The Truth About the Harry Quebert Affair: A Novel Page 11

  “But that book was a masterpiece.”

  “That book is the devil’s work. It’s perverted. I threw away all the copies we had here. People are too upset about this.”

  I sighed, but said nothing. I didn’t want to have an argument with him. All I said was: “Ernie, can I have a package sent to you here, at the library?”

  “A package? Of course. Why?”

  “I asked my cleaning lady to pick up something important from my apartment and send it to me by FedEx. But I’d prefer it be delivered here, it’s safer.”

  The mailbox at Goose Cove provided an accurate reflection of the state of Harry’s reputation: The whole country, having admired him before, was now condemning him, sending him hate mail. This was the biggest scandal in the history of publishing. The Origin of Evil had already disappeared from the shelves of libraries and from school curricula, and the Boston Globe had dropped Harry’s column from its pages; as for Burrows College’s board of directors, they had decided to dismiss him, effective immediately. The newspapers had no qualms about describing him as a sexual predator; he was the subject of every debate and conversation. Roy Barnaski, scenting a surefire commercial opportunity, wanted a book on the scandal at any price. And since Douglas had not managed to persuade me, Barnaski ended up calling me himself to deliver a brief lesson on the market economy.

  “The public wants this book,” he explained. “Listen to this: you even have fans chanting your name outside our building.”

  He put me on speakerphone and cued his assistants, who belted out: “Gold-man! Gold-man! Gold-man!”

  “They’re not fans, Roy, they’re your staff. Hi, Marisa.”

  “Hi, Marcus,” Marisa said.

  Barnaski picked up the receiver again. “Listen, you need to think about this. We’re bringing a book out in the fall. A guaranteed success! A month and a half to write it—does that sound fair to you?”

  “A month and a half? It took me years to write my first book. And I don’t even know what I would write. Nobody knows what happened yet.”

  “I can provide you with ghostwriters, you know, to speed the process along. And it doesn’t have to be great literature—people just want to know what Quebert did with that girl. Just give us the facts—with some suspense and some sleazy details, and a little sex, of course.”

  “Sex?”

  “Come on, Goldman, I don’t have to teach you how to do your job. Who would want to buy this book if there weren’t some indecent scenes between the old guy and the seven-year-old girl? That’s what people want! We’ll sell it by the bucket load, even if the book’s no good. That’s what matters, isn’t it?”

  “Harry was thirty-four years old, and Nola was fifteen!”

  “Don’t split hairs. If you write this book, as I told your agent, I’ll tear up your previous contract and offer you a million-dollar advance as thanks for your cooperation.”

  I refused point blank, and Barnaski lost his temper: “All right, if you want to play hardball, let’s play hardball. I expect a manuscript from you in exactly eleven days. And if I don’t get one, I will sue the shit out of you!”

  He hung up on me. Soon afterward, while I was buying groceries in the general store in Somerset, I received a call from Douglas. Barnaski had undoubtedly been in touch with him. “Marc, you can’t mess around with this,” he said. “Let me remind you that Barnaski has you by the balls! Your previous contract is still valid and your only means of getting out of it is to accept his proposal. And this book would be a huge boost to your career. An advance of a million dollars—there are worse things in life, aren’t there?”

  “Barnaski wants me to do a hatchet job! It’s out of the question. I don’t want to write a book like that—a piece of garbage churned out in a few weeks. Good books take time.”

  “But this is the way it is today! Writers who hang around in a daydream waiting for inspiration to come . . . all that is in the past! Everyone wants your book, even without your having written a single word of it, because everybody wants to know the truth. And they want it now. There’s a narrow window of opportunity. This fall, there’s the election . . .”

  “So why would any publisher want to risk publishing a book that’s got nothing to do with the election?”

  “That’s Barnaski through and through. He’s a fuck wit, a genius, an asshole, but he’ll pull it off, you see. Believe me, only he could do it.”

