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

She had with her a cardboard folder containing bank documents. She pushed it across the table in our direction.

“It took me a while to find his name. I didn’t bring the newspaper back with me and I couldn’t remember the surname. I had to go into the bank’s computer system to find the transactions. These last few months he had been coming several times a week.”

As we listened to her, Jesse and I consulted the copies of statements that Macy Warwick had brought. There were several deposits of $20,000 in cash into an account registered with her bank.

“Several times a week? Joseph Gordon came to your branch and deposited these sums?” Jesse said in surprise.

“Yes,” Macy said. “$20,000 is the maximum a customer can deposit without needing to give an explanation.”

Studying the statements, we discovered that these deposits had started the previous March.

“And besides, my boss doesn’t like too many questions being asked. He says if the customers don’t come here, they’ll go somewhere else. Apparently the bank’s directors are planning to close some branches.”

“So the money is still in this account in your bank?”

“In our bank, if you like, but I took the liberty of checking which account the money was deposited in. It was a different account, still in Mr Gordon’s name, but opened in our branch in Bozeman, Montana.”

Jesse and I were astonished. In the bank statements we had found in Gordon’s house, there were only personal accounts held in a bank in the Hamptons. What was this other account in the wilds of Montana?

We immediately contacted the Montana State Police to get more information. And what they discovered was more than enough justification for Jesse and me to fly to Yellowstone Bozeman Airport, by way of Chicago. We took a few sandwiches with Natasha’s Sauce to survive the flight.

Mayor Gordon had been renting a house in Bozeman since April. We were able to establish that because of the regular debits from his account there. We tracked down the realtor, who took us to a sinister little single-story shack built out of planks at the intersection of two streets.

“Yes, that’s him, Joseph Gordon,” the realtor said when we showed him a photograph of the mayor. “He came to Bozeman just once, in April. He was alone. He’d driven all the way from New York State. His car was full of cardboard boxes. He confirmed that he would take the house even before he’d seen it. At a price like that, he said, how can you refuse?”

“Are you certain this was the man you saw?” I said.

“Oh, yes. I didn’t trust him, so when he wasn’t looking I took a photograph, so that I had at least his face and his license plate, just in case.”

The realtor took a photograph from his pocket. On it, Mayor Gordon could be seen unloading boxes from a convertible.

“Did he tell you why he wanted to live here?”

“Not really, but in the end he did say something along the lines of ‘It’s not especially beautiful around here, but it’s quiet and out of the way.’”

“And when was he supposed to be moving in?”

“He rented the house from April, but he didn’t know when exactly he’d be coming for good. I didn’t really care. As long as the rent is paid, the rest is no concern of mine.”

“Can I take this photograph for our file?” I said.

“Go ahead, Sergeant.”

The bank account opened in March, the house rented in April. Mayor Gordon had been planning his escape. The night he died, he really was on the verge of leaving Orphea with his family. Could the killer have known that?

We also had to figure out where that money came from. Because now it was a near certainty that there was a link between his murder and those huge sums of cash he had transferred to Montana—a total of almost $500,000.

Our first idea was to check if that money might be the connection between Mayor Gordon and Tennenbaum. We had to use all our persuasive skills on Major McKenna for him to agree to send a request to the assistant D.A. for access to Tennenbaum’s bank details.

“You know,” the major warned us, “with a lawyer like Starr on the case, if you screw up one more time, you’ll be dragged in front of the disciplinary board—or even in front of a judge—for harassment. And let me tell you this right now: if that happens, it’s your careers down the toilet.”

We knew that perfectly well, but we could not help but notice that the mayor had started to receive those mysterious sums of money just when the refurbishment work on the Café Athena buildinghad started. What if Mayor Gordon had been screwing money out of Tennenbaum in return for agreeing not to block the work and letting it open in time for the festival?

After hearing our arguments, the assistant D.A. thought our theory was sufficiently persuasive to issue a warrant. And that was how we discovered that between February and July 1994 Tennenbaum had withdrawn $500,000 from an account inherited from his father in a Manhattan bank.

JESSE ROSENBERG

Tuesday, July 8, 2014

Eighteen days to opening night

That morning, as we drove to New York, Betsy told Derek and me about the call she had had from Kirk Hayward.

“He refused to tell me anything over the phone, but he agreed to meet tomorrow, Wednesday, at 5 p.m. in the Beluga Bar.”

“In Los Angeles?” I said. “Is he joking?”

“He seemed serious to me. I’ve checked the schedules. You can take a flight tomorrow morning from J.F.K., Jesse.”

“What do you mean, Jesse?” I protested.

“This is a job for a State Police Officer, and Derek has children.”

We had not warned Bergdorf we were coming because we wanted to surprise him. We found him in the editorial offices of the New York Literary Review. He ushered us into his untidy office.

“I just heard about Stephanie,” he said immediately. “Such a tragedy! Do you have any leads?”

“A possible