Gone Girl: A Novel (41 page)

W
e searched every cranny of my father’s house, which didn’t take long, since it’s so pathetically empty. The cabinets, the closets. I yanked at the corners of rugs to see if they came up. I peeked into his washer and dryer, stuck a hand up his chimney. I even looked behind the toilet tanks.

“Very
Godfather
of you,” Go said.

“If it were very
Godfather
, I’d have found what we were looking for and come out shooting.”

Tanner stood in the center of my dad’s living room and tugged at the end of his lime tie. Go and I were smeared with dust and grime, but somehow Tanner’s white button-down positively glowed, as if it retained some of the strobe-light glamour of New York. He was staring at the corner of a cabinet, chewing on his lip, tugging at the tie,
thinking
. The man had probably spent years perfecting this look: the
Shut up, client, I’m thinking
look.

“I don’t like this,” he finally said. “We have a lot of uncontained issues here, and I won’t go to the cops until we’re very, very contained. My first instinct is to get ahead of the situation—report that stuff in the shed before we get busted with it. But if we don’t know what Amy wants us to find here, and we don’t know Andie’s mind-set … Nick, do you have a
guess
what Andie’s mind-set is?”

I shrugged. “Pissed.”

“I mean, that makes me very, very nervous. We’re in a very prickly situation, basically. We need to tell the cops about the woodshed. We
have to be on the front end of that discovery. But I want to lay out for you what will happen when we do. And what will happen is: They will go after Go. It’ll be one of two options. One: Go is your accomplice, she was helping you hide this stuff on her property, and in all likelihood, she knows you killed Amy.”

“Come on, you can’t be serious,” I said.

“Nick, we’d be lucky with that version,” Tanner said. “They can interpret this however they want. How about this one: It was Go who stole your identity, who got those credit cards. She bought all that crap in there. Amy found out, there was a confrontation, Go killed Amy.”

“Then we get way, way ahead of all this,” I said. “We tell them about the woodshed, and we tell them Amy is framing me.”

“I think that is a bad idea in general, and right now it’s a really bad idea if we don’t have Andie on our side, because we’d have to tell them about Andie.”

“Why?”

“Because if we go to the cops with your story, that Amy framed you—”

“Why do you keep saying
my story
, like it’s something I made up?”

“Ha. Good point. If we explain to the cops how Amy is framing you, we have to explain
why
she is framing you. Why: because she found out you have a very pretty, very young girlfriend on the side.”

“Do we really have to tell them that?” I asked.

“Amy framed you for her murder because … she was … what, bored?”

I swallowed my lips.

“We have to give them Amy’s motive, it doesn’t work otherwise. But the problem is, if we set Andie, gift-wrapped, on their doorstep, and they don’t buy the frame-up theory, then we’ve given them your motive for murder. Money problems, check. Pregnant wife, check. Girlfriend, check. It’s a murderer’s triumvirate. You’ll go down. Women will line up to tear you apart with their fingernails.” He began pacing. “But if we don’t do anything, and Andie goes to them on her own …”

“So what do we do?” I asked.

“I think the cops will laugh us out of the station if we say right now that Amy framed you. It’s too flimsy. I believe you, but it’s flimsy.”

“But the treasure hunt clues—” I started.

“Nick, even I don’t understand those clues,” Go said. “They’re all inside baseball between you and Amy. There’s only your word that they’re leading you into … incriminating situations. I mean, seriously: crummy jeans and visor equals Hannibal?”

“Little brown house equals your dad’s house, which is
blue
,” Tanner added.

I could feel Tanner’s doubt. I needed to really show him Amy’s character. Her lies, her vindictiveness, her score-settling. I needed other people to back me up—that my wife wasn’t Amazing Amy but
Avenging
Amy.

“Let’s see if we can reach out to Andie today,” Tanner finally said.

“Isn’t it a risk to wait?” Go asked.

Tanner nodded. “It’s a risk. We have to move fast. If another bit of evidence pops up, if the police get a search warrant for the woodshed, if Andie goes to the cops—”

“She won’t,” I said.