  I couldn’t believe in anything anymore. I paid for my groceries and returned to my car. That was where I found a piece of paper slipped under one of the windshield wipers. The same message, once again:

  Go home, Goldman.

  I looked around: There was nobody. A few people sitting at an outdoor table at a nearby restaurant, customers coming out of the general store. Who was following me? Who wanted me to give up my investigation into the death of Nola Kellergan?

  • • •

  The day after this latest incident—Friday, June 20—I went to see Harry in prison again. Before leaving Somerset, I stopped at the library, where my package had just been delivered.

  “What is it?” Pinkas asked. He was curious, and was hoping I would open it in front of him.

  “A tool that I need.”

  “What kind of tool?”

  “A tool for work. Thank you for receiving it, Ernie.”

  “Wait—don’t you want some coffee? I’ve just made some. Do you want a knife to open your package?”

  “Thanks, Ernie, maybe next time. I have to go.”

  Arriving in Concord, I decided to swing by the state police headquarters in order to find Sergeant Gahalowood and present him with a few theories I’d put together since our brief first meeting.

  The New Hampshire Division of State Police headquarters, where the criminal division—known as the Investigative Services Bureau—had its offices, was a large red-brick building: 33 Hazen Drive, in the center of Concord. It was almost 1 p.m.; I was told that Gahalowood had left for his lunch, and was asked to wait in a corridor, near a table where there were magazines and a coffee machine. When he arrived an hour later, he looked angry.

  “You!” he exploded when he saw me. “They called me and they said, ‘Perry, hurry up—there’s a guy here who’s been waiting for you for an hour,’ and I interrupt my meal to come see what’s happening because it might be important, and what do I find? The writer!”

  “Don’t be mad. I thought we got off on the wrong foot, and that maybe—”

  “I hate you, writer. I’m warning you now. My wife read your book—she thought you were good-looking and intelligent. Your face, on the back cover, has been smiling out from her nightstand for weeks. You’ve been living in our bedroom! You’ve slept with us! You’ve had dinner with us! You’ve been on vacation with us! You’ve taken baths with my wife! You’ve made all her friends cluck like hens! You have ruined my life!”

  “You’re married, Sergeant? That’s funny. You’re so disagreeable, I would have bet anything you didn’t have a family.”

  He sank his face into his double chin. “In the name of God, what do you want?” he barked.

  “To understand.”

  “That’s pretty ambitious for a guy like you.”

  “I know.”

  “Let the police do their job, will you?”

  “I need information, Sergeant. I have a pathological desire to know everything. I’m a control freak, you see—I have to control everything.”

  “Really? Then control yourself!”

  “Could we go to your office?”

  “No.”

  “Just tell me if Nola really did die at fifteen years old.”

  “Yes. The bone scan confirmed it.”

  “So she was abducted and killed at the same time?”

  “Yes.”

  “But that bag . . . why was she buried with that bag?”

&nb
sp; “I have no idea.”

  “And if she had a bag with her, couldn’t that lead us to think she was running away?”

  “If you’re packing a bag to run away, you fill it with clothes, don’t you?”

  “Exactly.”

  “Because the only thing in her bag was that book.”

  “One point for you,” I said. “Your insight blows me away. But that bag . . .”

  He interrupted: “I should never have mentioned that bag the other day. I don’t know what got into me.”

  “Me neither.”

  “Pity, I guess. Yes, that’s it: You made me feel sorry for you, with your bewildered look and your muddy shoes.”

  “Thank you. And just to continue: What could I learn from the autopsy? Actually, do you say autopsy when it’s just a skeleton?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Would forensic examination be a more appropriate term?”

  “I don’t give a damn about the exact term. What I can tell you is that she had her skull smashed! Smashed! Bang! Bang!”

  As he accompanied these words with gestures, miming someone hitting with a bat, I asked him: “So it was done with a bat?”

  “I don’t know, you son of a bitch!”

