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

solving Amy
. When I’d hold up the bloody stumps,
she’d sigh and turn to her secret mental notebook on which
she 
tallied 
all 
my 
deficiencies, 
forever 
noting
disappointments, frailties, shortcomings. My old Amy,
damn, she was fun. She was funny. She made me laugh. I’d
forgotten that. And 
she
laughed. From the bottom of her
throat, from right behind that small finger-shaped hollow,
which is the best place to laugh from. She released her
grievances like handfuls of birdseed: They are there, and
they are gone.
She was not the thing she became, the thing I feared
most: an angry woman. I was not good with angry women.
They brought something out in me that was unsavory.
‘She bossy?’ Gilpin asked. ‘Take-charge?’
I thought of Amy’s calendar, the one that went three
years into the future, and if you looked a year ahead, you
would actually find appointments: dermatologist, dentist,
vet. ‘She’s a planner – she doesn’t, you know, wing
anything. She likes to make lists and check things off. Get
things done. That’s why this doesn’t make sense—’
‘That can drive you crazy,’ Boney said sympathetically.
‘If you’re not that type. You seem very B-personality.’

---

‘I’m a little more laid-back, I guess,’ I said. Then I
added the part I was supposed to add: ‘We round each
other out.’
I looked at the clock on the wall, and Boney touched
my hand.
‘Hey, why don’t you go ahead and give a call to Amy’s
parents? I’m sure they’d appreciate it.’
It was past midnight. Amy’s parents went to sleep at
nine p.m.; they were strangely boastful about this early
bedtime. They’d be deep asleep by now, so this would be
an urgent middle-of-the-night call. Cells went off at 8:45
always, so Rand Elliott would have to walk from his bed all
the way to the end of the hall to pick up the old heavy
phone; he’d be fumbling with his glasses, fussy with the
table lamp. He’d be telling himself all the reasons not to
worry about a late-night phone call, all the harmless
reasons the phone might be ringing.
I dialed twice and hung up before I let the call ring
through. When I did, it was Marybeth, not Rand, who
answered, her deep voice buzzing my ears. I’d only gotten
to ‘Marybeth, this is Nick’ when I lost it.
‘What is it, Nick?’
I took a breath.
‘Is it Amy? Tell me.’
‘I uh – I’m sorry I should have called—’
‘Tell me, goddamn it!’
‘We c-can’t find Amy,’ I stuttered.
‘You can’t 
find
Amy?’
‘I don’t know—’
‘Amy is missing?’
‘We don’t know that for sure, we’re still—’

---

‘Since when?’
‘We’re not sure. I left this morning, a little after seven—’
‘And you waited till now to call us?’
‘I’m sorry, I didn’t want to—’
‘Jesus Christ. We played tennis tonight. 
Tennis
, and
we could have been … My God. Are the police involved?
You’ve notified them?’
‘I’m at the station right now.’
‘Put on whoever’s in charge, Nick. Please.’
Like a kid, I went to fetch Gilpin. 
My mommy-in-law
wants to talk to you
.
Phoning the Elliotts made it official. The emergency –
Amy is gone
– was spreading to the outside.
I was heading back to the interview room when I heard my
father’s voice. Sometimes, in particularly shameful
moments, I heard his voice in my head. But this was my
father’s voice, here. His words emerged in wet bubbles like
something from a rancid bog. 
Bitch bitch bitch
. My father,
out of his mind, had taken to flinging the word at any woman
who even vaguely annoyed him: 
bitch bitch bitch
. I peered
inside a conference room, and there he sat on a bench
against the wall. He had been a handsome man once,
intense and cleft-chinned. 
Jarringly dreamy
was how my
aunt had described him. Now he sat muttering at the floor,
his blond hair matted, trousers muddy and arms scratched,
as if he’d fought his way through a thornbush. A line of
spittle glimmered down his chin like a snail’s trail, and he
was flexing and unflexing arm muscles that had not yet
gone to seed. A tense female officer sat next to him, her
lips in an angry pucker, trying to ignore him: 
Bitch bitch

