flynn_gillian_gone_girl (1) (858987), страница 37
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Boney was taking turns playing di erent female characters:powerful woman, doting caregiver, to see what got the best results.“How’s your marriage, Nick?” Rhonda asked. “I mean, ve years, that’s not far fromthe seven-year itch.”“The marriage was fine,” I repeated. “It’s fine. Not perfect, but good, good.”She wrinkled her nose: You lie.“You think she might have run o ?” I asked, too hopefully. “Made this look like acrime scene and took off? Runaway-wife thing?”Boney began ticking o reasons no: “She hasn’t used her cell, she hasn’t used hercredit cards, ATM cards.
She made no major cash withdrawals in the weeks before.”“And there’s the blood,” Gilpin added. “I mean, again, I don’t want to sound harsh,but the amount of blood spilled? That would take some serious … I mean, I couldn’t havedone it to myself. I’m talking some deep wounds there. Your wife got nerves of steel?”“Yes. She does.” She also had a deep phobia of blood, but I’d wait and let the brilliantdetectives figure that out.“It seems extremely unlikely,” Gilpin said. “If she were to wound herself thatseriously, why would she mop it up?”“So really, let’s be honest, Nick,” Boney said, leaning over on her knees so she couldmake eye contact with me as I stared at the oor.
“How was your marriage currently?We’re on your side, but we need the truth. The only thing that makes you look bad isyou holding out on us.”“We’ve had bumps.” I saw Amy in the bedroom that last night, her face mottled withthe red hivey splotches she got when she was angry. She was spitting out the words—mean, wild words—and I was listening to her, trying to accept the words because theywere true, they were technically true, everything she said.“Describe the bumps for us,” Boney said.“Nothing speci c, just disagreements. I mean, Amy is a blow-stack. She bottles up abunch of little stuff and—whoom!—but then it’s over.
We never went to bed angry.”“Not Wednesday night?” Boney asked.“Never,” I lied.“Is it money, what you mostly argue about?”“I can’t even think what we’d argue about. Just stuff.”“What stu was it the night she went missing?” Gilpin said it with a sideways grin,like he’d uttered the most unbelievable gotcha.“Like I told you, there was the lobster.”“What else? I’m sure you didn’t scream about the lobster for a whole hour.”At that point Bleecker waddled partway down the stairs and peered through therailings.“Other household stu too. Married-couple stu .
The cat box,” I said. “Who wouldclean the cat box.”“You were in a screaming argument about a cat box,” Boney said.“You know, the principle of the thing. I work a lot of hours, and Amy doesn’t, and Ithink it would be good for her if she did some basic home maintenance. Just basicupkeep.”Gilpin jolted like an invalid woken from an afternoon nap. “You’re an old-fashionedguy, right? I’m the same way.
I tell my wife all the time, ‘I don’t know how to iron, Idon’t know how to do the dishes. I can’t cook. So, sweetheart, I’ll catch the bad guys,that I can do, and you throw some clothes in the washer now and then.’ Rhonda, youwere married, did you do the domestic stuff at home?”Boney looked believably annoyed. “I catch bad guys too, idiot.”Gilpin rolled his eyes toward me; I almost expected him to make a joke—sounds likesomeone’s on the rag—the guy was laying it on so thick.Gilpin rubbed his vulpine jaw. “So you just wanted a housewife,” he said to me,making the proposition seem reasonable.“I wanted—I wanted whatever Amy wanted.
I really didn’t care.” I appealed toBoney now, Detective Rhonda Boney with the sympathetic air that seemed at leastpartly authentic. (It’s not, I reminded myself.) “Amy couldn’t decide what to do here. Shecouldn’t nd a job, and she wasn’t interested in The Bar. Which is ne, if you want tostay home, that’s ne, I said. But when she stayed home, she was unhappy too.
Andshe’d wait for me to fix it. It was like I was in charge of her happiness.”Boney said nothing, gave me a face expressionless as water.“And, I mean, it’s fun to be hero for a while, be the white knight, but it doesn’t reallywork for long. I couldn’t make her be happy. She didn’t want to be happy. So I thought ifshe started taking charge of a few practical things—”“Like the cat box,” said Boney.“Yeah, clean the cat box, get some groceries, call a plumber to x the drip that droveher crazy.”“Wow, that sounds like a real happiness plan there. Lotta yuks.”“But my point was, do something. Whatever it is, do something. Make the most of thesituation.
Don’t sit and wait for me to x everything for you.” I was speaking loudly, Irealized, and I sounded almost angry, certainly righteous, but it was such a relief. I’dstarted with a lie—the cat box—and turned that into a surprising burst of pure truth, andI realized why criminals talked too much, because it feels so good to tell your story to astranger, someone who won’t call bullshit, someone forced to listen to your side.(Someone pretending to listen to your side, I corrected.)“So the move back to Missouri?” Boney said. “You moved Amy here against herwishes?”“Against her wishes? No. We did what we had to do.
