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

our eyes. And we hadn’t seen it. The book about the festival. The cover was still dog-eared. It was there on a shelf, among the works of the great American authors. It had not been moved in all that time.

It was Betsy who took it down. We gathered around her as she leafed through the pages, revealing a number of words underlined in ink. As with the script of Hayward’s play, which had been found in the mayor’s safe deposit box, the first letters of each of the underlined words, when put end to end, made a name:

MEGHAN PADALIN

* * *

In Mount Sinai Hospital, Carolina, who had been awake since the day before, was showing surprising signs of recovery. The doctor, who had come to check on her condition, found her devouring a hamburger her father had brought in.

“Hey, slow down,” he said with a smile, “take time to chew.”

“I’m so hungry,” Carolina said, her mouth full.

“I’m pleased to see you like this.”

“Thank you, doctor. It seems you’re the one I owe it to that I’m still alive.”

The doctor shrugged. “You owe it only to yourself, Carolina. You’re a fighter. You wanted to live.”

She lowered her eyes. The doctor checked the bandage on her chest. She had been given a dozen stitches.

“Don’t worry,” the doctor said. “We should be able to fix it and hide the scar.”

“Definitely not,” Carolina said in a low voice. “This scar is my way of fixing my life.”

* * *

In Orphea, we went over to Springfield’s bookstore to reconstruct what might have happened there on July 1, 1994, according to Meghan’s diary. We had suggested to Bird and Hayward that they join us. They might help us to get a better idea.

Betsy placed herself behind the counter, as if she were Meghan. Hayward, Bird and I played the roles of customers. Derek took up position in front of the display of local books, which was in a section slightly removed from the rest of the store. Betsy had brought with her the article from the Chronicle from the end of June 1994, which she had found the day before Springfield was killed. She studied the photograph of Springfield standing by the display and said:

“At the time, the display was in a small space separated from the store by a partition. Springfield called it the Local Writers’ Room. It was only later that he took down the partition to make more space.”

“So at the time,” Derek said, “nobody at the counter could see what was happening in that room.”

“Exactly,” Betsy said. “Nobody would have noticed what was being plotted in that room on July 1, 1994. But Meghan had been watching the mayor. She must have been suspicious of his presence here, given that he had not set foot in the store for months, and she kept an eye on him and noticed his little game.”

“So that day,” Hayward said, “there in the back room Tennenbaum and Mayor Gordon each conveyed the name of the person they wanted to get rid of.”

“Two death sentences,” Bird murmured.

“That’s why Cody Springfield was killed,” Betsy said. “He must have seen the murderer in the store and had finally put two and two together. The murderer might have been afraid that Meghan had spoken to her boss back then about the strange scene she had witnessed.”

As far as I was concerned, this hypothesis stood up. But Derek was not convinced.

“Continue with your theory, Betsy,” he said.

“The swap takes place on July 1. Jeremiah is killed on July 16. For two weeks, Gordon has been watching his every move. He has observed that Fold takes the same route every night to get home from Ridge’s Club. Finally, he goes ahead with it. But he’s not very good at this job. He doesn’t kill him outright, he knocks his man off the road and leaves him at the side of the road when he isn’t even dead. He picks up what broken bits he can, runs away, panics, and sells his car first thing the next day, taking the risk of being reported to the police by the car dealer. All total improvisation. Mayor Gordon only kills Fold because he wants to get rid of Meghan before she can report him to the police and bring him down. He’s a reluctant murderer.”

There was a moment’s silence.

“Maybe,” Derek said. “Let’s assume all this holds up and that Mayor Gordon did kill Fold. What about Meghan?”

“Tennenbaum has been coming to the bookstore to watch her,” Betsy went on. “She mentions his visits in her diary. He’s a regular customer. On one of his visits, he must have heard her say that she won’t be going to the opening night of the festival and he decides to kill her while she’s out jogging, when the whole town will be on Main Street and there’ll be no witnesses.”

“There’s one problem with your hypothesis,” Derek said. “Tennenbaum didn’t kill Meghan Padalin. Not to mention that he drowned in the river after we chased him and the murder weapon was never found, until it was used again last Saturday in the Grand Theater.”

“Which means there is a third man,” Betsy said. “Tennenbaum made sure the message was passed on for Fold to be killed, but it was also in someone else’s interest. And today that person is covering his tracks.”

“The man with the tear gas canister and the eagle tattoo,” I said, and seeing Hayward’s blank expression, I related what Miranda Bird had told us about the incident with Costico in the motel.

“What would his motive be?” Hayward said when I was done.

“Costico tracks him down thanks to the wallet he left in Mylla’s room. And he puts pressure on him. Just imagine: Costico must have been furious to have been made to look ridiculous like that in the parking lot, in front of all the hookers. He would have wanted to take his revenge on the man, by threatening his family and turning him into one of