flynn_gillian_gone_girl (1) (858987), страница 68
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An awkward,shoulderless kid with a crew cut and a police o cer’s uniform sat next to her on one ofthe bar stools.“This is Tyler,” she said. “He grew up in Tennessee, he has a horse named Custard—”“Custer,” Tyler said.“Custer, and he’s allergic to peanuts. Not the horse but Tyler. Oh, and he has a tornlabrum, which is the same injury baseball pitchers get, but he’s not sure how he got it.”She took a drag on the cigarette.
Her eyes watered. “He’s been here a long time.”Tyler tried to give me a tough look, ended up watching his well-shined shoes.Boney appeared through the sliding glass doors at the back of the house. “Big day,boys,” she said. “Wish you’d bothered letting us know, Nick, that you have a girlfriend.Would have saved us all a lot of time.”“We’re happy to discuss that, as well as the contents of the shed, both of which wewere on our way to tell you about,” Tanner said. “Frankly, if you had given us thecourtesy of telling us about Andie, a lot of pain could have been forestalled.
But youneeded the press conference, you had to have the publicity. How disgusting, to put thatgirl up there like that.”“Right,” Boney said. “So, the woodshed. You all want to come with me?” She turnedher back on us, leading the way over the patchy end-of-summer grass to the woodshed.A cobweb trailed from her hair like a wedding veil. She motioned impatiently when shesaw me not following.
“Come on,” she said. “Not gonna bite you.”The woodshed was lit up by several portable lights, making it look even moreominous.“When’s the last time you been in here, Nick?”“I came in here very recently, when my wife’s treasure hunt led me here. But it’s notmy stuff, and I did not touch anything—”Tanner cut me o : “My client and I have an explosive new theory—” Tanner began,then caught himself. The phony TV-speak was so incredibly awful and inappropriate, weall cringed.“Oh, explosive, how exciting,” Boney said.“We were about to inform you—”“Really? What convenient timing,” she said. “Stay there, please.” The door hungloose on its hinges, a broken lock dangling to the side.
Gilpin was inside, cataloging thegoods.“These the golf clubs you don’t play with?” Gilpin said, jostling the glinting irons.“None of this is mine—none of this was put there by me.”“That’s funny, because everything in here corresponds with purchases made on thecredit cards that aren’t yours either,” Boney snapped. “This is, like, what do they call it,a man cave? A man cave in the making, just waiting for the wife to go away for good.Got yourself some nice pastimes, Nick.” She pulled out three large cardboard boxes andset them at my feet.“What’s this?”Boney opened them with ngertip disgust despite her gloved hands.
Inside weredozens of porn DVDs, flesh of all color and size on display on the covers.Gilpin chuckled. “I gotta hand it to you, Nick, I mean, a man has his needs—”“Men are highly visual, that’s what my ex always said when I caught him,” Boneysaid.“Men are highly visual, but Nick, this shit made me blush,” Gilpin said. “It made me alittle sick too, some of it, and I don’t get sick too easy.” He spread out a few of the DVDslike an ugly deck of cards. Most of the titles implied violence: Brutal Anal, BrutalBlowjobs, Humiliated Whores, Sadistic Slut Fucking, Gang-raped Sluts, and a series calledHurt the Bitch, volumes 1–18, each featuring photos of women writhing in pain whileleering, laughing men inserted objects into them.I turned away.“Oh, now he’s embarrassed.” Gilpin grinned.But I didn’t respond because I saw Go being helped into the back of a police car.We met an hour later at the police station.
Tanner advised against it—I insisted. Iappealed to his iconoclast, millionaire rodeo-cowboy ego. We were going to tell the copsthe truth. It was time.I could handle them fucking with me—but not my sister.“I’m agreeing to this because I think your arrest is inevitable, Nick, no matter whatwe do,” he said. “If we let them know we’re up for talking, we may get some moreinformation on the case they’ve got against you. Without a body, they’ll really want aconfession, so they’ll try to overwhelm you with the evidence. And that may give usenough to really jumpstart our defense.”“And we give them everything, right?” I said. “We give them the clues and themarionettes and Amy.” I was panicked, aching to go—I could picture the cops right nowsweating my sister under a bare lightbulb.“As long as you let me talk,” Tanner said.