I had no job, Amy had no job, mymom was sick. I’d do the same for Amy.”“That’s nice of you to say,” Boney muttered. And suddenly she reminded me exactlyof Amy: the damning below-breath retorts uttered at the perfect level, so I was prettysure I heard them but couldn’t swear to it. And if I asked what I was supposed to ask—What did you say?—she’d always say the same: Nothing. I glared at Boney, my mouthtight, and then I thought: Maybe this is part of the plan, to see how you act toward angry,dissatisfied women. I tried to make myself smile, but it only seemed to repulse her more.“And you’re able to a ord this, Amy working, not working, whatever, you couldswing it financially?” Gilpin asked.“We’ve had some money problems of late,” I said.
“When we rst married, Amy waswealthy, like extremely wealthy.”“Right,” said Boney, “those Amazing Amy books.”“Yeah, they made a ton of money in the eighties and nineties. But the publisherdropped them. Said Amy had run her course. And everything went south. Amy’s parentshad to borrow money from us to stay afloat.”“From your wife, you mean?”“Right, ne.
And then we used most of the last of Amy’s trust fund to buy the bar,and I’ve been supporting us since.”“So when you married Amy, she was very wealthy,” Gilpin said. I nodded. I wasthinking of the hero narrative: the husband who sticks by his wife through the horribledecline in her family’s circumstances.“So you had a very nice lifestyle.”“Yeah, it was great, it was awesome.”“And now she’s near broke, and you’re dealing with a very di erent lifestyle thanwhat you married into. What you signed on for.”I realized my narrative was completely wrong.“Because, okay, we’ve been going over your nances, Nick, and dang, they don’tlook good,” Gilpin started, almost turning the accusation into a concern, a worry.“The Bar is doing decent,” I said.
“It usually takes a new business three or four yearsto get out of the red.”“It’s those credit cards that got my attention,” Boney said. “Two hundred and twelvethousand dollars in credit-card debt. I mean, it took my breath away.” She fanned astack of red-ink statements at me.My parents were fanatics about credit cards—used only for special purposes, paid oevery month. We don’t buy what we can’t pay for. It was the Dunne family motto.“We don’t—I don’t, at least—but I don’t think Amy would—Can I see those?” Istuttered, just as a low- ying bomber rattled the windowpanes.
A plant on the mantelpromptly lost ve pretty purple leaves. Forced into silence for ten brain-shakingseconds, we all watched the leaves flutter to the ground.“Yet this great brawl we’re supposed to believe happened in here, and not a petalwas on the floor then,” Gilpin muttered disgustedly.I took the papers from Boney and saw my name, only my name, versions of it—NickDunne, Lance Dunne, Lance N. Dunne, Lance Nicholas Dunne, on a dozen di erentcredit cards, balances from $62.78 to $45,602.33, all in various states of lateness, tersethreats printed in ominous lettering across the top: pay now.“Holy fuck! This is, like, identity theft or something!” I said.
“They’re not mine. Imean, freakin’ look at some of this stu : I don’t even golf.” Someone had paid overseven thousand dollars for a set of clubs. “Anyone can tell you: I really don’t golf.” I triedto make it sound self-e acing—yet another thing I’m not good at—but the detectivesweren’t biting.“You know Noelle Hawthorne?” Boney asked. “The friend of Amy’s you told us tocheck out?”“Wait, I want to talk about the bills, because they are not mine,” I said. “I mean,please, seriously, we need to track this down.”“We’ll track it down, no problem,” Boney said, expressionless. “Noelle Hawthorne?”“Right.
I told you to check her out because she’s been all over town, wailing aboutAmy.”Boney arched an eyebrow. “You seem angry about that.”“No, like I told you, she seems a little too broken up, like in a fake way.Ostentatious. Attention-seeking. A little obsessed.”“We talked to Noelle,” Boney said. “Says your wife was extremely troubled by themarriage, was upset about the money stu , that she worried you’d married her for hermoney. She says your wife worried about your temper.”“I don’t know why Noelle would say that; I don’t think she and Amy ever exchangedmore than five words.”“That’s funny, because the Hawthornes’ living room is covered with photos of Noelleand your wife.” Boney frowned.
I frowned too: actual real pictures of her and Amy?Boney continued: “At the St. Louis zoo last October, on a picnic with the triplets, on aweekend float trip this past June. As in last month.”“Amy has never uttered the name Noelle in the entire time we’ve lived here. I’mserious.” I scanned my brain over this past June and came upon a weekend I went awaywith Andie, told Amy I was doing a boys’ trip to St.
Louis. I’d returned home to nd herpink-cheeked and angry, claiming a weekend of bad cable and bored reading on thedock. And she was on a oat trip? No. I couldn’t think of anything Amy would care forless than the typical midwestern oat trip: beers bobbing in coolers tied to canoes, loudmusic, drunk frat boys, campgrounds dotted with vomit. “Are you sure it was my wife inthose photos?”They gave each other a he serious? look.“Nick,” Boney said. “We have no reason to believe that the woman in the photos wholooks exactly like your wife and who Noelle Hawthorne, a mother of three, your wife’sbest friend here in town, says is your wife, is not your wife.”“Your wife who—I should say—according to Noelle, you married for money,” Gilpinadded.“I’m not joking,” I said. “Anyone these days can doctor photos on a laptop.”“Okay, so a minute ago you were sure Desi Collings was involved, and now you’vemoved on to Noelle Hawthorne,” Gilpin said.
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