by Joël Dicker
* * *
“There were just those very few pieces,” Grace said between two mouthfuls of pancake. “Nothing else. Which meant that either they had been there for a while, or that someone had cleaned up during the night.”
“Someone who rammed Fold’s bike?” Derek said.
“Yes. Which would explain why there were no traces of brakes. It must have been quite a crash. Whoever was at the wheel would have been able to collect most of the pieces so as not to leave any trace. His own hood must have been smashed in, but the car was still drivable. After that, this person must have told his garage mechanic that he’d hit a stag to explain the state of the car. He won’t have been asked any more questions.”
“Did you follow up on this?”
“No, Captain Rosenberg. I found out later that Fold never wore a helmet because, it was said, he was claustrophobic. So he wasn’t always as careful as his reputation suggested. And anyhow, it had nothing to do with the A.T.F. I already had enough work, I didn’t need to look into traffic accidents. But I always had that doubt in me.”
“But you went no further?” Derek said.
“No. Although some months later, toward the end of October 1994, I was contacted by the chief of police in Orphea, who’d been asking himself much the same questions as me.”
“Chief Hayward got in touch with you?” I said.
“Yes, that was his name, Hayward. We talked briefly about the case. He told me he’d contact me again, but he never did. I assumed he dropped it. Time passed, and I dropped it, too.”
“So you never had the pieces of headlight analyzed?” Derek said.
“No, but you can. I kept them.”
Grace had a wicked gleam in his eye. He wiped his mouth with a paper napkin and handed us a plastic bag. Inside, there was a piece of a black bumper and fragments of glass. He smiled and said:
“It’s your turn now, gentlemen.”
The day it took us to drive to Massachusetts and back was going to be worth it. If Fold had been murdered, we might have our connection with the death of Mayor Gordon.
* * *
In the secrecy of the Grand Theater, surrounded by crowds and defended like a fortress, rehearsals continued. In the middle of the morning, when she was not involved, Carolina Eden slipped out of the auditorium, eager for a smoke. She got to the stage door, which looked out on a dead-end alley, access forbidden to press and onlookers. She would be undisturbed there.
She lit her cigarette, sitting on the top of the steps in the sun. It was then that she saw a man appear, a press card hanging around his neck.
“Frank Vannan, New York Times,” he said.
“How did you get this far?” Carolina said.
“The art of journalism is getting to where you’re not wanted. Are you in this play?”
“Yes, I’m one of the actresses. Carolina Eden.”
“What part are you playing?”
“I’m sorry, I’m not allowed to say. The director is very strict about leaks. None of us has even read the full script.”
Vannan took out a notepad and scribbled a few notes.
“Write what you want,” Carolina said, “but please don’t quote me.”
“No problem. So you don’t know yourself what this play is going to reveal?”
“You know, Frank, it’s a play about a secret. And a secret, when it comes down to it, is more important for what it hides than what it reveals.”
“What do you mean?”
“Take a look at the cast, Frank. Every one of the actors is hiding something. If you want my opinion, the question isn’t what this play is going to reveal but what it’s hiding.”
Carolina turned to go back in through the stage door, which she had propped open with a brick.
“Come in if you want,” she said. “It’s worth a look. But don’t tell anyone I let you in.”
* * *
While Derek and I were in Massachusetts, Betsy went to see Michael Bird’s wife Miranda, formerly Miranda Davis.
Miranda ran a clothes store on Main Street in Bridgehampton called Keith & Danee, next door to the Golden Pear coffee shop. She was alone in the store when Betsy came in. She recognized her immediately and smiled, although she was puzzled by her visit.
“Hello, Betsy. Are you looking for Michael?”
Betsy smiled back, gently. “It’s you I’m looking for, Miranda.”
She showed her a xerox of the missing persons notice she was holding. Miranda’s face crumpled.
“It’s nothing to worry about,” Betsy said. “I just need to talk.”
Miranda was immediately ashen. “Let’s get out of here and go for a drive. I don’t want my customers to see me like this.”
They closed the store and took Betsy’s car. They drove for a while in the direction of East Hampton, then turned onto a dirt track until they came to the edge of the forest, beside a field of wild flowers. Miranda got out of the car as if she were nauseous, knelt in the grass, and burst into tears. Betsy crouched beside her and tried to calm her. It was only after a long quarter of an hour that Miranda was able to speak, and even then with difficulty.
“My husband and kids don’t know. Don’t destroy me, Betsy. I beg you, don’t destroy me.”
As she voiced the thought that her secret might be discovered by her family, Miranda was once more shaken by uncontrollable sobs.
“Don’t worry, Miranda, no-one will know. But I do need you to tell me about Jeremiah Fold.”
“Jeremiah Fold? Oh, my God, I hoped I would never hear that name again. Why him?”
“Because he may have been involved in some way in the killings of 1994.”
“Jeremiah?”
“It may seem strange because he died before the killings, but his name keeps recurring in our investigation.”
“What do you think I can tell you?”
“First of all, how you ended up at the mercy of Jeremiah Fold.”
