The Disappearance of Stephanie Mailer: A gripping new thriller with a killer twist by Joël Dicker (ebook reader play store .txt) 📕

stayed there until late in the night looking for fingerprints, but they found none. For my part, judging by the force of the blow I had received, I inclined strongly to the idea that the intruder was a man.

I had to find Stephanie and I sensed that I did not have much time. Driving now along Route 17, I accelerated on the last straight stretch before getting to Orphea, without putting on either my flashing lights or my siren.

It was only when I passed the road sign marking the city limits that I noticed the unmarked police car concealed behind it, which immediately started following me. I pulled up onto the shoulder. In my rear-view mirror I saw a pretty young woman in a uniform get out of her vehicle and walk toward me. I was about to make the acquaintance of the first person who would agree to help me in unraveling this case: Betsy Kanner.

As she approached my open window, I showed my badge and smiled.

“Captain Jesse Rosenberg,” she read. “I think I saw you briefly on Bendham Road yesterday.” She introduced herself. “Deputy Betsy Kanner. How’s your head, Captain?”

“My head’s fine, thanks. But I’m a little disturbed by what happened in that apartment. Chief Gulliver thinks it was a burglary, but I don’t hold with that. I wonder if I haven’t gotten myself involved in a really weird case.”

“Gulliver’s a complete idiot,” Betsy said. “But tell me about your case. I’m interested.”

I realized then that Betsy might be a valuable ally in Orphea. And as I was subsequently to discover, she was also a terrific policewoman.

“Betsy, can I buy you a coffee? I’ll tell you the whole story, as much as I know it.”

A few minutes later, in a roadside diner, I was telling Betsy how everything had started, how Stephanie had come to see me at the beginning of the week and told me about an investigation she was conducting into the quadruple murder in Orphea in 1994.

“What quadruple murder in 1994?”

“The mayor of Orphea and his family were murdered, as well as a woman who was out jogging, who happened to pass by. It was the opening night of the first Orphea Theater Festival. And it was the first big case I worked on. My partner Derek Scott and I reckoned we had solved it. But on Monday, this woman, a journalist on the Chronicle, approached me at my retirement party to tell me she thought we had made a mistake. We had gotten the wrong man. And then she vanished. Last night, someone paid a visit to her apartment.

“According to the parents,” I said to Betsy, “the only duplicate was the one in their possession. That means that whoever was in the apartment last night had Stephanie’s keys.”

I had already mentioned the text received by her editor Michael Bird, and now Betsy said, “If that person has Stephanie’s keys, he or she may also have her cell phone.”

“You mean she didn’t send the text? Then who did?”

“Someone who was playing for time.”

From the back pocket of my pants I took the envelope I’d slipped out of the letterbox the previous day and handed it to Betsy.

“This is Stephanie’s credit card statement,” I said. “She traveled to Los Angeles at the beginning of the month. We don’t know what that was about. I’ve checked, and she hasn’t taken a plane since. If she left of her own free will, she most likely left by car. I put out an A.P.B. on the license number. If she’s on the road somewhere, the Highway Patrol will find her soon enough.”

“You didn’t waste any time,” Betsy said.

“There is no time to waste,” I said. “I also requested her telephone records and credit card statements for the last few months. I hope to have them by this evening.”

Betsy quickly read the statement. “Her credit card was last used at 9.55 on Monday evening at the Kodiak Grill. That’s on Main Street. We should go there. Someone may have seen something.”

The Kodiak Grill was located at the top of Main Street. The manager consulted the week’s roster for us and pointed out the members of staff there now who had also been on duty on Monday evening. One of the waitresses we questioned recognized Stephanie from the photograph Mrs Mailer had insisted I take with me when I was at their house yesterday.

“I remember her,” she said. “She was here at the beginning of the week. A pretty girl, all on her own.”

“How come you remember her out of all your customers? Was there something special about her?”

“It wasn’t the first time she was here. She always asked for the same table. She’d say she was waiting for someone, but whoever it was never showed up.”

“What happened on Monday?”

“She got here when my shift was starting, around six. And she waited. In the end she ordered a Caesar salad and a Coke, and then she left.”

“Around ten.”

“That’s possible. I don’t remember the time, but she was here for quite a while. She paid and left. That’s all I remember.”

Leaving the Kodiak Grill, we noticed that the building next door was a bank with an A.T.M. on the outside.

“There must be cameras,” Betsy said. “Stephanie may have been filmed on Monday.”

A few minutes later, we were in the cramped office of the bank’s security officer, who showed us the angles from which the different cameras on the building recorded the scene. One of them was aimed at the sidewalk and we could see the outside seating area of the Kodiak Grill. He ran Monday’s footage for us, from six o’clock onwards. Peering at the people passing on the screen, I suddenly saw her.

“Stop!” I said. “That’s her.”

The security officer froze the image.

“Now go back slowly, please,” I said.

On the screen, Stephanie walked backward. The cigarette she was holding between her lips reconstructed itself, then she lit it with a gold lighter, took it between her fingers, and put it in