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

THE POLICE IN ACTION

That article earned me a lot of teasing from my colleagues, some of it funny, some of it less so. I found a clipping under the windshield wiper of my car, on which an anonymous fan had written with a black Sharpie: Two Cows in Orphea. And as if that wasn’t enough, my parents came from New York to visit me that weekend.

“Is that why you moved here?” my father asked as soon as he arrived, waving a copy of the Chronicle in front of me. “You screwed up your marriage to become a cowherd?”

“Daddy, are we going to start arguing?”

“I just think you would have made a good lawyer.”

“I know, Daddy, you’ve been telling me that for the last fifteen years.”

“When I think you studied law for so long only to end up a police officer in a little town! What a waste!”

“I’m doing what I like, that’s the most important thing, isn’t it?”

“I’m taking Mark as my partner,” he announced.

“Dammit, do you really need to work with my ex-husband?”

“He’s a good man, you know.”

“Don’t start, please!”

“He’s prepared to forgive you. You could get back together again, and you could come back to the firm.”

“I’m proud of working for the police.”

JESSE ROSENBERG

Tuesday, July 1, 2014

Twenty-five days to opening night

Stephanie had been missing for a week.

In the area, it was the only topic of conversation. A handful of people were convinced she had orchestrated her escape. Most thought that something had happened to her and were worried about who would be the next victim. A housewife out shopping? A girl on her way to the beach?

That morning, July 1, Derek and I joined Betsy at Café Athena for breakfast. She told us about the strange disappearance of Kirk Hayward, something neither Derek nor I had known about at the time, which meant it had happened after we had solved the Gordon killings.

“I had a look at the archives of the Chronicle,” Betsy said. “And this is what I found, searching for articles about the first festival in 1994 . . .”

She showed us a photocopy of an article with the headline:

THE GREAT CRITIC OSTROVSKI

ON THE FESTIVAL

I skimmed the beginning of the article, an interview with Meta Ostrovski, a famous New York critic, about that first festival. My eyes were drawn to a particular section.

“Listen to this,” I said to Derek. “The interviewer asks Ostrovski about his highlights and disappointments from the festival, and Ostrovski replies: ‘The highlight—and I think everyone will agree—was definitely the wonderful production of “Uncle Vanya”, above all Charlotte Carrell’s superb performance as Yelena. As for the disappointments, I was surprised to find there was no play by Kirk Hayward on the program, as I had been led to believe. I had heard good things about his recent production in Albany.’”

“Did he say Kirk Hayward?” Derek said, incredulous.

“That’s right, Kirk Hayward,” Betsy said, proud of her discovery.

“What’s that all about?” I said in astonishment. “Orphea’s police chief had a connection with the festival?”

“What’s more,” Derek added, “Hayward investigated the Gordon murders. So he was linked both to the murders and to the festival.”

“That must be why Stephanie wanted to find him.” I said. “We must absolutely track him down.”

One man could help us in our search: Lewis Erban, the officer Betsy had replaced in Orphea. He had spent his whole career in the Orphea police department, which meant he had definitely been around at the same time as Chief Hayward.

Betsy, Derek and I paid him a visit. We found him tending a flower bed in front of his house. Seeing Betsy, his face lit up with a friendly smile.

“Betsy,” he said, “what a pleasure! You’re the first of my colleagues to come calling.”

“I’m sorry that this is more than a social visit,” Betsy said. “These two officers are from the State Police. You may remember them from the 1994 investigation. We’d like to talk to you about Chief Hayward.”

Sitting in his kitchen, where he insisted on offering us a homemade cookie, Erban told us he had no idea what had become of Kirk Hayward.

“Could he be dead?” Betsy said.

“I doubt it. How old would he be today? Around fifty-five.”

“He disappeared in October 1994, soon after the murders of Mayor Gordon and his family were solved, is that right?”

“That’s right. One day he was there, the next day he was gone. He left a strange letter of resignation. We never could figure it out.”

“Was there an investigation?”

“Not really,” Lewis said with a slightly shamefaced air.

“How do you mean? Your police chief walks out on you and no-one tries to find out why?”

“The truth of it is, everyone disliked him,” Erban said. “By the time he disappeared, he wasn’t really in control anymore. His deputy, Ron Gulliver, had taken over, more or less. We’d lost all patience with Hayward. We called him Chief Loner.”

“Then why was he ever appointed chief?” Derek said.

“Well, we liked him at first. He was charismatic and highly intelli-gent. A good commander, too. Crazy about the theater. You know what he did during his spare time? He wrote plays! He’d spend his vacations in New York, seeing all the plays that were on. He even put on a play with a student company from the University of Albany, and it was quite successful. Got talked about in the paper and everything. He had found himself a girlfriend, a student who was in the cast, a really pretty girl. He had the works. The guy had everything going for him.”

“What went wrong?” Derek said.

“His sudden fame didn’t last more than a year, if that. He wrote a second play. When the theater festival was created, he moved heaven and earth to get his play put on as the opening show, but Mayor Gordon said no. They had arguments about it. And, at about that time Hayward’s girlfriend left him, so his life took a turn for the worse . . .”

“Was it because of his play that Hayward’s colleagues in the