“She bit you, Nick.”

“She won’t. She’s pissed off right now, but she’s … I can’t believe she’d do that to me. She knows I’m innocent.”

“Nick, you said you were with Andie for about an hour the morning Amy disappeared, yes?”

“Yes. From about ten-thirty to right before twelve.”

“So where were you between seven-thirty and ten?” Tanner asked. “You said you left the house at seven-thirty, right? Where did you go?”

I chewed on my cheek.

“Where did you go, Nick—I need to know.”

“It’s not relevant.”

“
Nick!
” Go snapped.

“I just did what I do some mornings. I pretended to leave, then I drove to the most deserted part of our complex, and I … one of the houses there has an unlocked garage.”

“And?” Tanner said.

“And I read magazines.”

“Excuse me?”

“I read back issues of my old magazine.”

I still missed my magazine—I hid copies like porn and read them in secret, because I didn’t want anyone feeling sorry for me.

I looked up, and both Tanner and Go felt very, very sorry for me.

I drove back to my house just after noon, was greeted by a street full of news vans, reporters camped out on my lawn. I couldn’t get into my driveway, was forced to park in front of the house. I took a breath, then flung myself out of the car. They set on me like starving birds, pecking and fluttering, breaking formation and gathering again.
Nick, did you know Amy was pregnant? Nick, what is your alibi? Nick, did you kill Amy?

I made it inside, locked myself in. On each side of the door were windows, so I braved it and quickly pulled down the shades, all the while cameras clicking at me, questions called.
Nick, did you kill Amy?
Once the shades were pulled, it was like covering a canary for the night: The noise out front stopped.

I went upstairs and satisfied my shower craving. I closed my eyes and let the spray dissolve the dirt from my dad’s house. When I opened them back up, the first thing I saw was Amy’s pink razor on the soap dish. It felt ominous, malevolent. My wife was crazy. I was married to a crazy woman. It’s every asshole’s mantra:
I married a psycho bitch
. But I got a small, nasty bite of gratification: I really did marry a genuine, bona fide psycho bitch.
Nick, meet your wife: the world’s foremost mindfucker
. I was not as big an asshole as I’d thought. An asshole, yes, but not on a grandiose scale. The cheating, that had been preemptive, a subconscious reaction to five years yoked to a madwoman: Of course I’d find myself attracted to an uncomplicated, good-natured hometown girl. It’s like when people with iron deficiencies crave red meat.

I was toweling off when the doorbell rang. I leaned out the bathroom door and heard the reporters’ voices geared up again:
Do you believe your son-in-law, Marybeth? What does it feel like to know you’ll be a grandpa, Rand? Do you think Nick killed your daughter, Marybeth?

They stood side by side on my front step, grim-faced, their backs rigid. There were about a dozen journalists, paparazzi, but they made the noise of twice that many.
Do you believe your son-in-law, Marybeth? What does it feel like to know you’ll be a grandpa, Rand?
The Elliotts entered with mumbled hellos and downcast eyes, and I slammed the door shut on the cameras. Rand put a hand on my arm and immediately removed it under Marybeth’s gaze.

“Sorry, I was in the shower.” My hair was still dripping, wetting the shoulders of my T-shirt. Marybeth’s hair was greasy, her clothes wilted. She looked at me like I was insane.

“Tanner Bolt? Are you serious?” she asked.

“What do you mean?”

“I mean, Nick: Tanner Bolt, are you serious. He only represents guilty people.” She leaned in closer, grabbed my chin. “What’s on your cheek?”

“Hives. Stress.” I turned away from her. “That’s not true about Tanner, Marybeth. It’s not. He’s the best in the business. I need him right now. The police—all they’re doing is looking at me.”

“That certainly seems to be the case,” she said. “It looks like a bite mark.”

“It’s hives.”

Marybeth released an aggravated sigh, turned the corner into the living room. “This is where it happened?” she asked. Her face had collapsed into a series of fleshy ridges—eye bags and saggy cheeks, her lips downcast.

“We think. Some sort of … altercation, confrontation, also happened in the kitchen.”

