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

NICK DUNNE
NINE DAYS GONE
G
ood morning!
I sat in bed with my laptop by my side, enjoying the
online reviews of my impromptu interview. My left eyeball
was throbbing a bit, a light hangover from the cheap
Scotch, but the rest of me was feeling pretty satisfied. Last
night I cast the first line to lure my wife back in. 
I’m sorry, I
will make it up to you, I will do whatever you want from now
on, I will let the world know how special you are
.
Because I was fucked unless Amy decided to show
herself. Tanner’s detective (a wiry, clean-cut guy, not the
boozy noir gumshoe I’d hoped for) had come up with
nothing so far – my wife had disappeared herself perfectly. I
had to convince Amy to come back to me, flush her out with
compliments and capitulation.
If the reviews were any indication, I made the right call,
because the reviews were good. They were very good:
The Iceman Melteth!
I KNEW he was a good guy
.
In vino veritas!
Maybe he didn’t kill her after all
.
Maybe he didn’t kill her after all
.
Maybe he didn’t kill her after all
.
And they’d stopped calling me Lance.

---

Outside my house, the cameramen and journalists
were restless, they wanted a statement from the guy who
Maybe Didn’t Kill Her After All. They were yelling at my
drawn blinds: 
Hey, Nick, come on out, tell us about Amy.
Hey, Nick, tell us about your treasure hunt
. For them it
was just a new wrinkle in a ratings bonanza, but it was
much better than 
Nick, did you kill your wife?
And then, suddenly, they were yelling Go’s name – they
loved Go, she had no poker face, you knew if Go was sad,
angry, worried; stick a caption underneath, and you had a
whole story. 
Margo, is your brother innocent? Margo, tell
us about … Tanner, is your client innocent? Tanner—
The doorbell rang, and I opened the door while hiding
behind it because I was still disheveled; my spiky hair and
wilted boxers would tell their own story. Last night, on
camera, I was adorably smitten, a tad tipsy, in vino
veritastic. Now I just looked like a drunk. I closed the door
and waited for two more glowing reviews of my
performance.
‘You don’t ever – 
ever
– do something like that again,’
Tanner started. ‘What the hell is wrong with you, Nick? I feel
like I need to put one of those toddler leashes on you. How
stupid can you be?’
‘Have you seen all the comments online? People love
it. I’m turning around public opinion, like you told me to.’
‘You don’t do that kind of thing in an uncontrolled
environment,’ he said. ‘What if she worked for Ellen
Abbott? What if she started asking you questions that were
harder than 
What do you want to say to your wife, cutie-
pumpkin-pie?
’ He said this is a girlish singsong. His face
under the orange spray tan was red, giving him a

---

radioactive palette.
‘I trusted my instincts. I’m a journalist, Tanner, you have
to give me some credit that I can smell bullshit. She was
genuinely sweet.’
He sat down on the sofa, put his feet on the ottoman
that would never have flipped over on its own. ‘Yeah, well,
so was your wife once,’ he said. ‘So was Andie once.
How’s your cheek?’
It still hurt; the bite seemed to throb as he reminded me
of it. I turned to Go for support.
‘It wasn’t smart, Nick,’ she said, sitting down across
from Tanner. ‘You were