by Joël Dicker
“When did all this happen?”
“We found out all about it in June 1994.”
“But how were the police able to function without a chief from June to October?”
“Gulliver stepped up. He became de facto chief. The guys respected him, and everything went well. There was nothing official about the situation, but nobody minded. Then Mayor Gordon was killed, and in the months that followed, Mayor Brown had his hands full of administrative problems.”
“And yet,” Derek said, “we worked with Hayward when we were investigating the Gordon killings.”
“Who else from the station did you see a lot of?” Erban wanted to know.
“Nobody else,” Derek said.
“Didn’t you think it was strange that you only had dealings with Hayward?”
“I didn’t think about it at the time.”
“Look, it doesn’t mean we neglected our jobs. Four people had been killed. We took every call from the public seriously, every request from the State Police, too. But outside that, Hayward conducted his own investigation. He was obsessed by the case.”
“So he had his own file?”
“Of course. It’s probably still in the records room.”
“There’s nothing there,” Betsy said. “It’s an empty box.”
“Maybe it’s in his office in the basement,” Erban said.
“What office in the basement?”
“In 1994, a group of us went into Hayward’s office, hoping he’d explain himself. He wasn’t there, so we started searching and we realized he’d been spending more time working on his play than doing his job. There were all kinds of scripts and notes there. We decided to do a thorough clean. All the things that had nothing to do with his police work we put through the shredder. Let me tell you, there wasn’t much left. After that, we unplugged his computer, took his chair and his desk, and moved everything into a room in the basement that had been used as an equipment store. The place was a mess, no windows, no fresh air. From that day on, when he got to the station, Hayward went straight down to his new office. We didn’t think he’d hold out for a week, but he managed to survive in that basement for three months, until one day in October he was gone.”
The mutiny described by Erban left us astonished. Finally, I said:
“Without warning anyone, he went missing?”
“That’s right, Captain. I remember it very well, because the day before he left he tried to talk to me about his case.”
* * *
Orphea, late October 1994
Erban walked into the toilets and there was Hayward, washing his hands.
“Lewis, we need to talk,” he said.
Erban pretended at first not to have heard him. But Hayward kept looking at him, so he said:
“Kirk, I don’t want to be roasted by the others . . .”
“Listen, Lewis, you can hate me all you want. But I need your help.”
“Forget it. If the guys find out I’ve even been talking to you, I’m going to end up in the basement like you.”
“Then let’s meet somewhere else. How about the marina parking lot at eight tonight? I’ll tell you everything I’ve been working on. It’s important. It’s about Ted Tennenbaum.”
* * *
“Ted Tennenbaum?” I echoed.
“That’s right, Captain Rosenberg,” Erban said. “Obviously, I didn’t go. Being seen with Hayward was like having scabies. That conversation was the last I ever had with him. The next day, when I got to the station, I heard that Gulliver had found a letter from Hayward on his desk, saying he had left and would not be coming back.”
“What was your reaction?” Derek said.
“Good riddance, I thought. Honestly, it was better for everyone.”
Leaving Erban’s house, Betsy said to us:
“At the Grand Theater, Stephanie asked the volunteers about Ted Tennenbaum’s movements on the night of the murders.”
“Shit,” Derek said under his breath. “Tennenbaum was the man who—”
“. . . committed those murders, I know,” Betsy cut in.
“At least that’s what we’ve been thinking these twenty years. What had Kirk Hayward found out about him, and why didn’t he tell us?”
That same day we received from forensics an analysis of the contents of Stephanie’s computer. There was only one file on the hard drive, a Word document, protected by a code the I.T. people had easily been able to get around.
The three of us gathered in front of Stephanie’s computer and opened the file. “Maybe it’s her article,” Derek said.
“Looks more like a book,” Betsy said.
She was right. Reading the file, we discovered that Stephanie had been devoting a whole book to the case. This was the start of it:
NOT GUILTY
by
Stephanie Mailer
The ad was in between one for a shoe repairer and another for a Chinese restaurant offering an all-you-can-eat buffet for less than $20.
DO YOU WANT TO WRITE A BESTSELLER?
MAN OF LETTERS SEEKS AMBITIOUS WRITER FOR SERIOUS WORK. REFERENCES ESSENTIAL.
I didn’t take it seriously at first. But I was intrigued enough to dial the number. A man answered. I didn’t recognize his voice. It wasn’t until the next day, when I saw him in the café in SoHo where we had arranged to meet, that I realized who it was.
“You?” I said in surprise.
He seemed as surprised as I was. He explained that he needed someone to write a book that had been going around in his head for a long time.
“I’ve been placing that ad for nearly twenty years, Stephanie,” he said. “A lot of people have replied to it over the years, but they were all pitiful.”
“Why are you looking for someone to write it instead of you?”
“Not instead of me. For me. I give you the subject, you write it.”
“But why not write it yourself?”
