The Disappearance of Stephanie Mailer: A gripping new thriller with a killer twist

by Joël Dicker

  “Jerry, I don’t recognize you anymore! This is our daughter we’re talking about! You used to be so close, remember? When she was little, I was even jealous of how close you were.”

  “I know, I know,” Eden replied, anxious to calm his wife.

  They had not realized that their daughter was gone until Sunday. They had thought she was sleeping and hadn’t gone to her room until early in the afternoon.

  “We should have looked in on her when we came home,” Cynthia said.

  “What difference would that have made? And anyway, we’re supposed to be ‘respecting her inner space’. That’s what I was told in one of those family therapy sessions. All we’ve done is apply that fucking principle of trust recommended by your fucking Dr Lern!”

  “Don’t distort everything, Jerry! When we talked about that in the session, it was because Carolina was complaining that you kept searching her room for drugs. Dr Lern said we should make her room a space just for her, a space we would respect, and thereby establish a principle of trust. He never said we shouldn’t go in there to see if our daughter was alright!”

  “For all we knew, she was sleeping in. I wanted to give her the benefit of the doubt.”

  “Her cell phone is still off!” Cynthia said in a choked voice, having tried in the meantime to reach her daughter. “I’m going to call Dr Lern.”

  Just then, the landline rang. Eden rushed to pick up.

  “Mr Eden? This is the N.Y.P.D. We have your daughter. Don’t worry, she’s fine. A patrol found her sleeping in an alley, apparently drunk. She’s been taken to Mount Sinai for tests.”

  * * *

  When we got back to Orphea, Betsy and I dropped by the Grand Theater. On the drive from Poughkeepsie, we had called Cody Springfield. We needed to find out anything more we could about the first festival. We were particularly curious to learn about the play Hayward had proposed, which Mayor Gordon had initially turned down.

  Betsy led me through the building to the backstage area. Springfield was waiting for us in his office. From the archives he had prepared a cardboard box filled with assorted mementos.

  “What are you looking for in particular?” he said.

  “Any information about the first festival. The name of the company that performed the opening show, for example.”

  “The opening play was ‘Uncle Vanya’. Look, here’s the program.”

  He took out an old, yellowing brochure and held it out to me. “You can keep it,” he said. “I have others.” Then, rummaging some more in his box, he took out a booklet. “Oh, I’d forgotten this even existed. It was an idea of Mayor Gordon’s at the time. You may find it useful.”

  I took the booklet and read the title.

  HISTORY OF THE ORPHEA THEATER FESTIVAL

  by Steven Bergdorf

  “What is this?”

  “Steven Bergdorf?” Betsy said, reading the author’s name.

  Springfield told us about an episode that had occurred two months before the Gordon murders.

  * * *

  Orphea, May 1994

  Sitting in his little office in the bookstore, Springfield was busy processing orders when Meghan Padalin shyly opened the door.

  “Sorry to bother you, Cody, but the mayor’s here. He’d like to see you.”

  Springfield immediately stood up and walked from the back room into the store. He was curious. For some reason, Mayor Gordon had not been to the store for two months or so. Cody could not understand why. He had the impression the mayor was avoiding it. He had been seen buying books from the bookstore in East Hampton.

  Gordon was waiting on the other side of the counter, nervously fingering a little booklet.

  “Mayor Gordon!”

  “Hello, Cody.”

  They shook hands cordially.

  “We’re very fortunate,” Mayor Gordon said, gazing at the bookshelves, “to have such a wonderful bookstore here in Orphea.”

  “Is everything alright, Mr Mayor? I’ve had the impression you’ve been avoiding me recently.”

  “Avoiding you? What a strange idea! You know, I’m impressed by how much people here read. They always have a book in their hands. The other day, I was having dinner in the restaurant, and, believe it or not, at the next table was a young couple sitting face to face, each of them deep in a book! I told myself, people have gone crazy. Talk to each other, dammit, instead of being engrossed in your book! On top of that, sunbathers go to the beach carrying piles of reading matter. It’s their drug.”

