Gone Girl(104)

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 analyzing 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?”