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

was the account of a teenager on vacation with his parents who every evening met up with a group of friends on the beach near which we had found Stephanie’s car. It was Betsy who questioned him after his parents, alerted by the media storm, contacted us, thinking their son might have seen something important. They were right.

According to Dr Singh, Stephanie’s death occurred on the Monday night. The teenager told Betsy that on Monday, June 26, he had walked away from the group for a quiet phone call to his girlfriend, who had stayed behind in New York.

“I sat down on a rock,” the boy said. “From there, I had a view of the parking lot. I remember it was deserted. Suddenly, I saw a woman coming along the path from the forest. She waited for a while, until 10.30. I know that because that’s when I finished my call. I checked on my phone. Just then, a car drove into the parking lot. I saw the woman in the headlights. She was wearing a white T-shirt. The window on the passenger side was rolled down and the woman said something to the person at the wheel, then got in next to him and the car drove off. Was it the woman who died?”

“I’ll check it out,” Betsy said, not wanting to shock him needlessly. “Could you describe the car for me? Did you notice anything you rem-ember? Maybe you saw the license plates? Even part of them? Or the name of the state?”

“No, I’m sorry.”

“Was the driver a man or a woman?”

“I couldn’t say. It was pretty dark and it happened quickly. I didn’t really pay that much attention. If I’d known . . .”

“You’ve already helped me a lot. You can confirm that the girl got in the car voluntarily?”

“Oh, yes! She was waiting for that car, I’m sure of it.”

So the teenager was the last person apart from the murderer to have seen Stephanie alive. The second testimony was provided by a traveling salesman from Hicksville who showed up at troop headquarters. He told us he had come to Orphea on Monday, June 26, to see some customers.

“I left town around 10.30 in the evening. I took Route 17 to get back on the highway. As I passed Stag Lake, I saw a car parked at the side of the road with its engine running and both front doors open. I thought that was odd, obviously, so I slowed down. I thought someone might be in trouble. It does happen.”

“What time was this?”

“Around 10.50. Shortly before 11, anyway.”

“So, you slowed down, and . . . ?”

“I slowed down, because I thought it was strange this car should have stopped there. I looked around, and saw someone climbing back up from the lake. I thought it was probably someone who’d stopped to take a leak. I didn’t think further than that. If this person had needed help, he’d have signaled to me. I started my car again and drove home, didn’t think about it anymore. It was only when I heard about a murder on the shore of the lake on Monday night that I made the connection with what I’d seen and figured it might be important.”

“The person you saw—was it a man or a woman?”

“I’d say more likely a man. But it was quite dark.”

“How about the car?”

“My recollection is only of the doors being open and the engine. But nothing else.”

In Betsy’s office at the Orphea police station, we were able to put together these different elements and reconstruct a timeline of Stephanie’s last night.

“At 6.00 she arrives at the Kodiak Grill,” I said. “She waits for someone—probably the killer—who doesn’t show himself, but is in fact watching her in the restaurant without her knowing it. At 10.00 she leaves the restaurant. Her possible killer calls her from the booth in the restaurant and arranges to meet her on the beach. Stephanie is worried and calls Sean, the police officer, but he doesn’t answer. So she goes to the place they agreed on. At 10.30, the killer arrives in his car. She gets in. Which means she must trust him, or maybe that she actually knows him.”

With the help of a huge wall map of the region, Betsy traced in red marker the route the car must have taken. From the beach, along Ocean Road, then along Route 17 in a north-easterly direction, beside the lake. From the beach to Stag Lake was five miles, in other words, about fifteen minutes by car.

“Around 10.45,” I went on, “realizing she’s in danger, Stephanie throws herself out of the car and runs off through the forest, before the driver catches up with her and drowns her. At some point he takes her keys and goes to her apartment, probably that same Monday night. Not finding what he is looking for there, he burglarizes the newspaper offices and leaves with Stephanie’s computer, but there, too, he draws a blank. Stephanie has been too careful. Playing for time, he sends a text at midnight to Michael Bird, knowing he’s her editor and still hoping to get his hands on Stephanie’s investigative work. But when he realizes that the State Police are starting to think that Stephanie’s disappearance is suspicious, things move quickly. He goes back to Stephanie’s apartment, but I show up. He knocks me out and comes back the following night to set fire to it, hoping at least to destroy whatever it was he never found.”

For the first time since the beginning of the case, we had a clearer idea of what had happened. But where we felt that the vise was starting to close in, the townspeople were getting increasingly paranoid, and the front page of that day’s Chronicle certainly did not improve matters. I became aware of that when Betsy received a call from Springfield.

“Have you read the paper?” he said. “Stephanie’s murder is being linked to the festival. I’m calling a meeting of the