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

AMY ELLIOTT DUNNE
NINE DAYS GONE
I
am penniless and on the run. How fucking noir. Except
that I am sitting in my Festiva at the far end of the parking
lot of a vast fast-food complex on the banks of the
Mississippi River, the smell of salt and factory-farm meat
floating on the warm breezes. It is evening now – I’ve
wasted hours – but I can’t move. I don’t know where to
move to. The car gets smaller by the hour – I am forced to
curl up like a fetus or my legs fall asleep. I certainly won’t
sleep tonight. The door is locked, but I still await the tap on
the window, and I know I will peek up and see either a
crooked-toothed, sweet-talking serial killer (wouldn’t that be
ironic, for me to actually be murdered?) or a stern, ID-
demanding cop (wouldn’t that be worse, for me to be
discovered in a parking lot looking like a hobo?). The
glowing restaurant signs never go off here; the parking lot is
lit like a football field – I think of suicide again, how a
prisoner on suicide watch spends twenty-four hours a day
under lights, an awful thought. My gas tank is below the
quarter mark, an even more awful thought: I can drive only
about an hour in any direction, so I must choose the
direction carefully. South is Arkansas, north is Iowa, west is
back to the Ozarks. Or I could go east, cross the river into
Illinois. Everywhere I go is the river. I’m following it or it’s

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following me.
I know, suddenly, what I must do.

---

NICK DUNNE
TEN DAYS GONE
W
e spent the day of the interview huddled in the spare
bedroom of Tanner’s suite, prepping my lines, fixing my
look. Betsy fussed over my clothes, then Go trimmed the
hair above my ears with nail scissors while Betsy tried to
talk me into using makeup – powder – to cut down on
shine. We all spoke in low voices because Sharon’s crew
was setting up outside; the interview would be in the suite’s
living room, overlooking the St. Louis Arch. Gateway to the
West. I’m not sure what the point of the landmark was
except to serve as a vague symbol of the middle of the
country: 
You Are Here
.
‘You need at least a little powder, Nick,’ Betsy finally
said, coming at me with the puff. ‘Your nose sweats when
you get nervous. Nixon lost an election on nose sweat.’
Tanner oversaw it all like a conductor. ‘Not too much off that
side, Go,’ he’d call. ‘Bets, be very careful with that powder,
better too little than too much.’
‘We should have Botoxed him,’ she said. Apparently,
Botox fights sweat as well as wrinkles – some of their
clients got a series of underarm shots before a trial, and
they were already suggesting such a thing for me. Gently,
subtly suggesting, 
should
we go to trial.
‘Yeah, I really need the press to get wind that I was

---

having Botox treatments while my wife was missing,’ I said.
‘Is missing.’ I knew Amy wasn’t dead, but I also knew she
was so far out of my reach that she might as well be. She
was a wife in past tense.
‘Good catch,’ Tanner said. ‘Next time do it before it
comes out of your mouth.’
At five p.m., Tanner’s phone rang, and he looked at the
display. ‘Boney.’ He sent it to voice mail. ‘I’ll call her after.’
He didn’t want any new bit of information, interrogation,
gossip to force us to reformulate our message. I agreed: I
didn’t want Boney in my head just then.
‘You sure we shouldn’t see what she wants?’ Go said.
‘She wants to fuck with me some more,’ I said. ‘We’ll
call her. A few hours. She can wait.’
We all rearranged ourselves, a mass group
reassurance that the call was nothing to worry about. The
room stayed silent for half a minute.
‘I have to say, I’m strangely excited to get to meet
Sharon Schieber,’ Go finally said. ‘Very classy lady. 
Not
like that Connie Chung
.’
I laughed, which was the intention. Our mother had
loved Sharon Schieber and hated Connie Chung – she’d
never forgiven her for embarrassing Newt Gingrich’s
mother on TV, something about Newt calling Hilary Clinton
a b-i-t-c-h. I don’t remember the actual interview, just our
mom’s outrage over it.
At six p.m. we entered the room, where two chairs
were set up facing each other, the Arch in the background,
the timing picked precisely so the Arch would glow but
there would be no sunset glare on the windows. One of the
most important moments of my life, I thought, dictated by

---

the angle of the sun. A producer whose name I wouldn’t
remember clicked toward us on dangerously high heels
and explained to me what I should expect. Questions could
be asked several times, to make the interview seem as
smooth as possible, and to allow for Sharon’s reaction
shots. I could not speak to my lawyer before giving an
answer. I could rephrase an answer but not change the
substance of the answer. Here’s some water, let’s get you
miked.
We started to move over to the chair, and Betsy
nudged my arm. When I looked down, she showed me a
pocket of jellybeans. ‘Remember …’ she said, and tsked
her finger at me.
Suddenly, the suite door swung wide and Sharon
Schieber entered, as smooth as if she were being borne by
a team of swans. She was a beautiful woman, a woman
who had probably never looked girlish. A woman whose
nose probably never sweated. She had thick dark hair and
giant brown eyes that could look doelike or wicked.
‘It’s Sharon!’ Go said, a thrilled whisper to imitate our
mom.
Sharon turned to Go and nodded majestically, came
over to greet us. ‘I’m Sharon,’ she said in a warm, deep
voice, taking both of Go’s hands.
‘Our mother loved you,’ Go said.
‘I’m so glad,’ Sharon said, managing to sound warm.
She turned to me and was about to speak when her
producer clicked up on high heels and whispered in her
ear. Then waited for Sharon’s reaction, then whispered
again.
‘Oh. Oh my God,’ Sharon said. When she turned back

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to me, she wasn’t smiling at all.

---