  “A man? A woman?”

  “What?”

  “Couldn’t a woman have carried out the attack? Why is it necessarily a man?”

  “Because the eyewitness, Deborah Cooper, expressly identified a man. Anyway, this conversation is over, writer. You’re getting on my nerves.”

  “But what do you think of this case?”

  He took a family photograph out of his wallet. “I have two daughters, writer. Fourteen and seventeen. I can’t imagine going through what Mr. Kellergan has gone through. I want the truth. I want justice. Justice does not mean merely adding up the various facts; it is much more complex than that. So I am going to carry out my investigation. If I discover proof that Quebert is innocent, believe me, he will be freed. But if he’s guilty, you can be sure I will not let Roth grandstand the jury into acquitting a criminal. Because that is not justice either.”

  Beneath his bull-like aggression, Gahalowood had a philosophy that I liked.

  “You’re a good guy, Sergeant. How about I buy you a doughnut and we continue our little chat?”

  “I don’t want a doughnut. I want you to get the hell out of here. I’ve got work to do.”

  “But you have to explain to me how an investigation works. I don’t know how to do it.”

  “Good-bye, writer. I’ve seen enough of you to last me the rest of the month. Maybe the rest of my life.”

  I was disappointed not to be taken seriously, but I didn’t insist. I held out my hand. He crushed my fingers in his powerful grip, and I left. But out in the parking lot, I heard him calling me: “Hey, writer!” I turned around and saw his hefty form jogging toward me.

  “Writer,” he said breathlessly when he’d caught up with me. “Good cops don’t focus on the killer . . . they focus on the victim. You need to find out about the victim. And you have to start at the beginning, before the murder. Not at the end. You’re making a mistake by concentrating on the murder. You have to find out who the victim was. Find out who Nola Kellergan was . . .”

  “And Deborah Cooper?”

  “If you want my opinion, it’s all linked to Nola. Deborah Cooper was just a collateral victim. Find out who Nola was—you’ll discover her killer and Deborah Cooper’s at the same time.”

  • • •

  Who was Nola Kellergan? That was the question I intended to ask Harry when I saw him at the state prison. He didn’t look good. He seemed highly preoccupied by the contents of his gym locker.

  “Did you find everything?” he asked, before he even greeted me.

  “Yes.”

  “And you burned it all?”

  “Yes.”

  “The manuscript too?”

  “The manuscript too.”

  “Why didn’t you tell me you’d done it? I was worried sick. And where have you been for the last two days?”

  “I was carrying out my investigation. Harry, why was that box in a gym locker?”

  “I know that seems weird to you. After your visit in March, I became afraid that someone else would find it. It seemed to me that anyone might discover it: an inconsiderate visitor, the cleaning lady. I decided it was prudent to hide my mementos somewhere else.”

  “You hid them? But that makes you look guilty. And that manuscript . . . it was The Origin of Evil?”

  “Yes. The very first draft.”

  “I recognized the text. There was no title on the cover page . . .”

  “The title came to me afterward.”

  “After Nola’s disappearance, you mean?”

  “Yes. But let’s not talk about that manuscript, Marcus. It was cursed. It brought only evil into my life. Now Nola is dead and I’m in prison.”

  We looked at each other for a moment. I put a plastic bag on the table, inside of which were the contents of the package I had received.

  “What is it?” Harry asked.

  Without replying, I took out a minidisc player with a microphone connected to it. I set it up in front of Harry.

  “Marcus, what the hell are you up to? Don’t tell me you kept that damn thing—”

  “Of course, Harry. I took good care of it.”

  “Put it away, please.”

  “Don’t be like that, Harry.”

  “What the hell do you plan to do with it?”

  “I want you to tell me about Nola, about Somerset, about everything. About the summer of 1975, about your book. I need to know. And, Harry, I’d be grateful if you would tell me the truth.”

