by Joël Dicker
The second witness was a man named Albert Plant, who lived alone in a single-story house on a parallel street. Confined to a wheelchair since an accident, he had been at home that evening. He had heard the shots as he was having dinner, and they had attracted his attention sufficiently for him to go out onto his porch, curious about what was going on in the neighborhood. He had the presence of mind to check the time: 7.10. By then silence had returned and he assumed someone must have been letting off firecrackers. He stayed out on the porch, enjoying the mild evening until, just over an hour later, around 8.20, he heard a man screaming for help. Mr Plant immediately called the police.
One of our first difficulties was the absence of motive. To discover who had killed the mayor and his family, we needed to know who had a good reason to do so. But no line of questioning seemed to lead anywhere. We talked to many townspeople, to municipal employees, to the families and friends of the mayor and of his wife, all without success. The Gordons seemed to have led a perfectly unobtrusive life. No known enemies, no debts, no drama, no dubious past. An ordinary family. Leslie Gordon, the mayor’s wife, was a much-loved teacher at Orphea’s elementary school. As for the mayor himself, although nobody was fulsome in their praise of him, he was well enough liked by his fellow citizens, and everyone assumed he would be re-elected in the elections in September, in which his deputy, Alan Brown, would be standing against him.
One afternoon, as we were yet again going through the case file, I said to Jesse:
“What if the Gordons weren’t running away? What if we’ve been getting it wrong from the start?”
“Wrong in which way?”
“Well, we’ve focused on the fact that Gordon was at home, not at the Grand Theater, and that they had packed their cases.”
“You have to admit that it’s odd for the mayor not to show up on the opening night of a festival he was responsible for.”
“Maybe he was late,” I said. “Maybe he was just about to set off. The official ceremony wasn’t due to kick off until 7.30. He still had time to get to the Grand Theater. It’s only a ten-minute drive. As for the cases, maybe the Gordons had planned to go on vacation. The wife and son had the whole summer off. It’s perfectly logical. They were planning to leave early the next day and they wanted to have their cases packed before going to the theater because they knew they’d be late back.”
“So why were they killed?” Jesse said.
“A burglary that went wrong,” I suggested. “Someone who assumed that the Gordons would be at the Grand Theater by then and they’d easily get into their house.”
“Except that the supposed burglar didn’t take anything—apart from their lives. And would you have kicked the door down to get in? Not very discreet as a method. Besides, none of the municipal employees we spoke to mentioned anything about the mayor having said he was going on vacation. No, Derek, it’s something else. Whoever killed them wanted to get rid of them. The violence of it is indication enough.”
From the file, Jesse took a photograph of the mayor’s body taken in the house and stared at it for a long time.
“Is there anything that surprises you in this photograph?”
“You mean apart from the fact that the mayor is lying in a pool of blood?”
“He wasn’t wearing a suit and tie,” Jesse said. “He was wearing casual clothes. What mayor would launch a festival in an outfit like that? It makes no sense. I reckon the mayor never had any intention of going to the theater.”
In the photographs of the open suitcase beside Leslie Gordon, some of the contents were visible. Photograph albums, a trinket.
“Look at this,” Jesse went on. “When she was killed, Leslie Gordon was filling her suitcase with personal objects. Who takes photograph albums with them on vacation? They were running away, probably from the person who killed them. Someone who knew that they wouldn’t be at the theater.”
Natasha came into the room just as Jesse was finishing his sentence.
“Well, guys,” she said with a smile, “do you have a lead?”
“No,” I said. “We don’t have a damn thing apart from a black van with a design on the rear window, which the witness cannot describe.”
We were interrupted by the doorbell.
“Who’s that?”
“Darla,” Natasha said. “She’s come to look at the plans for the decor of the restaurant.”
I scooped up the documents and put them in a cardboard file.
“Don’t talk to her about the case,” I said to Natasha as she was on her way to the door.
“O.K., Derek,” she said nonchalantly.
“This is serious, Nat. We’re sworn to secrecy. We shouldn’t be here, you shouldn’t be seeing all this. Jesse and I could get in trouble.”
“Word of honor.”
Natasha opened the door. Coming into the apartment, Darla immediately noticed the file I was holding.
“So, how’s the case going?” she said.
“Fine,” I said.
“Come on, is that all you can say?”
I used the same words as I’d used with Natasha, rather more curtly than I had planned. “We’re sworn to secrecy.”
“Sworn to secrecy?” Darla retorted. “That’s bullshit! I bet Natasha knows the whole story.”
JESSE ROSENBERG
Monday, June 30, 2014
Twenty-six days to opening night
I woke Betsy at 1.30 in the morning and asked her to join Derek and me at the self-storage facility. She knew where it was, and was there twenty minutes later. We met her in the parking lot. It was a hot night and the sky was studded with stars.
Introducing Derek, I said to Betsy:
“It’s Derek who found out where Stephanie was conducting her investigation.”
“In a self-storage facility?”
