NICK DUNNE
EIGHT DAYS GONE
As the sun came up, I held an ice cube to my cheek. Hours later, and I could still feel the bite: two little staple-shaped creases. I couldn’t go after Andie – a worse risk than her wrath – so I finally phoned her. Voice mail.
Contain, this must be contained.
‘Andie, I am so sorry, I don’t know what to do, I don’t know what’s going on. Please forgive me. Please.’
I shouldn’t have left a voice mail, but then I thought: She may have hundreds of my voice mails saved, for all I know. Good God, if she played a hit list of the raunchiest, nastiest, smittenist … any woman on any jury would send me away just for that. It’s one thing to know I’m a cheat and another to hear my heavy teacher voice telling a young co-ed about my giant, hard—
I blushed in the dawn light. The ice cube melted.
I sat on Go’s front steps, began phoning Andie every ten minutes, got nothing. I was sleepless, my nerves barbwired, when Boney pulled in to the driveway at 6:12 a.m. I said nothing as she walked toward me, bearing two Styrofoam cups.
‘Hey, Nick, I brought you some coffee. Just came over to check on you.’
‘I bet.’
‘I know you’re probably reeling. From the news about the pregnancy.’ She made an elaborate show of pouring two creamers into my coffee, the way I like it, and handed it to me. ‘What’s that?’ she said, pointing to my cheek.
‘What do you mean?’
‘I mean, Nick, what is wrong with your face? There’s a giant pink …’ She leaned in closer, grabbed my chin. ‘It’s like a bite mark.’
‘It must be hives. I get hives when I’m stressed.’
‘Mm-hmmm.’ She stirred her coffee. ‘You do know I’m on your side, right, Nick?’
‘Right.’
‘I am. Truly. I wish you’d trust me. I just – I’m getting to the point where I won’t be able to help you if you don’t trust me. I know that sounds like a cop line, but it’s the truth.’
We sat in a strange semi-companionable silence, sipping coffee.
‘Hey, so I wanted you to know before you hear it anywhere,’ she said brightly. ‘We found Amy’s purse.’
‘What?’
‘Yep, no cash left, but her ID, cell phone. In Hannibal, of all places. On the banks of the river, south of the steamboat landing. Our guess: Someone wanted to make it look like it’d been tossed in the river by the perp on the way out of town, heading over the bridge into Illinois.’
‘Make it look like?’
‘It had never been fully submerged. There are fingerprints still at the top, near the zipper. Now sometimes fingerprints can hold on even in water, but … I’ll spare you the science, I’ll just say, the theory is, this purse was kinda settled on the banks to make sure it was found.’
‘Sounds like you’re telling me this for a reason,’ I said.
‘The fingerprints we found were yours, Nick. Which isn’t that crazy – men get into their wives’ purses all the time. But still—’ She laughed as if she got a great idea. ‘I gotta ask: You haven’t been to Hannibal recently, have you?’
She said it with such casual confidence, I had a flash: a police tracker hidden somewhere in the undercarriage of my car, released to me the morning I went to Hannibal.
‘Why, exactly, would I go to Hannibal to get rid of my wife’s purse?’
‘Say you’d killed your wife and staged the crime scene in your home, trying to get us to think she was attacked by an outsider. But then you realized we were beginning to suspect you, so you wanted to plant something to get us to look outside again. That’s the theory. But at this point, some of my guys are so sure you did it, they’d find any theory that fit. So let me help you: You in Hannibal lately?’
I shook my head. ‘You need to talk to my lawyer. Tanner Bolt.’
‘Tanner Bolt? You sure that’s the way you want to go, Nick? I feel like we’ve been pretty fair with you so far, pretty open. Bolt, he’s a … he’s a last-ditch guy. He’s the guy guilty people call in.’
‘Huh. Well, I’m clearly your lead suspect, Rhonda. I have to look out for myself.’
‘Let’s all get together when he gets in, okay? Talk this through.’
‘Definitely – that’s our plan.’
‘A man with a plan,’ Boney said. ‘I’ll look forward to it.’ She stood up, and as she walked away, she called back: ‘Witch hazel’s good for hives.’
