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

“There’s no need to treat us like fools,” I retorted. “We know your client was in a dispute with Mayor Gordon for several months about the work on Café Athena.”

Starr looked at me, intrigued. “The work has already been completed, it seems to me. So, Sergeant Scott, where is the problem?”

“Construction on Café Athenacould not be delayed, and I know Mayor Gordon threatened to hold it up. After one final quarrel, Mr Tennenbaum ended up killing the mayor, his family, and that unfortunate jogger who was passing the house. Because, as I’m sure you know, Mr Starr, your client is a trained marksman.”

Starr nodded ironically. “That’s quite a tangled web, Sergeant, I’m really impressed.”

Tennenbaum did not react. He was content to let his lawyer talk for him, which had worked well so far. Starr continued:

“If you’ve finished with this tall story of yours, please allow me to reply to it. My client couldn’t have been at Mayor Gordon’s house at seven o’clock on July 30 for the perfectly good reason that he was the fire officer on duty at the Grand Theater. You can ask anyone who was backstage that night, they’ll tell you they saw Ted.”

“There was a lot of coming and going that night,” I said. “Mr Tennenbaum had time to slip out. It’s only a few minutes’ drive to the mayor’s house.”

“Oh, I see, Sergeant! So your theory is that my client jumped into his van, drove over to the mayor’s house, killed everyone who he happened to run across, and then calmly returned to his post at the Grand Theater.”

I decided to play my trump card. After leaving a moment’s silence, I said:

“Your client’s van has been formally identified as having been parked outside the Gordon family’s house a few minutes before the murders. That’s why your client is here, and it’s why he won’t leave here except to go to a federal prison while awaiting trial.”

Starr looked me up and down severely. I had the feeling I had hit the target. He started clapping. “Congratulations, Sergeant. And thank you. I haven’t had such a good laugh in years. So, your whole house of cards rests on this preposterous story of the van, which your witness was apparently unable to identify for ten days until she suddenly got her memory back?”

“How do you know that?”

“Because, unlike you, I do my job. I’m sorry to tell you this, but no judge would accept such an absurd testimony! You have no tangible evidence. Your case is worthy of a Boy Scout. You should be ashamed, Sergeant. If you have nothing to add, my client and I will now take our leave of you.”

The door of the room opened. It was the major, glaring at us. He let Starr and Tennenbaum go, and when they had left he came back in. With an angry kick, he sent a chair flying. I had never seen him so furious.

“So this is your great investigation?” he shouted.

Jesse and I lowered our eyes. We did not dare say a word, we knew it would only have reinforced the major’s fury.

“Well? What do you have to say for yourselves?”

“I’m convinced Tennenbaum did it, sir,” I said.

“How convinced, Scott? So convinced that you won’t sleep or eat until you’ve closed this case?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Then get on with it! Get the hell out of here, the two of you, and solve the case!”

-6

Death of a Reporter

WEDNESDAY, JULY 2 – TUESDAY, JULY 8, 2014

JESSE ROSENBERG

Wednesday, July 2, 2014

Twenty-four days to opening night

On Route 117 an armada of emergency vehicles—fire engines, ambulances and police cars from all over the region—blocked access to Stag Lake. Traffic had been diverted by the Highway Patrol. Tape had been strung across the surrounding meadows, from one part of the forest to another, and behind them officers kept guard, stopping onlookers from getting in, as well as the reporters who had come running.

A few dozen yards away, at the foot of a gentle slope, in the middle of the high grass and cherry bushes, Betsy, Derek and I, as well as Chief Gulliver and a handful of officers, were gazing in silence at the fairy-tale setting of a vast stretch of water, covered in aquatic plants. Right in the middle of the lake, a patch of color was clearly visible in the vegetation. A little mound of white flesh. A human body caught among the water lilies.

It was impossible to say from that distance if it was Stephanie. We were waiting for frogmen from the State Police. As we waited, powerless and speechless, we looked at the calm stretch of water.

On one of the opposite shores, police officers trying to approach had become bogged down in the mud.

“Wasn’t this area searched?” I asked Chief Gulliver.

“We didn’t get as far as here. The place isn’t easily accessible. And the shore’s impassable, what with the mud and the reeds.”

We heard sirens in the distance. Backup was coming. Then Mayor Brown arrived, escorted by Montagne, who had gone to collect him from the town hall. At last, the State Police units arrived, and things moved into higher gear: police officers and firefighters unloading rubber dinghies, followed by frogmen carrying crates of heavy equipment.

“What’s going on in this town?” the mayor said as he joined us, staring out at the expanses of water lilies.

The frogmen rapidly got to work, and the dinghies were launched on the water. Chief Gulliver and I got into one of them. We set out across the lake, followed by a second dinghy carrying the frogmen. The frogs and the birds suddenly broke off their cries, and when the engines were turned off, the silence that ensued was nerve-wracking. The dinghies continued moving through the carpets of flowering water lilies and soon came level with the body. The divers slipped into the water and disappeared in a cloud of bubbles. I crouched