Miranda looked sadly at Betsy. After a long silence, she said:
“I was born in 1975. But I only started to live on July 16, 1994, the day I learned Jeremiah Fold was dead. Jeremiah was the most charismatic and also the cruelest person I have ever met. He was perverted. He was nothing like any idea people might have of a cold, brutal criminal, he was much, much worse than that. He was a true force of evil. I met him in 1992, after I ran away from home. I was seventeen, and I resented the whole world for reasons I can’t figure out anymore. I was at war with my parents, and one night I just took off. It was summer, it was great to be outdoors. I spent a few nights in the open air, then I let myself be persuaded by some guys I met by chance to join a squat. An abandoned old house that had become a kind of hippie community. I liked that kind of carefree life. And besides, I had a little money with me, so I could eat and live. Until the night some guys in the squat saw that I had money. They tried to rob me, they started hitting me. I ran away and got as far as the road, and there I was almost knocked down by a guy on a motorbike. He wasn’t wearing a helmet. He was quite young, very handsome, dressed in a well-cut suit and nice shoes. He saw how scared I was and asked me what was going on. Then he saw the three guys coming after me, and he punched all three of them. As far as I was concerned, I had just met my guardian angel. He took me to his place on the back of his bike. He rode slowly, because I didn’t have a helmet and it was dangerous, he said. He was a very, very cautious man.”
* * *
August 1992
“Where shall I take you?” Fold asked Miranda.
“I don’t have anywhere to go,” she said. “Could I crash with you for a few days?”
Fold took Miranda to his place and installed her in his guest room. She hadn’t slept in a bed in weeks. The following day they had a long talk.
“Miranda,” Fold said, “you’re only seventeen. I have to take you back to your parents.”
“Please let me stay for a while. I won’t be any trouble, I promise.”
In the end, Fold agreed. He gave her two
days, which were then extended indefinitely. He let Miranda go with him to the club he ran, but wouldn’t let her be served alcohol. Then, since she was asking to work, he hired her for the club as a welcome hostess. Miranda would have preferred to be in the room, serving, but Fold did not want it. “You’re not legally of an age to serve alcohol, Miranda.” The man fascinated her. One night she tried to kiss him, but he cut her off mid-move. He said, “Miranda, you’re seventeen. I could get into trouble.”
Then, strangely, he started calling her Mylla. She had no idea why, but she quite liked the fact that he had given her a pet name. She had the feeling she had a special connection with him. Then he asked her to do favors for him. She had to take packages to strangers, go to restaurants where they would give her thick envelopes she had to take back to Fold. One day, she woke up to what Fold was doing: she was transporting drugs, money, and God knows what for him. She went to see him.
“I thought you were a good guy, Jeremiah.”
“I am a good guy!”
“People say you’re a drug dealer. I opened one of those packages.”
“You shouldn’t have done that, Mylla.”
“My name isn’t Mylla!”
He told her she wouldn’t have to do it again. But the very next day, he summoned her like a dog. “Mylla! Mylla, go take this package to X!” She got scared. She decided to run away. She took the package, as he had asked, but didn’t go where she was supposed to go. She threw the package in a garbage can, then took the train. She wanted to go back to her parents in New York. She wanted to be back in the warm feeling of home. With the money she still had, she finished her journey by taxi. When the taxi dropped her outside her parents’ building, she felt a deep happiness come over her. It was midnight on a fine autumn night. The street was deserted, asleep. Suddenly, she saw him, sitting on the front steps of the building. Fold. He glared at her. She wanted to scream, to run away, but Costico, his henchman, came up behind her. Fold made a sign to Miranda to be quiet. They drove her back to Ridge’s Club. For the first time, they took her to the room they called “the office”. Fold asked her where the package was. Miranda was crying. She immediately admitted that she had thrown it away. She was sorry, she promised not to do it again. Fold kept saying, “You’re not going to leave me, Mylla, do you understand that? You belong to me!” Still crying and terrified, she got down on her knees. Fold finally said, “I’m going to punish you, but I’m not going to mess you up.” Miranda didn’t understand at first. Then Jeremiah grabbed her by the hair and dragged her over to a large bowl of water. He plunged her head into it, for several seconds. She thought she was going to die. When he had finished, as she was lying on the ground, crying and shaking, Costico threw photographs of her parents in her face. “If you disobey,” he said, “if you do anything stupid, I’ll kill both of them.”
* * *
Miranda interrupted her account for a long while.
“I’m really sorry I’m making you relive all this,” Betsy said gently, placing her hand on hers. “What happened after that?”
“It was the start of a new life. I was at Fold’s beck and call. He set me up in a room in a motel by the side of Route 16, mainly used by hookers.”
* * *
September 1992
“This is your new home,” Jeremiah told Miranda as they walked into the motel room. “It’ll be better for you here, you can come and go as you like.”
Miranda sat down on the bed. “I want to go home, Jeremiah,” she said.
“Don’t you like it here?”
He had spoken in a gentle voice. That was how perverse he was: one day he would mistreat her, the next day he would take her shopping and be as nice to her as he had been at the beginning.
“I’d like to leave,” Miranda said.
“You can go if you like. The door is wide open. But I wouldn’t want anything to happen to your parents.”
