by Joël Dicker
Harry’s solitude would not have bothered me, if our friendship hadn’t begun, inevitably, to cause talk. The other students insinuated that we were having an affair. One Saturday morning I finally asked him straight out, “Harry, why are you always alone?”
He shook his head; I saw his eyes shine.
“You’re asking me about love, Marcus, but love is complicated. It is at once the most extraordinary and the worst thing that can happen to you. You’ll discover it for yourself one day. Love can hurt so much. All the same, you should not be afraid of falling, and especially not of falling in love, because love is also very beautiful. But like everything that’s beautiful, it dazzles you and hurts your eyes.”
From that day on, I began to visit Harry regularly in Somerset. Sometimes I came from Burrows just for the day; sometimes I spent the night. Harry taught me to be a writer, and I did what I could to make him feel less alone. And so it was in the years leading up to my graduation, I saw Harry Quebert the star writer whenever I was at Burrows, and in Somerset I hung out with Just Harry, the solitary man.
*
In the summer of 2002, after four years at Burrows, I received my degree. On graduation day, after the ceremony, when I gave the valedictory speech in the main amphitheater to an audience including my family and friends from Montclair, who were moved to find that I was still Marcus the Magnificent, I walked through campus with Harry for a little while. We strolled beneath the thick-trunked plane trees, and eventually found ourselves at the boxing gym. The sun was bright. It was a beautiful day. We made one final pilgrimage together among the punching bags and boxing rings.
“This is where it all began,” Harry said. “What are you going to do now?”
“Go back to New Jersey. Write a book. Become a writer, just as you taught me. Write a great novel.”
He smiled. “A great novel? Patience, Marcus—you’ve got your whole life to do that. Will you come here from time to time, you think?”
“Of course.”
“You’re always welcome in Somerset.”
“I know, Harry. Thank you.”
He looked at me, and took me by the shoulders. “It’s been years since our first meeting. You’ve changed. You’ve become a man. I can’t wait to read your first novel.”
We stared into each other’s eyes for a long time, and he added: “Why do you want to write, deep down?”
“I don’t know.”
“That’s not an answer. Why do you write?”
“It’s in my blood. When I wake up in the morning, it’s the first thing I think about. That’s all I can say. Why did you become a writer, Harry?”
“Because writing gave meaning to my life. In case you haven’t noticed, life generally doesn’t have any meaning—unless you strive, every God-given day, to provide it with some. You have talent, Marcus. Give meaning to your life, make the wind of victory blow in your name. To be a writer is to be alive.”
“What if I don’t manage it?”
“You’ll manage it. It will be difficult, but you’ll get there. The day writing gives meaning to your life, you will be a true writer. Until that happens, whatever you do, don’t be afraid of falling.”
It was the novel I wrote during the next two years that propelled me to the heights of fame. There was a bidding war among publishers, and finally, in 2005, I signed a contract for a nice sum with Schmid & Hanson. Roy Barnaski, a shrewd businessman, gave me a three-book contract. As soon as it appeared, in the fall of 2006, the book was a huge success. Felton High School’s Marcus the Magnificent had become a famous novelist, and my life was turned upside down: I was twenty-six years old, rich, well known, and talented. I was far from imagining that Harry’s lesson was just beginning.
27
Where the Hydrangeas Were Planted
“Harry, I have doubts about what I’m writing. I don’t know if it’s any good. If it’s worth—”
“Put your shorts on, Marcus. And go for a run.”
“Now? But it’s pouring rain.”
“Spare me your whining. Rain never hurt anyone. If you’re not brave enough to run in the rain, you’ll certainly never be brave enough to write a book.”
“Is this another one of your famous maxims?”
“Yes. And this rule applies to all of the Marcuses inside you: the man, the boxer, and the writer. Anytime you have doubts about what you’re doing, go outside and run. Run until you can’t run anymore. Run until you feel that fierce desire to win being born within you. You know, Marcus, I used to hate rain too before …”
“What changed your mind?”
“Someone.”
“Who?”
“Go. Leave now, and don’t come back until you’re exhausted.”
“How am I supposed to learn if you never tell me anything?”
“You ask too many questions, Marcus. Have a good run.”
He was a big man and he didn’t exactly look easygoing: an African American with hands like bear paws, wearing a too-tight blazer that revealed his powerful, stocky build. The first time I saw him, he was pointing a revolver at me. He was the first person who had ever threatened me with a gun. He entered my life on June 18, 2008, the day I began my investigation into the murders of Nola Kellergan and Deborah Cooper. That morning, after almost forty-eight hours at Goose Cove, I decided it was time to go see the gaping hole that had been dug sixty feet from the house and that, up to this point, I had been content to observe from a distance. After slipping under the police tape, I spent a long time inspecting that area that I knew so well. Goose Cove was surrounded by beach and shore-side forest, and there were no barriers or signposts to mark the limits of the property. Anybody could come and go, and it wasn’t unusual to see people walking along the beach or cutting through the woods. The trench was on a grassy plot overlooking the ocean. When I reached it, thousands of questions began buzzing in my head. In particular, I wondered how many hours I had spent on that deck, or in Harry’s office, while the girl’s corpse was rotting underground. I took photographs and even a few videos with my cell phone, trying to imagine the decomposed body, as found by the police. Fixated as I was upon the crime scene, I did not sense the threatening presence behind me. It was only when I turned around to film the distance to the deck that I saw a man, a few yards away, aiming a revolver at me.