“If it’s me talking about the frame-up, theycan’t use it against us at trial … if we go with a different defense.”It concerned me that my lawyer found the truth to be so completely unbelievable.Gilpin met us at the steps of the station, a Coke in his hand, late dinner. When heturned around to lead us in, I saw a sweat-soaked back. The sun had long set, but thehumidity remained. He apped his arms once, and the shirt uttered and stuck rightback to his skin.“Still hot,” he said. “Supposed to get hotter overnight.”Boney was waiting for us in the conference room, the one from the rst night. TheNight Of. She’d French-braided her limp hair and clipped it to the back of her head in arather poignant updo, and she wore lipstick. I wondered if she had a date.
A meet youafter midnight situation.“You have kids?” I asked her, pulling out a chair.She looked startled and held up a nger. “One.” She didn’t say a name or an age oranything else. Boney was in business mode. She tried to wait us out.“You first,” Tanner said. “Tell us what you got.”“Sure,” Boney said. “Okay.” She turned on the tape recorder, dispensed with thepreliminaries. “It is your contention, Nick, that you never bought or touched the items inthe woodshed on your sister’s property.”“That is correct,” Tanner replied for me.“Nick, your fingerprints are all over almost every item in the shed.”“That’s a lie! I touched nothing, not a thing in there! Except for my anniversarypresent, which Amy left inside.”Tanner touched my arm: Shut the fuck up.“Nick, your ngerprints are on the porn, on the golf clubs, on the watch cases, andeven on the TV.”And then I saw it, how much Amy would have enjoyed this: my deep, self-satis edsleep (which I lorded over her, my belief that if she were only more laid-back, more likeme, her insomnia would vanish) turned against me.
I could see it: Amy down on herknees, my snores heating her cheeks, as she pressed a ngertip here and there over thecourse of months. She could have slipped me a mickey for all I knew. I remember herpeering at me one morning as I woke up, sleep-wax gumming my lips, and she said,“You sleep the sleep of the damned, you know.
Or the drugged.” I was both and didn’tknow it.“Do you want to explain about the fingerprints?” Gilpin said.“Tell us the rest,” Tanner said.Boney set a biblically thick leather-covered binder on the table between us, charredall along the edges. “Recognize this?”I shrugged, shook my head.“It’s your wife’s diary.”“Um, no. Amy didn’t do diaries.”“Actually, Nick, she did. She did about seven years’ worth,” Boney said.“Okay.”Something bad was about to happen. My wife was being clever again.AMY ELLIOTT DUNNETEN DAYS GONEWe drive my car across state lines into Illinois, to a particularly awful neighborhoodof some busted river town, and we spend an hour wiping it down, and then we leave itwith the keys in the ignition.
Call it the circle of strife: The Arkansas couple who droveit before me were sketchy; Ozark Amy was obviously shady; hopefully, some Illinoisdown-and-outer will enjoy it for a bit too.Then we drive back into Missouri over wavy hills until I can see, between the trees,Lake Hannafan glistening. Because Desi has family in St.
Louis, he likes to believe thearea is old, East Coast old, but he is wrong. Lake Hannafan is not named after anineteenth-century statesman or a Civil War hero. It is a private lake, machine-forged in2002 by an oily developer named Mike Hannafan who turned out to have amoonlighting job illegally disposing of hazardous waste. The kerfu ed community isscrambling to find a new name for their lake. Lake Collings, I’m sure, has been floated.So despite the well-planned lake—upon which a few select residents can sail but notmotor—and Desi’s tastefully grand house—a Swiss château on an American scale—Iremain unwooed. That was always the problem with Desi.
Be from Missouri or don’t, butdon’t pretend Lake “Collings” is Lake Como.He leans against his Jaguar and aims his gaze up at the house so that I have to pausefor appreciation also.“We modeled it after this wonderful little chalet my mother and I stayed at inBrienzersee,” he says. “All we’re missing is the mountain range.”A rather big miss, I think, but I put my hand on his arm and say, “Show me the inside.It must be fabulous.”He gives me the nickel tour, laughing at the idea of a nickel. A cathedral kitchen—allgranite and chrome—a living room with his-and-hers replaces that ows onto anoutdoor space (what midwesterners call a deck) overlooking the woods and the lake.
Abasement entertainment room with a snooker table, darts, surround sound, a wet bar,and its own outdoor space (what midwesterners call another deck). A sauna o theentertainment room and next to it the wine cellar. Upstairs, ve bedrooms, the secondlargest of which he bestows on me.“I had it repainted,” he says.
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