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

NICK DUNNE
FIVE DAYS GONE
I
sat in the billowing heat of my car outside Desi’s house,
the windows rolled down, and checked my phone. A
message from Gilpin: ‘Hi, Nick. We need to touch base
today, update you on a few things, go over a few questions.
Meet us at four at your house, okay? Uh … thanks.’
It was the first time I’d been ordered. Not 
Could we,
we’d love to, if you don’t mind
. But 
We need to. Meet us
…
I glanced at my watch. Three o’clock. Best not be late.
The summer air show – a parade of jets and prop planes
spinning loops up and down the Mississippi, buzzing the
tourist steamboats, rattling teeth – was three days off, and
the practice runs were in high gear by the time Gilpin and
Rhonda arrived. We were all back in my living room for the
first time since The Day Of.
My home was right on a flight path; the noise was
somewhere between jackhammer and avalanche. My cop
buddies and I tried to jam a conversation in the spaces
between the blasts. Rhonda looked more birdlike than
usual – favoring one leg, then another, her head moving all
around the room as her gaze alighted on different objects,
angles – a magpie looking to line her nest. Gilpin hovered
next to her, chewing his lip, tapping a foot. Even the room

---

felt restive: The afternoon sun lit up an atomic flurry of dust
motes. A jet shot over the house, that awful sky-rip noise.
‘Okay, couple of things here,’ Rhonda said when the
silence returned. She and Gilpin sat down as if they both
had suddenly decided to stay awhile. ‘Some stuff to get
clear on, some stuff to tell you. All very routine. And as
always, if you want a lawyer—’
But I knew from my TV shows, my movies, that only
guilty guys lawyered up. Real, grieving, worried, innocent
husbands did not.
‘I don’t, thanks,’ I said. ‘I actually have some
information to share with you. About Amy’s former stalker,
the guy she dated back in high school.’
‘Desi – uh, Collins,’ began Gilpin.
‘Collings. I know you all talked to him, I know you for
some reason aren’t that interested in him, so I went to visit
him myself today. To make sure he seemed … okay. And I
don’t think he is okay. I think he’s someone you all should
look into. Really look into. I mean, he moves to St. Louis—’
‘He was living in St. Louis three years before you all
moved back,’ Gilpin said.
‘Fine, but he’s in St. Louis. Easy drive. Amy bought a
gun because she was afraid—’
‘Desi’s okay, Nick. Nice guy,’ Rhonda said. ‘Don’t you
think? He reminds me of you, actually. Real golden boy,
baby of the family.’
‘I’m a twin. Not the baby. I’m actually three minutes
older.’
Rhonda was clearly trying to nip at me, see if she could
get a rise, but even knowing this didn’t prevent the angry
blood flush to my stomach every time she accused me of

---

being a baby.
‘Anyway,’ Gilpin interrupted. ‘Both he and his mother
deny that he ever stalked Amy, or that he even had much
contact with her these past years except the occasional
note.’
‘My wife would tell you differently. He wrote Amy for
years – 
years
– and then he shows up 
here
for the search,
Rhonda. Did you know that? He was here that first day. You
talked about keeping an eye out for men inserting
themselves into the investigation—’
‘Desi Collings is not a suspect,’ she interrupted, one
hand up.
‘But—’
‘Desi Collins is not a suspect,’ she repeated.
The news stung. I wanted to accuse her of being
swayed by