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

Because of certain prejudicial actions by the police
involved in this case, I really, unfortunately, can’t answer

---

that right now, as much as I’d like to
– and say it
convincingly.’
‘Like a talking dog.’
‘Sure, like a talking dog who doesn’t want to go to
prison. We get Sharon Schieber to take you on as a cause,
Nick, and we are golden. This is all incredibly unorthodox,
but that’s me,’ Tanner said again. He liked the line; it was
his theme music. He paused and furrowed his brow, doing
his pretend-thinking gesture. He was going to add
something I wouldn’t like.
‘What?’ I asked.
‘You need to tell Sharon Schieber about Andie –
because it’s going to come out, the affair, it just will.’
‘Right when people are finally starting to like me. You
want me to undo that?’
‘ I 
swear
to you, Nick – how many cases have I
handled? It always – somehow, some way, always comes
out. This way we have control. You tell her about Andie and
you apologize. Apologize literally as if your life depends on
it. You had an affair, you are a man, a weak, stupid man.
But
you love your wife, and you will make it up to her. You
do the interview, it’ll air the next night. All content is
embargoed – so they can’t tease the Andie affair in their
ads. They can just use the word 
bombshell
.’
‘So you already told them about Andie?’
‘Good God, no,’ he said. ‘I told them: 
We have a nice
bombshell for you
. So you do the interview, and we have
about twenty-four hours. Just before it hits TV, we tell Boney
and Gilpin about Andie and about our discovery in the
woodshed. 
Oh my gosh, we’ve put it all together for you:
Amy is alive and she’s framing Nick! She’s crazy, jealous,

---

and she is framing Nick! Oh, the humanity!
’
‘Why not tell Sharon Schieber, then? About Amy
framing me?’
‘Reason one. You come clean about Andie, you beg
forgiveness, the nation is primed to forgive you, they’ll feel
sorry for you – Americans love to see sinners apologize.
But you can reveal nothing to make your wife look bad; no
one wants to see the cheating husband blame the wife for
anything. Let someone else do it sometime the next day:
Sources close to the police
reveal that Nick’s wife – the
one he swore he loved with all his heart – is framing him!
It’s great TV.’
‘What’s reason two?’
‘It’s too complicated to explain exactly how Amy is
framing you. You can’t do it in a sound bite. It’s bad TV.’
‘I feel sick,’ I said.
‘Nick, it’s—’ Go started.
‘I know, I know, it has to be done. But can you imagine,
your biggest secret and you have to tell the world about it? I
know I have to do it. And it works for us, ultimately, I think.
It’s the only way Amy might come back,’ I said. ‘She wants
me to be publicly humiliated—’
‘Chastened,’ Tanner interrupted. ‘Humiliated makes it
sound like you feel sorry for yourself.’
‘—and to publicly apologize,’ I continued. ‘But it’s
going to be fucking awful.’
‘Before we go forward, I want to be honest here,’
Tanner said. ‘Telling the police the whole story – Amy’s
framing Nick – it is a risk. Most cops, they decide on a
suspect and they don’t want to veer at all. They’re not open
to any other options. So there’s the risk that we tell them

---

and they laugh us out of the station and they arrest you –
and then theoretically we’ve just given them a preview of
our defense. So they can plan exactly how to destroy it at
trial.’
‘Okay, wait, that sounds really, really bad, Tanner,’ Go
said. ‘Like, bad, inadvisable bad.’
‘Let me finish,’ Tanner said. ‘One, I think you’re right,
Nick. I think Boney isn’t convinced you’re a killer. I think she
would be open to an alternate theory. She has a good
reputation as a cop who’s actually fair. As a cop who has
good instincts. I talked with her. I got a good vibe. I think the
evidence is leading her in your direction, but I think her gut
is telling her something’s off. More important, if we do go to
trial, I wouldn’t use the Amy frame-up as your defense,
anyway.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘Like I said, it’s too complicated, a jury wouldn’t be
able to follow. If it’s not good TV, believe me, it’s not for a
jury. We’d go with more of an O.J. thing. A simple story line:
The cops are incompetent and out to get you, it’s all
circumstantial, if the glove doesn’t fit, blah blah, blah.’
‘Blah blah blah, that gives me a lot of confidence,’ I
said.
Tanner flashed a smile. ‘Juries love me, Nick. I’m one
of them.’
‘You’re the opposite of one of them, Tanner.’
‘Reverse that: They’d like to think they’re one of me.’
Everything we did now, we did in front of small brambles of
flashing paparazzi, so Go, Tanner, and I left the house
under pops of light and pings of noise (‘Don’t look down,’

---

Tanner advised, ‘don’t smile, but don’t look ashamed. Don’t
rush either, just walk, let them take their shots, and shut the
door before you call them names. Then you can call them
whatever you want.’) We were headed down to St. Louis,
where the interview would take place, so I could prep with
Tanner’s wife, Betsy, a former TV news anchor turned
lawyer. She was the other Bolt in Bolt & Bolt.
It was a creepy tailgate party: Tanner and I, followed by
Go, followed by a half-dozen news vans, but by the time the
Arch crept over the skyline, I was no longer thinking of the
paparazzi.
By the time we reached Tanner’s penthouse hotel
suite, I was ready to do the work I needed to nail the
interview. Again I longed for my own theme music: the
montage of me getting ready for the big fight.
What’s the mental equivalent of a speed bag?
A gorgeous six-foot-tall black woman answered the
door.
‘Hi, Nick, I’m Betsy Bolt.’
In my mind Betsy Bolt was a diminutive blond
Southern-belle white girl.
‘Don’t worry, everyone is surprised when they meet
me.’ Betsy laughed, catching my look, shaking my hand.
‘Tanner and Betsy, we sound like we should be on the
cover of