flynn_gillian_gone_girl (1) (858987), страница 76

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I still havethe scar. See?B: Yes, that was noted in your medical examination. You were lucky it was onlya flesh wound.A: It doesn’t feel like a flesh wound, believe me.B: So he stabbed you? The angle is—A: I’m not sure if he did it on purpose, or if I thrust myself onto the bladeaccidentally—I was so o balance. I remember the club falling to the oor, though,and I looked down and saw my blood from the stab wound pooling over the club.

Ithink I passed out then.B: Where were you when you woke up?A: I woke up hog-tied in my living room.B: Did you scream, try to get the neighbors’ attention?A: Of course I screamed. I mean, did you hear me? I was beaten, stabbed, andhog-tied by a man who had been obsessed with me for decades, who once tried tokill himself in my dorm bedroom.B: Okay, okay, Amy, I’m sorry, that question was not intended in the least tosound like we are blaming you; we just need to get a full picture here so we canclose the investigation and you can get on with your life. Do you want anotherwater, or coffee or something?A: Something warm would be nice. I’m so cold.B: No problem.

Can you get her a coffee? So what happened then?A: I think his original plan was to subdue me and kidnap me and let it look likea runaway-wife thing, because when I wake up, he’s just nished mopping theblood in the kitchen, and he’s straightened the table of little antique ornaments thatfell over when I ran to the kitchen. He’s gotten rid of the club. But he’s running outof time, and I think what must have happened is: He sees this disheveled livingroom—and so he thinks, Leave it. Let it look like something bad happened here.

So hethrows the front door open, and then he knocks a few more things over in the livingroom. Overturns the ottoman. So that’s why the scene looked so weird: It was halftrue and half false.B: Did Desi plant incriminating items at each of the treasure hunt sites: Nick’soffice, Hannibal, his dad’s house, Go’s woodshed?A: I don’t know what you mean?B: There was a pair of women’s underwear, not your size, in Nick’s o ce.

A: Iguess it must have been the girl he was … dating. B: Not hers either.A: Well, I can’t help on that one. Maybe he was seeing more than one girl.B: Your diary was found in his father’s house. Partly burned in the furnace.A: Did you read the diary? It’s awful. I’m sure Nick did want to get rid of it—Idon’t blame him, considering you guys zeroed in on him so quickly.B: I wonder why he would go to his father’s to burn it.A: You should ask him.

(Pause.) Nick went there a lot, to be alone. He likes hisprivacy. So I’m sure it didn’t feel that odd to him. I mean, he couldn’t do it at ourhouse, because it’s a crime scene—who knows if you guys will come back, ndsomething in the ashes. At his dad’s, he has some discretion. I thought it was a smartmove, considering you guys were basically railroading him.B: The diary is very, very concerning. The diary alleges abuse and your fearsthat Nick didn’t want the baby, that he might want to kill you.A: I really do wish that diary had burned. (Pause.) Let me be honest: The diaryincludes some of Nick’s and my struggles these past few years. It doesn’t paint thegreatest picture of our marriage or of Nick, but I have to admit: I never wrote in thediary unless I was super-happy, or I was really, really unhappy and wanted to ventand then … I can get a little dramatic when it’s just me stewing on things.

I mean, alot of that is the ugly truth—he did shove me once, and he didn’t want a baby, andhe did have money problems. But me being afraid of him? I have to admit, it painsme to admit, but that’s my dramatic streak. I think the problem is, I’ve been stalkedseveral times—it’s been a lifelong issue—people getting obsessed with me—and so Iget a little paranoid.B: You tried to buy a gun.A: I get a lot paranoid, okay? I’m sorry. If you had my history, you’d understand.B: There’s an entry about a night of drinks when you su ered from what soundslike textbook antifreeze poisoning.A: (Long silence.) That’s bizarre. Yes, I did get ill.B: Okay, back to the treasure hunt.

You did hide the Punch and Judy dolls in thewoodshed?A: I did.B: A lot of our case has focused on Nick’s debt, some extensive credit-cardpurchases, and our discovery of all those items hidden in the woodshed. What didyou think when you opened the woodshed and saw all this stuff?A: I was on Go’s property, and Go and I aren’t especially close, so mostly, I feltlike I was nosing around in something that wasn’t my business. I rememberthinking at the time that it must have been her stu from New York. And then I sawon the news—Desi made me watch everything—that it corresponded with Nick’spurchases, and … I knew Nick had some money troubles, he was a spender.

