The Disappearance of Stephanie Mailer: A gripping new thriller with a killer twist, Joël Dicker [general ebook reader .txt] 📗

came up concerned my legitimacy and my competence. I had arrived with the rank of second deputy, a rank created specially for me. The official reason was that over the years, as the town had developed, the Orphea police department had seen a significant increase in its workload and its manpower, and the arrival of a third command-ing officer was meant to allow Chief Gulliver and Deputy Montagne to breathe more easily.

First I was asked, “Why did they need to create a position for you? Is it because you’re a woman?”

“No,” I said, “the post was created first, and then they tried to fill it.”

The next question was:

“What happens if you have to fight a man? I mean, you’re just a woman alone in a car. Can you arrest a guy all on your own?”

“Can you?” I said.

“Sure.”

“So why not me?”

Finally, trying to take my measure:

“Do you have experience in the field?”

“I have experience of the streets of New York.”

“It’s not the same. What kind of thing did you do in New York?”

I hoped that my résumé would impress them. “I was a crisis negotiator. I was constantly on call. I dealt with hostage situations, domestic incidents, suicide threats.”

My colleagues shrugged. “It’s not the same.”

*

I spent the first month partnered up with Lewis Erban, an old, worn-out officer. He was on the verge of retirement, and I would be replacing him. I soon learned the ropes: night-time patrols on the beach and in the municipal park, taking down statements on traffic violations, breaking up fights when the bars were closing.

While I may have proved myself in the field, both as a superior officer and when I was on call, everyday relations remained tense. The established hierarchy had been shaken up. For years, Chief Ron Gulliver and Deputy Montagne had laid down the law, two wolves at the head of their pack. Gulliver was due to retire on October 1 the following year and it was taken for granted that Montagne would succeed him. In any case, it was Montagne who already ruled the roost in the station, with Gulliver only pretending to give the orders. When it came down to it, Gulliver was quite a pleasant man but not a good chief. He was manipulated by Montagne who had long taken over as head of the chain of command. But this had changed. With my arrival in the post of second deputy, there were now three of us in command.

It did not take much more for Montagne to launch a ferocious smear campaign. He made it clear to all the other officers that it was best for them if they didn’t team up with me. Nobody in the station wanted to be in Montagne’s bad books and my colleagues avoided contact with me outside our professional exchanges. I knew that in the locker room, when the guys at the end of their shift mentioned going for a beer, he would lecture them: “Don’t even think of asking that bimbo to go with you. Unless you want to scour the toilets for the next ten years.”

This campaign of Montagne’s did not make my integration into the town of Orphea any easier. My colleagues were not inclined to see me when we were off duty, and my dinner invitations to them and their wives resulted either in refusals, last-minute cancellations, or even no-shows. I lost count of the number of Sunday brunches I spent alone at a table set for five or more with a kitchen full of food. My social activities were very limited. I sometimes went out with the mayor’s wife, Charlotte Brown, and since I was particularly fond of Café Athena on Main Street, I hit it off with the owner, Sylvia Tennenbaum. We would regularly chat, though I could not say we were friends. The person I saw most of was my neighbor, Cody Springfield. Whenever I felt bored, I would drop by his bookstore. Sometimes I would even help out there. I finally joined his volunteers’ organization that handled the theater festival at the beginning of summer, which gave me at least one evening a week when I was busy, preparing for the festival that was due to open at the end of July.

At the station, as soon as I had the impression I was beginning to be accepted, Montagne struck back. He moved up a gear, searching in my past and starting to give me suggestive nicknames like “Betsy the trigger-happy” or “the killer,” or saying to my colleagues: “Better be careful, guys. Betsy’s quick on the draw.” He would laugh like an idiot, then say, “Betsy, does everyone know why you left New York?”

One morning I found a press clipping stuck to the door of my office, with the headline:

MANHATTAN: HOSTAGE KILLED BY POLICE

IN JEWELRY STORE

I went straight to Gulliver’s office, brandishing the clipping. “Did you tell him, Chief? Was it you who told Montagne?”

“It was nothing to do with me, Betsy,” he said.

“Then how the hell did he find out?”

“It’s in your file. He could have had access to it one way or another.”

Determined to get rid of me, Montagne made sure I was sent out on the most most boring or thankless assignments. When I was alone on patrol in the town or its surroundings, I would frequently receive a radio call from the station: “Kanner, switchboard here. I need you to answer an emergency call.”I would go to the address indicated, with sirens blaring and lights flashing, not realizing until I arrived that it was a minor incident.

Wild geese blocking Route 17? That was for me.

A cat stuck up a tree? That was for me.

An old, slightly senile lady who frequently heard suspicious noises and called three times in one night? That would be for me, too.

I even got my photograph in the Chronicle in an item about cows that had escaped from a pen. There I was, looking ridiculous, covered in mud and trying to retrieve a cow by pulling its