by Joël Dicker
She was astonished at the name that appeared on her computer. “No, it must be a mistake!” she said, suddenly white. She asked me to repeat the number and tapped the keys frenetically as she once more entered the number.
I approached the screen and read the name. “Sean O’Donnell. What’s the problem, Betsy? Do you know him?”
“I know him very well,” she said, dismayed. “Sean O’Donnell is one of my officers.”
*
Having been shown the phone records, Chief Gulliver could not refuse me permission to question Sean O’Donnell. He had him brought in from patrol and put in an interview room. When I walked in, accompanied by Betsy and Chief Gulliver, Sean half rose from his chair, as if his legs were giving way.
“Is anyone going to tell me what’s going on?” he demanded anxiously.
“Sit down,” Gulliver said. “Captain Rosenberg has some questions to ask you.”
Gulliver and I sat down at the table, facing him. Betsy kept back, standing by the wall.
“Sean,” I said, “I know Stephanie Mailer called you on Monday night. You’re the last person she tried to contact. What are you hiding from us?”
Sean took his head in his hands. “Captain,” he moaned, “I fucked up. I’m sorry. I should have told Chief Gulliver. I wanted to, I really did!”
“But you didn’t, Sean. So now you have to tell us everything.”
He spoke only after a long sigh. “Stephanie and I dated for a time. We met in a bar, a while back. I was the one who approached her and, to be honest with you, she didn’t seem too crazy about the idea. But in the end, she let me buy her a drink, and we talked for a while. I didn’t think it would go any farther. Until I told her I was a police officer here in Orphea—that seemed to grab her immediately. Right away her whole attitude changed, she suddenly seemed very interested in me. We exchanged numbers, and we went out a few times. No more than that. Then two weeks ago, things suddenly moved ahead. We slept together. Just once.”
“Why only once?” I said.
“Because I realized it wasn’t me she was interested in, it was the records room at the station.”
“The records room?”
“Yes, Captain. It was really weird. She kept mentioning it. She absolutely wanted me to take her there. I thought she was joking and told her it was out of the question. But two weeks ago, when we were in bed together at her place, she woke me up and demanded that I drive her to the records room. As if I owed her something for spending the night with her. I was pretty hurt. I stormed out. I made it very clear to her that I didn’t want to see her anymore.”
“You weren’t curious to know why she was so interested in the records room?” Chief Gulliver said.
“I was, of course. Part of me absolutely wanted to know. But I didn’t want to show Stephanie that I was interested. I felt like I was being manipulated, and, since I really liked her, that hurt me.”
“And did you see her again?” I asked.
“Just once. Last Saturday. She called me a few times that night, but I didn’t pick up. I thought she’d give up, but she just kept calling. I was on duty, and I couldn’t stand the way she wouldn’t leave me alone. In the end, I was such a wreck that I told her to meet me outside her apartment building. I didn’t even get out of my car, I told her that if she contacted me again I’d lodge a complaint for harassment. She told me she needed my help, but I didn’t believe her.”
“What was the help she needed?”
“She said she needed to take a look at a file connected to a murder committed here, something she had some information about. She said, ‘The investigation was badly handled. There’s a detail that nobody saw at the time even though it was really obvious.’ To convince me, she showed me her hand and asked me what I saw. ‘Your hand,’ I said. ‘It’s my fingers you should have seen,’ she said.
“All this about hands and fingers—I told myself she was playing with me. I left her standing there on the street and swore I’d never let her fool me again.”
“And you didn’t talk to her after that?” I said.
“No, Captain Rosenberg. That was the last time.”
I paused for a moment, then played my trump card. “Sean, I know you talked to Stephanie on Monday night, the night she went missing.”
“No, Captain! I swear I didn’t talk to her!”
I waved the phone records and put them down in front of him. “Don’t lie to me, it’s written here. You talked to each other for twenty seconds.”
“No, we didn’t talk!” Sean cried. “She called me, that’s true. Twice. But I didn’t answer! The second time she called, she left me a message. Yes, our phones were connected, like the records say, but we didn’t talk.”
Sean wasn’t lying. Checking his phone, we discovered a message received on Monday at 10.10, lasting twenty seconds. I pressed the button and Stephanie’s voice suddenly emerged from the phone’s speaker.
“Sean, it’s me. I absolutely have to talk to you, it’s urgent. Please . . . [Pause] Sean, I’m scared. I’m really scared.”
There was panic in her voice.
“I didn’t listen to the message at the time. I thought it was her whining again. I didn’t listen to it until Wednesday, after her parents came to the station to report her missing. And I didn’t know what to do.”
“Why didn’t you say anything?”
“I was scared, Captain. And I was ashamed.”
“Do you think Stephanie felt threatened?”
“If she did, she never mentioned it. That was the first time she said she was scared.”
Betsy, Chief Gulliver, and I exchanged glances. Then I asked Sean:
“I need to know where you were and what you were doing around ten o’clock on Monday night, when Stephanie tried to reach you.”
“I was in a bar in East Hampton. A friend of mine is the manager. There was a group of us. We spent the whole evening there. I’ll give you all the names, you can check.”
