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

NICK DUNNE
TWO DAYS GONE
I
woke up on the pullout couch in the Elliotts’ suite,
exhausted. They’d insisted I stay over – my home had not
yet been reopened to me – insisted with the same urgency
they once applied to snapping up the check at dinner:
hospitality as ferocious force of nature. 
You must let us do
this for you
. So I did. I spent the night listening to their
snores through the bedroom door, one steady and deep –
a hearty lumberjack of a snore – the other gaspy and
arrhythmic, as if the sleeper were dreaming of drowning.
I could always turn myself off like a light. 
I’m going to
sleep
, I’d say, my hands in prayer position against my
cheek, 
Zzzzzz
, the deep sleep of a NyQuiled child – while
my insomniac wife fussed in bed next to me. Last night,
though, I felt like Amy, my brain still going, my body on
edge. I was, most of the time, a man who was literally
comfortable in his own skin. Amy and I would sit on the
couch to watch TV, and I’d turn to melted wax, my wife
twitching and shifting constantly next to me. I asked her
once if she might have restless leg syndrome – an ad for
the disease was running, the actors’ faces all furrowed in
distress as they shook their calves and rubbed their thighs
– and Amy said, 
I have restless everything syndrome
.
I watched the ceiling of the hotel room turn gray then

---

pink then yellow and finally pulled myself up to see the sun
blaring right at me, across the river, again, a solar third
degree. Then the names popped in my head – bing! Hilary
Handy. Such an adorable name to be accused of such
disturbing acts. Desi Collings, a former obsessive who
lived an hour away. I had claimed them both as mine. It is a
do-it-yourself era: health care, real estate, police
investigation. Go online and fucking figure it out for yourself
because everyone’s overworked and understaffed. I was a
journalist
. I spent over ten years interviewing people for a
living and getting them to reveal themselves. I was up to the
task, and Marybeth and Rand believed so too. I was
thankful they let me know I was still in their trust, the
husband under a wispy cloud of suspicion. Or do I fool
myself to use the word 
wispy
?
The Days Inn had donated an underused ballroom to serve
as the Find Amy Dunne headquarters. It was unseemly – a
place of brown stains and canned smells – but just after
dawn, Marybeth set about pygmalioning it, vacuuming and
sani-wiping, arranging bulletin boards and phone banks,
hanging a large headshot of Amy on one wall. The poster –
with Amy’s cool, confident gaze, those eyes that followed
you – looked like something from a presidential campaign.
In fact, by the time Marybeth was done, the whole room
buzzed with efficiency – the urgent hopefulness of a
seriously underdog politician with a lot of true believers
refusing to give up.
Just after ten a.m., Boney arrived, talking into her cell
phone. She patted me on the shoulder and began fiddling
with a printer. The volunteers arrived in bunches: Go and a

---

half dozen of our late mother’s friends. Five forty-something
women, all in capri pants, like they were rehearsing a
dance show: two of them – slender and blond and tanned –
vying for the lead, the others cheerfully resigned to second
string. A group of loudmouthed white-haired old ladies,
each trying to talk over the next, a few of them texting, the
kind of elderly people who have a baffling amount of
energy, so much youthful vigor you had to wonder if they
were trying to rub it in. Only one man showed up, a good-
looking guy about my age, well dressed, alone, failing to
realize that his presence could use some explaining. I
watched Loner Guy as he sniffed around the pastries,
sneaking glances at the poster of Amy.
Boney finished setting up the printer, grabbed a
branny-looking muffin, and came to stand by me.
‘Do you guys keep an eye on everyone who reports to
volunteer?’ I asked. ‘I mean, in case it’s someone—’
‘Someone who seems to have a suspicious amount of
interest? Absolutely.’ She broke off the edges of the muffin
and popped them in her mouth. She dropped her voice.
‘But to tell the truth, serial killers watch the same TV shows
we do. They know that 
we
know they like to—’
‘Insert themselves into the investigation.’
‘That’s it, yup.’ She nodded. ‘So they’re more careful
about that kind of thing now. But yeah, we sift through all the
kinda-weirdos to make sure they’re just, you know, kinda-
weirdos.’
I raised an eyebrow.
‘Like, Gilpin and I were lead detectives on the Kayla
Holman case few years back. Kayla Holman?’
I shook my head: no bell.

---

‘Anyway, you’ll find some ghouls get attracted to stuff
like this. And watch out for those two—’ Boney pointed
toward the two pretty forty-something women. ‘Because
they look like the type. To get a little too interested in
consoling the worried husband.’
‘Oh, come on—’
‘You’d be surprised. Handsome guy like you. It
happens.’
Just then one of the women, the blonder and tanner,
looked over at us, made eye contact, and smiled the
gentlest, shyest smile at me, then ducked her head like a
cat waiting to be petted.
‘She’ll work hard, though; she’ll be Little Miss Involved,’
Boney said. ‘So that’s good.’
‘How’d the Kayla Holman case turn out?’ I asked.
She shook her head: 
no
.
Four more women filed in, passing a bottle of sunblock
among themselves, slathering it on bare arms and
shoulders and noses. The room smelled like coconuts.
‘By the way, Nick,’ Boney said. ‘Remember when I
asked if Amy had friends in town – what about Noelle
Hawthorne? You didn’t mention her.’ She left us two
messages.
I gave her a blank stare.
‘Noelle in your complex? Mother of triplets?’
‘No, they aren’t friends.’
‘Oh, funny. She definitely seems to think they are.’
‘That happens to Amy a lot,’ I said. ‘She talks to
people once, and they latch on. It’s creepy.’
‘That’s what her parents said.’
I debated asking Boney directly about Hilary Handy

---

and Desi Collings. Then I decided not to; I’d look better if I
were the one leading the charge. I wanted Rand and
Marybeth to see me in action-hero mode. I couldn’t shake
the look Marybeth had given me: