by Joël Dicker
JESSE ROSENBERG
Wednesday, July 30, 2014
Four days after opening night
That morning, by the time Derek and I got to our room at the Chronicle, Betsy had pinned photocopies of Meghan Padalin’s diary to the wall.
“Meghan was the person who made that anonymous call to Alan Brown in February 1994, telling him that Mayor Gordon was corrupt,” she said. “From what I gather, she found it out from someone called Felicity. I don’t know what exactly this Felicity woman told her, but Meghan was very angry with Mayor Gordon. About a month or so after her anonymous call, on April 1, when she was alone in the bookstore, she finally confronted Gordon, who’d come in to buy a book. She told him she knew everything, and called him a criminal.”
“Can we be sure she is referring to his corrupt business deals?” Derek said.
“That’s what I wondered,” Betsy said, going to the next page. “Because two days later, while she was out jogging, Meghan confronted Gordon in front of his house and hurled abuse at him. She writes in her diary: I’m like the eye pursuing Cain.”
“The eye pursued Cain because he’d killed,” I said. “Did the mayor kill someone?”
“That’s what I’m wondering,” Betsy said. “In the months that followed, and up until her death, Meghan ran as far as Mayor Gordon’s house every evening. She’d wait in in the park for him to get home and when she saw him, she would waylay him and remind him of his guilt.”
“So the mayor would have had a reason to kill Meghan,” Derek said.
“The perfect culprit,” Betsy said, “if he hadn’t died in the same shooting.”
“Do we know any more about this Felicity?” I asked.
“Felicity Daniels,” Betsy said with a smug little smile. “It took one call to Samuel Padalin to trace her. She lives in Coram now and she’s waiting for us. Let’s go.”
Felicity Daniels was sixty years old and worked in a store selling household appliances in the mall in Coram, where we met with her. She had been waiting for us so she could take her break. We went to a nearby coffee shop.
“Do you mind if I have a sandwich?” she said. “Otherwise I won’t have time for lunch.”
“Go ahead,” Betsy said.
Felicity ordered her sandwich from the waiter. My impression was that she was sad and tired.
“You said you wanted to talk about Meghan?”
“Yes,” Betsy said. “As you may have heard, we have had to reopen the investigation into her murder and those of the Gordon family. Meghan was a friend of yours, wasn’t she?”
“Yes. We met at the tennis club and hit it off. She was younger than me, by about ten years. But we had the same level in tennis. I wouldn’t say we were very close, but from taking a drink together after matches, we got to know each other quite well.”
“How would you describe her?”
“She was a romantic. A bit dreamy, a bit naive. Starry-eyed.”
“Have you been living in Coram for long?”
“I came here with the kids just after my husband died. He died on November 16, 1993, his birthday.”
“Did you see Meghan between the time you moved here and the time she died?”
“Yes, she’d come regularly to Coram, to say hello. She’d bring me cooked dishes, sometimes a good book. To tell the truth, I never asked her for anything. She kind of imposed herself, but she meant well.”
“Was Meghan a happy woman?”
“Yes, she had everything going for her. Men liked her. Well, everyone swooned over her. Gossips will tell you it was thanks to her that the bookstore in Orphea did so well in those days.”
“So she often cheated on her husband?”
“That’s not what I said at all. She wasn’t the kind of person to have affairs.”
“Why not?”
Felicity Daniels frowned. “I don’t know. Maybe because she wasn’t brave enough. She wasn’t the kind of person to live dangerously.”
“And yet, according to her diary,” Betsy said, “Meghan had a relationship with a man in the last months of her life.”
“Really?” Felicity said in surprise.
“Yes, a man she met on December 31 at the Northern Rose Hotel in Bridgehampton. Meghan mentions meeting him regularly until the beginning of June 1994. After that, nothing. Did she ever talk to you about him?”
“No, never. Who was he?”
“I don’t know,” Betsy replied. “I was hoping you could tell me. Did Meghan ever mention feeling threatened?”
“Threatened? No way! You know, there must be people around who knew her better than I did. Why are you asking me all these questions?”
“Because according to Meghan’s diary, in February 1994, you confided to her something about the mayor of Orphea, Joseph Gordon, which seemed to have really upset her.”
“Oh, my God!” Felicity Daniels said, placing a hand over her mouth.
“What was it about?” Betsy said.
“About my husband Luke,” Felicity said in a thin voice. “I should never have said anything to Meghan.”
“What happened to your husband?”
“Luke was up to his neck in debt. He had an air conditioning business that went bankrupt. He had to dismiss all his workers. There was nothing he could do. For months, he hadn’t told anyone. I only found out just before he died. After he died, I had to sell the house to pay off the debts. I left Orphea with the children and found this job as a sales assistant.”
“Mrs Daniels, how did your husband die?”
“He committed suicide. He hanged himself in our room on the evening of his birthday.”
* * *
February 3, 1994
It was early evening in the furnished apartment Felicity Daniels rented in Coram. Meghan had dropped by late in the afternoon to bring her a dish of lasagna and had found her in despair. The children were quarreling, refusing to do their homework, the living room was a mess, and Felicity was slumped on the couch, crying, no longer able to summon the strength to take the situation in hand.
Meghan intervened. She brought the children to order, helped them finish their homework, then sent them to shower, gave them their dinner, and put them to bed. Then she opened the bottle of wine she had brought with her and poured Felicity a large glass.
Felicity had nobody to confide in and she opened up to Meghan.
“I can’t take it anymore, Meg. If only you knew what people are saying about Luke. The coward who hanged himself in his bedroom on his birthday while his wife and children were getting ready to celebrate it downstairs. I see how the other kids’ parents look at me. I can’t stand that mixture of judgment and condescension.”
“I’m so sorry,” Meghan said.
Felicity shrugged. She poured herself more wine. With the help of the drink, after a silence filled with sadness, she finally said:
“Luke was always too honest. Look where it got him.”
“What do you mean?” Meghan said.
“Nothing.”
“Oh, no, Felicity. You’ve started now, you’ll have to finish.”
“Meghan, if I tell you, you have to promise me you won’t tell anyone else.”
“Of course. You know you can trust me.”
“Luke’s business had been doing well in the last few years. Everything was fine with us, until the day Mayor Gordon asked to see him in his office. It was just before the start of the refurbishing work on the muni-cipal buildings. Gordon told Luke he’d give him the contract for all the ventilation systems in return for a financial contribution.”
“You mean a bribe?”
“Yes. And Luke refused. He said the accounts department would notice, and he might lose everything. Gordon threatened to destroy him. He told him the practice was common all over town. But Luke wouldn’t give in. So he didn’t get the municipal contracts. Or the ones after that. And to punish him for resisting, Mayor Gordon broke him. He did everything he could to make things difficult for him, bad-mouthed him, put people off
working with him. Soon Luke lost all his customers. But he never said anything to me, he didn’t want to worry me. I only found out just before he died. The company accountant came to tell me about the imminent bankruptcy, the workers having to be laid off. Poor fool that I was, I didn’t know a thing. That evening I sat Luke down and asked him what was going on, and he told me the whole story. I told him we could fight it, and he said he couldn’t do anything against the mayor. I told him he should report it to the police. He gave me a defeated look. ‘You don’t understand, Felicity, everyone in town is involved in these kickbacks. All our friends. Your brother, too. How do you think he got all those contracts in the last two years? They’ll lose everything if we report them. They’ll go to jail. We can’t say anything, everyone has their hands tied.’ The following evening, he hanged himself.”
“Oh, my God, Felicity!” Meghan said, horrified. “And this is all Mayor Gordon’s doing?”
“You mustn’t tell anyone, Meghan.”
“People have to know that Gordon is a criminal.”
“Swear you won’t say anything, Meghan! Businesses will be shut down, the bosses will go to prison, the workers will be out of a job . . .”
“So we’re going to let the mayor go unpunished?”
“Gordon’s very strong. Much stronger than he looks.”
“He doesn’t scare me!”
“Meghan, promise me you won’t tell anyone. I have enough worries as it is.”
* * *
“But she did tell someone,” Betsy said.
“Yes,” Felicity said, “she made an anonymous phone call to Deputy Mayor Brown. I was furious.”
“Why?”
“Because people I liked might have been in big trouble if the police investigated. I knew what it meant to lose everything. I wouldn’t wish that on my worst enemy. Meghan promised not to say anything more. But then, two months later, she called me and told me she’d had it out with Mayor Gordon in the bookstore. I screamed at her like I’ve never screamed at anyone. That was the last time I had any contact with Meghan. I just stopped talking to her. I was too angry with her. Real friends don’t betray your secrets.”
“I think she was trying to defend you,” Betsy said. “She wanted there to be some kind of justice. She went every day and reminded the mayor that, because of him, your husband had killed himself. She wanted justice for your husband. You say Meghan wasn’t very brave? I think she was. She wasn’t afraid to confront Gordon. She was the only person who dared to do that. She was braver than all the other people in the town combined. And she paid for that with her life.”
“You mean Meghan was the target of those murders?” Felicity said, astonished.
“We think she was,” Derek said.
“But who could have done it? Mayor Gordon? He died at the same time as her. It doesn’t make sense.”
“Mrs Daniels,” Betsy said, “can you think of any other friend of Meghan’s we could talk to about her? In her diary she mentions some-one named Kate.”
“Yes, Kate Grand. She was another member of the tennis club. I think she was quite a close friend of Meghan’s.”
As they left the shopping mall in Coram, Derek received a telephone call from the bodywork specialist at the Highway Patrol.
“I was able to analyze the car debris you gave me. You were right. It’s a piece of a right bumper, with blue paint around it, which means the car was blue, obviously. I also found on it streaks of gray paint, which, according to the police file you sent me, was the color of the motorcycle involved in that fatal accident of July 16, 1994.”
* * *
In Mount Sinai hospital, Cynthia Eden ran out of Carolina’s room and called a nurse.
“Get the doctor!” Cynthia cried. “My daughter has opened her eyes!”
* * *
In the archive room, helped by Hayward and Bird, we were studying the possible scenarios of Fold’s accident.
“According to the specialist,” Derek said, “and judging by the impact, the car probably came level with the motorbike and hit it, sending it off the road.”
“So Fold was murdered,” Bird said.
“Murdered in a way,” Betsy said. “He was left for dead. Whoever hit him was a total amateur.”
“A reluctant murderer!” Derek cried. “The very same profile that Doctor Singh drew of our killer. He doesn’t want to kill, but he has to.”
“There were surely a lot of people who wanted to kill Fold,” I said.
“What if the name of Jeremiah Fold found in that copy of ‘The Darkest Night’ was an order to kill?” Hayward suggested.
Derek pointed to a photograph from the police file showing the interior of the Gordons’ garage. There was a red car with the trunk open and suitcases inside. “Mayor Gordon had a red car.”
“That’s funny,” Hayward said. “I seem to remember he drove a blue convertible.”
At these words, a memory came back to me and I collected the case file from 1994. “We saw it at the time!” I said. “I remember a photograph of Mayor Gordon and his car.”
I went frantically through the reports, the photographs, the transcripts of witness statements, the bank statements. And then I found it. The photograph taken on the fly by the realtor in Montana, showing Mayor Gordon unloading cardboard boxes from the trunk of a blue convertible outside the house he had rented in Bozeman.
“The realtor in Montana was suspicious of Gordon,” Derek said. “He photographed him in front of his car so as to have a record of his license number and his face.”
