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

JESSE ROSENBERG

Sunday, August 3, 2014

Eight days after opening night

In his hospital room, where he had spent the night under observation, Bird told us how he had been attacked at his house.

“I was in the kitchen. I had just phoned my wife. Suddenly, I heard a noise outside. Betsy was in the bathroom, so it couldn’t have been her. I went out to see what was going on, and was sprayed with tear gas before receiving a violent blow full in the face. I blacked out. When I came to, I was in the trunk of a car, with my hands tied. The trunk suddenly opened. I pretended to be unconscious. I was dragged along the ground. I could smell earth and vegetation. I heard a noise, like someone digging. I half opened my eyes. I was in the middle of a forest. A few yards away was a guy in a hood, digging a hole. It was my grave. I thought about my wife, my daughters. I didn’t want to die like that. With the energy of despair, I stood up and started running. I ran down a slope, and ran as fast as I could through the forest. I could hear him behind me, running after me. I managed to get some distance from him. Then I came to a road. I followed it, hoping to see a car, but finally spotted a gas station.”

Derek, having listened carefully to Bird’s story, said, “Enough of this bullshit, Michael. We found Stephanie Mailer’s keys in your desk drawer.”

Bird looked amazed. “Stephanie Mailer’s keys? What are you talking about? That’s completely absurd.”

“And yet it’s the truth. A whole bunch of them, the keys to her apartment, the newspaper offices, her car, and a self-storage facility.”

“That’s quite simply impossible,” Bird said, seeming genuinely astonished by all this.

“Was it you, Michael?” I said. “Did you kill Stephanie?”

“No, Jesse, of course not! I mean, it’s ridiculous! Who found those keys in my desk?”

We would rather he hadn’t asked that question. Since the keys had not been found by a police officer in the course of an official search, they had no value as evidence. But I had to tell him the truth.

“It was Kirk Hayward.”

“Hayward? Hayward searched my desk and just happened to come across Stephanie’s keys? That makes no sense! Was he alone?”

“Yes.”

“Listen, I don’t know what it means, but I think Hayward is pulling the wool over your eyes. Just as he did with that play of his. So what’s happening? Am I under arrest?”

“No.”

Stephanie Mailer’s keys were not valid evidence. Had Hayward really found them in Bird’s desk as he claimed? Or had he had them with him from the start? Unless it was Bird who was trying to pull the wool over our eyes and who had staged the attack on himself? It was Hayward’s word against Bird’s. One of them was lying. But which one?

The wound to Bird’s face was serious and had required several stitches. Blood had been found on the front steps of his house. His story held up. The fact that Betsy had been thrown onto the back seat of her car was also consistent with Bird’s version, since he claimed he had been put in the trunk. In addition, we had searched his house as well as the offices of the Chronicle and had found absolutely nothing.

After our visit with Bird, Derek and I went to see Betsy in a nearby room. She, too, had spent the night in the hospital. She had pulled through quite well. She had an ugly bruise on her forehead and a black eye, but she had escaped the worst. The little island had been searched and Costico’s decomposing body had been found buried in a shallow grave. He had been shot.

Betsy had not seen her attacker, nor heard the sound of his voice. All she remembered was the tear gas that had blinded her and the blows that had knocked her out. When she had come to, she had a canvas bag over her head. As for her car, in which there might possibly be fingerprints, it had still not been recovered.

Betsy was ready to leave the hospital and we offered to drive her home. In the corridor, we told her Bird’s version, and she seemed doubtful.

“The attacker left him in the trunk of the car while he rowed me to that island? Why?”

“Maybe the boat wouldn’t have taken the weight of three people,” I suggested, “and he was planning to make two trips.”

“When you got to the lake, did you not look in the car?”

“No,” I said. “We dived straight into the water.”

“So we can’t do anything to Bird?”

“Nothing without cast-iron evidence.”

“If Bird’s blameless,” Betsy went on, “why did Miranda lie to me? She told me she met Michael a few years after Fold died. But in their living room, I saw a photograph from Christmas 1994. That’s just six months later. By that time, she was back with her parents in New York. She could only have met Michael when she was working for Fold.”

“You think Bird could be the guy from the motel?” I said.

“Yes, I do. And what’s more, I think Miranda made up that stuff about the tattoo to throw everyone off the scent.”

Just then, who should we see but Miranda Bird, who had just arrived at the hospital.

“My God, Betsy, your face!” she said. “I’m sorry about what happened. How are you feeling?”

“I’m feeling fine.”

Miranda turned to us. “You see, Michael had nothing to do with it. Poor man, what state is he in?”

“We found Betsy in the very place you suggested,” I said.

“It could have been anyone! Everybody in the area knows Badger Lake. Do you have any evidence?”

We had nothing concrete. I felt as if I was reliving the investigation into Tennenbaum in 1994.

“You lied to me, Miranda,” Betsy said. “You