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

We knew that it was a man, that he had been in Orphea in 1994, that he had information suggesting that Tennenbaum was not the murderer, that he considered the matter serious enough to be the subject of a book, and that he could not write this book himself. That was the strangest part of it.

“Who would like to write but can’t?” Derek wondered out loud. “To the point of looking desperately for someone to do it by placing ads year after year in student magazines?”

Betsy wrote on the whiteboard what looked like a mystery worthy of the Sphinx of Thebes:

I WANT TO WRITE BUT CAN’T. WHO AM I?

For want of anything better, all we could do was continue looking through the articles from the Chronicle.We had skimmed through them without success. Suddenly Derek became excited and circled a paragraph in red.

“Listen to this,” he said, staring incredulously at the photocopy he had in his hand. “This is an article that appeared in the Chronicle on August 2, 1994. It says: According to police sources, a third witness has come forward. This testimony may prove crucial for the police, who have almost no leads at the moment.”

“What is all this?” I said. “A third witness? There were only two witnesses, the two people who lived in the neighborhood.”

“I know that, Jesse,” Derek said, as surprised as I was.

Betsy immediately contacted Michael Bird. He had no memory of this witness, but recalled that in the days after the murders the town had been awash with rumors. Unfortunately, it was impossible to question the author of the article, who had died ten years earlier, but Bird told us with certainty that the police source was Chief Gulliver, who had always been a gossip.

Chief Gulliver was not in the station. When he returned, he came to see us in Betsy’s office. When I told him we had discovered a reference to a third witness, he immediately said:

“That was Marty Connors. He worked in a gas station near Penfield Crescent.”

“Why were we never told about him?”

“Because we checked him out, and his testimony was worthless.”

“We’d have liked to judge that for ourselves,” I said.

“You know, at the time, there were dozens like that. We checked them all out carefully before we passed them on to you. People were contacting us about all kinds of things. They’d felt a presence, heard a strange noise, seen a flying saucer. We had to filter them, or you would have been snowed under. We did everything by the book.”

“I don’t doubt that. Was it you who questioned him?”

“No. I can’t remember who did.”

As he was leaving the room, Gulliver stopped in the doorway and said:

“A one-armed man.”

The three of us stared at him.

“What are you talking about, Chief?” I said.

“That thing on the board: I want to write, but I can’t. Who am I? Answer: a one-armed man.”

“Thanks, Chief.”

The gas station Gulliver had mentioned was still there. And by a stroke of luck, twenty years later, so was Marty Connors.

“Marty works nights,” the clerk told me over the phone. “He starts his shift at eleven.”

“Is he working tonight?”

“Yes. You want me to leave him a message?”

“No, that’s kind of you. I’ll come over to see him.”

* * *

Those who have no time to waste getting to the Hamptons from Manhattan travel by air. From the heliport at the southern tip of the island, twenty minutes by helicopter are enough to connect the city with any town on Long Island.

In the parking lot of the airfield in Orphea, Jerry Eden was sitting at the wheel of his car, waiting. A loud engine noise tore him from his thoughts. He looked up and saw the helicopter arriving. He got out of the car and watched the machine come down onto the asphalt a few dozen yards away. Once the engine had been turned off and the propellers stopped, the side door of the helicopter opened and Cynthia Eden got out, followed by their lawyer, Benjamin Graff. They came through the gate separating the landing pad from the parking lot and Cynthia rushed into her husband’s arms, sobbing.

Eden, still embracing his wife, exchanged a friendly handshake with his lawyer.

“Benjamin,” he said, “tell me there is no chance Carolina can go to prison.”

“What quantity of drugs did she have on her?”

“I have no idea.”

“Let’s go straight to the police station. We have to prepare for the hearing. In normal circumstances, I wouldn’t be worried, but there is the background of the Scalini case. If the judge prepares his case properly, he’s bound to find out about that and may be tempted to take it into account. That could be a problem for Carolina.”

Eden was shaking. His legs could barely support him. He asked Benjamin to take the wheel. A quarter of an hour later, they presented themselves at the police station in Orphea. They were admitted to an interrogation room, and a short while later Carolina was led in by two police officers. She was in handcuffs. When she saw her parents, she burst into tears. One of the officers removed her handcuffs and she immediately rushed into their arms. “My baby!” Cynthia cried, hugging her daughter to her as hard as she could.

The officers left them alone in the room and they sat down around the plastic table. The lawyer took out a file and a notepad from his briefcase and immediately got to work.

“Carolina,” he said, “I need to know exactly what you told the police. I particularly need to know if you told them anything about Tara.”

*

At the Grand Theater, Hayward’s auditions were in full flow. Mayor Brown was sitting onstage next to the director, growing more and more anxious as the hours passed. Nobody seemed suitable.

“Don’t worry,” Hayward kept saying. “There’s talent in this town, I know it. It’s just a matter of time.”

“Time is the one thing we don’t have,” the mayor said glumly.

Hayward called the next two aspiring actors up onstage. Two men