  Springfield listened, amused, to the mayor’s story. He found him affable, sympathetic, good-natured. Maybe he’d been barking up the wrong tree. But there was an ulterior motive behind Gordon’s visit.

  “I wanted to ask you a question, Cody,” the mayor said. “As you know, July 30 is the opening night of our very first theater festival.”

  “Yes, of course I know,” Springfield said enthusiastically. “I’ve already ordered several different editions of ‘Uncle Vanya’ for my customers.”

  “What a good idea! Anyway, here’s what I wanted to ask you. Steven Bergdorf, the editor of the Chronicle, as you know, has written a little book about the festival. Do you think you could put it on sale here? Look, I brought you a copy.”

  He handed Springfield the booklet. The cover had on it a photograph of the mayor posing outside the Grand Theater, with the title above it.

  “History of the Festival,” Springfield read out loud. “But this is only the first festival, isn’t it? Don’t you think it’s a bit premature to have a book about it?”

  “Well, there’s already so much to say about the subject. You may be in for quite a surprise.”

  Springfield did not see what possible interest there might be in the book, but he wanted to show willing to the mayor, so he agreed for it to be sold in his store. Once Gordon had left, Meghan Padalin reappeared.

  “What did he want?”

  “To promote a booklet he’s publishing.”

  She softened and leafed through the little book. “It doesn’t look too bad. You know, there are quite a lot of people in the area who self-publish. We should put a little corner aside for them so they can put their works on sale here.”

  “A corner? We’re short of space as it is. And besides, nobody will be interested. People don’t want to read their neighbors’ books.”

  “Let’s use the storeroom in back,” Meghan said. “A coat of paint and it’ll be like new. We’ll make it a room for local writers. You’ll see—writers buy books. They’ll come from all over the region to see their own books on the shelves and at the same time they’ll make purchases.”

  Yes, Springfield thought, it might be a good idea. And besides, he wanted to please Mayor Gordon. He could sense that something was amiss and he did not like that.

  “We can try it if you like, Meghan,” he said. “We have nothing to lose. If nothing more comes of it, we’ll have tidied the storeroom. Anyway, thanks to Mayor Gordon, I’ve discovered that Steven Bergdorf is a writer in his spare time.”

  * * *

  “So Steven Bergdorf used to be the editor of the Chronicle?” Betsy said. “Did you know that, Jesse?”

  I had had no idea. Had I met him in 1994? I couldn’t remember.

  “Do you know him?” Springfield asked, surprised by our reaction.

  “He’s the editor of the magazine Stephanie Mailer used to work for in New York,” Betsy said.

  How was it I didn’t remember Steven Bergdorf? Going further into it, we discovered that Bergdorf had resigned from his post as editor of the Chronicle just after the Gordon killings and had been replaced by Michael Bird. A strange coincidence. What if Bergdorf had left with questions that still nagged at him today? What if he was the person who had commissioned the book Stephanie had been writing? She had hinted at someone who couldn’t write it themselves. It was understandable if the one-time editor of the local paper was unwilling to come back twenty years later and declare an interest in the case. We absolutely had to go
to New York and speak with Bergdorf. We decided to do so first thing the next day.

  This was not our final surprise. The same day, late in the evening, Betsy received a call. “Deputy Kanner?” a man’s voice said. “This is Kirk Hayward speaking.”

  DEREK SCOTT

  Monday, August 22, 1994. Three weeks after the murders.

  Jesse and I were on our way to Hicksville, a town on Long Island between New York and Orphea. The woman who had contacted us worked as a clerk in a branch of the Long Island Bank.

  “She’s agreed to meet us in a coffee shop downtown,” I told Jesse in the car. “Her boss doesn’t know she got in touch with us.”

  “But is this about Gordon?” Jesse said.

  “It seems so.”

  It was early in the morning, nevertheless Jesse was eating a hot meat sandwich, the meat covered in a brown sauce that smelled wonderful.

