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

Avenging
Amy.
‘Lets see if we can reach out to Andie today,’ Tanner
finally said.
‘Isn’t it a risk to wait?’ Go asked.

---

Tanner nodded. ‘It’s a risk. We have to move fast. If
another bit of evidence pops up, if the police get a search
warrant for the woodshed, if Andie goes to the cops—’
‘She won’t,’ I said.
‘She bit you, Nick.’
‘She won’t. She’s pissed off right now, but she’s … I
can’t believe she’d do that to me. She knows I’m innocent.’
‘Nick, you said you were with Andie for about an hour
the morning Amy disappeared, yes?’
‘Yes. From about ten-thirty to right before twelve.’
‘So where were you between seven-thirty and ten?’
Tanner asked. ‘You said you left the house at seven-thirty,
right? Where did you go?’
I chewed on my cheek.
‘Where did you go, Nick – I need to know.’
‘It’s not relevant.’
‘
Nick!
’ Go snapped.
‘I just did what I do some mornings. I pretended to
leave, then I drove to the most deserted part of our
complex, and I … one of the houses there has an unlocked
garage.’
‘And?’ Tanner said.
‘And I read magazines.’
‘Excuse me?’
‘I read back issues of my old magazine.’
I still missed my magazine – I hid copies like porn and
read them in secret, because I didn’t want anyone feeling
sorry for me.
I looked up, and both Tanner and Go felt very, very
sorry for me.

---

I drove back to my house just after noon, was greeted by a
street full of news vans, reporters camped out on my lawn. I
couldn’t get into my driveway, was forced to park in front of
the house. I took a breath, then flung myself out of the car.
They set on me like starving birds, pecking and fluttering,
breaking formation and gathering again. 
Nick, did you
know Amy was pregnant? Nick, what is your alibi? Nick,
did you kill Amy?
I made it inside, locked myself in. On each side of the
door were windows, so I braved it and quickly pulled down
the shades, all the while cameras clicking at me, questions
called. 
Nick, did you kill Amy?
Once the shades were
pulled, it was like covering a canary for the night: The noise
out front stopped.
I went upstairs and satisfied my shower craving. I
closed my eyes and let the spray dissolve the dirt from my
dad’s house. When I opened them back up, the first thing I
saw was Amy’s pink razor on the soap dish. It felt ominous,
malevolent. My wife was crazy. I was married to a crazy
woman. It’s every asshole’s mantra: 
I married a psycho
bitch
. But I got a small, nasty bite of gratification: I really did
marry a genuine, bona fide psycho bitch. 
Nick, meet your
wife: the world’s foremost mindfucker
. I was not as big an
asshole as I’d thought. An asshole, yes, but not on a
grandiose scale. The cheating, that had been preemptive,
a subconscious reaction to five years yoked to a
madwoman: Of course I’d find myself attracted to an
uncomplicated, good-natured hometown girl. It’s like when
people with iron deficiencies crave red meat.
I was toweling off when the doorbell rang. I leaned out
the bathroom door and heard the reporters’ voices geared

---

up again: 
Do you believe your son-in-law, Marybeth?
What does it feel like to know you’ll be a grandpa, Rand?
Do you think Nick killed your daughter, Marybeth?
They stood side by side on my front step, grim-faced,
their backs rigid. There were about a dozen journalists,
paparazzi, but they made the noise of twice that many.