Gone Girl: A Novel (26 page)

Cut to the photo of me at the press conference, the jackass grin. Another of me waving and smiling like a pageant queen as I got out of my car (I was waving
back
to Marybeth; I was smiling because I smile when I wave).

Then up came the cell-phone photo of me and Shawna Kelly, Frito-pie baker. The two of us cheek to cheek, beaming pearly whites. Then the real Shawna appeared on-screen, tanned and sculpted and somber as Ellen introduced her to America. Pinpricks of sweat erupted all over me.

The grotesque photo appeared on-screen again. We somehow looked even more cheerful.

You should have been nicer to her, Nick. You should have eaten the fucking pie
.

The rest of the segment was basically Ellen Abbott, professional hatemonger, obsessing over my lack of alibi: “Why doesn’t
Lance Nicholas Dunne
have an alibi until
noon
? Where was he that
morning
?” she drawled in her Texas sheriff’s accent. Her panel of guests agreed that it didn’t look good.

I phoned Go and she said, “Well, you made it almost a week without them turning on you,” and we cursed for a while.
Fucking Shawna crazy bitch whore
.

“Do something really, really useful today, active,” Go advised. “People will be watching now.”

“I couldn’t sit still if I wanted to.”

I drove to St. Louis in a near rage, replaying the TV segment in my head, answering all of Ellen’s questions, shutting her up.
Today, Ellen Abbott, you fucking cunt, I tracked down one of Amy’s stalkers. Desi Collings. I tracked him down to get the truth
. Me, the hero husband. If I had soaring theme music, I would have played it. Me, the nice working-class guy, taking on the spoiled rich kid. The media would have to bite at that: Obsessive stalkers are more intriguing than run-of-the-mill wife killers. The Elliotts, at least, would appreciate it. I dialed Marybeth, but just got voice mail. Onward.

As I rolled into his neighborhood, I had to change my Desi vision from rich to extremely, sickly wealthy. The guy lived in a mansion in Ladue that probably cost at least $5 million. Whitewashed brick, black lacquer shutters, gaslight, and ivy. I’d dressed for the meeting, a decent suit and tie, but I realized as I rang his doorbell that a four-hundred-dollar suit in this neighborhood was more poignant than if I’d shown up in jeans. I could hear a clattering of dress shoes coming from the back of the house to the front, and the door opened with a desuctioning sound, like a refrigerator. Cold air rolled out toward me.

Desi looked the way I had always wanted to look: like a very handsome, very decent fellow. Something in the eyes, or the jaw. He had
deep-set almond eyes, teddy-bear eyes, and dimples in both cheeks. If you saw the two of us together, you’d assume he was the good guy.

“Oh,” Desi said, studying my face. “You’re Nick. Nick Dunne. Good God, I’m so sorry about Amy. Come in, come in.”

He ushered me into a severe living room, manliness as envisioned by a decorator. Lots of dark, uncomfortable leather. He pointed me toward an armchair with a particularly rigid back; I tried to make myself comfortable, as urged, but found the only posture the chair allowed was that of a chastised student:
Pay attention and sit
up.

Desi didn’t ask me why I was in his living room. Or explain how he’d immediately recognized me. Although they were becoming more common, the double takes and cupped whispers.

“May I get you a drink?” Desi asked, pressing two hands together: business first.

“I’m fine.”

He sat down opposite me. He was dressed in impeccable shades of navy and cream; even his shoelaces looked pressed. He carried it all off, though. He wasn’t the dismissible fop I’d been hoping for. Desi seemed the definition of a gentleman: a guy who could quote a great poet, order a rare Scotch, and buy a woman the right piece of vintage jewelry. He seemed, in fact, a man who knew inherently what women wanted—across from him, I felt my suit wilt, my manner go clumsy. I had a swelling urge to discuss football and fart. These were the kinds of guys who always got to me.

“Amy. Any leads?” Desi asked.

He looked like someone familiar, an actor, maybe.

“No good ones.”

“She was taken … from the home. Is that correct?”

“From our home, yes.”

