by Joël Dicker
“There!” I shouted, pausing the recorder. “You see? You talk about the mother.”
“No,” Nancy replied. “I told you how shocked I was when Nola mentioned her mother. I was trying to explain that there was something strange going on at the Kellergans’ house. I was absolutely sure you already knew her mother was dead.”
“But I didn’t know anything! I mean, I knew her mother was dead, but I thought she must have died after her daughter disappeared. I even remember David Kellergan showing me a photograph of his wife the first time I went to see him. I remember being surprised by how friendly he was. And I remember asking him something like: ‘What about your wife?’ And he replied: ‘She died a long time ago.’”
“Now that I’ve heard the recording, I can understand how you got the wrong idea. It’s a terrible misunderstanding, Mr Goldman. I’m sorry about that.”
I pressed PLAY again:
“… Like the nurse at the high school, for example. But Nola told me she didn’t want to talk about it anymore.”
“What happened in Alabama?”
“I have no idea. I never found out. Nola never told me.”
“Was it connected to their moving here?”
“I don’t know. I’d like to help you, but I just don’t know.”
“It’s all my fault, Ms Hattaway,” I said. “After that, I forgot about Alabama.”
“So it was her father who used to beat her?” Gahalowood asked, puzzled.
Nancy thought about this for a moment. She seemed a little confused. Finally she answered: “Yes. Or no. Oh, I don’t know. There were those marks on her body. When I asked her what happened, she told me she was punished at home.”
“Punished for what?”
“That was all she said. But she never said it was her father who beat her. I just don’t know. My mother saw bruises on her body one day at the beach. And then there was that deafening music that the father used to play all the time. People suspected that Mr Kellergan beat his daughter, but nobody dared say anything. He was our pastor, after all.”
After we left Nancy Hattaway’s store, Gahalowood and I sat on a bench outside for a long time in silence. I was in despair.
“Just a stupid misunderstanding,” I said finally. “All this because of a stupid fucking misunderstanding! How could I have been such an idiot?”
“Calm down, writer. Don’t be so hard on yourself. We were all fooled. We were so excited by what we were discovering that we didn’t see what was clearly in front of us. It’s just a psychological block—everyone gets them.”
Just then his cell phone rang. It was the state police returning his call.
“They found the name of the old guy from the motel,” he whispered to me while waiting to hear the news.
Then a strange expression appeared on his face. He removed the receiver from his ear and said:
“It was David Kellergan.”
*
The never-ending music reverberated from 245 Terrace Avenue. Evidently Mr Kellergan was home.
“We have to find out what he wanted from Harry,” Gahalowood said to me as we got out of the car. “But please, writer, let me do the talking!”
When interviewing Mr Kellergan at the Sea Side Motel, the state troopers had found a shotgun in his car. He did, however, possess a license for it. He had explained that he was on his way to the shooting range and had stopped at the motel restaurant for coffee. The troopers, having no reason to hold him or charge him, had let him go.
“Pry it out of him, Sergeant,” I said as we walked down the driveway to the house. “I’m curious to know what that letter was about. Kellergan told me he barely knew Harry. You think he lied?”
“That’s what we’re going to find out.”
David Kellergan must have seen us arriving, because he opened the door before we even rang the bell. He was holding his shotgun. He looked mad as hell. I got the distinct impression that he wanted to kill me. “You’ve desecrated the memory of my wife and my daughter!” he screamed at me. “You bastard! You son of a bitch!” Gahalowood tried to calm him down. He asked him to put his shotgun away, while explaining that we were there so we could work out what actually happened to Nola. Neighbors, alerted by the noise, rushed over to see what was going on. Soon there was a crowd of onlookers in front of the house while David Kellergan continued to yell and Gahalowood signaled to me that we should move away slowly. Two Somerset police cars arrived, sirens on. Travis Dawn got out of one, visibly unhappy to see me. “Don’t you think you’ve already caused enough trouble in this town?” he said. Then he asked Gahalowood if there was a good reason for the state police to be in Somerset without giving him prior notice. Because I knew we were running out of time, I shouted at David Kellergan:
“So you turned the music up loud and you had a ball, didn’t you, Reverend?”
He made a threatening motion with his shotgun.
“I never raised a hand to my daughter! She was never beaten. You’re full of shit, Goldman! I’m going to hire a lawyer, and I’m going to take you to court.”
“Oh yeah? So how come you haven’t already done that? Why aren’t we in court now? Maybe you don’t want people looking into your past? What happened in Alabama?”
He spat in my direction.
“People like you would never understand, Goldman.”
“What happened with you and Harry Quebert at the Sea Side Motel? What are you hiding from us?”
Just then Travis started yelling too, threatening Gahalowood that he would inform his superiors, and we had to leave.
We drove in silence toward Concord. Finally Gahalowood said, “What are we missing, writer? I have a feeling it’s something we’ve been looking at the whole time but we’ve somehow failed to see.”
“We now know that Harry was aware of something about Nola’s mother that he didn’t tell me.”
“And we can assume that Mr Kellergan knows that Harry knows. But knows what, for God’s sake?”