With these words, Fold left. For a long time Miranda looked at the door of the room. She just had to walk through it and take a bus to New York. But that was impossible. She was Fold’s prisoner.
Fold forced her to resume her deliveries. Then he tightened his grip on her by involving her in the recruiting of his “slaves”. One day, he summoned her to his office. She entered it shaking, thinking she was going again to the bowl. But Fold seemed in a good mood.
“I need a new director of human resources,” he said. “The last one just took an overdose.”
Miranda felt her heart pounding. What did Fold want of her?
“We’re going to trap a few perverts who are looking for an underage girl to fuck. And the underage girl is going to be you. Don’t worry, nobody will do anything to you.”
The plan was simple: Miranda was to hustle in the parking lot of the motel, and when a client approached her she would lead him to her room. There she would ask him to undress, she would do the same, and only then admit to the man that she was underage. The man would probably say that that wasn’t a problem, on the contrary, and at that moment Costico would come out of his hiding place and handle the rest.
And that was what happened. Miranda agreed to it, not only because she had no choice, but because Fold promised her that once she had helped him trap three “slaves” for him she would be free to leave.
Having fulfilled her side of the contract, Miranda went to see him and demanded that he let her leave. She ended up with her head in the bowl of water. “You’re a criminal, Mylla,” he said as she tried to catch her breath. “You’re trapping guys and blackmailing them. They’ve all seen you and they even know your real name. You’re not going anywhere, Mylla, you’re staying with me.”
Miranda’s life became hell. When she wasn’t delivering packages, she was being used as bait in the parking lot, and every night she was at the reception in the club, where she was much appreciated by the customers.
* * *
“How many guys did you trap like that?” Betsy said.
“I don’t know. In the two years it lasted, maybe dozens. Fold would often renew his stock of slaves. He didn’t want to use them for too long, for fear they might be identified by the police. He liked to cover his tracks. I was scared, depressed, unhappy. I didn’t know what was going to happen to me. The girls in the parking lot said that those who had been the bait before me had ended up either killing themselves or dying of an overdose.”
“A girl in the motel told us about an argument between Costico and a guy who wouldn’t let them get one over on him.”
“Yes, I remember something like that,” Miranda said.
“We’d like to track this man down.”
Miranda opened her eyes wide. “It was twenty years ago, I don’t remember it very well. What’s the connection with your investigation?”
“The man sprayed Costico with tear gas. And the man we’re looking for now has the habit of using tear gas. I have a feeling it’s no coincidence. I need to find that man.”
“Unfortunately, he never told me his name, and I doubt I’d be able to remember his face. Twenty years is a long time.”
“According to my information, the man ran off naked. Could you have noticed any distinguishing marks on his body? Anything that struck you?”
Miranda closed her eyes, as if searching in her memories. Suddenly, something occurred to her.
“He had a tattoo across his shoulder blades. An eagle in flight.”
Betsy noted this down. “Thank you, Miranda. That could be very useful information. I have one last question.”
She showed Miranda photographs of Mayor Gordon, Ted Tennenbaum, and Cody Springfield, and said:
“Was one of these men a slave of Fold’s?”
“No,” Miranda said. “Especially not Cody Springfield! What a lovely man he was.”
“Tell me, what did you do after Fold died?”
“I was able to get back to my parents in New York. I finished school and went to college. I gradually got myself back on track. A few years later, I met Michael. It
’s thanks to him that I really recovered the strength to live. He’s an exceptional man.”
“That’s true,” Betsy said. “I like him a lot.”
The two women drove back to Bridgehampton. As Miranda was getting out of the car, Betsy said, “Are you sure you’re going to be alright?”
“I’m certain, thanks.”
“Miranda, you’ll have to tell your husband about all this one day. Secrets are always found out in the end.”
“I know,” Miranda said sadly.
JESSE ROSENBERG
Friday, July 25, 2014
One day to opening night
We were twenty-four hours from opening night. We were making progress, but were a long way from getting to the end of our investigation. During the last twenty-four hours, we had discovered that Fold might not have died accidentally, that he could have been murdered. The pieces of the bumper and the headlights picked up at the time by Special Agent Grace were now in the hands of the forensics team.
Thanks to Miranda Bird, whose secret we had promised to keep, we also had a description of a man with an eagle tattoo on his shoulder blades. According to our information, neither Tennenbaum nor Mayor Gordon had a tattoo like that. And nor had Cody Springfield.
Costico, who was the only person who could lead us to the man with the tear gas canister, had vanished into thin air since the day before. He wasn’t at the club, and he wasn’t at his home. His car was parked outside his building, his door wasn’t locked, and when we went inside we found the T.V. on. As if Costico had left home in a big hurry. Or as if something had happened to him.
And as if that was not enough, we also had to lend our support to Michael Bird. He had been accused by Mayor Brown of divulging information about the play to the New York Times, which had published an article that morning that everyone was talking about.
Brown had summoned a meeting in his office. By the time we arrived, Montagne, Major McKenna, and Bird were already there.
“Can you explain this mess to me?” Mayor Brown shouted at poor Bird, waving a copy of the New York Times.