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

“Yes and no,” Erban replied. “As I said, after his girlfriend broke up with him, he lost his way. In short, he was falling apart. There were rumors that he was spending his time following her around town rather than doing his job. You’re police officers, you know what it’s like. When there’s something wrong at the top it affects everyone. Hayward was still coming into the station, but for all intents and purposes we had no chief.”

“When did all this happen?”

“We found out all about it in June 1994.”

“But how were the police able to function without a chief from June to October?”

“Gulliver stepped up. He became de factochief. The guys respected him, and everything went well. There was nothing official about the situation, but nobody minded. Then Mayor Gordon was killed, and in the months that followed, Mayor Brown had his hands full of administrative problems.”

“And yet,” Derek said, “we worked with Hayward when we were investigating the Gordon killings.”

“Who else from the station did you see a lot of?” Erban wanted to know.

“Nobody else,” Derek said.

“Didn’t you think it was strange that you only had dealings with Hayward?”

“I didn’t think about it at the time.”

“Look, it doesn’t mean we neglected our jobs. Four people had been killed. We took every call from the public seriously, every request from the State Police, too. But outside that, Hayward conducted his own investigation. He was obsessed by the case.”

“So he had his own file?”

“Of course. It’s probably still in the records room.”

“There’s nothing there,” Betsy said. “It’s an empty box.”

“Maybe it’s in his office in the basement,” Erban said.

“What office in the basement?”

“In 1994, a group of us went into Hayward’s office, hoping he’d explain himself. He wasn’t there, so we started searching and we realized he’d been spending more time working on his play than doing his job. There were all kinds of scripts and notes there. We decided to do a thorough clean. All the things that had nothing to do with his police work we put through the shredder. Let me tell you, there wasn’t much left. After that, we unplugged his computer, took his chair and his desk, and moved everything into a room in the basement that had been used as an equipment store. The place was a mess, no windows, no fresh air. From that day on, when he got to the station, Hayward went straight down to his new office. We didn’t think he’d hold out for a week, but he managed to survive in that basement for three months, until one day in October he was gone.”

The mutiny described by Erban left us astonished. Finally, I said:

“Without warning anyone, he went missing?”

“That’s right, Captain. I remember it very well, because the day before he left he tried to talk to me about his case.”

* * *

Orphea, late October 1994

Erban walked into the toilets and there was Hayward, washing his hands.

“Lewis, we need to talk,” he said.

Erban pretended at first not to have heard him. But Hayward kept looking at him, so he said:

“Kirk, I don’t want to be roasted by the others . . .”

“Listen, Lewis, you can hate me all you want. But I need your help.”

“Forget it. If the guys find out I’ve even been talking to you, I’m going to end up in the basement like you.”

“Then let’s meet somewhere else. How about the marina parking lot at eight tonight? I’ll tell you everything I’ve been working on. It’s important. It’s about Ted Tennenbaum.”

* * *

“Ted Tennenbaum?” I echoed.

“That’s right, Captain Rosenberg,” Erban said. “Obviously, I didn’t go. Being seen with Hayward was like having scabies. That conversation was the last I ever had with him. The next day, when I got to the station, I heard that Gulliver had found a letter from Hayward on his desk, saying he had left and would not be coming back.”

“What was your reaction?” Derek said.

“Good riddance, I thought. Honestly, it was better for everyone.”

Leaving Erban’s house, Betsy said to us:

“At the Grand Theater, Stephanie asked the volunteers about Ted Tennenbaum’s movements on the night of the murders.”

“Shit,” Derek said under his breath. “Tennenbaum was the man who—”

“. . . committed those murders, I know,” Betsy cut in.

“At least that’s what we’ve been thinking these twenty years. What had Kirk Hayward found out about him, and why didn’t he tell us?”

That same day we received from forensics an analysis of the contents of Stephanie’s computer. There was only one file on the hard drive, a Word document, protected by a code the I.T. people had easily been able to get around.

The three of us gathered in front of Stephanie’s computer and opened the file. “Maybe it’s her article,” Derek said.

“Looks more like a book,” Betsy said.

She was right. Reading the file, we discovered that Stephanie had been devoting a whole book to the case. This was the start of it:

NOT GUILTY

by

Stephanie Mailer

The ad was in between one for a shoe repairer and another for a Chinese restaurant offering an all-you-can-eat buffet for less than $20.

DO YOU WANT TO WRITE A BESTSELLER?

MAN OF LETTERS SEEKS AMBITIOUS WRITER FOR SERIOUS WORK. REFERENCES ESSENTIAL.

I didn’t take it seriously at first. But I was intrigued enough to dial the number. A man answered. I didn’t recognize his voice. It wasn’t until the next day, when I saw him in the café in SoHo where we had arranged to meet, that I realized who it was.

“You?” I said in surprise.

He seemed as surprised as I was. He explained that he needed someone to write a book that had been going around in his head for a long time.

“I’ve been placing that ad for nearly twenty years, Stephanie,” he said. “A lot of people have replied to it over the years, but they were all pitiful.”

“Why are you looking for someone to write it instead of you?”

“Not instead of me. For me. I give you the subject, you write it.”

“But why not write