*
The press was having a field day.
New development in the Harry Quebert case: inconsistencies discovered in Marcus Goldman’s account call into question the credibility of his book, which was acclaimed by critics and presented by publisher Roy Barnaski as an accurate depiction of the events leading up to the murder of Nola Kellergan in 1975.
Knowing I could not return to New York until I had cleared up this case, I took refuge in my suite at the hotel in Concord where I had stayed over the summer. The only person who knew where I was was Denise; I had told her so she could keep me informed of events in New York and the latest developments regarding the ghost of Nola’s mother.
That evening, Gahalowood invited me to dinner at his house. His daughters were volunteering for the Obama campaign, and they dominated the conversation. They gave me bumper stickers for my car. Later, as I was helping wash the dishes, Helen mentioned that I looked upset.
“I don’t understand what I did wrong,” I explained. “How could I have messed up this badly?”
“There must be a reason, Marcus. You know, Perry has great faith in you. He thinks you’re an exceptional person. I’ve known him for thirty years, and I’ve never heard him use that word about anyone. I’m sure you haven’t messed up, and that there’s a rational explanation for all this.”
That night Gahalowood and I stayed up late in his office, reading the manuscript that Harry had left me. The unpublished novel The Seagulls of Somerset turned out to be a wonderful story about Harry and Nola. The manuscript was undated, but I guessed it must have been written after The Origin of Evil. While the latter was the story of an impossible love affair that was never consummated, in The Seagulls of Somerset, Harry recounted how Nola had inspired him, how she had always believed in him and encouraged him, helping him to become the great writer he was. But at the end of the book, Nola did not die; a few months after his success, the central protagonist, named Harry, goes to Canada, where Nola is waiting for him in a lakeside cabin.
&
nbsp; At 2 a.m. Gahalowood made us coffee and asked me: “So what do you think he’s trying to tell us with this book?”
“He’s imagining his life if Nola hadn’t died,” I said. “This book is writers’ heaven.”
“Writers’ heaven? What’s that?”
“It’s when the power of writing turns against you. You no longer know if your characters exist only in your head or if they are truly alive.”
“And how does that help us?”
“I have no idea. It doesn’t. It’s a very good book, and yet he never published it. Why did he keep it at the bottom of a drawer?”
Gahalowood shrugged. “Maybe he didn’t dare publish it because it was about a girl who had disappeared.”
“Maybe. But The Origin of Evil was about Nola too, and that didn’t stop him from offering it to publishers. And why did he write to me: ‘This book is the truth’? The truth about what? Nola? What does he mean? That Nola never died and is living in a cabin somewhere?”
“That would make no sense at all,” said Gahalowood. “The forensics tests were unequivocal: It was her skeleton we found.”
“So … what then?”
“So we haven’t gotten any closer, writer.”
*
The next morning Denise called to inform me that a woman had been looking for me, and Schmid & Hanson had given her my office number.
“She wanted to talk to you,” Denise explained. “She said it was important.”
“What was it about?”
“She said she had gone to school with Nola Kellergan in Somerset, and that Nola had talked to her about her mother.”
Cambridge, Massachusetts, Saturday, October 25, 2008
She was in the 1975 Somerset High School yearbook, listed as Stephanie Hendorf; only two photographs separated her from Nola. She was one of the students Ernie Pinkas had been unable to find. Having married a man of Polish origin, she was now named Stephanie Larjinjiak and lived in an opulent house in Cambridge, Massachusetts. That was where Gahalowood and I met with her. She was forty-eight, the same age Nola would have been now had she lived. She was pretty, twice married, and the mother of three children, and she had taught art history at Harvard and now ran her own art gallery. Growing up in Somerset, she had been in the same year in school as Nola, Nancy Hattaway, and a few other people I had met during my investigation. Listening to her tell the story of her life, I thought of her as a survivor. On the one hand there was Nola, murdered at the age of fifteen, and on the other there was Stephanie, who had lived and had a family and a career.
A few old photographs were scattered on the coffee table in her living room.
“I’ve been following the case from the beginning,” she told us. “I remember the day Nola disappeared; I remember it all—just like all the girls my age who lived in Somerset then, I imagine. So when her body was found and Harry Quebert was arrested, I obviously felt very involved. What a story. I really liked your book, Mr Goldman. You described Nola so well. I felt like I’d got her back a little bit, thanks to you. Is it true they’re going to make a movie?”
“Warner Brothers wants to buy the rights,” I said.
She showed us the photographs: they were from a birthday party in 1973.
“Nola and I were very close,” she said. “She was a wonderful girl. Everyone loved her in Somerset. Probably because people were moved by the image she and her father conveyed: the kind pastor, a widower, and his devoted daughter, always smiling, never complaining. I remember whenever I would act willfully, my mother would say: ‘Why can’t you be more like Nola? That poor girl—the good Lord took her mother, and yet she is still pleasant and appreciative.’”
“My God, how could I not have realized that her mother was dead?” I said. “And you say you liked my book? You should have been thinking what a pathetic excuse for a writer I was!”
