The Disappearance of Stephanie Mailer: A gripping new thriller with a killer twist Joël Dicker (booksvooks TXT) 📖

least she share whatever new information she had, but she refused. We had a little argument in the Beluga Bar. When I tried to hold her back, her bag fell, and it emptied on the floor. The papers from her investigation, her cigarette lighter, her key ring with a ridiculous big yellow ball. As I helped her to pick up her things, I tried to take the opportunity to read her notes. But obviously I couldn’t. And then you showed up, my dear Rosenberg. At first I thought I wouldn’t tell you anything. Not after Stephanie Mailer refused to share what she knew with me. But then I told myself it could be my last chance to get back to Orphea and, who knows, for my play to be performed at the opening of the festival.”

“But you had no real play.”

“I had something better, don’t you see that? I had a story, rooted in the history of a small town. I knew I could find a talented cast among the people coming for the festival, many of whom had some link to the the first festival and the murders. Charlotte Brown, who could have been a star if she hadn’t left me for that idiot Brown. Ostrovski, who has seen every play from Broadway to State Street. Bergdorf, a respected literary editor. Eden, head of a T.V. network, and his daughter, practically a prodigy. And to top it off, Samuel Padalin, whose wife was one of the victims. All I needed was the name of the killer. I’d briefed that cast on every possible suspect. Once we had the name, I knew they could play it by ear.”

“So that explains why you only wrote a handful of scenes.”

“Exactly. I was counting on my promise to reveal the killer on opening night to sell tickets. But I was counting on you two to find the killer.”

“But we didn’t find him.”

“That was why I added Carolina’s line about his identity. I knew you would be in the auditorium, watching the audience. I was hoping to flush him out, force him to make a mistake.”

“But we were in your dressing room,” Derek said, glancing my way. “Trying to find out what you knew.”

“Why didn’t you just tell us, Hayward?” I said. “We could have worked together, like we did back in ’94.”

“And how far did that get us?” Hayward said. He sighed. “I thought I had it all figured out. I had once-in-a-lifetime publicity for my play and as talented a cast as I could possibly have hoped for. But now, because of me, that wonderful young woman is hovering between life and death.”

There was a moment’s silence.

“You were on the right track with your original investigation,” I said at last. “It’s not the ideal moment to mention this, but we did find your play. Mayor Gordon was keeping it in a safe deposit box. In it, in the form of a code, was the name Jeremiah Fold, the man who died in a motorcycle accident. So there is a connection between Fold, Gordon, and Meghan Padalin. You understood everything, Kirk. You had all the pieces of the puzzle in your hand. Now we simply have to put them together.”

“Let me help you. It’ll be my way of making amends.”

*

Before anything else, we needed to figure out what had happened the previous night in the Grand Theater.

“I was in the wings, watching Carolina,” Hayward said. “Jerry Eden was standing next to me. Then there were the shots. Carolina collapsed. Jerry and I rushed to her, soon joined by Charlotte.”

“Could you tell from what direction the shots came?” Derek said. “From the front row? From the edge of the stage?”

“I had no idea. The auditorium was in darkness and we had the spotlights pointing at us. The shooter was on the audience side, I’m sure of that. Carolina was facing the auditorium and was hit in the chest. What I find incredible is how a weapon could have gotten into the theater. The security was so tight.”

In an attempt to answer this question, and before questioning the other members of the cast, we joined Major McKenna, Acting Chief Montagne and Mayor Brown in a conference room for a first review of the situation.

At this point, we had absolutely no clue as to the identity of the shooter. There were no cameras in the Grand Theater and those members of the audience who had been questioned had seen nothing. They had all repeated the same litany: the auditorium had been in total darkness at the time of the shooting, the spotlights, from behind the audience, directed onto the stage. “It really was ‘The Darkest Night’ in there,” they had said. “There were two gunshots, the girl collapsed, then there was panic. How is the poor girl?”

McKenna informed us that the weapon had not been found, either in the theater or on the surrounding streets. “The shooter has to have taken advantage of the panic to run away from the theater and dispose of the weapon.”

“It was impossible for us to stop people from leaving,” Montagne said, as if hoping to get himself off the hook. “They would have trampled each other, people could have died. Nobody ever thought the danger would come from inside. We had secured the theater from the outside.”

This was the point on which, despite the absence of clues, we were going to advance in the investigation.

“How could an armed person have gotten into the theater?” I said.

“I can’t figure that out,” McKenna said. “The guys who were in charge of the access routes are used to difficult situations. They secure international conferences, parades, the President’s visits to New York. The procedure was very strict. The theater was first searched by sniffer dogs, then placed under total surveillance. Nobody could have broken in during the night. And the audience and the cast all went through metal detectors on their way in.”

Something had escaped us. We had to figure out how a weapon had gotten into the theater.