“So the mayor did have a blue car,” Bird said.
Hayward was now peering closely at the photograph of the red car in Gordon’s garage.
“Look at the rear window,” he said. “There’s the name of the car dealership. It may still be around.”
We checked, and indeed it was. It was located on the road to Montauk and had been in business for forty years. We went straight there and were received by an elderly man in grease-marked overalls in his cluttered, insalubrious office.
“What can I do for the police?” he said amiably.
“We are looking for information about a car that was bought from you, probably in 1994.”
He laughed. “1994? I can’t really help you there. Have you seen the mess in here?”
“Take a look at the model,” Derek suggested, showing him the photograph of the car in the garage.
The man glanced at it. “I sold heaps of that model. Maybe you have the customer’s name?”
“Joseph Gordon, the mayor of Orphea.”
The car dealer turned serious. “Now that’s a sale I won’t forget in a hurry,” he said in a suddenly solemn tone. “Two weeks after buying his car, the poor guy was murdered, along with his whole family.”
“So he bought it in mid-July?” I said.
“It must have been something like that. When I came to open up, I found him outside. He looked like someone who hadn’t slept all night. He stank of alcohol. The right side of his car was ruined. He wanted a new one right away. I had three red Dodges in stock, and he took one without any argument. He paid in cash. He told me he had been driving drunk and had hit a stag, and that it might compromise his re-election in September. He gave me $5,000 and told me to take his car straight to the junkyard. He left in his new car and everyone was happy.”
“Didn’t it strike you as strange?”
“Yes and no. I see things like that all the time. You know the secret of my success in business, why I’ve been here so long?”
“No.”
“I keep my mouth shut, and everyone around here knows that.”
Mayor Gordon had good reason to kill Meghan, but he had killed Jeremiah Fold, with whom he had no connection that we knew of. Why?
Leaving Orphea that evening, Derek and I had questions going around in our heads. We drove back in silence, lost in thought. When I stopped outside his house, he didn’t get out of the car but just sat there.
“What’s up?” I sa
id.
“Since I reopened this investigation with you, Jesse, it’s been like a new life for me. I haven’t felt so fulfilled in a long time. But it’s also brought back the ghosts of the past. For the last two weeks, whenever I close my eyes at night, I find myself back in that car with you and Natasha.”
“It could have been me driving. None of what happened is your fault.”
“It was you or her, Jesse! I had to choose between you and her.”
“You saved my life, Derek.”
“And killed Natasha at the same time, Jesse. Look at yourself twenty years later, still in mourning for her.”
“Derek, it wasn’t your fault.”
“What would you have done in my place, Jesse? That’s the question I keep asking myself.”
I didn’t reply. We smoked together, in silence. Then we exchanged a brotherly hug and Derek went into the house.
I didn’t feel like going home immediately. I wanted to see her again. I drove to the cemetery. At this hour, it was closed. I climbed over the low perimeter wall without difficulty and strolled down the quiet paths. I walked between the graves, the thick grass muffling my footsteps. Everything was calm and beautiful. I saluted my grandparents, who were sleeping peacefully, then came to her grave. I sat down and stayed there for a long while. Suddenly, I heard footsteps behind me. It was Darla.
“How did you know I’d be here?” I said.
She smiled. “You’re not the only person who climbs over the wall to come see her.”
I smiled, too. Then I said, “I’m sorry about the restaurant. It was a stupid idea.”
“No, Jesse, it was a wonderful idea. I’m sorry about the way I reacted.”
She sat down next to me.
“I should never have taken her in our car that day,” I said. “It’s all my fault.”
“What about me, Jesse? I should never have made her get out of my car. We should never have had that stupid quarrel.”
“In other words, we all feel guilty.”
Darla nodded.
“Sometimes I have the feeling she’s with me,” I went on. “When I go back home in the evening, I find myself hoping to see her there.”