“Don’t shoot!” I cried. “Please don’t shoot, for God’s sake! I’m Marcus Goldman! Writer!”
Instantly he lowered his gun.
“You’re Marcus Goldman?”
He slid the pistol into a holster hanging from his belt, and I noticed he was wearing a badge.
“You’re a cop?” I asked him.
“Sergeant Perry Gahalowood. New Hampshire State Police, Investigative Services Bureau. What are you doing here? This is a crime scene.”
“Do you do this a lot, hold people up with your gun? What if I’d been with the feds? You’d have looked pretty stupid then, wouldn’t you? I’d have kicked you off the property right away.”
He laughed.
“You? A cop? I’ve been watching you for ten minutes, walking around on tiptoes so you don’t get your loafers dirty. And federal agents don’t scream when they see a gun. They get theirs out and shoot everything that moves.”
“I thought you were a criminal.”
“Because I’m black?”
“No, because you look like a criminal. Is that a bolo tie you’re wearing?”
“Yes.”
“You know they’re not cool anymore?”
“Are you going to tell me what the hell you’re doing here?”
“I live here.”
“What do you mean, you live here?”
“I’m a friend of Harry Quebert. He asked me to look after the house in his absence.”
“Harry Quebert is accused of a double murder. His house has been searched and sealed off. I’m throwing you out, my friend.”
“There are no seals on the house.”
He looked puzzled for a mome
nt, then replied, “I hadn’t thought some wannabe writer would come here and squat.”
“You should have thought. Even if that is difficult for a policeman.”
“I’m going to throw you out anyway.”
“Legal loophole!” I said. “No seals means access is not prohibited! I’m staying here. If you try to throw me out, I’ll take you to the Supreme Court and sue you for threatening me with your gun. I will claim millions in damages. I’ve filmed everything.”
“Roth is behind this, isn’t he?” Gahalowood said with a sigh.
“Yes.”
“That asshole. He’d send his own mother to the electric chair if it would get one of his clients off.”
“Legal loophole, Sergeant. Legal loophole. I hope you’re not mad at me.”
“I am. But in any case, we’re not interested in the house anymore. On the other hand, I am warning you now not to cross any more police tape. Can’t you read? It says CRIME SCENE—DO NOT CROSS.”
Having recovered my self-assurance, I dusted off my shirt and took a few steps toward the hole.
“The thing is, Sergeant, I’m running an investigation too,” I told him very seriously. “Tell me what you know about the case.”
He laughed again.
“I don’t believe this. You’re running an investigation? That’s a new one. You owe me fifteen dollars, by the way.”
“Why?”
“That’s what I paid for your book. I read it last year. A very bad book. Probably the worst I’ve read in my entire life. I would like to be reimbursed.”
I looked him straight in the eyes and said, “Fuck off, Sergeant.”
And since I was walking without looking where I was going, I fell into the hole. I began screaming because I was in the place where Nola had died.
“You are unbelievable!” Gahalowood shouted from the edge of the hole.
He gave me his hand and helped me back up. We went to sit on the deck and I gave him his money. All I had was a fifty-dollar bill.
“Do you have any change?”
“No.”
“Keep it, then.”
“Thank you, writer.”
“I’m not a writer anymore.”
I would soon discover that Sergeant Gahalowood was a crabby and extremely stubborn man. Nevertheless, after I’d nagged him for a while, he told me he’d been on duty the day the discovery was made, and that he had been one of the first to see inside the hole.
“There were human remains, and a leather bag. The name Nola Kellergan was stitched on the inside of the bag, and there was a manuscript, in reasonably good condition. I imagine leather preserves paper.”
“How did you know this manuscript was Harry Quebert’s?”
“At the time, I didn’t know. I showed it to him in the interview room and he acknowledged it right away. I checked the text afterward, of course. It corresponds word for word to his book, The Origin of Evil. Strange coincidence, don’t you think?”
“Just because he wrote a book about Nola doesn’t mean he killed her. He says that manuscript disappeared, and that Nola sometimes took his pages.”
“We found the girl’s corpse in his yard. With the manuscript of his book. Show me the proof of his innocence, writer, and maybe I’ll change my mind.”
“I’d like to see that manuscript.”
“Out of the question. It’s evidence.”
“But I’ve told you: I’m investigating this too,” I insisted.
“I’m not interested in your investigation, writer. You’ll have access to the case files when Quebert goes before the grand jury.”
I wanted to show him that I was not some hopeless amateur, and that I, too, had a certain knowledge of the case.
“I spoke with Travis Dawn, now Somerset’s police chief. Apparently, at the time Nola disappeared, they had a suspect: the driver of a black Chevrolet Monte Carlo.”