---

bitch I told you bitch
.
‘What’s going on?’ I asked her. ‘This is my father.’
‘You got our call?’
‘What call?’
‘To come get your father.’ She overenunciated, as if I
were a dim ten-year-old.
‘I – My wife is missing. I’ve been 
here
most of the
night.’
She stared at me, not connecting in the least. I could
see her debating whether to sacrifice her leverage and
apologise, inquire. Then my father started up again, 
bitch
bitch bitch
, and she chose to keep the leverage.
‘Sir, Comfort Hill has been trying to contact you all day.
Your father wandered out a fire exit early this morning. He’s
got a few scratches and scrapes, as you can see, but no
damage. We picked him up a few hours ago, walking down
River Road, disoriented. We’ve been trying to reach you.’
‘I’ve been right here,’ I said. ‘Right goddamn next door,
how did no one put this together?’
Bitch bitch bitch
, said my dad.
‘Sir, please don’t take that tone with me.’
Bitch bitch bitch
.
Boney ordered an officer – male – to drive my dad back to
the home so I could finish up with them. We stood on the
stairs outside the police station, watched him get settled
into the car, still muttering. The entire time he never
registered my presence. When they drove off, he didn’t
even look back.
‘You guys not close?’ she asked.
‘We are the definition of not close.’

---

The police finished with their questions and hustled me into
a squad car at about two a.m. with advice to get a good
night’s sleep and return at eleven a.m. for a 12-noon press
conference.
I didn’t ask if I could go home. I had them take me to
Go’s, because I knew she’d stay up and have a drink with
me, fix me a sandwich. It was, pathetically, all I wanted right
then: a woman to fix me a sandwich and not ask me any
questions.
‘You don’t want to go look for her?’ Go offered as I ate. ‘We
can drive around.’
‘That seems pointless,’ I said dully. ‘Where do I look?’
‘Nick, this is really fucking serious.’
‘I know, Go.’
‘Act 
like 
it, 
okay, 
Lance
? 
Don’t 
fucking
myuhmyuhmyuh
.’ It was a thick-tongued noise, the noise
she always made to convey my indecisiveness,
accompanied by a dazed rolling of the eyes and the dusting
off of my legal first name. No one who has my face needs to
be called Lance. She handed me a tumbler of Scotch. ‘And
drink this, but only this. You don’t want to be hungover
tomorrow. Where the fuck could she be? God, I feel sick to
my stomach.’ She poured herself a glass, gulped, then tried
to sip, pacing around the kitchen. ‘Aren’t you worried, Nick?
That some guy, like, saw her on the street and just, just
decided to take her? Hit her on the head and—’
I started. ‘Why did you say 
hit her on the head
, what
the fuck is that?’
‘I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to paint a picture, I just … I
don’t know, I just keep thinking. About some crazy person.’

---

She splashed some more Scotch into her tumbler.
‘Speaking of crazy people,’ I said, ‘Dad got out again
today, they found him wandering down River Road. He’s
back at Comfort now.’
She shrugged: 
okay
. It was the third time in six months
that our dad had slipped out. Go was lighting a cigarette,
her thoughts still on Amy. ‘I mean, isn’t there someone we
can go talk to?’ she asked. ‘Something we can do?’
‘Jesus, Go! You really need me to feel more fucking
impotent than I do right now?’ I snapped. ‘I have no idea
what I’m supposed to be doing. There’s no “When Your
Wife Goes Missing 101.” The police told me I could leave. I
left. I’m just doing what they tell me.’
‘Of course you are,’ murmured Go, who had a long-
stymied mission to turn me into a rebel. It wouldn’t take. I
was the kid in high school who made curfew; I was the
writer who hit my deadlines, even the fake ones. I respect
rules, because if you follow rules, things go smoothly,
usually.
‘Fuck, Go, I’m back at the station in a few hours, okay?
Can you please just be nice to me for a second? I’m scared
shitless.’
We had a five-second staring contest, then Go filled up
my glass one more time, an apology. She sat down next to
me, put a hand on my shoulder.
‘Poor Amy,’ she said.

---