Then I knew who he was: He was the guy who’d shown up alone the first day of searches, the guy who kept sneaking looks at Amy’s photo.

“You were at the volunteer center, weren’t you? The first day.”

“I was,” Desi said, reasonable. “I was about to say that. I wish I’d been able to meet you that day, express my condolences.”

“Long way to come.”

“I could say the same to you.” He smiled. “Look, I’m really fond of Amy. Hearing what had happened, well, I had to do something. I
just—It’s terrible to say this, Nick, but when I saw it on the news, I just thought,
Of course
.”

“Of course?”

“Of course someone would … want her,” he said. He had a deep voice, a fireside voice. “You know, she always had that way. Of making people want her. Always. You know that old cliché: Men want her, and women want to be her. With Amy, that was true.”

Desi folded large hands across his trousers. Not pants, trousers. I couldn’t decide if he was fucking with me. I told myself to tread lightly. It’s the rule of all potentially prickly interviews: Don’t go on the offense until you have to, first see if they’ll hang themselves all on their own.

“You had a very intense relationship with Amy, right?” I asked.

“It wasn’t only her looks,” Desi said. He leaned on a knee, his eyes distant. “I’ve thought about this a lot, of course. First love. I’ve definitely thought about it. The navel-gazer in me. Too much philosophy.” He cracked a self-effacing grin. The dimples popped. “See, when Amy likes you, when she’s interested in you, her attention is so warm and reassuring and entirely enveloping. Like a warm bath.”

I raised my eyebrows.

“Bear with me,” he said. “You feel good about yourself. Completely good, for maybe the first time. And then she sees your flaws, she realizes you’re just another regular person she has to deal with—you are, in actuality, Able Andy, and in real life, Able Andy would never make it with Amazing Amy. So her interest fades, and you stop feeling good, you can feel that old coldness again, like you’re naked on the bathroom floor, and all you want is to get back in the bath.”

I knew that feeling—I’d been on the bathroom floor for about three years—and I felt a rush of disgust for sharing this emotion with this other man.

“I’m sure you know what I mean,” Desi said, and smiled winkily at me.

What an odd man
, I thought.
Who compares another man’s wife to a bath he wants to sink into? Another man’s
missing
wife?

Behind Desi was a long, polished end table bearing several silver-framed photos. In the center was an oversize one of Desi and Amy back in high school, in tennis whites—the two so preposterously stylish, so monied-lush they could have been a frame from a Hitchcock movie. I pictured Desi, teenage Desi, slipping into Amy’s
dorm room, dropping his clothes to the floor, settling onto the cold sheets, swallowing plastic-coated pills. Waiting to be found. It was a form of punishment, of rage, but not the kind that occurred in my house. I could see why the police weren’t that interested. Desi trailed my glance.

“Oh, well, you can’t blame me for that.” He smiled. “I mean, would
you
throw away a photo that perfect?”

“Of a girl I hadn’t known for twenty years?” I said before I could stop. I realized my tone sounded more aggressive than was wise.

“I know Amy,” Desi snapped. He took a breath. “I knew her. I knew her very well. There aren’t any leads? I have to ask … Her father, is he … there?”

“Of course he is.”

“I don’t suppose … He was definitely in New York when it happened?”

“He was in New York. Why?”

Desi shrugged:
Just curious, no reason
. We sat in silence for a half minute, playing a game of eye-contact chicken. Neither of us blinked.

“I actually came here, Desi, to see what you could tell me.”

I tried again to picture Desi making off with Amy. Did he have a lake house somewhere nearby? All these types did. Would it be believable, this refined, sophisticated man keeping Amy in some preppy basement rec room, Amy pacing the carpet, sleeping on a dusty sofa in some bright, clubby ’60s color, lemon yellow or coral. I wished Boney and Gilpin were here, had witnessed the proprietary tone of Desi’s voice:
I know Amy
.

“Me?” Desi laughed.
He laughed richly
. The perfect phrase to describe the sound. “I can’t tell you anything. Like you said, I don’t know her.”

“But you just said you did.”

“I certainly don’t know her like you know her.”

“You stalked her in high school.”