“Because of the blood.” Marybeth touched the ottoman, tested it, lifted it a few inches, and let it drop. “I wish you hadn’t fixed everything. You made it look like nothing ever happened.”

“Marybeth, he has to live here,” Rand said.

“I still don’t understand how—I mean, what if the police didn’t find everything? What if … I don’t know. It seems like they gave up. If they just let the house go. Open to anyone.”

“I’m sure they got everything,” Rand said, and squeezed her hand. “Why don’t we ask if we can look at Amy’s things so you can pick something special, okay?” He glanced at me. “Would that be all right, Nick? It’d be a comfort to have something of hers.” He turned back to his wife. “That blue sweater Nana knitted for her.”

“I don’t want the goddamn blue sweater, Rand!”

She flung his hand off, began pacing around the room, picking up items. She pushed the ottoman with a toe. “This is the ottoman, Nick?” she asked. “The one they said was flipped over but it shouldn’t have been?”

“That’s the ottoman.”

She stopped pacing, kicked it again, and watched it remain upright.

“Marybeth, I’m sure Nick is exhausted”—Rand glanced at me with a meaningful smile—“like we all are. I think we should do what we came here for and—”

“This is what I came here for, Rand. Not some stupid sweater of Amy’s to snuggle up against like I’m three. I want my daughter. I don’t want her stuff. Her stuff means nothing to me. I want Nick to tell us what the hell is going on, because this whole thing is starting to stink. I never, I never—I never felt so foolish in my life.” She began crying, swiping away the tears, clearly furious at herself for crying. “We trusted you with our daughter. We trusted you, Nick. Just tell us the truth!” She put a quivering index finger under my nose. “Is it true? Did you not want the baby? Did you not love Amy anymore? Did you hurt her?”

I wanted to smack her. Marybeth and Rand had raised Amy. She was literally their work product. They had created her. I wanted to say the words
Your daughter is the monster here
, but I couldn’t—not until we’d told the police—and so I remained dumbfounded, trying to think of what I could say. But I looked like I was stonewalling. “Marybeth, I would never—”

“
I would never, I could never
, that’s all I hear from your goddamn
mouth
. You know, I hate even
looking
at you anymore. I really do. There’s something wrong with you. There’s something missing inside you, to act the way you’ve been acting. Even if it turns out you’re totally blameless, I will never forgive you for how casually you’ve taken all of this. You’d think you mislaid a damn umbrella! After all Amy gave up for you, after all she did for you, and this is what she gets in return. It— You— I don’t believe you, Nick. That’s what I came here to let you know. I don’t believe in you. Not anymore.”

She began sobbing, turned away, and flung herself out the front door as the thrilled cameramen filmed her. She got in the car, and two reporters pressed against the window, knocking on it, trying to get her to say something. In the living room, we could hear them repeating and repeating her name.
Marybeth—Marybeth—

Rand remained, hands in his pockets, trying to figure out what role to play. Tanner’s voice—
we have to keep the Elliotts on our side
—was Greek-chorusing in my ear.

Rand opened his mouth, and I headed him off. “Rand, tell me what I can do.”

“Just say it, Nick.”

“Say what?”

“I don’t want to ask, and you don’t want to answer. I get that. But I need to hear you say it. You didn’t kill our daughter.”

He laughed and teared up at the same time. “Jesus Christ, I can’t keep my head straight,” Rand said. He was turning pink, flushed, a nuclear sunburn. “I can’t figure out how this is happening. I can’t figure it out!” He was still smiling. A tear dribbled on his chin and fell to his shirt collar. “Just say it, Nick.”

“Rand, I did not kill Amy or hurt her in any way.” He kept his eyes on me. “Do you believe me, that I didn’t physically
harm
her?”

Rand laughed again. “You know what I was about to say? I was about to say I don’t know what to believe anymore. And then I thought, that’s someone else’s line. That’s a line from a movie, not something I should be saying, and I wonder for a second, am I in a movie? Can I stop being in this movie? Then I know I can’t. But for a second, you think,
I’ll say something different, and this will all change
. But it won’t, will it?”