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

NICK DUNNE
THREE DAYS GONE
T
he police weren’t going to find Amy unless someone
wanted her found. That much was clear. Everything green
and brown had been searched: miles of the muddy
Mississippi River, all the trails and hiking paths, our sad
collection of patchy woods. If she were alive, someone
would need to return her. If she were dead, nature would
have to give her up. It was a palpable truth, like a sour taste
on the tongue tip. I arrived at the volunteer center and
realized everyone else knew this too: There was a
listlessness, a defeat, that hung over the place. I wandered
aimlessly over to the pastries station and tried to convince
myself to eat something. Danish. I’d come to believe there
was no food more depressing than Danish, a pastry that
seemed stale upon arrival.
‘I still say it’s the river,’ one volunteer was saying to his
buddy, both of them picking through the pastries with dirty
fingers. ‘Right behind the guy’s house, what easier way?’
‘She would have turned up in an eddy by now, a lock,
something.’
‘Not if she’s been cut. Chop off the legs, the arms …
the body can shoot all the way to the Gulf. Tunica, at least.’
I turned away before they noticed me.
A former teacher of mine, Mr Coleman, sat at a card

---

table, hunched over the tip-line phone, scribbling down
information. When I caught his eye, he made the cuckoo
signal: finger circling his ear, then pointing at the phone. He
had greeted me yesterday by saying, ‘My granddaughter
was killed by a drunk driver, so …’ We’d murmured and
patted each other awkwardly.
My cell rang, the disposable – I couldn’t figure out
where to keep it, so I kept it on me. I’d made a call, and the
call was being returned, but I couldn’t take it. I turned the
phone off, scanned the room to make sure the Elliotts
hadn’t seen me do it. Marybeth was clicking away on her
BlackBerry, then holding it at arm’s length so she could
read the text. When she saw me, she shot over in her tight
quick steps, holding the BlackBerry in front of her like a
talisman.
‘How many hours from here is Memphis?’ she asked.
‘Little under five hours, driving. What’s in Memphis?’
‘Hilary Handy lives in Memphis. Amy’s 
stalker
from
high school. How much of a coincidence is that?’
I didn’t know what to say: none?
‘Yeah, Gilpin blew me off too. 
We can’t authorize the
expense for something that happened twenty-some years
ago
. Asshole. Guy always treats me like I’m on the verge of
hysteria; he’ll talk to Rand when I’m right there, totally ignore
me, like I need my husband to explain things to little dumb
me. 
Ass
hole.’
‘The city’s broke,’ I said. ‘I’m sure they really don’t have
the budget, Marybeth.’
‘Well, we do. I’m serious, Nick, this girl was off her
rocker. And I know she tried to contact Amy over the years.
Amy told me.’

---

‘She never told me that.’
‘What’s it cost to drive there? Fifty bucks? Fine. Will
you go? You said you’d go. Please? I won’t be able to stop
thinking until I know someone’s talked to her.’
I knew this to be true, at least, because her daughter
suffered from the same tenacious worry streak: Amy could
spend an entire evening out fretting that she left the stove
on, even though we didn’t cook that day. Or was the door
locked? Was I sure? She was a worst-case scenarist on a
grand scale. Because it was never just that the door was
unlocked, it was that the door was unlocked, and men were
inside, and they were waiting to rape and kill her.
I felt a layer of sweat shimmer to the surface of my
skin, because, finally, my wife’s fears had come to fruition.
Imagine the awful satisfaction, to know that all those years
of worry had paid off.
‘Of course I’ll go. And I’ll stop by St. Louis, see the
other one, Desi, on the way. Consider it done.’ I turned
around, started my dramatic exit, got twenty feet, and
suddenly, there was Stucks again, his entire face still slack
with sleep.
‘Heard the cops searched the mall yesterday,’ he said,
scratching his jaw. In his other hand he held a glazed donut,
unbitten. A bagel-shaped bulge sat in the front pocket of his
cargo pants. I almost made a joke: