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

Leave it. Let
it look like something bad happened here
. So he
throws the front door open, and then he knocks a few
more things over in the living room. Overturns the
ottoman. So that’s why the scene looked so weird: It
was half true and half false.
B: Did Desi plant incriminating items at each of the
treasure hunt sites: Nick’s office, 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 office.
A: I guess 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.

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A: Did you 
read
the diary? It’s awful. I’m sure Nick did want
to get rid of it – I don’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 his privacy. So I’m sure it didn’t feel that
odd to him. I mean he couldn’t do it at our house,
because it’s a crime scene – who knows if you guys
will come back, find something in the ashes. At his
dad’s, he has some discretion. I thought it was a smart
move, considering you guys were basically railroading
him.
B: The diary is very, very concerning. The diary alleges
abuse and your fears that 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 diary includes some of Nick’s and my
struggles these past few years. It doesn’t paint the
greatest picture of our marriage or of Nick, but I have to
admit: I never wrote in the diary unless I was super-
happy, 
or
I was really, really unhappy and wanted to
vent and then … I can get a little dramatic when it’s just
me stewing on things. I mean, a lot of that is the ugly
truth – he did shove me once, and he didn’t want a
baby, and he did have money problems. But me being
afraid of him? I have to admit, it 
pains
me to admit, but
that’s my dramatic streak. I think the problem is, I’ve

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been stalked several times – it’s been a lifelong issue
– people getting obsessed with me – and so I get 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
suffered from what sounds like 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 the woodshed?
A: I did.
B: A lot of our case has focused on Nick’s debt, some
extensive credit-card purchases, and our discovery of
all those items hidden in the woodshed. What did you
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 felt like I was nosing around in
something that wasn’t my business. I remember
thinking at the time that it must have been her stuff from
New York. And then I saw on the news – Desi made
me watch everything – that it corresponded with Nick’s

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purchases, and … I knew Nick had some money
troubles, he was a spender. I think he was probably
embarrassed. Impulse purchases he couldn’t undo, so
he hid them from me until he could sell them online.
B: The Punch and Judy puppets, they seem a little ominous
for an anniversary present.
A: I know! Now I know. I didn’t remember the whole
backstory of Punch and Judy. I was just seeing a
husband and wife and a baby, and they were made of
wood, and I was pregnant. I scanned the Internet and
saw Punch’s line: 
That’s the way 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 me in, threw me in the trunk, and
drove away.
B: And did you yell then?
A: Yes, I fucking yelled. I am a complete coward. 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 a sleeping pill so he wouldn’t be awakened
by my 
sobbing
, and that the police were going to
actually interview him and 
still
not have a clue, still sit
around with their thumbs up their asses, I might have
yelled harder. Yes, I might have.

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B: Again, my apologies. Can we get Ms Dunne some
tissues, please? And where’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 at Hannibal – I heard the steamboat
whistle. He threw my purse out. 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 this case. Like, that Desi
would happen to toss out the purse right at Hannibal,
where your clue would make Nick go – and we in turn
would believe that Nick tossed the purse there. Or how
you decided to hide a present in the very place where
Nick was hiding goods he’d bought on secret credit
cards.
A: Really? I have to tell you, none of this sounds like
coincidence to me. It sounds like a bunch of cops who
got hung up on my husband being guilty, and now that I
am alive and he’s clearly not guilty, they look like giant
idiots, and they’re scrambling 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 would be on death row and I’d
be chained to a bed, being raped every day from now
until I died.
B: I’m sorry, it’s—
A: I saved myself, which saved Nick, which saved your sorry

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fucking asses.
B: That is an incredibly good point, Amy. I’m sorry, we’re so
… We’ve spent so long on this case, we want to figure
out every detail that we missed so we don’t repeat 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.

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