An hour later, the doorbell rang, and Tanner Bolt stood there in a baby-blue suit, and something told me it was the look he wore when he went ‘down South.’ He was inspecting the neighborhood, eyeing the cars in the driveways, assessing the houses. He reminded me of the Elliotts, in a way – examining and analysing at all times. A brain with no off switch.
‘Show me,’ Tanner said before I could greet him. ‘Point me toward the shed – do not come with me, and do not go near it again. Then you’ll tell me everything.’
We settled down at the kitchen table – me, Tanner, and a just-woken Go, huddling over her first cup of coffee. I spread out all of Amy’s clues like some awful tarot-card reader.
Tanner leaned toward me, his neck muscles tense. ‘Okay, Nick, make your case,’ he said. ‘Your wife orchestrated this whole thing. Make the case!’ He jabbed his index finger on the table. ‘Because I’m not moving forward with my dick in one hand and a wild story about a frame-up in the other. Unless you convince me. Unless it works.’
I took a deep breath and gathered my thoughts. I was always better at writing than talking. ‘Before we start,’ I said, ‘you have to understand one very key thing about Amy: She is fucking brilliant. Her brain is so busy, it never works on just one level. She’s like this endless archaeological dig: You think you’ve reached the final layer, and then you bring down your pick one more time, and you break through to a whole new mine shaft beneath. With a maze of tunnels and bottomless pits.’
‘Fine,’ Tanner said. ‘So …’
‘The second thing you need to know about Amy is, she is righteous. She is one of those people who is never wrong, and she loves to teach lessons, dole out punishment.’
‘Right, fine, so …’
‘Let me tell you a story, one quick story. About three years ago, we were driving up to Massachusetts. It was awful, road-rage traffic, and this trucker flipped Amy off – she wouldn’t let him in – and then he zoomed up and cut her off. Nothing dangerous, but really scary for a second. You know those signs on the back of trucks: How Am I Driving? She had me call and give them the license plate. I thought that was the end of it. Two months later – two months later – I walked into our bedroom, and Amy was on the phone, repeating that license plate. She had a whole story: She was traveling with her two-year-old, and the driver had nearly run her off the road. She said it was her fourth call. She said she’d even researched the company’s routes so she could pick the correct highways for her fake near-accidents. She thought of everything. She was really proud. She was going to get that guy fired.’
‘Jesus, Nick,’ Go muttered.
‘That’s a very … enlightening story, Nick,’ Tanner said.
‘It’s just an example.’
‘So, now, help me put this all together,’ he said. ‘Amy finds out you’re cheating. She fakes her death. She makes the supposed crime scene look just fishy enough to raise eyebrows. She’s screwed you over with the credit cards and the life insurance and your little man-cave situation out back …’
‘She picks an argument with me the night before she goes missing, and she does it standing near an open window so our neighbor will hear.’
‘What was the argument?’
‘I am a selfish asshole. Basically, the same one we always have. What our neighbor doesn’t hear is Amy apologizing later – because Amy doesn’t want her to hear that. I mean, I remember being astonished, because it was the quickest makeup we’ve ever had. By the morning she was freakin’ making me crepes, for crying out loud.’
I saw her again at the stove, licking powdered sugar off her thumb, humming to herself, and I pictured me, walking over to her and shaking her until—
‘Okay, and the treasure hunt?’ Tanner said. ‘What’s the theory there?’
Each clue was unfolded on the table. Tanner picked up a few and let them drop.
‘Those are all just bonus fuck-yous,’ I said. ‘I know my wife, believe me. She knew she had to do a treasure hunt or it would look fishy. So she does it, and of course it has eighteen different meanings. Look at the first clue.’
I picture myself as your student,
With a teacher so handsome and wise
My mind opens up (not to mention my thighs!)
If I were your pupil, there’d be no need for flowers
Maybe just a naughty appointment during your office hours
So hurry up, get going, please do
And this time I’ll teach you a thing or two.
‘It’s pure Amy. I read this, I think: Hey, my wife is flirting with me. No. She’s actually referring to my … infidelity with Andie. Fuck-you number one. So I go there, to my office, with Gilpin, and what’s waiting for me? A pair of women’s underwear. Not even close to Amy’s size – the cops kept asking everyone what size Amy wore, I couldn’t figure out why.’