Several witnesses did confirm O’Donnell’s presence in the bar in question from seven o’clock until one in the morning on the night of Stephanie’s disappearance. In Betsy’s office, I wrote Stephanie’s riddle on the whiteboard: What was in front of our eyes and we didn’t see in 1994?
We were sure that Stephanie had wanted to get into the Orphea police records to gain access to the file on the investigation into the 1994 quadruple murder. So we went to the records room. It wasn’t hard to locate the large box containing the file. But the box was empty. Inside, there was only a yellowing sheet of paper on which somebody had typewritten the words:
Here begins THE DARKEST NIGHT.
Like the start of a treasure hunt.
*
The only real lead we had was the telephone call from the Kodiak Grill immediately after Stephanie left. We went back there. The waitress we had questioned the previous evening was on duty.
“Can you tell me where your public phone is?” I said.
“You can use the one on the counter.”
“That’s kind of you, but I’d like to see your public phone.”
She led us across the restaurant to the rear, where there were two rows of coat hooks fixed to the wall, a passage to the toilets, a coin machine, and, in a corner, a phone booth.
“Is there a camera?” Betsy asked, looking up at the ceiling.
“No, there’s no camera in the restaurant.”
“Is this booth often used?”
“Difficult to say. There’s always a lot of coming and going. The toilets are reserved for the customers, but pretty often people come in and ask if there’s a phone. We tell them yes. But we don’t know if they really want to make a phone call or just need to take a leak. These days everyone has a cell phone, don’t they?”
Just then, as if on cue, Betsy’s cell phone rang. Stephanie’s car had been found near the beach.
*
We sped along Ocean Road, which led from Main Street to Orphea’s beach. The road ended in a parking lot c
onsisting of a vast concrete circle, where bathers parked their cars any old how, with no time limit. In winter, there would always be a few scattered vehicles belonging to people walking on the beach, fathers flying kites with their children. It started to fill up on the fine days of spring. At the height of summer, it was besieged from early on the burning hot mornings, and the number of cars that managed to cram themselves in there was extraordinary.
About a hundred yards from the parking lot, a police car was parked at the side of the road. An officer waved to us and I drew up behind him. At this point on the road, a narrow hikers’ trail plunged into the forest.
“It was some people out walking who saw the car,” the officer told us. “Apparently, it’s been there since Tuesday. It wasn’t until they read the paper this morning that they made the connection. I checked the license number. It’s definitely Ms Mailer’s car.”
We had to walk two hundred yards to get to the car, neatly parked in a nook. It was indeed the blue Mazda caught on the cameras at the bank. I put on a pair of latex gloves and walked around it, inspecting the interior through the windows. I tried to open the door, but it was locked. Betsy finally voiced the thought that was going through my head.
“Jesse, do you think she’s in the trunk?”
“There’s only one way to find out.”
The officer brought us a crowbar. I plunged it into the groove. Betsy was standing right behind me, holding her breath. The lock gave easily and the trunk snapped open. I stepped back, then leaned forward to see inside. The trunk was empty. “Nothing here,” I said, moving away from the car. “Let’s call forensics before the scene gets contaminated. This time the mayor is going to agree that we have to dig deeper.”
The discovery of Stephanie’s car did indeed change things. Mayor Brown arrived on the scene with Chief Gulliver. Recognizing that a search operation had to be launched and that the local police would soon be overwhelmed by the situation, he called on police units from the neighboring towns for backup.
In one hour, Ocean Road was blocked off, from the halfway point to the beach parking lot. Police departments from all over the county had sent officers, supported by patrols from the State Police. Groups of onlookers had gathered beyond the police tape.
On the forest side, forensics officers were moving in white jumpsuits around Stephanie’s car, going over it with a fine-toothed comb. Teams of sniffer dogs had also been dispatched.
Soon, the head of the dog team sent for us from the beach parking lot.
“All the dogs are following a single track,” he said when we had joined him. “They set off from the car and take that little path that winds through the forest and arrives here.”
He pointed to the path, which was a shortcut people out walking took to get from the beach to the hikers’ trail.
“The dogs all stop here in the parking lot. Right where I’m standing. After that, they lose the scent.”
The officer was standing literally in the middle of the parking lot.
“What does that mean?”
“That she got in a car here, Captain Rosenberg, and left in it.”
The mayor turned to me. “What do you think, Captain?”
“I think there was a car waiting for her. She’d arranged to meet someone. That person was at the Kodiak Grill, sitting at a table at the far end from where she was, watching her. When she leaves the restaurant, he calls her from the phone booth and arranges to meet her at the beach. Stephanie is worried: she’s been expecting a meeting in a public place and now she finds she has to go to the beach, which is deserted at this hour. She telephones Sean, who doesn’t answer. In the end, she decides to park her car on the forest path. Maybe to have a fallback solution. Or else to see the mystery person coming. Anyway, she locks her car, she walks down to the parking lot, and gets in her contact’s vehicle. Where was she taken? God alone knows.”
There was a chilling silence. Then Chief Gulliver, as if he was taking the measure of the situation, murmured:
“And that’s when Stephanie Mailer disappears.”