“Me? Impossible! What would people say? Can you imagine . . .? Anyway, I know your work on the Literary Review and how good you are, I’ll pay all your expenses while you’re writing. And when the book comes out you’ll be a rich and famous writer, and I’ll be a calmer man. I’ll finally have the satisfaction of knowing the answers to questions that have been haunting me for twenty years. And the pleasure of seeing this book actually out there. If you solve the mystery, it’ll make a wonderful detective story. The readers will love it.”
It has to be admitted, the story did make for a fascinating read. Stephanie told how she had gotten herself hired by the Orphea Chronicle as a cover to allow her to investigate the 1994 murders at her leisure.
It was difficult, though, to distinguish what was true from what was fiction. If she was only telling the truth of what had happened, then who was this mysterious sponsor who had asked her to write the book? And why? She did not give his name, but she did make clear that it was someone she knew, someone who had, apparently, been in the Grand Theater on the night of the murders.
“That may be why I’m so obsessed by what happened. I was in the theater, watching the play. A very ordinary production of ‘Uncle Vanya’. The real drama, a fascinating one, was taking place a few streets away, in the Penfield neighborhood. Every day since then, I have been wondering what exactly happened, and every day I have been telling myself that this story would make a wonderful mystery novel.”
“But from what I heard, the murderer was found. It was a man named Ted Tennenbaum, who owned a restaurant in Orphea.”
“I know, Stephanie. I also know that everything points to his guilt. But I’m not convinced. He was the fire officer on duty in the theater that night. Just before seven, I went out onto the street to get a breath of fresh air and saw a van drive by. It was easy to recognize because of the unusual sticker on the rear window. Sometime afterward, reading the newspapers, I realized it was Ted Tennenbaum’s vehicle. The problem is, it wasn’t him at the wheel.”
“What’s all this about a van?” Betsy said.
>
“Tennenbaum’s van was one of the principal things that led to his arrest,” Derek said. “A witness stated categorically that it was parked outside the mayor’s house just before the murders.”
“So it was his van, but he wasn’t at the wheel?” Betsy said.
“That’s what this guy seems to be saying,” I said. “And why Stephanie told me we had nailed the wrong man.”
“So someone doubted his guilt but never said anything in all this time?” Derek said.
It was clear to all three of us that if Stephanie had disappeared of her own free will, she would never have left without her computer.
Unhappily, this conviction of ours was to prove correct. The following morning, Wednesday, July 2, an amateur birder walking on the shore of Stag Lake noticed a mass floating in the distance, in among rushes and water lilies. Intrigued, she looked through her binoculars. It took her only a few moments to realize it was a human body.
DEREK SCOTT
August 1994. Our investigation was going nowhere. We had neither a suspect nor a motive. If Mayor Gordon and his family had indeed been meaning to flee Orphea, we had no idea of their intended desti-nation or of the reason. We did not have a single clue, a single lead. Nothing in the behavior of Leslie or Joseph Gordon had alarmed their nearest and dearest, and their bank accounts indicated nothing abnormal.
To retrace the killer’s steps, even if we did not yet understand his motive, we needed something specific to go on. Thanks to the ballistics experts, we knew that the weapon used for the murders was a Beretta pistol, and, to judge by the accuracy of the shooting, the murderer was well trained. We were drowning in weapons registrations and membership lists from shooting clubs.
We did have one thing, though, which might change the course of the investigation: the vehicle spotted on the street by Lena Bellamy just before the murders. She vaguely remembered a black van, with an impressive drawing on the rear window.
Jesse and I spent hours with her, showing her images of every possi-ble vehicle.
“How about this one?” we would ask her.
She would look closely at the photographs propped up in front of her and reply, “It’s really hard to say.”
“When you say a van, do you mean a van or a pickup?”
“What’s the difference? You know, the more vehicles you show me, the more confused I am.”
For all Lena Bellamy’s goodwill, we were going round in circles. And time was not on our side. Major McKenna was putting a lot of pressure on us.
“Well?” he would repeat. “Tell me you have something, guys.”
“Nothing yet, sir. It’s a real puzzle.”
“Dammit, you really have to make some progress. Don’t tell me I made a mistake about you. This is a big case and everyone in the squad is waiting to see you screw up. You know what they’re saying about you around the coffee machine? That you’re amateurs. You’re going to look like idiots, I’m going to look like an idiot, and all this is going to be very unpleasant for everyone. So I need you to think about nothing but this case. Four people dead in broad daylight—there has to be a lead somewhere.”
We were living and breathing the case. Twenty hours a day, seven days a week. I was practically living with Jesse and Natasha. There were three toothbrushes in their bathroom now.
It was thanks to Lena Bellamy that the investigation took a dramatic new turn.
Ten days after the murders, her husband took her out for dinner. Since that terrible night of July 30, Lena had been so worried and nervous that she had barely left home. She had stopped letting her children play in the park in front of the house. She preferred them to play farther away, even if that meant a car ride. She even thought about moving. Her husband Terrence, anxious to get her out of this mood, finally got her to agree to an evening out together. He wanted to try the hip new restaurant everyone was talking about, Café Athena on Main Street. It had opened just in time for the festival and was already heavily booked.