“I
stalked
her? Nick. She was my girlfriend.”

“Until she wasn’t,” I said. “And you wouldn’t go away.”

“Oh, I probably did pine for her. But nothing out of the ordinary.”

“You call trying to kill yourself in her dorm room ordinary?”

He jerked his head, squinted his eyes. He opened his mouth to speak, then stared down at his hands. “I’m not sure what you’re talking about, Nick,” he finally said.

“I’m talking about you stalking my wife. In high school. Now.”

“That’s
really
what this is about?” He laughed again. “Good God, I thought you were raising money for a reward fund or something. Which I’m happy to cover, by the way. Like I said, I’ve never stopped wanting the best for Amy. Do I love her? No. I don’t know her anymore, not really. We exchange the occasional letter. But it is interesting, you coming here. You confusing the issue. Because I have to tell you, Nick, on TV, hell,
here
, now, you don’t seem to be a grieving, worried husband. You seem … smug. The police, by the way, already talked with me, thanks, I guess to you. Or Amy’s parents. Strange you didn’t know—you’d think they’d tell the husband everything if he were in the clear.”

My stomach clenched. “I’m here because I wanted to see for myself your face when you talked about Amy,” I said. “I gotta tell you, it worries me. You get a little … moony.”

“One of us has to,” Desi said, again reasonably.

“Sweetheart?” A voice came from the back of the house, and another set of expensive shoes clattered toward the living room. “What was the name of that
book—
”

The woman was a blurry vision of Amy, Amy in a steam-fogged mirror—exact coloring, extremely similar features, but a quarter century older, the flesh, the features, all let out a bit like a fine fabric. She was still gorgeous, a woman who chose to age gracefully. She was shaped like some sort of origami creation: elbows in extreme points, a clothes-hanger collarbone. She wore a china-blue sheath dress and had the same pull Amy did: When she was in a room, you kept turning your head back her way. She gave me a rather predatory smile.

“Hello, I’m Jacqueline Collings.”

“Mother, this is Amy’s husband, Nick,” Desi said.

“Amy.” The woman smiled again. She had a bottom-of-a-well voice, deep and strangely resonant. “We’ve been quite interested in that story around here. Yes, very interested.” She turned coldly to her son. “We can never stop thinking about the superb Amy Elliott, can we?”

“Amy Dunne now,” I said.

“Of course,” Jacqueline agreed. “I’m so sorry, Nick, for what you’re going through.” She stared at me a moment. “I’m sorry, I must … I didn’t picture Amy with such an … 
American
boy.” She seemed to be speaking neither to me nor to Desi. “Good God, he even has a cleft chin.”

“I came over to see if your son had any information,” I said. “I know he’s written my wife a lot of letters over the years.”

“Oh, the
letters
!” Jacqueline smiled angrily. “Such an interesting way to spend one’s time, don’t you think?”

“Amy shared them with you?” Desi asked. “I’m surprised.”

“No,” I said, turning to him. “She threw them away unopened, always.”

“All of them? Always? You know that?” Desi said, still smiling.

“Once I went through the trash to read one.” I turned back to Jacqueline. “Just to see what exactly was going on.”

“Good for you,” Jacqueline said, purring at me. “I’d expect nothing less of my husband.”

“Amy and I always wrote each other letters,” Desi said. He had his mother’s cadence, the delivery that indicated everything he said was something you’d want to hear. “It was our thing. I find e-mail so … cheap. And no one saves them. No one saves an e-mail, because it’s so inherently impersonal. I worry about posterity in general. All the great love letters—from Simone de Beauvoir to Sartre, from Samuel Clemens to his wife, Olivia—I don’t know, I always think about what will be lost—”

“Have you kept all my letters?” Jacqueline asked. She was standing at the fireplace, looking down on us, one long sinewy arm trailing along the mantelpiece.

“Of course.”

She turned to me with an elegant shrug. “Just curious.”

I shivered, was about to reach out toward the fireplace for warmth, but remembered that it was July. “It seems to me a rather strange devotion to keep up all these years,” I said. “I mean, she didn’t write you back.”