“No, not at all. Quite the opposite, in fact. I even thought you had done it deliberately. Because I experienced the same thing with Nola.”
“Tell me about that.”
“One day something very strange happened, something that made me want to keep my distance from her.”
March 1973
Stephanie Hendorf’s parents ran the general store on the main street in Somerset. Sometimes Stephanie took Nola there after school, and the two of them would secretly stuff themselves with candy in the storeroom. That is what they were doing on this particular afternoon: Hidden behind bags of flour, they were gobbling so much candy that they got stomachaches, laughing with their hands over their mouths so no-one would hear them. But suddenly Stephanie noticed that there was something wrong with Nola. Her expression had changed; she was no longer listening.
“Nola? You O.K.?” she asked.
No reply. Stephanie repeated her question, and finally Nola said: “I … I have to go home.”
“Already? Why?”
“Mom wants me to go home.”
Stephanie thought she must have misheard. “Your mother?”
Nola stood up in a panic. “I have to go home!” she repeated.
“But, Nola … your mother is dead!”
Nola rushed toward the storeroom door, and when Stephanie attempted to hold her back, she turned around and shoved her.
“My mother!” she screamed, terrified. “You don’t know what she’ll do to me. When I’m wicked, I get punished.”
And she ran away.
Stephanie was speechless. That evening she told her mother what had happened, but Mrs Hendorf didn’t believe her. She stroked her hair tenderly.
“I don’t know where you come up with these stories, darling. Come on now, stop being silly and go wash your hands—it’s time for dinner. Your father’s been working all day and he’s hungry.”
The next day in school, Nola seemed fine, as if nothing had happened. Stephanie did not dare say anything. But she kept worrying, so about ten days later she spoke directly to Nola’s father about what had happened. She went to see him in his parish office, where he welcomed her very kindly, as always. He offered her a glass of lemonade, then listened attentively, thinking she must have come to see him as her pastor. But when she told him what she had witnessed, he did not believe her either.
“You must have misheard,” he said.
“I know it sounds crazy, Reverend. But I swear it’s true.”
“But it makes no sense. Why would Nola come out with such garbage? Don’t you know her mother is dead? Are you trying to hurt us?”
“No, but …”
David Kellergan wanted to end the conversation, but Stephanie persisted. Suddenly the pastor’s face changed. She had never seen him like that before. The friendly minister vanished, and a somber-faced, frightening man took his place.
“I don’t want you to mention this ever again!” he told her. “Not to me or to anyone else—do you hear me? If you say anything, I’ll tell your parents that you’re a little liar. And I will tell them that I caught you stealing from the church. I’ll tell them you stole fifty dollars from me. You don’t want to get in trouble, do you? So be a good girl.”
*
Stephanie went silent. She fiddled with the photographs for a moment, before turning toward me.
“So I never spoke about this again,” she said. “But I never forgot it either. Over time I convinced myself that I must have misheard, misunderstood, and that it was really nothing. And then your book came out, and I found her mother alive and abusing her. I can’t tell you how that affected me. You have an incredible talent, Mr Goldman. When the newspapers started saying that what you wrote was false, I decided I had to contact you. Because I know you’re telling the truth.”
“But how can it be the truth?” I asked. “The mother had been dead for years.”
“I know that. But I also know you’re right.”
“Do you think Nola was beaten by her father?”
“Well, that’s what everyone thought. At school people noticed her bruises. But who would accuse our pastor of such a thing
? In Somerset in 1975, you didn’t get mixed up in other people’s business. That was a different time.”
“Is there anything else you can tell me?” I asked. “About Nola or what you read in the book?”
She thought for a moment. “No. Except that … it’s almost funny to discover after all these years that it was Harry Quebert who Nola was in love with.”
“What do you mean?”
“Well, I was such a naive little kid, you know. I didn’t see Nola as much after that incident. But the summer she disappeared, I bumped into her quite often. During that summer I spent a lot of time working in my parents’ store, which was across from the post office. And I kept seeing Nola there. She went to mail letters. I know that because I kept asking her who she was writing to, and she didn’t want to say. One day she finally spilled the beans. She told me she was madly in love with someone, and was corresponding with him. She never told me who it was, though. I thought it must be Cody, this boy from our high school who was on the basketball team. I never managed to see the name on the envelope, but one time I did notice that the address was in Somerset. I wondered why she was bothering to mail letters to someone in Somerset when she lived there herself.”
When we left Stephanie Larjinjiak’s house, Gahalowood looked at me with a puzzled expression. “What’s going on, writer?”
“I was about to ask you the same question. What do you think we should do now?”
“What we should have done a long time ago: go to Jackson, Alabama. You asked the right question at the beginning: What happened in Alabama?”
4
Sweet Home Alabama
“When you get to the end of the book, Marcus, give your reader a last-minute twist.”
“Why?”
“Because you have to keep them on tenterhooks until the end. It’s like when you’re playing cards: You have to hold a few trump cards for the final part of the game.”
Jackson, Alabama, October 28, 2008