Derek and I nodded in unison and led Betsy along the rows of metal shutters. We stopped when we came to 234-A. I raised the shutter and switched on the light to reveal a small room, six feet by ten, lined top to bottom with folders of documents, all devoted to the quadruple murder of 1994. There were clippings from various regional daily papers of the time, notably a series of articles in the Orphea Chronicle. There were enlargements of photographs of each of the victims and a photograph of Mayor Gordon’s house taken on the night of the murder, also cut from a newspaper. There I was, with Derek and a group of police officers, standing next to a white sheet covering the body of Meghan Padalin. Stephanie had written on the photograph with a marker pen:
What nobody saw
The only furniture was one small table and one chair. It was easy to imagine Stephanie spending hours here.
On that makeshift desk were paper and pens. And there was a sheet of paper stuck to the wall, on which she had written:
Find Kirk Hayward
“Who’s Kirk Hayward?” Betsy said.
“He was Orphea’s police chief at the time of the murders,” I said. “He worked on the case with us.”
“And where is he now?”
“I have no idea. He must have retired. We need to contact him. He may have talked to Stephanie.”
Searching among the notes in little heaps on the table, I made another discovery.
“Betsy, look at this,” I said, handing her Stephanie’s airline ticket to Los Angeles. On it, she had written:
Darkest Night ➝ Police records
“‘Darkest Night’ again,” Betsy said. “What the hell does it mean?”
“It means her trip to L.A. was connected with her investigation,” I said. “And now we know for certain that Stephanie really was investi-gating the Gordon killings.”
On the wall was a photograph of Mayor Brown, taken at least twenty years earlier. It looked like a frame from a video. Brown was standing at the microphone with a sheet of paper in his hand, as if he were making a speech. The sheet of paper had been circled in felt-tip. The background suggested the stage of the Grand Theater.
“It could be a picture of Mayor Br
own giving the opening speech of the festival on the night of the murders,” Derek said.
“How do you know it’s the night of the murders?” I said. “Do you remember what he was wearing that night?”
Derek picked up the press photograph in which Brown also appeared. “He seems to be wearing the same clothes.”
We spent all night in the self-storage facility. There were no security cameras and the guard told us he was there only in case there were any problems, but there never were. Customers came and went as they pleased, at all hours, without being checked and without having to answer any questions.
The forensics team from the State Police was sent to inspect the place, and their meticulous search uncovered Stephanie’s laptop, hidden in the false bottom of a cardboard box they had supposed was empty until the officer who lifted it to move it expressed surprise at the weight.
“This is what whoever set fire to the apartment and burglarized the newspaper offices was looking for,” I said.
The computer was taken away by the forensics team for analysis, while Betsy, Derek and I removed the items from the wall and put them back together in the same order in Betsy’s office. At 6.30 in the morning, eyes swollen by lack of sleep, Derek pinned up the photograph of Mayor Gordon’s house, stared at it for a long while and read again out loud what Stephanie had written on it: What nobody saw. He moved his face to within a few inches of the picture and studied the faces of the people in it. “So, let’s see. This is Mayor Brown,” he said, pointing to a man in a light-colored suit. “And this,” he said, pointing to a tiny head, “is Chief Kirk Hayward.”
I was due back at troop headquarters to inform Major McKenna of whatever progress I had made. Derek came with me. As we were leaving Orphea, going back down Main Street in the morning sunshine, Derek, who was seeing Orphea again after a gap of twenty years, said:
“Nothing’s changed. It’s like time stood still.”
An hour later, we were in Major McKenna’s office. He listened in amazement to my account of the weekend. With the discovery of the unit in the self-storage facility, we now had proof that Stephanie had been investigating the 1994 murders.
“Goddammit, Jesse,” McKenna said, “is this case going to follow us around our whole lives?”
“I hope not, sir. But we can’t give up on the investigation now.”
“Do you realize what it means if you screwed up at the time?”
“Yes, I do. That’s why I’d like you to keep me on the force for as long as it takes me to see this thing through.”
He sighed. “You know, Jesse, it’s going to cost me a hell of a lot of time in paperwork and explanations to the top brass.”
“I’m aware of that, sir, and I’m sorry.”
“And what about this famous project of yours, the one that persuaded you to quit the force?”
“That can wait until I’ve closed this case, sir.”
Grunting, McKenna took some forms from a drawer. “I’m doing this for you, Jesse, because you’re the best police officer I’ve ever known.”
“I’m very grateful, sir.”
“I’m afraid I already assigned your office to someone else, starting from tomorrow.”
“I don’t need an office, sir. I’ll go pick up my things.”
“And I don’t want you to investigate on your own. I’m assigning you a partner. Unfortunately, the other teams in your unit are already fixed up, since you were supposed to be leaving today, but don’t worry, I’ll find you someone.”
Derek, who had been sitting beside me, now broke his silence.
“I’m ready to back up Jesse, sir. That’s why I’m here.”
“You, Derek? How long is it since you were last in the field?”
“Twenty years.”
“It’s thanks to Derek that we found the self-storage facility,” I said.
