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

She raised her hand and placed it at the level of my eyes. “What do you see, Captain?”

“Your hand.”

“I was showing you my fingers.”

“But I see your hand,” I said, not understanding.

“That’s the problem right there,” she said. “You saw what you wanted to see, not what you were being shown. That’s what you missed twenty years ago.”

She walked away, leaving me with her mystery, her business card, and the photocopy of the press clipping.

Spotting my former partner Derek Scott at the buffet—these days he was vegetating in a desk job—I hurried over to join him and showed him the clipping.

“You haven’t changed a bit, Jesse,” he said with a smile, amused to see a reference to that old case. “What did that girl want?”

“She’s a reporter. According to her, we blew it back in ’94. She claims we missed something in our investigation and ended up with the wrong man.”

Derek choked. “That’s crazy. What exactly did she say?”

“That the answer was right in front of our eyes and we didn’t see it.”

Derek was bewildered. He seemed troubled, too, but he was clearly going to dismiss the idea. “I don’t believe it for a moment,” he grunted. “It’s just a two-bit reporter trying to make some cheap publicity for herself.”

“Maybe,” I said. “Maybe not.”

Across the parking lot I saw Stephanie Mailer getting into her car. She waved to me and called out, “See you later, Captain Rosenberg.”

But there was to be no “later”. That was the day she disappeared.

DEREK SCOTT

I remember the day the whole thing started. It was Saturday, July 30, 1994.

Jesse and I were on duty that evening. We had stopped to have a meal at the Blue Lagoon, the fashionable restaurant where Darla and Natasha worked as waitresses.

Jesse and Natasha had been a couple for some years by that time. Darla was one of Natasha’s best friends. They were planning to open a restaurant together and spent most of their time on the project. They had found a place and were in the process of obtaining the authorizations to start work. Evenings and weekends, they worked at the Blue Lagoon, putting aside half of what they earned to invest in their future establishment.

They could have managed the Blue Lagoon, or worked in the kitchen, but the owner said to them, “With your pretty faces and pretty asses, your place is out front. And don’t complain, you make much more in tips than you’d earn in the kitchen.” On that last point he wasn’t wrong. Many customers came to the Blue Lagoon in the hopes of being served by them. They were beautiful, sweet, and friendly. They had everything going for them. Their own restaurant was going to be a resounding success and everyone was already talking about it.

Ever since I had met Darla she was all I could think about. I pestered Jesse to come to the Blue Lagoon whenever Natasha and Darla were there so we could have coffee with them. And when they met at Jesse’s to work on their project, I was there as often as I could be, trying to charm Darla, who only half responded.

On that famous July evening, Jesse and I were having dinner at the restaurant and chatting happily with the two of them as they went about their business. My pager and Jesse’s went off simultaneously.

“For both of your pagers to go off at the same time,” Natasha said, “it must be serious.”

She pointed toward the phone booth as well as a phone on the counter. Jesse headed for the booth, I opted for the counter. The calls were brief.

“There’s a general call out,” I said as I hurried to the door. “There’s been a quadruple killing.”

Jesse was putting his jacket on.

“Hurry up,” I teased him. “The first unit in the squad to reach the scene will get the case.”

We were young and ambitious. This was a chance for us to do our first major investigation together. I was a more experienced officer than Jesse and had the rank of sergeant. The higher-ups liked me. Everyone said I had a great career ahead of me.

We ran to our car and bundled ourselves in.

I set off at speed and Jesse picked the flashing light up from the floor, switched it on, and reached through the open window to put it on the roof of our unmarked car, sending red flashes into the darkness.

That was how it started.

JESSE ROSENBERG

Thursday, June 26, 2014

Thirty days to opening night

I had assumed that I would spend my last week in the police hanging around the hallways, drinking coffee with my colleagues and saying leisurely goodbyes. But for the last three days I’d been in my office from morning to evening, absorbed in the file which I had taken out of records on the murders of 1994. My encounter with the journalist Stephanie Mailer had shaken me. I could think of nothing but that article, and her saying: “The answer was right in front of your eyes. You just didn’t see it.”

As far as I was concerned, we had seen everything there was to see. The more I went over the file, the more convinced I was that it was one of the most solid investigations I had conducted in my whole career. All of the pieces had fallen into place. The evidence against the man Derek and I had identified as the murderer was overwhelming. We had been meticulous. I could see no flaw in what we had done. How could we have gotten the wrong man?

That afternoon, Derek came to my office.

“What on earth are you doing, Jesse? Everyone’s waiting for you in the cafeteria. The people in the administrative department have baked you a cake.”

“I’ll be right there, Derek. I’m sorry, my mind’s on other things.”

He looked at the documents spread out on my desk and picked one up. “Oh no, don’t tell me you’re swallowing the crap that reporter gave you?”

“Derek, I’d just like