The Truth About the Harry Quebert Affair

by Joël Dicker

  “But what about Harry? I don’t want to lose him.”

  “You won’t lose him. He’ll wait for you.”

  “Really?”

  “Yes. He’ll wait his whole life for you.”

  Nola heard more screams. Luther! She ran as fast as she could toward the stump, yelling at the top of her voice for them to stop beating him. She burst into the clearing. Luther was lying on the ground, dead. Chief Pratt and Officer Dawn were staring wild-eyed at the corpse. There was blood everywhere.

  “What have you done?” Nola screamed.

  “Nola?” Pratt said. “But—”

  “You killed Luther!”

  She threw herself at Chief Pratt, who slapped her in the face. Blood poured from her nose. She shook with fear.

  “Sorry, Nola. I … I didn’t mean to hurt you,” Pratt stammered.

  She recoiled.

  “You … you killed Luther!”

  “Wait, Nola!”

  She fled. Travis tried to grab her, but was left with nothing but a handful of blond hair.

  “Catch her, for God’s sake!” Pratt yelled at Travis. “Catch her!”

  She ran through the forest, scratching her cheeks on low branches, and finally emerging from the last line of trees. A house. She saw a house. She ran toward the kitchen door. Her nose was still bleeding. There was blood all over her face. Deborah Cooper opened the door, her face a mask of terror, and let her in.

  “Help me,” Nola whimpered. “Call for help.”

  Deborah rushed once more to the telephone to call the police.

  *

  Nola felt a hand over her mouth. Travis lifted her up with a single powerful motion. She fought, but he was too strong. Before he could get her out of the house Deborah Cooper came back into the living room. She cried out in terror.

  “Don’t worry, ma’am,” Travis said. “I’m a police officer. Everything is under control.”

  “Help!” Nola screamed, attempting to escape his grip. “They killed a man! These policemen are murderers! There’s a man dead in the forest!”

  The next few moments felt like an eternity. Deborah Cooper and Travis stared at each other in silence. She did not dare run to the telephone; he did not dare run away. Then there was a gunshot, and Deborah Cooper crumpled to the floor. Chief Pratt had shot her with his service pistol.

  “Are you crazy?” Travis shouted. “What the fuck! Why did you do that?”

  “We had no choice, Travis. You know what would have happened to us if she had talked …”

  Travis was trembling. “What now?” he asked.

  “I don’t know.”

  Nola, who was terrified, gathered up her strength and took advantage of their indecision to break free of Travis’s grip. Before Chief Pratt had time to react, she had climbed through the kitchen window and was running down the steps. But she lost her balance and fell. She got right back up, but by then the chief was holding her by her hair. She screamed and bit his hand. The chief loosened his grip, but she didn’t have time to run away. Travis hit her on the back of her head with his nightstick. She collapsed to the ground. He recoiled in horror. There was blood everywhere. She was dead.

  Travis remained crouched over the body for a moment. He wanted to throw up. Pratt was shaking. The sound of birdsong reached them from the woods.

  “What have we done, Chief?” whispered Travis, eyes glinting.

  “Stay calm, Travis. Stay calm. Panicking is not going to help.”

  “Yes, Chief.”

  “We have to get rid of Caleb and Nola. We could get the death penalty for this, you know.”

  “Yes, Chief. What about Mrs Cooper?”

  “We’ll make it look like she was killed by a robber. You need to do exactly what I tell you.”

  Travis was crying now.

  “Yes, Chief. I’ll do what I have to.”

  “You told me you saw Caleb’s car near Shore Road?”

  “Yes. The keys are in the ignition.”

  “Good. We’re going to put his body in the car. And you’re going to get rid of it, O.K.?”

  “Yes.”

  “As soon as you’re gone, I’ll call for backup, so nobody suspects. We’ll have to act fast. By the time the reinforcements arrive, you’ll be long gone. In the crush of people, no-one will notice your absence.”

  “Yes. But, Chief … I think Mrs Cooper called 911 again.”

  “Fuck! We have to get going then!”

