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

“Me neither,” said a man who had only recently arrived in Orphea.

“That must be because you’re both new here,” someone said.

“That’s right,” someone else piped up. “And you weren’t here in 1994.”

“1994?” Betsy said in surprise. “Stephanie asked you about 1994?”

“Yes. She was mainly interested in the very first festival.”

“What kind of thing did she ask?”

To this question, Betsy obtained a variety of answers, but one cropped up frequently: Stephanie had systematically asked questions about the fire officer on duty in the theater on opening night. In gathering the volunteers’ testimonies, she appeared to have been trying to reconstruct in detail what had happened in the theater that evening.

Betsy finally went to see Springfield in the tiny room that served as his office. He was sitting behind a makeshift table, on which were an old computer and untidy piles of paper.

“Have you finished disturbing my volunteers, Betsy?” he said good-humoredly.

“Cody, do you by any chance remember who was on duty as fire officer on the opening night of the festival in 1994 and if he’s still living in Orphea?”

Springfield’s eyes opened wide. “Do I remember? Hell, Betsy, this is really a day for ghosts. It was Ted Tennenbaum, the man who committed all those murders. And you won’t be able to find him, because he’s dead.”

BETSY KANNER

The friendly atmosphere there had been in the station when I arrived lasted barely two days before the difficulties started. The first one involved a question of organization: what to do about the toilets. In the part of the station where the public didn’t go, there were toilets on every floor, all designed for men, with rows of urinals and individual cubicles.

“One of the toilets will have to be for women only,” one of the officers suggested.

“Yes, but that gets complicated if you have to change floors to take a leak,” someone else retorted.

“We could make all the toilets unisex,” I proposed, trying not to complicate matters. “Unless anyone has a problem with that.”

“I’d find it tricky to be taking a leak with a woman doing whatever she’d be doing in the cubicle behind me,” said another of my new colleagues, putting his hand up like an elementary school pupil.

“Wouldn’t you be able to get it out?” someone said, and everybody laughed.

It so happened that in the visitors’ section, just beside the front desk, there were separate toilets for men and women. It was decided that I would use the female visitors’ toilet, and that suited me perfectly. The fact that I had to cross the reception area of the station every time I wanted to go to the toilet would not have bothered me if I hadn’t one day heard the desk sergeant sniggering as he counted my comings and goings.

“My God, she certainly takes a lot of leaks,” he said to the officer he was talking to.

“Or else she’s thinking about Gulliver and touching herself up,” the other man said.

The next difficulty brought about by the new mixed-sex situation was the locker room. The station had one large locker room, with adjoining showers, where the officers could change at the beginning and end of their shift. As a consequence of my arrival, and without my asking anyone for anything, access to the locker room was forbidden to all male staff. On the door, beneath the metal plate bearing the words LOCKER ROOM, Chief Gulliver put a piece of paper with the word WOMAN, in the singular. “The two sexes have to have separate locker rooms, that’s the law,” Gulliver told his men as they stood watching him do this, dumbfounded. “Mayor Brown has insisted on Betsy having a locker room to get changed in. So, gentlemen, from now on you have to change in your offices.” The officers present started grumbling. We finally decided on a compromise. I would change at home and come to the station in my uniform. Everyone was happy. But the next day, seeing me get out of my car in the station’s parking lot, Chief Gulliver summoned me to his office.

“Betsy,” he said, “I don’t like you driving your own car in your uniform.”

“But I don’t have anywhere to change in the station,” I said.

“I know. That’s why I’m going to let you have one of our unmarked cars. I want you to use it to move around between your house and the station when you’re in uniform.”

And so I found myself with a vehicle from the motor pool, a black S.U.V. with tinted windows. The revolving lights were hidden at the top of the windshield and the radiator grille.

What I did not at first know was that there were only two unmarked cars in the pool. Chief Gulliver had allocated himself one for his personal use. The second one, which had been sitting there in the parking lot, was a treasure coveted by all my colleagues and now it had been given to me, and that inevitably aroused a certain indignation in the other officers.

“That’s a privilege!” they complained during a hastily called meeting. “She just got here and already she’s getting privileges.”

“You have to choose, guys,” I said to them when they opened up to me. “Share the car between yourselves and leave me the locker room if you prefer. I’d be fine with that, too.”

The episode of the car was the first unwitting insult to Montagne on my part. He’d had his eyes on that unmarked car for a long time.

“It should have been me,” he moaned to Gulliver. “I am the deputy, after all! How does this make me look?”

But Gulliver turned him down point-blank. “Listen, Jasper,” he said, “I know the situation is complicated. It’s complicated for everyone, especially me. Believe me, I’d happily have done without it. Women always create tension in a team. They have too much to prove. And of course when she gets pregnant, we’ll all have to do overtime!”

One drama followed another. Once the logistics had been fixed, the next questions that