  He smiled sadly. I pressed Record and let him talk. It was a nice scene: Here in this prison visiting room, where husbands were reunited with their wives, fathers with their children, I was reunited with my old mentor, who told me his story.

  • • •

  I ate early that evening, on the way back to Somerset. Afterward, because I had no desire to go straight to Goose Cove, where I would be alone in that immense house, I drove along the coast for a while. The sun was setting, the ocean sparkling: It was all so beautiful. I passed the Sea Side Motel, the Side Creek forest, Side Creek Lane, and Goose Cove; I went through Somerset and ended up at Grand Beach. I walked up to the water’s edge, then sat down on the shells to watch night fall. The lights of Somerset in the distance danced on the surface of the waves; the seagulls shrieked loudly, mockingbirds sang in the surrounding bushes, and I heard the lighthouse foghorns. I pressed Play on the recorder, and Harry’s voice rang out in the darkness:

  You know Grand Beach, Marcus? It’s the first beach you see in Somerset if you’re coming from Massachusetts. I sometimes go there at dusk and look out at the town’s lights. And I think over everything that happened there thirty-three years ago. That beach is where I stopped on the day I first arrived in Somerset. It was May 20, 1975. I was thirty-four years old. I was coming from New York, where I’d made a decision to take responsibility for my own future. I had ditched everything: I’d quit my job as an English teacher, I’d gathered up my savings, and I’d decided to make a go of it as a writer. I was going to hole myself up in New England and write the novel of my dreams.

  To begin with, I had thought about renting a house in Maine, but a Boston real estate agent persuaded me to choose Somerset. He’d told me about a house that corresponded exactly to what I was looking for—it was Goose Cove. The moment I saw it, I fell in love with it. It was exactly the place I needed: a calm, rustic retreat, but not altogether isolated, because Somerset was not many miles away. I liked the town a lot too. Life seemed gentle there: children played in the streets; crime was nonexistent. It was like a picture-postcard town. The house at Goose Cove was well beyond my means, but the real esta
te agent allowed me to rent in installments, and I calculated that if I didn’t spend too much money, I could just about make ends meet. And I had a feeling that I was making a good choice. I was right too, because that decision changed my life: The book I wrote that summer would make me rich and famous.

  I think what I liked so much about Somerset was the status I soon began to enjoy there. In New York, I was just a high school teacher who moonlighted as a writer, but in Somerset I was Harry Quebert, a writer who had come from New York to write his next novel. You know, Marcus, that thing with your being Marcus the Magnificent in high school, when you contented yourself with distorting the way you appeared to others in order to shine? That’s exactly what happened to me when I came here. I was young, self-confident, good-looking, athletic, and cultivated, and not only that, but I lived in the beautiful Goose Cove house. The people in the town, even if they’d never heard of me before, assumed I was successful because of the way I acted and the place where I lived. That was all it took for the locals to imagine that I was a big celebrity in New York. So overnight I became someone. The respected writer I couldn’t be in New York, I was in Somerset. I had provided the local library with a few copies of my first book, and guess what? That pathetic pile of pages, cold-shouldered by New York, provoked great excitement here in Somerset. It was 1975 in a small New Hampshire town that was looking for a raison d’être, long before the Internet and all that, and in me it found the local star it had always dreamed of having.

  It was about 11 p.m. when I got back to Goose Cove. As I drove down the narrow gravel driveway, my headlights illuminated a masked figure who instantly fled into the woods. I hit the brakes and leaped out of the car, yelling, ready to pursue the intruder. That was when my eye was caught by a bright glow: Something was burning near the house. I ran over to see what was happening. Harry’s Corvette was on fire. The flames had already taken hold, and a plume of acrid smoke was rising toward the sky. I called for help, but there was nobody to hear me. All that surrounded me was the woods. The Corvette’s windows exploded in the heat, the car itself began to melt, and the flames grew higher, licking the garage walls. There was nothing I could do. It was all going to burn.