  “Want to try it?” Jesse said between mouthfuls, holding out his sandwich to me. “It’s seriously good.”

  I bit into the bread. I had seldom tasted anything as delicious.

  “It’s the sauce that’s incredible. I don’t know how Natasha does it. I call it Natasha’s Sauce.”

  “You mean Natasha made you this sandwich this morning before you left?”

  “She got up at four to try out dishes for the restaurant. Darla will be dropping by later. I had an embarrassment of choice. Pancakes, waffles, Russian salad. There was enough for a regiment. I suggested she serve these sandwiches at Little Russia. People are going to fight over them.”

  “And with lots of fries,” I said, already picturing myself there. “There can never be enough fries.”

  *

  The clerk from the Long Island Bank was called Macy Warwick. She was waiting for us in an otherwise empty coffee shop, nervously stirring her cappuccino.

  “I was in the Hamptons last weekend and I saw a photograph in a newspaper of that family that was murdered. I thought I recognized the man, and then I realized he was a customer of the bank.”

  She had with her a cardboard folder containing bank documents. She pushed it across the table in our direction.

  “It took me a while to find his name. I didn’t bring the newspaper back with me and I couldn’t remember the surname. I had to go into the bank’s computer system to find the transactions. These last few months he had been coming several times a week.”

  As we listened to her, Jesse and I consulted the copies of statements that Macy Warwick had brought. There were several deposits of $20,000 in cash into an account registered with her bank.

  “Several times a week? Joseph Gordon came to your branch and deposited these sums?” Jesse said in surprise.

  “Yes,” Macy said. “$20,000 is the maximum a customer can deposit without needing to give an explanation.”

  Studying the statements, we discovered that these deposits had started the previous March.

  “And besides, my boss doesn’t like too many questions being asked. He says if the customers don’t come here, they’ll go somewhere else. Apparently the bank’s directors are planning to close some branches.”

  “So the money is still in this account in your bank?”

  “In our bank, if you like, but I took the liberty of checking which account the money was deposited in. It was a different account, still in Mr Gordon’s name, but opened in our branch in Bozeman, Montana.”

  Jesse and I were astonished. In the bank statements we had found in Gordon’s house, there were only personal accounts held in a bank in the Hamptons. What was this other account in the wilds of Montana?

  We immediately contacted the Montana State Police to get more information. And what they discovered was more than enough justification for Jesse and me to fly to Yellowstone Bozeman Airport, by way of Chicago. We took a few sandwiches with Natasha’s Sauce to survive the flight.

  Mayor Gordon had been renting a house in Bozeman since April. We were able to establish that because of the regular debits from his account there. We tracked down the realtor, who took us to a sinister little single-story shack built out of planks at the intersection of two streets.

  “Yes, that’s him, Joseph Gordon,” the realtor said when we showed him a photograph of the mayor. “He came to Bozeman just once, in April. He was alone. He’d driven all the way from New York State. His car was full of cardboard boxes. He confirmed that he would take the house even before he’d seen it. At a price like that, he said, how can you refuse?”

  “Are you certain this was the man you saw?” I said.

  “Oh, yes. I didn’t trust him, so when he wasn’t looking I took a photograph, so that I had at least his face and his license plate, just in case.”

  The realtor took a photograph from his pocket. On it, Mayor Gordon could be seen unloading boxes from a convertible.

  “Did he tell you why he wanted to live here?”

  “Not really, but in the end he did say something along the lines of ‘It’s not especially beautiful around here, but it’s quiet and out of the way.’”

  “And when was he supposed to be moving in?”

  “He rented the house from April, but he didn’t know when exactly he’d be coming for good. I didn’t really care. As long as the rent is paid, the rest is no concern of mine.”

  “Can I take this photograph for our file?” I said.

  “Go ahead, Sergeant.”

  The bank account opened in March, the house rented in April. Mayor Gordon had been planning his escape. The night he died, he really was on the verge of leaving Orphea with his family. Could the killer have known that?

