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

NICK DUNNE
FOUR DAYS GONE
R
and and I sat in the vacant Find Amy Dunne headquarters
at five in the morning, drinking coffee while we waited for
the cops to check out Lonnie. Amy stared at us from her
poster perch on the wall. Her photo looked distressed.
‘I just don’t understand why she wouldn’t say something
to you if she was afraid,’ Rand said. ‘Why wouldn’t she tell
you?’
Amy had come to the mall to buy a gun on Valentine’s
Day, of all days, that’s what our friend Lonnie had said. She
was a little abashed, a little nervous: 
Maybe I’m being silly,
but … I just really think I need a gun
. Mostly, though, she
was scared. Someone was unnerving her, she told Lonnie.
She gave no more details, but when he asked her what
kind of gun she wanted, she said: 
One that stops someone
fast
. He told her to come back in a few days, and she did.
He hadn’t been able to get her one (‘It’s not really my bag,
man’), but now he wished he had. He remembered her well;
over the months, he’d wondered how she was now and
then, this sweet blonde with the fearful face, trying to get a
gun on Valentine’s Day.
‘Who would she be afraid of?’ Rand asked.
‘Tell me about Desi again, Rand,’ I said. ‘Did you ever
meet him?’

---

‘He came to the house a few times.’ Rand frowned,
remembering. ‘He was a nice-looking kid, very solicitous of
Amy – treated her like a princess. But I just never liked him.
Even when things were good with them – young love, Amy’s
first love – even then I disliked him. He was very rude to me,
inexplicably so. Very possessive of Amy, arms around her
at all times. I found it strange, very strange, that he wouldn’t
try to be nice to us. Most young men want to get in good
with the parents.’
‘I wanted to.’
‘And you did!’ He smiled. ‘You were just the right
amount of nervous, it was very sweet. Desi wasn’t anything
but nasty.’
‘Desi’s less than an hour out of town.’
‘True. And Hilary Handy?’ Rand said, rubbing his eyes.
‘I don’t want to be sexist here – she was scarier than Desi.
Because that Lonnie guy at the mall, he didn’t say Amy was
afraid of a man.’
‘No, he just said she was afraid,’ I said. ‘There 
is
that
Noelle Hawthorne girl – the one who lives near us. She told
the police she was best friends with Amy when I know she
wasn’t. They weren’t even 
friends
. Her husband says she’s
been in hysterics. That she was looking at pictures of Amy,
crying. At the time I thought they were Internet photos, but …
what if they were actual photos she had of Amy? What if
she was stalking Amy?’
‘She tried to talk with me when I was a little busy
yesterday,’ Rand said. ‘She quoted some 
Amazing Amy
stuff at me. 
Amazing Amy and the Best Friend War
,
actually. “Best friends are the people who know us best.”’
‘Sounds like Hilary,’ I said. ‘All grown up.’

---

We met Boney and Gilpin just after seven a.m. at an IHOP
out along the highway for a showdown: It was ridiculous that
we were doing their job for them. It was insane that we were
the ones discovering leads. It was time to call in the FBI if
the local cops couldn’t handle it.
A plump, amber-eyed waitress took our orders,
poured us coffee, and, clearly recognizing me, lingered
within eavesdropping distance until Gilpin scatted her
away. She was like a determined housefly, though.
Between drink refills and dispensing of utensils and the
magically quick arrival of our food, our entire harangue
came in limp bursts.