Rating: ★★★★☆ Tags: Mystery Detective, General, Fiction

NICK DUNNE
EIGHT DAYS GONE
A
s the sun came up, I held an ice cube to my cheek. Hours
later, and I could still feel the bite: two little staple-shaped
creases. I couldn’t go after Andie – a worse risk than her
wrath – so I finally phoned her. Voice mail.
Contain, this must be contained
.
‘Andie, I am so sorry, I don’t know what to do, I don’t
know what’s going on. Please forgive me. Please.’
I shouldn’t have left a voice mail, but then I thought: 
She
may have hundreds of my voice mails saved, for all I
know
. Good God, if she played a hit list of the raunchiest,
nastiest, smittenist … any woman on any jury would send
me away just for that. It’s one thing to know I’m a cheat and
another to hear my heavy teacher voice telling a young co-
ed about my giant, hard—
I blushed in the dawn light. The ice cube melted.
I sat on Go’s front steps, began phoning Andie every
ten minutes, got nothing. I was sleepless, my nerves
barbwired, when Boney pulled in to the driveway at 6:12
a.m. I said nothing as she walked toward me, bearing two
Styrofoam cups.
‘Hey, Nick, I brought you some coffee. Just came over
to check on you.’
‘I bet.’

---

‘I know you’re probably reeling. From the news about
the pregnancy.’ She made an elaborate show of pouring
two creamers into my coffee, the way I like it, and handed it
to me. ‘What’s that?’ she said, pointing to my cheek.
‘What do you mean?’
‘I mean, Nick, what is wrong with your face? There’s a
giant pink …’ She leaned in closer, grabbed my chin. ‘It’s
like a bite mark.’
‘It must be hives. I get hives when I’m stressed.’
‘Mm-hmmm.’ She stirred her coffee. ‘You do know I’m
on your side, right, Nick?’
‘Right.’
‘I am. Truly. I wish you’d trust me. I just – I’m getting to
the point where I won’t be able to help you if you don’t trust
me. I know that sounds like a cop line, but it’s the truth.’
We sat in a strange semi-companionable silence,
sipping coffee.
‘Hey, so I wanted you to know before you hear it
anywhere,’ she said brightly. ‘We found Amy’s purse.’
‘What?’
‘Yep, no cash left, but her ID, cell phone. In Hannibal, of
all places. On the banks of the river, south of the steamboat
landing. Our guess: Someone wanted to make it look like
it’d been tossed in the river by the perp on the way out of
town, heading over the bridge into Illinois.’
‘
Make it look like?
’
‘It had never been fully submerged. There are
fingerprints still at the top, near the zipper. Now sometimes
fingerprints can hold on even in water, but … I’ll spare you
the science, I’ll just say, the theory is, this purse was kinda
settled on the banks to make sure it was found.’

---

‘Sounds like you’re telling me this for a reason,’ I said.
‘The fingerprints we found were yours, Nick. Which
isn’t that crazy – men get into their wives’ purses all the
time. But still—’ She laughed as if she got a great idea. ‘I
gotta ask: You haven’t been to Hannibal recently, have
you?’
She said it with such casual confidence, I had a flash:
a police tracker hidden somewhere in the undercarriage of
my car, released to me the morning I went to Hannibal.
‘Why, exactly, would I go to Hannibal to get rid of my
wife’s purse?’
‘Say you’d killed your wife and staged the crime scene
in your home, trying to get us to think she was attacked by
an outsider. But then you realized we were beginning to
suspect you, so you wanted to plant something to get us to
look outside again. That’s the theory. But at this point,
some of my guys are so sure you did it, they’d find any
theory that fit. So let me help you: You in Hannibal lately?’
I shook my head. ‘You need to talk to my lawyer.
Tanner Bolt.’
‘