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

* * *

Orphea, July 30, 1994, 6.50 p.m.

The evening of the murders

Charlotte Brown started Tennenbaum’s van and drove out of the dead-end lane onto Main Street. She was astonished by the indescribable bustle there. The street was full of people and closed to traffic. When she had arrived with the cast that morning, the place had been deserted. Now a dense crowd filled the street.

At the intersection, a volunteer in charge of traffic was busy giving directions to families who were clearly lost. He pushed open the police barrier to allow Charlotte through, signaling to her that she could only go up the street along a corridor left free to allow access to emergency vehicles. She obeyed—she had no choice. She did not know Orphea, and all she had to orientate herself was a rough map on the back of a booklet published by the tourist office for the festival. Penfield Crescent wasn’t on it, although she could see the Penfield neighborhood. She decided to head there and then ask a passer-by for directions. So she drove as far as Sutton Street, then followed the street until she came to Penfield Road, which marked the entrance to the residential neighborhood of the same name. But the place was like a maze, with streets going off in all directions. Charlotte wandered, making U-turns, and even got lost for a brief while. The streets were deserted, almost ghostly: there wasn’t anyone out of doors. Time was passing, she had to hurry. Finally, she got back onto Penfield Road, the main thoroughfare, and drove quickly along it. She had to come across someone in the end. It was then that she spotted a young woman doing exercises in a park. Charlotte immediately pulled up at the side of the road, got out of the van, and walked across the grass.

“Excuse me,” she said to the young woman. “I’m lost. I need to get to Penfield Crescent.”

“You’ve reached it,” the woman said, smiling. “It’s that semicircle on the edge of the park. What number are you looking for?”

“I don’t even know the number,” Charlotte admitted. “I’m looking for Mayor Gordon’s house.”

“Oh, it’s right there,” the young woman said, pointing to a cozy-looking house on the other side of the park.

Charlotte thanked her and got back in the van. She turned onto Penfield Crescent and pulled up outside the mayor’s house, leaving the vehicle on the street, with the engine on. According to the dashboard it was 7.04. She had to be quick. She ran to the door of the house and rang the bell. No response. She rang again and stuck her ear to the door. She thought she could make out some sounds inside. She banged on the door with her fist. “Is there anybody there?” she shouted. But there was no response. As she walked back down the porch steps, she noticed that the drawn curtains at one of the windows in the house were moving slightly. She saw a boy looking at her. He immediately pulled back the curtain. She called out: “Hey, you, wait!” and made to run across the lawn to the window. But the lawn was flooded, and Charlotte found herself up to her ankles in water. When she got to the window, she called the boy again, but to no avail. She didn’t have time to keep on with this. She had to get back to the theater. She tiptoed back across the lawn to the sidewalk. What rotten luck! Her stage shoes were soaked. She got back in the van and set off at high speed. According to the dashboard it was 7.09.

* * *

“So you left Penfield Crescent just before the murderer got there?” I said.

“Yes, Captain Rosenberg,” Charlotte said. “If I’d stayed a minute longer, I’d have been killed, too.”

“Maybe he was already there somewhere,” Derek suggested, “waiting for you to leave.”

“Maybe.”

“Did you notice anything?” I said.

“No, nothing. I got back to the theater as rapidly as I could. There were so many people on Main Street, everything was blocked, I didn’t think I’d get back in time for the play. I’d have been quicker on foot, but I couldn’t abandon Tennenbaum’s van. I finally got to the theater at 7.30. The official part had already begun. I put back the keys to the van and ran to my dressing room.”

“And Tennenbaum didn’t see you?”

“No, and I didn’t say anything to him later either. But in any case, my little escape had been a total fiasco. I hadn’t seen Gordon. And Buzz, the director, had discovered my absence because of my hair dryer catching fire. But he didn’t hold it against me. We were about to start, and he was mainly relieved to see me backstage. And the play was a success. We never spoke about it again.”

“Charlotte,” I said, finally coming to what mattered most to us, “why did you have to speak with Mayor Gordon?”

“I had to recover Kirk Hayward’s play, ‘The Darkest Night’. He’d been pestering me about it for days. He said the mayor had his play and would not give it back. The day the festival was due to start he came to see me in my dressing room.”

“By this point you had broken up with Hayward, is that right?” I said.

“I was already seeing Alan and had split up with Kirk, but he wouldn’t let go. He was making my life a misery.”

* * *

Orphea, July 30, 1994, 10.10 a.m.

Nine hours before the murders

Walking into her dressing room, Charlotte Brown was startled to see Hayward, in his uniform, sprawled on the couch.

“What are you doing here?”

“If you leave me, Charlotte, I’ll kill myself.”

“Oh, for God’s sake, Kirk, grow up!”

“Grow up, you say?” Leaping off the couch, he pulled out his gun and stuck it in his mouth.

“Kirk, stop this, for heaven’s sake!” Charlotte was in a state of panic.

He put his gun back in his belt.