I thinkhe was probably embarrassed. Impulse purchases he couldn’t undo, so he hid themfrom me until he could sell them online.B: The Punch and Judy puppets, they seem a little ominous for an anniversarypresent.A: I know! Now I know. I didn’t remember the whole backstory of Punch andJudy. I was just seeing a husband and wife and a baby, and they were made ofwood, and I was pregnant.

I scanned the Internet and saw Punch’s line: That’s theway to do it! And I thought it was cute—I didn’t know what it meant.B: So you were hog-tied. How did Desi get you to the car?A: He pulled the car into the garage and lowered the garage door, dragged mein, threw me in the trunk, and drove away.B: And did you yell then?A: Yes, I fucking yelled. And if I’d known that, every night for the next month,Desi was going to rape me, then snuggle in next to me with a martini and asleeping pill so he wouldn’t be awakened by my sobbing, and that the police weregoing to actually interview him and still not have a clue, still sit around with theirthumbs up their asses, I might have yelled harder.

Yes, I might have.B: Again, my apologies. Can we get Ms. Dunne some tissues, please? Andwhere’s her coff—Thank you. Okay, where did you go from there, Amy?A: We drove toward St. Louis, and I remember on the way there he stopped atHannibal—I heard the steamboat whistle. I guess that’s when he threw my purseout. It was the one other thing he did so it would look like foul play.B: This is so interesting. There seem to be so many strange coincidences in thiscase. Like, that Desi would happen to toss out the purse right at Hannibal, whereyour clue would make Nick go—and we in turn would believe that Nick tossed thepurse there. Or how you decided to hide a present in the very place where Nick washiding goods he’d bought on secret credit cards.A: Really? I have to tell you, none of this sounds like coincidence to me.

Itsounds like a bunch of cops who got hung up on my husband being guilty, and nowthat I am alive and he’s clearly not guilty, they look like giant idiots, and they’rescrambling to cover their asses. Instead of accepting responsibility for the fact that,if this case had been left in your extremely fucking incompetent hands, Nick wouldbe on death row and I’d be chained to a bed, being raped every day from now untilI died.B: I’m sorry, it’s—A: I saved myself, which saved Nick, which saved your sorry fucking asses.B: That is an incredibly good point, Amy.

I’m sorry, we’re so … We’ve spent solong on this case, we want to gure out every detail that we missed so we don’trepeat our mistakes. But you’re absolutely right, we’re missing the big picture,which is: You are a hero. You are an absolute hero.A: Thank you. I appreciate you saying that.NICK DUNNETHE NIGHT OF THE RETURNI went to the station to fetch my wife and was greeted by the press like a rock star–landslide president– rst moonwalker all in one.

I had to resist raising clasped handsabove my head in the universal victory shake. I see, I thought, we’re all pretending to befriends now.I entered a scene that felt like a holiday party gone awry—a few bottles ofchampagne rested on one desk, surrounded by tiny paper cups. Backslapping and cheersfor all the cops, and then more cheers for me, as if these people hadn’t been mypersecutors a day before.

But I had to play along. Present the back for slapping. Oh yes,we’re all buddies now.All that matters is that Amy is safe. I’d been practicing that line over and over. I had tolook like the relieved, doting husband until I knew which way things were going to go.Until I was sure the police had sawed through all her sticky cobwebby lies. Until she isarrested— I’d get that far, until she is arrested, and then I could feel my brain expand andde ate simultaneously—my own cerebral Hitchcock zoom—and I’d think: My wifemurdered a man.“Stabbed him,” said the young police o cer assigned as the family liaison.

(I hopednever to be liaisoned again, with anyone, for any reason.) He was the same kid who’dyammered on to Go about his horse and torn labrum and peanut allergy. “Cut him rightthrough the jugular. Cut like that, he bleeds out in, like, sixty seconds.”Sixty seconds is a long time to know you are dying. I could picture Desi wrapping hishands around his neck, the feel of his own blood spurting between his ngers with eachpulse, and Desi getting more frightened and the pulsing only quickening … and thenslowing, and Desi knowing the slowing was worse.

And all the time Amy standing justout of reach, studying him with the blameful, disgusted look of a high school biologystudent confronted with a dripping pig fetus. Her little scalpel still in hand.“Cut him with a big ole butcher knife,” the kid was saying. “Guy used to sit right nextto her on the bed, cut up her meat for her, and feed her.” He sounded more disgusted bythis than by the stabbing. “One day the knife slips off the plate, he never notices—”“How’d she use the knife if she was always tied up?” I asked.The kid looked at me as if I’d just told a joke about his mother.

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