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

in an interrogation room at troop headquarters, Michael Bird read a letter signed by the D.A. exempting his wife from all prosecution for having deliberately misled us in our investigation. He signed it and confessed, with something like relief in his voice.

“I killed Meghan. And the Gordons. And Stephanie. And Cody Springfield. And Costico. I killed them all.”

There was a long silence. After twenty years, we finally had a confession. I urged Michael to tell us more.

“Why did you do it?”

He shrugged. “I’ve confessed. That’s all that matters, isn’t it?”

“We want to understand. You don’t fit the profile of a murderer, Michael. You’re a kind family man. How does a man like you end up killing seven people?”

He hesitated for a moment.

“I don’t even know where to begin.”

“Begin at the beginning.”

Searching deep in his memories, he said, “It began one evening at the end of 1993.”

* * *

Early December 1993

It was the first time Bird had been in Ridge’s Club. This wasn’t at all his kind of place. But a friend of his had urged him to come with him. “There’s a singer there with an amazing voice,” he had said. But when they arrived, it wasn’t the singer who captivated Michael, but the hostess on the way in. That was Miranda. It was love at first sight. Michael was under her spell. He started going regularly to Ridge’s Club, just to see her. He was besotted.

At first, Miranda rejected his advances. She made it clear to him that he wasn’t to approach her. He thought she was just playing hard to get. He didn’t see the danger. Eventually, Costico noticed him and told Miranda to entice him into a trap at the motel. She refused at first. But a session with the bowl of cold water persuaded her to agree. One evening in January, she arranged to meet Michael in the motel. He joined her there the following afternoon. They both got undressed and only then did Miranda, lying naked on the bed, say, “I’m underage, I’m still at school, does that turn you on?” Bird was stunned. “You told me you were nineteen. You’re crazy to have lied to me. I can’t stay in this room with you.” He tried to get dressed but then he saw a huge man coming out from behind a curtain: it was Costico. There was a struggle, and Bird managed to get out of the room, naked, but with his car keys. Costico rushed out after him to the parking lot. Bird had time to open the door of his car and reach for a canister of tear gas. He neutralized Costico and escaped. But Costico tracked him down without difficulty and gave him a regulation beating in his own home, before bundling him into a car and driving, in the middle of the night, to Ridge’s Club, which had by then closed. Bird found himself in the office. With Fold. Miranda was there, too. Fold told Bird he would have to work for him from now on. He was his slave. “As long as you do as you’re told, your girlfriend here will be safe.” At this point, Costico grabbed Miranda by the hair and dragged her over to the bowl of cold water. He plunged her head in the water for several seconds, and repeated this until Bird promised to cooperate.

* * *

“And so you became one of Jeremiah Fold’s slaves,” I said.

“Yes,” Bird said. “I was even his favorite slave. I couldn’t refuse him anything. If I ever seemed unwilling, he’d take it out on Miranda.”

“And you didn’t think to go to the police?”

“It was too risky. Jeremiah had photographs of my entire family. One day, I went to see my parents, and there he was, in their living room, drinking tea. I was afraid for Miranda, too. I was crazy about her. And it was mutual. At night, I would come to see her in her motel room. I wanted to persuade her to run away with me, but she was too frightened. She said Fold would track us down. She said, ‘If Jeremiah finds out we talk, he’ll kill both of us. He’ll dispose of us, and nobody will ever find our bodies.’ I promised her I’d get her out of there. But things got complicated for me. Fold had set his sights on Café Athena.”

“He had started to put the squeeze on Tennenbaum?”

“That’s right. And guess who he entrusted with the task of collecting the money every week? Me. I knew Ted a little. Everyone knows everyone in Orphea. When I told him it was Fold who’d sent me, he took out a gun and stuck the barrel to my forehead. I thought he was going to kill me. I told him everything. I told him the life of a woman I loved depended on my cooperation. That was the one mistake that Fold made. He was always so meticulous, so attentive to details. He never imagined that Ted and I would join forces against him.”

“The two of you decided to kill him,” Derek said.

“Yes, but it was complicated. We didn’t know how to go about it. Ted liked a fight, but he was no murderer. And besides, Fold had to be alone. We couldn’t attack him in front of Costico or anyone else. So we decided to study his habits. Did he go for walks alone sometimes? Did he go running in the woods? We had to find the right moment to kill him and dispose of his body. But we soon discovered that the man was untouchable. He was more powerful than Ted and I could have imagined. His slaves spied on each other, he had an impressive intelligence network, he was in league with the police. He knew everything.”

* * *

May 1994

Bird had been staked out for two days in his car near Fold’s house, watching him, when suddenly the car door opened, and, before he could react, he was punched full