  We also had to figure out where that money came from. Because now it was a near certainty that there was a link between his murder and those huge sums of cash he had transferred to Montana—a total of almost $500,000.

  Our first idea was to check if that money might be the connection between Mayor Gordon and Tennenbaum. We had to use all our persuasive skills on Major McKenna for him to agree to send a request to the assistant D.A. for access to Tennenbaum’s bank details.

  “You know,” the major warned us, “with a lawyer like Starr on the case, if you screw up one more time, you’ll be dragged in front of the disciplinary board—or even in front of a judge—for harassment. And let me tell you this right now: if that happens, it’s your careers down the toilet.”

  We knew that perfectly well, but we could not help but notice that the mayor had started to receive those mysterious sums of money just when the refurbishment work on the Café Athena building had started. What if Mayor Gordon had been screwing money out of Tennenbaum in return for agreeing not to block the work and letting it open in time for the festival?

  After hearing our arguments, the assistant D.A. thought our theory was sufficiently persuasive to issue a warrant. And that was how we discovered that between February and July 1994 Tennenbaum had withdrawn $500,000 from an account inherited from his father in a Manhattan bank.

  JESSE ROSENBERG

  Tuesday, July 8, 2014

  Eighteen days to opening night

  That morning, as we drove to New York, Betsy told Derek and me about the call she had had from Kirk Hayward.

  “He refused to tell me anything over the phone, but he agreed to meet tomorrow, Wednesday, at 5 p.m. in the Beluga Bar.”

  “In Los Angeles?” I said. “Is he joking?”

  “He seemed serious to me. I’ve checked the schedules. You can take a flight tomorrow morning from J.F.K., Jesse.”

  “What do you mean, Jesse?” I protested.

  “This is a job for a State Police Officer, and Derek has children.”

  We had not warned Bergdorf we were coming because we wanted to surprise him. We found him in the editorial offices of the New York Literary Review. He ushered us into his untidy office.

  “I just heard about Stephanie,” he said immediately. “Such a tragedy! Do you have any leads?”

  “A possible one, which may have something to do with you,” Derek said. It was
clear that he had lost none of his flair—even after twenty years out of the field.

  “Me?” Bergdorf said, turning pale.

  “Stephanie got herself hired at the Chronicle so that she could discreetly carry out an investigation into the quadruple murder in 1994. She was writing a book about it.”

  “I had no idea. I’m amazed. But that does explain why she would choose to take such a step down in her career.”

  “We know the idea for the book was suggested to Stephanie by someone who was in Orphea on the night of the murders. More specifically, was in the Grand Theater. Where were you at the time of the murders, Mr Bergdorf? I’m sure you remember.”

  “It’s true, yes, I was in the Grand Theater. Like everyone in Orphea that night! But I never talked about it with Stephanie, it didn’t really matter that much to me.”

  “You were the editor of the Chronicle and you resigned in the days following the murders. There’s also the book you wrote about the festival, a festival that Stephanie was especially interested in. That makes a lot of connections, don’t you think? Mr Bergdorf, did you commission Stephanie Mailer to investigate the 1994 murders and write a book about them?”

  “I swear I did not! Why would I have done something like that?”

  “When was the last time you were in Orphea?”

  “I went there for a weekend in May last year, at the invitation of the town council. I hadn’t been back since 1994. Frankly, I have had no ties in Orphea since I left. I settled in New York, met my wife here, and continued my career as a journalist.”

  “Why did you leave Orphea just after the murders?”

  “Actually, it was because of Mayor Gordon.”

  With these words, Bergdorf plunged us back twenty years into the past.

  “Joseph Gordon was a fairly mediocre man, personally and professionally,” he said. “He was a failed businessman. His companies had all collapsed and he only went into politics when the opportunity to become mayor presented itself. He was attracted to the post because of the salary that went with it.”

  “How did he manage to get elected?”