  They dragged Luther’s and Nola’s bodies to the Chevrolet. Then Pratt ran through the forest back toward Deborah Cooper’s house and his police car. He used his car radio to say he’d found Deborah Cooper shot dead.

  Travis got behind the wheel of the Chevrolet and started the engine. As he was emerging from the bushes, he passed a sheriff’s patrol car that had been dispatched after Deborah Cooper’s second phone call.

  *

  Pratt was talking to the station when he heard a police siren close by. The radio announced a chase on Shore Road between a sheriff’s car and a black Chevrolet Monte Carlo spotted coming out near Side Creek Lane. Chief Pratt told them he would join the chase immediately. He started up his vehicle, turned on the siren, and drove along the parallel forest path. When he came out on Shore Road, he just avoided crashing into Travis. Their eyes met for a moment: Both men were terrified.

  During the chase, Travis managed to make the sheriff’s car swerve off the road. He then took Shore Road back southward and turned off at Goose Cove. Pratt followed close behind, pretending to pursue him. He gave false positions on the car radio, claiming he was on the Montburry road. He turned off his siren, pulled in to the Goose Cove path, and met up with Travis in front of the house. The two men got out of their cars, both feeling desperate.

  “Are you crazy? Why the hell did you stop here?” Pratt demanded.

  “Quebert’s not here,” Travis said. “He’ll be out of town for a while. He told Jenny Quinn, and she told me.”

  “I asked for roadblocks on every road. I had to.”

  “Shit! Shit!” Travis hissed. “We’re trapped! So what do we do now?”

  Pratt looked around. He noticed the empty garage. “Leave the car in there, lock the garage door, and get back to Side Creek Lane as fast as you can along the beach. Pretend to search Mrs Cooper’s house. I’ll join the chase again. We can get rid of the bodies tonight. Do you have a jacket in your car?”

  “Yes.”

  “Put it on. You’re covered in blood.”

  Fifteen minutes later, while Pratt was passing backup patrols near Montburry, Travis—wearing a rain jacket, and surrounded by colleagues who had come from all over the state—was sealing off the area around Side Creek Lane, where Deborah Cooper’s body had just been found.

  *

  In the middle of the night, Travis and Pratt went back to Goose Cove. They buried Nola about sixty feet from the house. Pratt had already defined the search area with Captain Rodik from the state police. He knew that Goose Cove was not included, so nobody would come here to look for Nola. They buried her with her leather shoulder bag, without even looking inside to see what was in it.

  When the hole had been filled in, Travis took the black Chevrolet and drove down Shore Road, with Luther’s corpse in the trunk. He entered Massachusetts. On the way, he had to pass through two police roadblocks.

  “Can I see your papers please, sir?” the cops said each time, nervously eyeing the car.

  And each time Travis showed them his badge.

  “Somerset police, guys. I’m trying to find our man too.”

  The policemen respectfully waved their colleague through, wishing him good luck.

  He drove until he reached a small coastal town that he knew well. Sagamore. He took the ocean road, the one that runs back north toward Ellisville Harbor. The parking area was empty. The view from here was beautiful in the daytime; he had often thought of bringing Jenny here for a romantic vacation. He stopped the car, put Luther’s body in the driver’s seat, and poured alco
hol down his throat. Then he put the car in neutral and pushed it. It rolled slowly down the little grassy slope, before hurtling over the edge and disappearing into the void amid a crash of metal.

  He walked back down the road for a few hundred yards. A car was waiting on the shoulder. He got in the passenger seat. He was sweating and covered in blood.

  “It’s done,” he told Pratt, who sat behind the wheel.

  The chief started the car.

  “We must never talk about what happened, Travis. And when they find the car, I’ll just keep it quiet. The only way we can be sure to get away with this is to never arrest anyone. You understand?”

  Travis nodded. He slid his hand into his pocket and fingered the necklace he had secretly taken from around Nola’s neck before they buried her. A pretty gold necklace with the name NOLA engraved on it.

  *

  Harry had sat back down on the couch.

  “So they killed Nola, Luther, and Mrs Cooper.”