It was a mild evening. Terrence parked in the marina parking lot and they strolled to the restaurant. The place was wonderful, with an outdoor seating area, entirely candlelit and surrounded by banks of flowers. The front of the restaurant was a large picture window, on which a series of lines and dots had been etched, which at first glance looked like a Native American motif, until it became clear that it was an owl.
Seeing that design, Lena Bellamy began shaking. “That’s it!” she said to her husband.
“What?”
“That’s the logo I saw on the back of the van.”
Bellamy called us from a phone booth. Jesse and I drove straight to Orphea and found the Bellamys lying low in their car at the marina. Lena was in tears. In the meantime, the famous black van had drawn up outside Café Athena. The logo on the rear window was indeed identical to the one on the front of the restaurant. Its driver was a man of imposing build whom the Bellamys had seen entering the establishment. We were able to identify him thanks to the van’s license plates. It was Ted Tennenbaum, the owner of Café Athena.
We decided not to rush in and arrest Tennenbaum. We would start by making inquiries. It did not take us long to realize that he corresponded to the profile we had of the killer. He had bought a handgun a year earlier—although it was not a Beretta—and he practiced regularly in a local shooting range, whose owner told us he was a pretty good shot.
Tennenbaum came from a well-to-do Manhattan family, the kind of impulsive rich kid who liked to use his fists. It was because of his propensity for getting into fights that he had been dismissed from Stanford University. He had even done a few months’ jail time—although that had not prevented him from later buying a weapon. He had been living in Orphea for a few years, and had, apparently, kept out of trouble. He had worked at the Lake Palace before launching out on his own with Café Athena. And it was his restaurant that had landed him in a dispute with the mayor.
Tennenbaum had bought a building that was ideally situated, bang on Main Street. The high price asked by the owner had put off other purchasers, but Tennenbaum was confident his restaurant would be a success. There was just one big problem: the zoning regulations did not allow for a restaurant in that location. Tennenbaum was somehow persuaded that the town council would grant him favorable treatment, but Mayor Gordon did not see things that way. He was fiercely opposed to the plans for Café Athena. Tennenbaum planned to make it a happening spot, the kind of place you might find in Manhattan, and Gordon claimed to see no benefit for Orphea. He refused any exemption from the zoning regulations. A number of municipal employees told us there had been heated arguments between the two men.
The next thing we discovered was that one night in February the building had been devastated by fire. That turned out to be a lucky break for Tennenbaum. The need for a total rebuild meant that the zoning regulation was changed. It was Chief Hayward who told us about this episode.
“So it was thanks to the fire that Tennenbaum was able to open his restaurant,” I said. “And the fire was caused deliberately, I imagine.”
“Obviously. But we found nothing that could prove that Tennenbaum was responsible. In any case, as luck would have it, the fire took place just in time for Tennenbaum to complete the work and open the restaurant before the start of the festival. Since then, it’s been pretty much full all the time. It wouldn’t have worked out if there had been the slightest delay.”
That was the point that would prove crucial. Several witnesses asserted that Gordon had implicitly threatened Tennenbaum with a delay to the work. We even heard from Deputy Gulliver about an incident when he had had to step in to stop the two men coming to blows in the street.
“Why did nobody tell us about this disagreement with Tennenbaum?” I asked.
“Because it happened back in March,” Gulliver said. “I’d forgotten about it. You know, when it comes to politics, people are always getting worked up. I have heaps of stories like that. You should go to a council meeting. The guys are forever going at ea
ch other hammer and tongs. That doesn’t mean they end up shooting each other.”
But for Jesse and me, that was enough. Tennenbaum had a motive to kill the mayor, he was a trained marksman, and his van had been formally identified as being parked outside the Gordons’ house a short time before the murders. At dawn on August 12, 1994, we arrested Tennenbaum at his home for the murders of Joseph, Leslie, and Arthur Gordon, and Meghan Padalin.
We arrived triumphantly at troop headquarters and escorted Tennenbaum to the cells while our colleagues and Major McKenna looked on admiringly.
Our blaze of glory lasted just a few hours. Long enough for Tennenbaum to call Robin Starr, a top-flight New York lawyer, who made the journey from Manhattan as soon as Tennenbaum’s sister paid him a $100,000 retainer.
In the interrogation room, Starr simply tore us to pieces, while the major and the rest of our colleagues could only watch behind a two-way mirror, doubled up with laughter.
“I’ve seen some incompetent police officers in my time,” Starr said, “but you two really are the last straw. Would you mind telling me your story again, Sergeant Scott?”
“There’s no need to treat us like fools,” I retorted. “We know your client was in a dispute with Mayor Gordon for several months about the work on Café Athena.”
Starr looked at me, intrigued. “The work has already been completed, it seems to me. So, Sergeant Scott, where is the problem?”
“Construction on Café Athena could not be delayed, and I know Mayor Gordon threatened to hold it up. After one final quarrel, Mr Tennenbaum ended up killing the mayor, his family, and that unfortunate jogger who was passing the house. Because, as I’m sure you know, Mr Starr, your client is a trained marksman.”
Starr nodded ironically. “That’s quite a tangled web, Sergeant, I’m really impressed.”
