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

in the face. It was Costico, who pulled him out of the car and dragged him to the club. Fold and Miranda were waiting in the office. Fold was furious. “You’re spying on me,” he said. “Are you planning to go to the police?” Bird swore he wasn’t, but Fold wouldn’t listen to him. He ordered Costico to beat him up. When they had finished with him, they started in on Miranda. The torture seemed interminable. Miranda was messed up so badly, she couldn’t go out for weeks.

After that episode, and afraid they were being watched, Bird and Tennenbaum went on meeting in the greatest secrecy, in unlikely places a long way from Orphea, so as not to risk being seen together.

“It’s impossible to kill Fold ourselves,” Tennenbaum said. “We have to find someone who doesn’t know anything about him and persuade that person to do it.”

“Who would agree to do something like that?”

“Someone who needs a similar favor. We’ll kill someone in return. Someone we don’t know either. The police will never trace it back to us.”

“Someone who’s done nothing to us?” Bird said.

“Believe me,” Tennenbaum said, “I’m not happy about suggesting this, but I don’t see any other way out.”

On reflection, Bird thought it was probably the only way to save Miranda. He was ready to do anything for her.

The problem was to find a partner, someone who had no connection with them. How to do that? They could hardly place a small ad.

Six weeks went by. In mid-June, just when they had despaired of finding someone, Tennenbaum contacted him.

“I think I’ve found our man.”

“Who is he?”

“It’s best you don’t know.”

* * *

“So you didn’t know the identity of the partner Tennenbaum had found?” Derek said.

“That’s right,” Bird said. “Tennenbaum was the go-between, only he knew who the two killers would be. That way we’d cover our tracks. The police couldn’t trace anything back to us since we didn’t know each other’s identity. Apart from Tennenbaum, but he had guts. To be sure we had no contact, Tennenbaum and this partner had agreed on a method for swapping the names of our victims. He had said to him something like, ‘We mustn’t speak again, we mustn’t meet again. On July 1, go to the bookstore in Orphea. There’s a room there where no-one ever goes, with books by local writers. Choose one, and write the name of the person in it. Not directly. Circle the first letters of words to spell out the name. Then turn down the corners of the pages. That’ll be the signal.”

“And you wrote the name Jeremiah Fold,” Betsy said.

“That’s right, in Hayward’s play. Our partner had chosen a book about the theater festival. In it was the name Meghan Padalin. The nice bookstore assistant. That was who we were supposed to kill. We started watching her movements. She went running every evening as far as Penfield Crescent. We thought we’d knock her down in a car. We still had to figure out when to do it. Our partner clearly had the same idea as us. On July 16 Jeremiah died in a traffic accident. But things might have gone badly. He had taken a long time to die, and might have been saved. That was the kind of pitfall we had to avoid. Ted and I were both good shots. My father had taught me to use a rifle when I was very young. He told me I had a real talent. So we decided to shoot Meghan. It was safer.”

* * *

July 20, 1994

Tennenbaum met with Bird in an empty parking lot by the beach.

“We have to do it, my friend. We have to kill that girl.”

“Can’t we just drop it?” Michael said with a grimace. “We got what we wanted.”

“I’d like to, but we have to keep our end of the bargain. If our partner thinks we’ve fucked him around, he could come after us. I heard Meghan talking in the bookstore. She’s not going to the opening of the festival. She’ll be jogging, same as every evening, and the neighborhood will be deserted. It’s the perfect opportunity.”

“So we’ll do it at the opening of the festival,” Bird murmured.

“Yes,” Tennenbaum said, covertly putting a Beretta in his hand. “Here, take this. The serial number is filed off. Nobody will trace it back to you.”

“Why me? Why don’t you do it?”

“Because I know the other guy’s identity. It has to be you, it’s the only way to cover our tracks. Even if the police question you, you won’t be able to tell them anything. Believe me, the plan is perfect. And besides, you told me you were a good shot, right? You just have to kill that girl and we’ll both be free of everything at last.”

* * *

“So on July 30, 1994, you went ahead with it,” Derek said.

“Yes. Tennenbaum said he’d come with me and asked me to meet with him at the theater. He was the duty fire officer that night. He’d parked his van outside the stage door so everyone noticed it and he could use it as an alibi. We went together to the Penfield neighborhood. Everything was deserted. Meghan was already in the park. I remember looking at my watch: 7.10. On July 30, 1994, at 7.10, I was going to take the life of a human being. I took a deep breath, then ran like a madman toward Meghan. She didn’t realize what was happening. I fired twice, and missed. She ran toward the mayor’s house. I got into position, waited for her to be in my sights, and fired again. She fell. I went to her and put a bullet in her head. To make sure she was dead. I felt almost relieved. It was unreal. At that moment, I saw the mayor’s son looking at me from behind the living room curtain. What was he doing there? Why wasn’t he in the Grand Theater with his parents? It all happened in a