  “Yes. And they arranged it so that the investigation would never lead anywhere. So, Harry, you knew that Nola had psychotic episodes, didn’t you? You talked about it with David Kellergan …”

  “I didn’t know about the fire. But I discovered that Nola was mentally fragile when I went to the Kellergans’ house to confront them about the physical abuse. I had promised Nola I would not go to see her parents, but I felt I couldn’t just let it continue. That was when I realized that Nola’s father was the only parent still alive, that he had been a widower for six years, and that the situation was way beyond him. He refused to face facts. I had to take Nola far from Somerset so she could receive the treatment she needed.”

  “So that was why you were running away? To get Nola help?”

  “That had become the reason, for me. I would have taken her to a good doctor, and she would have been treated. She was an amazing girl, Marcus. She would have helped me become a great writer, and I would have helped her be happy and sane. She was my guide and my inspiration. She has guided me throughout my life. You know that, don’t you? You know that better than anyone.”

  “Yes, Harry. But why didn’t you tell me?”

  “I wanted to. I would have, if it hadn’t been for those leaks from your book. I thought you had betrayed my trust. I was angry with you. I think I wanted your book to be a failure; I knew that no-one would take you seriously if you made a mistake like that about Nola’s mother. Yes, that’s what it was: I wanted your second book to be a failure. As mine was.”

  We were silent for a moment.

  “I regret it,” Harry finally added. “I regret everything. You must be so disappointed in me.”

  “No.”

  “I know you are. You put so much faith in me. And I built my life on a lie!”

  “I’ve always admired you for who you are, Harry. It doesn’t really matter to me whether you wrote that book or not. It was you—the man you are—who taught me so much about life. And no-one can take that away.”

  “No—you’ll never see me the same way anymore. And you know it. I’m just a fraud. An impostor! That was why I said we could no longer be friends. It’s all over. You’re becoming a great writer, and I’m no longer anything at all. You’re a real writer; I have never been one. You struggled to write your book, you struggled to rediscover inspiration, you overcame all the hurdles. And when I was in the same situation as you, I cheated.”

  “Harry, I—”

  “That’s life, Marcus. And you know I’m right. You could never look me in the eyes anymore. And I could never look at you without feeling an overwhelming, destructive jealousy—because you succeeded where I failed.”

  He held me close to him.

  “Harry,” I whispered, “I don’t want to lose you.”

  “You’ll be fine without me. You’ve become a great man, a great writer. You’ll be absolutely fine—I know you will. Our paths are taking different directions now. We have different destinies. It was never my destiny to become a great writer. I tried to change my destiny—I stole a book, I lied for thirty-three years. But destiny is invincible: It always triumphs in the end.”

  “Harry—”

  “Your destiny was always to be a writer, Marcus. I knew that from the beginning. And I also knew that this moment would arrive.”

  “You’ll always be my friend.”

  “Finish your book. The book about me—you have to finish it. You know the truth, and now you need to tell it to the world. The truth will set us all free. Write the truth about the Harry Quebert affair. Free me from the evil that has plagued me for thirty-three years. This is the last thing I’ll ask of you.”

  “But how? I can’t erase the past.”

  “No, but you can change the present. That’s a writer’s power. Writers’ heaven, remember? I know you’ll find a way to do it.”

  “Harry, I owe you everything! You made me the man I am now.”

  “That’s just an illusion. I didn’t do anything. You did it on your own.”

  “No, that’s not true! I followed your advice. I followed your thirty-one rules. That’s how I wrote my first book. And the next one. And it’s how I’ll write all the others that will come after. Your thirty-one rules, Harry—don’t you remember?”

  He smiled sadly. “Of course I remember.”

  Burrows, Christmas 1999

  “Happy Holidays, Marcus!”

  “You got me a gift? Thank you, Harry. What is it?”

  “Open it. It’s a minidisc recorder. The latest technological gizmo, apparently. You spend all your time taking notes on what I say, but then you lose the notes and I have to repeat it all. I figured with this you can just record everything.”