“I know all about it,” Gahalowood said. “And guess what, Sherlock: Harry Quebert had a black Chevrolet Monte Carlo.”
“How do you know about the car?”
“I read the report from back then.”
I thought about this for a second, and then said, “Wait a minute, Sergeant. If you’re so clever, explain to me why Harry would have wanted bushes planted in the very place where he’d buried Nola.”
“He didn’t expect the gardeners to dig so deep.”
“That makes no sense and you know it. Harry didn’t kill Nola Kellergan.”
“How can you be so sure?”
“He loved her.”
“They all say that at their trials: ‘I loved her too much, so I had to kill her.’ When you love someone, you don’t kill her.”
With these words, Gahalowood got up from his chair.
“Are you leaving already, Sergeant? But our investigation has hardly even begun.”
“Our investigation? Mine, you mean.”
“When will we meet again?”
“Never, writer. Never.”
And he left without further ado.
*
While Gahalowood did not take me seriously, the opposite was true for Travis Dawn, whom I went to see soon afterward at the police station in Somerset, to give him the anonymous message from the evening before.
“‘Go home, Goldman’? When did you find this?”
“Last night. I went for a walk on the beach. When I came back, this message was jammed in the front door.”
“And I suppose you didn’t see anything …”
“Nothing.”
“Is this the first time?”
“Yes. Then again, I’ve been here only two days …”
“I’m going to register a complaint in order to open a file. We have to be careful, Marcus.”
“At first, I thought it might be my mother’s doing.”
“No, this is serious. Don’t underestimate the emotional impact of this case. Can I keep this letter?”
“It’s all yours.”
“Thank you. Can I do anything else for you? I assume you didn’t come to see me just to tell me about this piece of paper.”
“I’d like you to come with me to Side Creek, if you have time. I want to see the place where it all happened.”
Not only did Travis agree to take me to Side Creek, he even took me back thirty-three years. In his patrol car we retraced his steps when he responded to Deborah Cooper’s first call. From Somerset, we headed toward Maine along Shore Road, which hugs the coastline. We passed Goose Cove and then, a few miles on, arrived at the intersection on the edge of the Side Creek forest. Deborah Cooper had lived at the end of this path. Travis turned off here and we parked in front of the house, a pretty wooden structure, facing the ocean and surrounded on three sides by woods. It was a beautiful but isolated place.
“It hasn’t changed,” Travis told me, while we walked around the house. “It’s been repainted—the color is a little lighter than before—but everything else is the way it was then.”
“Who lives here now?”
“A couple from Boston who come for the summer. They don’t arrive until July and they leave at the end of August. The rest of the time it’s empty.” He showed me the back door, which led directly to the kitchen, and said: “The last time I saw Deborah Cooper alive, she was standing in front of this door. Chief Pratt had just arrived. He told her to stay where she was and not to worry, and we left to search the woods. Who could imagine that twenty minutes later she’d be killed by a bullet to the chest?”
As he was speaking, Travis was walking toward the woods. I realized that he was taking the path he’d walked with Chief Pratt thirty-three years earlier.
“What ever happened to Chief Pratt?” I said, following him.
“He’s retired. He still lives in Somerset, on Mountain Drive. You’ve seen him around, I’m sure. A burly guy who always wears golf pants.”
We entered the rows of trees. Through dense vegetation, we could see the beach, slightly below. After we had walked for a good fifteen minut
es, Travis stopped dead in front of three very straight pine trees.
“It was here,” he told me.
“What was here?”
“Where we found all that blood, tufts of blond hair, and a scrap of red fabric. It was horrible. I’ll never forget this place. There’s more moss on the rocks and the trees have grown taller, but for me, nothing has changed.”
“What did you do then?”
“We realized something serious must have happened, but we didn’t have time to hang around any longer because we heard that gunshot. It’s crazy—we didn’t see anything on our way here. I mean the girl or her murderer must have passed us at some point. I don’t know how we could have missed them. I think they must have been hidden by the undergrowth, and that he must have been preventing her from making noise. The woods are huge; it’s not difficult to go unseen. I imagine she must have escaped while her attacker was distracted for a moment, and that she must have run to the house to seek help. He came to find her in the house and took care of Mrs Cooper.”
“So as soon as you heard the gunshot, you went back to the house …”
“Yeah.”
We walked back along the path and returned to the house.
“It all happened in the kitchen,” Travis told me.
“Nola came out of the forest, calling for help; Mrs Cooper let her in, then went to the living room to call the police and tell them that the girl was with her. I know that the telephone was in the living room because I had used it myself to call Chief Pratt half an hour before. While she was on the phone, the attacker entered the kitchen to grab Nola, but at that moment Mrs Cooper reappeared and he shot her. Then he took Nola to his car.”
“Where was this car?”
“By the side of Shore Road, where it passes this goddamn forest. Come with me—I’ll show you.”
From the house, Travis led me back into the woods, but in a different direction this time, guiding me confidently through the trees. We came out soon onto Shore Road.
“The black Chevy was here. At the time, the edges of the road weren’t so well cleared, and it was concealed by the bushes.”
