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

gurus, hypnotists, every kind of doctor, everything! We’ve twice sent her to detox and both times it was a disaster. She doesn’t seem like my daughter anymore. What do you want me to say?”

“You haven’t tried, Jerry!”

“What do you mean?”

“Yes, you sent her to every possible doctor, you even went with her sometimes, but you yourself haven’t tried to help her!”

“But what more could I do that the doctors couldn’t?”

“What more could you do? Dammit, you’re her father! You haven’t always been like this with her. Have you forgotten how close you used to be?”

“You know perfectly well what’s happened in the meantime, Cynthia!”

“Yes, I know, Jerry! That’s why you have to mend it. You’re the only one who can do that.”

“And what about that girl who died?” Eden said, his voice choked. “Can we ever mend that?”

“Stop it, Jerry! We can’t turn the clock back. Not me, not you, not anybody. Take Carolina away, I beg you, and save her. New York is killing her.”

“Take her where?”

“Where we were happy. Take her to Orphea. Carolina needs a father, not a couple of parents who yell at each other all day long.”

“We yell at each other because—”

Eden had raised his voice and his wife immediately placed her finger on his mouth to silence him.

“Save our daughter, Jerry. Only you can do that. She has to leave the city, get far away from her ghosts. Leave, Jerry, I beg you. Leave and come back to me. I want to see my husband again, I want to see my daughter again. I want to see my family again.”

She burst into tears. Eden nodded, and she took her finger away from his lips. He left the kitchen and walked resolutely toward his daughter’s room. He flung the door open and drew up the blinds.

“Hey, what are you doing?” Carolina protested, sitting up in bed.

“What I should have done a long time ago.” He opened a drawer at random, then another, and searched them roughly.

Carolina leaped out of bed. “Stop! Stop, Daddy! Dr Lern said . . .”

She tried to get in between her father and the drawers, but Jerry pushed her aside with a vigorous gesture that surprised her.

“Dr Lern said you should stop getting high!” Eden roared, waving a sachet filled with whitish powder.

“Leave that!” she screamed.

“What is this? Fucking ketamine?”

Without waiting for an answer, he walked toward the en suite bathroom.

“Stop! Stop!” Carolina yelled at him, trying to recover the sachet from her father’s hand, while he held her at a distance.

“What are you trying to do?” he said as he lifted the toilet lid. “To die? To end up in prison?”

“Don’t do that!” she implored him, starting to cry—whether out of anger or sorrow was not clear.

He poured out the powder and flushed the toilet, while his daughter looked on, powerless.

“You’re right!” she screamed. “I’m trying to die so that I don’t have to put up with you anymore!”

Her father looked at her sadly and announced in a surprisingly calm voice:

“Pack your bags, we’re leaving first thing tomorrow morning.”

“What do you mean, we’re leaving? I’m not going anywhere.”

“I’m not asking for your opinion.”

“Where the hell are we going?”

“Orphea.”

“Orphea? What’s gotten into you? I’m not going back there! And anyway I already made plans. Leyla has a friend who has a house in Montauk and—”

“Forget Montauk. Your plans just changed.”

“What? No, you can’t do this to me! I’m not a baby anymore, I can do what I want!”

“No, you cannot do what you want. I let you do what you wanted for far too long.”

“Get out of my room at once and leave me alone!”

“You’re my daughter, you’re nineteen years old, and you’re going to do what I tell you. And what I tell you is: pack your bags.”

“What about Mom?”

“It’ll be just you and me.”

“Why should I go anywhere with you? I want to discuss it with Dr Lern first.”

“No, there won’t be any discussion with Lern, or with anybody. It’s time we put limits on you.”

“You can’t do this to me! You can’t force me to go away with you!”

“Yes, I can. Because I’m your father and I order you to do it.”

“I hate you! I hate you, do you hear me?”

“I know you do, Carolina, you don’t need to remind me. Pack your bags now. We’re leaving first thing tomorrow morning.” There was urgency in his tone.

He left the room resolutely, went and poured himself a Scotch, and drank it down in a few mouthfuls, gazing through the picture window at the spectacular night sky over New York.

PART TWO

Toward the Surface

-4

Secrets

FRIDAY, JULY 11 – SUNDAY, JULY 13, 2014

JESSE ROSENBERG

Friday, July 11, 2014

Fifteen days to opening night

I was drinking a coffee with Derek while waiting for Betsy. We were at the marina in Orphea.

“So he wouldn’t tell you anything?” Derek said. “Not even when you got him what he asked for?”

“Nothing. He told me that he’s been thinking about this play for years and now that he has the chance to put it on he’s not going to discuss it in any detail until the time is ripe. He said that all would be revealed on opening night, or some nonsense like that.”

Betsy arrived a few minutes later, but she didn’t sit down.

“Mayor Brown wants to see us,” she said. “Before his press conference.”

I downed the last of my coffee. “Let’s go.”

When we entered the mayor’s office, he seemed in a good mood.

“I wanted to thank you, Captain Rosenberg,” he said, motioning for us to sit, “for finding us a play for the festival. You’ve done this town a great service.”

Derek and Betsy sat, but I remained standing.

“Thank you, Mr Mayor,” I said, “but I can’t pretend that I don’t have concerns about Hayward. Betsy arranged for me fly out to L.A. because we had reason to believe he met with Stephanie Mailer before her death. But he refused to tell me what they discussed or what he knows until opening