina would be in real trouble.”

  “A good thing?” my mother screamed. “Do you realize what you’re saying, Benjamin? You all make me want to throw up!”

  “I’m just trying to do my job,” Graff said, “and stop Carolina from ending up in jail.”

  But she had left a letter. Her parents found it a few days later in her room. In it, Tara explained at length that she preferred to die rather than continue to be humiliated by me every day.

  The Scalinis lodged a complaint.

  The police came again. It was then that I really became aware of what I had done. I had killed Tara. The handcuffs. The police station. The interrogation.

  Graff, when he arrived, was not as arrogant as the first time. He was even worried. He said the D.A. wanted to make an example of me and send a strong signal to those who harassed their friends on the Internet. Depending on how it was done, incitement to suicide could even be considered a kind of homicide.

  “You could be tried like an adult,” Graff told me. “If that happens, you face seven to fifteen years in prison. Unless we can come to some arrangement with Tara’s family and get them to withdraw their complaint.”

  “An arrangement?” my mother said.

  “Money,” Graff said. “In return for which they would give up on the idea of taking Carolina to court. There’d be no trial.”

  My father instructed Graff to approach the Scalinis’ lawyer. Graff returned with their demand.

  “They want your house in Orphea,” he told my parents.

  “Our house?” my father repeated, incredulous.

  “Yes,” Graff confirmed.

  “Then it’s theirs,” my father said. “Call their lawyer immediately and assure him that, if the Scalinis drop their charges, I’ll see to the paperwork.”

  JESSE ROSENBERG

  Thursday, July 24, 2014

  Two days to opening night

  Former Special Agent Grace of the A.T.F., now seventy-two, was retired and living in Portland, Maine. When I had contacted him by telephone, he had expressed interest in our case. “Could we meet?” he had asked. “I need to show you something.”

  To avoid my having to drive all the way to Maine, we agreed to meet halfway, in Worcester, Massachusetts. Grace gave us the address of a little restaurant he liked a lot, where we would be left in peace. When we got there, he was already at a table with a pile of pancakes. He was thinner than before, his face was lined.

  “Rosenberg and Scott, the two terrors of 1994,” he said with a smile when he saw us. “I always thought our paths would cross again.”

  We sat down facing him. On seeing him again, I had the impression I had taken a leap into the past. He had aged, but he had not changed much.

  “So you’re interested in Jeremiah Fold?” he said.

  I gave him a detailed update.

  “Fold was like an eel, Captain Rosenberg,” Grace said. “Slippery, untouchable, quick, electric. Everything a detective could hate.”

  “Why was the A.T.F. interested in him then?”

  “To be honest, we were only indirectly interested in him. For us, the real big deal was the stolen army weapons being sold in the Ridgesport area. Before we cottoned on that it was all happening in that bar where our paths crossed in 1994, it took us months of investigation. One of the leads we followed was Fold. We knew from our informers that he had his fingers in all kinds of pies. I soon grasped that he wasn’t our man, but the few weeks of observation we did on him really knocked me back. The guy was a maniac, incredibly organized. In the end, we lost interest in him. And then, one morning in July 1994, his name suddenly cropped up again.

  * * *

  A.T.F. stakeout, Ridgesport

  Morning of July 16, 1994

  It was seven in the morning when Agent Riggs arrived at the A.T.F. stake-out to relieve Grace, who had spent the night there.

  “I came by Route 16,” Riggs said
. “There’s been a bad accident. A biker got killed. You’ll never guess who it was.”

  “The biker? No idea,” Grace said. He was in no mood for riddles.

  “Jeremiah Fold.”

  Agent Grace was stunned. “Fold is dead?”

  “Almost. According to the officers I spoke to, he’ll be checking out soon. He’s in a terrible state. Apparently, he was riding without a helmet.”

  Grace was intrigued. Fold was a cautious, meticulous man. Not the kind to get himself killed stupidly. Something wasn’t quite right. Leaving the stakeout, Grace decided to go over to Route 16. Two highway patrol vehicles and a breakdown truck were still there.

  “The guy lost control of his bike,” one of the officers told Grace. “He veered off the road and went straight into a tree. He lay there for hours. The ambulance guys say he was pretty smashed up.”

  “And you think he lost control of his bike all alone?” Grace said.

  “There’s no trace of brakes anywhere on the road. Why’s the A.T.F. interested?”

  “The guy was a local mobster. A very careful man. I can’t see him killing himself.”

  “But not careful enough to wear a helmet,” the officer said. “You think this was a gangland killing?”

  “I have no idea,” Grace said. “But there’s something that bugs me, I don’t know what.”

  “If they had wanted to kill this guy, they’d have done it. I mean, they’d have knocked him down and shot him. But this guy was left to die in a ditch. If he’d been found earlier, he might have been saved. Not the perfect murder.”

  Grace agreed. He handed the officer a business card. “Please send me a copy of your report.”

  “O.K., Special Agent Grace. You can count on me.”

  Grace spent a while longer inspecting the side of the road. The officers of the Highway Patrol had left by the time his attention was drawn to a piece of matt plastic and a few transparent shards buried in the grass. He picked them up. It was a flake of a bumper and some fragments of headlights.