DEREK SCOTT
That evening, July 30, 1994, in Orphea, it took a while for the first of our colleagues from the squad to reach the scene, along with our commander, Major McKenna. Once we had updated them on the situation, the major took me aside.
“Derek, were you the first on the scene?”
“Yes, sir,” I replied. “Jesse and I have been here for more than an hour. Being the highest-ranking officer, I had to make a few decisions. The main one was to set up roadblocks.”
“You did the right thing. Everything seems to be well in hand. Do you think you’re up to taking on this case?”
“Yes, sir. I’d be honored.”
I sensed a hesitation on his part. “This would be your first big case,” he said, “and Jesse is still an inexperienced inspector.”
“Rosenberg has good instincts as a police officer,” I assured him. “Trust us, sir. We won’t disappoint you.”
After a moment’s reflection, he agreed. “I want to give you a chance. I like you and Jesse. Don’t fuck up. When your colleagues find out that I entrusted a case as big as this to you, a lot of tongues will wag. Well, they should have been here! Where are they all, for fuck’s sake? On vacation? Assholes.”
The major called Jesse over, then announced so that our colleagues could all hear:
“Scott and Rosenberg, you’re in charge of this case.”
Jesse and I were determined not to make the major regret his decision. We spent the night in Orphea, putting together the first elements of the investigation. It was almost seven in the morning when I dropped Jesse outside his home in Queens. He suggested I come in and have a coffee and I accepted. We were exhausted, but much too excited by the case to sleep. In the kitchen, while Jesse made the coffee, I started making notes.
“Who disliked the mayor enough to kill him, and his wife and son, too?” I asked out loud, writing this question on a piece of paper that he stuck to the refrigerator.
“We have to question those closest to him,” Jesse said.
“What was the family doing at home on the opening night of the theater festival? They should have been at the Grand Theater. And what about those suitcases full of stuff in the car? It looked like they were about to leave.”
“You mean they were running away? But why?”
“That,” I said, “is what we have to find out.”
I stuck a second piece of paper on the fridge, on which he wrote: Did the mayor have enemies?
Natasha, woken by our voices, appeared in the doorway, still half asleep.
“What happened last night?” she said, cuddling up against Jesse.
“Four killings,” I said.
“‘Murders at the theater festival’?” Natasha read on the fridge door before she opened it. “Sounds like a mystery novel.”
“It could be one,” Jesse said.
Natasha took out milk and eggs and flour and put them on the counter to make pancakes. She poured herself coffee, then looked again at the notes and asked us:
“So what are your first ideas?”
JESSE ROSENBERG
Sunday, June 29, 2014
Twenty-seven days to opening night
The search for Stephanie was getting nowhere.
For twenty-four hours the region had been on a state of high alert, but to no avail. Teams of officers and volunteers were combing the county. Dog teams, divers and a helicopter were also being held in readiness. Volunteers put up posters in supermarkets and went to stores and gas stations in the hope of finding a customer or an employee who might have seen Stephanie. The Mailer couple had given a statement to the press and the local T.V. channels, presenting a photograph of their daughter and calling on anyone who might have seen her to contact the police immediately.
Everyone wanted to participate in the effort. The Kodiak Grill offered free drinks to anyone who had taken part in the search. The Lake Palace, one of the most luxurious hotels i
n the region, located in the same county as Orphea, had put one of its reception rooms at the disposal of the police, who used it as a rallying point for the volunteers wishing to join in, and it was from there that they were directed toward one area or another of the search.
In Betsy’s office at the police station, she and I pursued our investigation. Stephanie’s trip to Los Angeles remained a mystery. It was on her return from California that she had suddenly become closer to Officer O’Donnell and pressed him to help her gain access to the police records room. What had she discovered in L.A.? We contacted the hotel where she had stayed, but it led us nowhere. On the other hand, by looking at her regular return trips to New York—revealed by her credit card payments at the tollbooths—we discovered that she had received fines for prolonged or illegal parking, and once even had her car towed away, always on the same street. It was not hard for Betsy to dig up a list of the various establishments on that street: restaurants, doctors, lawyers, chiropractors, a laundry. But the most crucial one was the offices of the New York Literary Review.
“How is that possible?” I said. “Stephanie’s mother told me her daughter left the Review in September and that was the reason she moved to Orphea. Why would she keep going back there? It doesn’t make sense.”
“Well,” Betsy said to me, “the dates when she passed through the tollbooths certainly tally with the dates of the parking tickets. And from what I see here, the places where she was booked are in the immediate vicinity of the building where the offices of the Review are located. Let’s call the editor and ask him if he can explain.”
She picked up the receiver, but didn’t have time to dial the number because just then there was a knock at the door of her office. It was the head of the forensics squad.
“These are the results from what was found in Stephanie Mailer’s apartment and car,” he said, waving a heavy envelope. “I think they’ll interest you.”
He sat on the edge of the desk.
“Let’s start with the apartment,” he said. “I can confirm that the fire was started deliberately. The place had been doused in accelerants. And in case you had any doubt, it wasn’t Stephanie Mailer who did it.”