The major sighed again. I could see how troubled he was.
“Derek, are you telling me you want to throw yourself back into a case that was the reason you’re behind a desk now?”
“Yes, sir,” Derek said, determination in his voice.
The major stared at us for a long time. “Where’s your service pistol, Derek?” he said at last.
“In my desk drawer.”
“Do you still know how to use it?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Well, at least do me the kindness of firing off a couple of rounds at the range before walking around with that thing on your belt. Gentlemen, tie this thing up quickly and tie it up well. I really don’t want the sky to come crashing down on our heads.”
* * *
While Derek and I were at headquarters, Betsy did not waste her time. She had gotten it into her head to track down Kirk Hayward, but this would prove more difficult than she had imagined. She spent hours without any success searching for traces of the former chief. He had dropped clean out of circulation. He had, apparently, neither an address nor a telephone number. Lacking sources, she turned to the one person she could trust in Orphea: her neighbor Cody Springfield. She went to see him in his bookstore, which was right next door to the offices of the Chronicle.
“There’s not a soul about today,” Springfield said wearily on seeing her.
Betsy realized he had hoped she was a customer when he heard the door open.
“I hope the fireworks on the Fourth of July will attract a few people,” he went on. “This has been a lousy June.”
Betsy took a novel from one of the displays. “Any good?”
“Not bad.”
“I’ll buy it.”
“Betsy, you’re not obliged to do that.”
“I’ve run out of things to read. It’s perfect timing.”
“But I don’t suppose that’s what you came in here for.”
“I didn’t come here only for that,” she said with a smile, handing him a fifty-dollar bill. “What can you tell me about those murders back in 1994?”
He frowned. “Nobody’s mentioned that in a long time. What do you want to know?”
“I’m just curious to know what the atmosphere was like in the town at the time.”
“It was terrible,” Springfield said. “Obviously, people were shocked. Can you imagine? A whole family wiped out, including the young boy. And Meghan, who was the sweetest girl you could imagine. Everyone here loved her.”
“Did you know her well?”
“Did I know her well? She worked right here. The store was doing really well in those days, and a lot of it was down to her. She was young, pretty, passionate, delightful, brilliant. People came from the whole of Long Island just for her. How unfair it was! To me, it was a terrible shock. For a while, I even thought about dropping everything and getting out. But where would I have gone? All my ties are here. You know, Betsy, the worst of it is that everyone assumed from the start that the reason Meghan died was that she had recognized the Gordons’ killer. That meant it was one of us. Someone we knew. Someone we saw at the supermarket, on the beach, even here in the bookstore. And unfortunately, we discovered we were right when the killer was identified.”
“Who was it?”
“Ted Tennenbaum, a pleasant, friendly guy from a good family. A model citizen. Restaurant owner by trade. Member of the volunteer fire service. He’d contributed toward organizing the first festival.” Springfield sighed. “I don’t like talking about all this, Betsy, it gets me too stirred up.”
“I’m sorry, Cody. One last question. Does the name Kirk Hayward mean anything to you?”
“Sure, he used to be police chief. Before Gulliver.”
“And what happened to him? I’m trying to discover his whereabouts.”
Cody stared at her curiously. “He vanished into thin air,” he said, handing over her change and slipping the book into a paper bag. “Nobody’s seen hide nor hair of him since.”
“What happened?”
“Nobody knows. He vanished one fine day in the fall of 1994.”
“You mean the same year as the
murders?”
“Yes, three months later. That’s why I remember it. It was a weird summer. Most people here would rather forget all about it.”
As she spoke, he picked up his keys and stuffed his cell phone, which had been on the counter, into his pocket.
“Are you leaving?” Betsy said.
“Yes, I’m going to take advantage of the fact that there’s nobody here to drop by the theater and work a little with the other volunteers. As a matter of fact, we haven’t seen you there in a while.”
“I know. I’ve been a bit snowed under lately. Can I give you a ride? As it happens, I’ve been planning to go to the theater to talk to the volunteers about Stephanie.”
Orphea’s Grand Theater was next to Café Athena, at the top of Main Street, almost opposite the entrance to the marina.
As in all quiet towns, there was not much surveillance of the public buildings. Betsy and Cody had only to push open the front door to get into the theater. They crossed the lobby to the auditorium, went in, and walked down the central aisle between the rows of red velvet seats.
“Imagine this place in a month, filled with people,” Springfield said proudly. “All that thanks to the work of the volunteers.”
He climbed the steps leading up to the stage and Betsy followed him. They went behind the curtains into the backstage area. They opened a door to where the volunteers worked. It was a hive of activity. There were people everywhere, some running the box office, others the logistical aspects. In one room, they were preparing to stick up posters and were proofreading programs which would soon be sent back to the printers. In the workshop, a team was putting together the framework for a set.
Betsy took the time to talk to each one of the volunteers. Many had abandoned the Grand Theater the day before to take part in the search operations for Stephanie and they came spontaneously to ask if the investigation was making any progress.