‘But Amy had no way of knowing Gilpin would be with you.’ Tanner frowned.
‘It’s a damn good bet,’ Go interrupted. ‘Clue One was part of the actual crime scene – so the cops would know about it – and she has the words office hours right in it. It’s logical they’d go there, with or without Nick.’
‘So whose panties are they?’ Tanner asked. Go squinched her nose at the word panties.
‘Who knows?’ I said. ‘I’d assumed they were Andie’s, but … Amy probably just bought them. The main point is they’re not Amy’s size. They lead anyone to believe something inappropriate happened in my office with someone who is not my wife. Fuck-you number two.’
‘And if the cops weren’t with you when you went to the office?’ Tanner asked. ‘Or no one noticed the panties?’
‘She doesn’t care, Tanner! This treasure hunt, it’s as much for her amusement as anything. She doesn’t need it. She’s overdone it all just to make sure there are a million damning little clues in circulation. Again, you’ve got to know my wife: She’s a belt-and-suspenders type.’
‘Okay. Clue Two,’ Tanner said.
Picture me: I’m crazy about you
My future is anything but hazy with you
You took me here so I could hear you chat
About your boyhood adventures: crummy jeans and visor hat
Screw everyone else, for us they’re all ditched
And let’s sneak a kiss … pretend we just got hitched.
‘This is Hannibal,’ I said. ‘Amy and I visited there once, so that’s how I read it, but it’s also another place where I had … relations with Andie.’
‘And you didn’t get a red flag?’ Tanner said.
‘No, not yet, I was too moony about the notes Amy had written me. God, the girl knows me cold. She knows exactly what I want to hear. You are brilliant. You are witty. And how fun for her to know that she could fuck with my head like that still. Long-distance, even. I mean, I was … Christ, I was practically falling in love with her again.’
My throat hitched for a moment. The goofy story about her friend Insley’s half-dressed, disgusting baby. Amy knew that was what I had loved most about us back when I loved us: not the big moments, not the Romantic with capital-R moments, but our secret inside jokes. And now she was using them all against me.
‘And guess what?’ I said. ‘They just found Amy’s purse in Hannibal. I’m sure as hell someone can place me there. Hell, I paid for my tour ticket with my credit card. So again, here is this piece of evidence, and Amy making sure I can be linked to it.’
‘What if no one found the purse?’ Tanner asked.
‘Doesn’t matter,’ Go said. ‘She’s keeping Nick running in circles, she’s amusing herself. I’m sure she was happy just knowing what a guilt trip it must be for Nick to be reading all these sweet notes when he knows he’s a cheat and she’s gone missing.’
I tried not to wince at her disgusted tone: cheat.
‘What if Gilpin were still with Nick when he went to Hannibal?’ Tanner persisted. ‘What if Gilpin were with Nick the whole time, so he knew that Nick didn’t plant the purse then?’
‘Amy knows me well enough to know I’d ditch Gilpin. She knows I wouldn’t want a stranger watching me read this stuff, gauging my reactions.’
‘Really? How do you know that?’
‘I just do.’ I shrugged. I knew, I just knew.
‘Clue Three,’ I said, and pushed it into Tanner’s hand.
Maybe you feel guilty for bringing me here
I must admit it felt a bit queer
But it’s not like we had the choice of many a place
We made the decision: We made this our space.
Let’s take our love to this little brown house
Gimme some goodwill, you hot lovin’ spouse.
‘See, I misread this, thinking that bringing me here meant Carthage, but again, she’s referring to my father’s house, and—’
‘It’s yet another place where you fucked this Andie girl,’ Tanner said. He turned to my sister. ‘Pardon the vulgarity.’
Go gave a no-problem flick of her hand.
Tanner continued: ‘So, Nick. There are incriminating women’s panties in your office, where you fucked Andie, and there is Amy’s incriminating purse in Hannibal, where you fucked Andie, and there is an incriminating treasure trove of secret credit-card purchases in the woodshed, where you fucked Andie.’
‘Uh, yeah. Yes, that’s right.’
‘So what’s at your dad’s house?’