  “That’s a great idea. Let’s do it.”

  “Do what?”

  “Give me your first piece of advice. I’m going to record it all.”

  “Oh, O.K. What kind of advice?”

  “I don’t know … Rules for writers. And for boxers. And for human beings.”

  “Ha-ha. Alright. How many do you want?”

  “At least a hundred!”

  “A hundred? I’m going to give you thirty-one rules. But I’ll give them to you over the years, not all at the same time.”

  “Why thirty-one?”

  “Because thirty-one is an important age. Your teenage years mold you as an adolescent. Your twenties mold you as an adult. Your thirties will make you a man, or not. And when you reach thirty-one, you begin that phase. How do you imagine yourself at thirty-one?”

  “Like you.”

  “Don’t be silly. Turn on your recorder. I’m going to give you the rules in descending order. Rule number thirty-one: This one will be advice about books. So, rule thirty-one: The first chapter, Marcus, is essential. If the readers don’t like it, they won’t read the rest of your book. How do you plan to begin yours?”

  “I don’t know, Harry. Do you think I’ll ever be able to do it?”

  “Do what?”

  “Write a book.”

  “I’m certain you will.”

  *

  He looked at me steadily and smiled.

  “You’re not even thirty, Marcus. And you’ve done it: you’ve become a magnificent man. Being Marcus the Magnificent was an achievement of sorts, but becoming a magnificent man is the crowning glory of a long and wonderful battle with yourself. I’m very proud of you.”

  He put his coat back on and wound his scarf around his neck.

  “Where are you going?” I said.

  “I have to leave now.”

  “Don’t leave! Stay!”

  “I can’t …”

  “Stay, Harry! Stay a little longer.”

  “I can’t. Goodbye, Marcus. I’m so glad you came into my life.”

  “Where are you going?”

  “I have to wait for Nola somewhere.”

  He embraced me.

  “Find love, Marcus. Love gives life its meaning. You’re stronger when you love. You’re bigger. You go further.”

  “Harr
y! Please don’t leave!”

  “Goodbye, Marcus.”

  He left. He did not close the door behind him, and I left it open for a long time afterward. That was the last time I saw my master and my friend, Harry Quebert.

  May 2002, finals of the university boxing championship

  “Marcus, are you ready? You go in the ring in three minutes.”

  “I’m scared, Harry.”

  “I’m sure you are. But that’s good: You can’t win unless you’re scared. Don’t forget: Boxing is like writing a book. You remember? Chapter one, chapter two …”

  “Yes. Jab in the first, hook in the second …”

  “Exactly, champ. Are you ready? You’re in the finals, Marcus! The finals! Not so long ago you were still fighting against heavy bags, and now you’re in the finals. Can you hear the loudspeaker? ‘Marcus Goldman and his coach, Harry Quebert, from Burrows College.’ That’s us! Let’s go!”

  “Wait, Harry …”

  “What?”

  “I have a gift for you.”

  “A gift? Now?”

  “Absolutely. I want you to have it before the match. It’s in my bag. Take it. I can’t give it to you with these gloves on.”

  “It’s a C.D.?”

  “Yes, a compilation. Your thirty-one most important statements. About boxing, about life, about books.”

  “Thank you, Marcus. I’m touched. Now, are you ready to fight?”

  “I sure am.”

  “Let’s go, then.”

  “Hang on—there’s still one thing I’m wondering …”

  “Marcus, they’re waiting for us!”

  “But this is important. I’ve listened to all our recordings, and you never answered me about one thing.”

  “Alright. What is it?”

  “How do you know when a book is finished?”

  “Books are like life, Marcus. They never really end.”

  EPILOGUE

  October 2009

  (one year after the book’s publication)

  “A good book, Marcus, is judged not by its last words but by the cumulative effect of all the words that have preceded them. About half a second after finishing your book, after reading the very last word, the reader should be overwhelmed by a particular feeling. For a moment he should think only of what he has just read; he should look at the cover and smile a little sadly because he is already missing all the characters. A good book, Marcus, is a book you are sorry to have finished.”