Gone Girl

sat next to her on one of the bar stools.
    ‘This is Tyler,’ she said. ‘He grew up in Tennessee, he has a horse named Custard—’
    ‘Custer,’ Tyler said.
    ‘Custer, and he’s allergic to peanuts. Not the horse but Tyler. Oh, and he has a torn labrum, which is the same injury baseball pitchers get, but he’s not sure how he got it.’ She took a drag on the cigarette. Her eyes watered. ‘He’s been here a long time.’
    Tyler tried to give me a tough look, ended up watching his well-shined shoes.
    Boney appeared through the sliding glass doors at the back of the house. ‘Big day, boys,’ she said. ‘Wish you’d bothered letting us know, Nick, that you have a girlfriend. Would have saved us all a lot of time.’
    ‘We’re happy to discuss that, as well as the contents of the shed, both of which we were on our way to tell you about,’ Tanner said. ‘Frankly, if you had given us the courtesy of telling us about Andie,a lot of pain could have been forestalled. But you needed the press conference, you had to have the publicity. How disgusting, to put that girl up there like that.’
    ‘Right,’ Boney said. ‘So, the woodshed. You all want to come with me?’ She turned her back on us, leading the way over the patchy end-of-summer grass to the woodshed. A cobweb trailed from her hair like a wedding veil. She motioned impatiently when she saw me not following. ‘Come on,’ she said. ‘Not gonna bite you.’
    The woodshed was lit up by several portable lights, making it look even more ominous.
    ‘When’s the last time you been in here, Nick?’
    ‘I came in here very recently, when my wife’s treasure hunt led me here. But it’s not my stuff, and I did not touch anything—’
    Tanner cut me off: ‘My client and I have an explosive new theory—’ Tanner began, then caught himself. The phony TV-speak was so incredibly awful and inappropriate, we all cringed.
    ‘Oh, explosive, how exciting,’ Boney said.
    ‘We were about to inform you—’
    ‘Really? What convenient timing,’ she said. ‘Stay there, please.’ The door hung loose on its hinges, a broken lock dangling to the side. Gilpin was inside, cataloging the goods.
    ‘These the golf clubs you don’t play with?’ Gilpin said, jostling the glinting irons.
    ‘None of this is mine – none of this was put there by me.’
    ‘That’s funny, because everything in here corresponds with purchases made on the credit cards that aren’t yours either,’ Boney snapped. ‘This is, like, what do they call it, a man cave? A man cave in the making, just waiting for the wife to go away for good. Got yourself some nice pastimes, Nick.’ She pulled out three large cardboard boxes and set them at my feet.
    ‘What’s this?’
    Boney opened them with fingertip disgust despite her gloved hands. Inside were dozens of porn DVDs, flesh of all colors and sizes on display on the covers.
    Gilpin chuckled. ‘I gotta hand it to you, Nick, I mean, a man has his needs—’
    ‘Men are highly visual, that’s what my ex always said when I caught him,’ Boney said.
    ‘Men are highly visual, but Nick, this shit made me blush,’ Gilpin said. ‘It made me a little sick, too, some of it, and I don’t get sick too easy.’ He spread out a few of the DVDs like an ugly deckof cards. Most of the titles implied violence: Brutal Anal, Brutal Blowjobs, Humiliated Whores, Sadistic Slut Fucking, Gang-raped Sluts , and a series called Hurt the Bitch , volumes 1–18, each featuring photos of women writhing in pain while leering, laughing men inserted objects into them.
    I turned away.
    ‘Oh, now he’s embarrassed.’ Gilpin grinned.
    But I didn’t respond because I saw Go being helped into the back of a police car.
    We met an hour later at the police station. Tanner advised against it – I insisted. I appealed to his iconoclast, millionaire rodeo-cowboy ego. We were going to tell the cops the truth. It was time.
    I could handle them fucking with me – but not my sister.
    ‘I’m agreeing to this because I think your arrest is inevitable, Nick, no matter what we do,’ he said. ‘If we let them know we’re up for talking, we may get some more information on the case they’ve got against you. Without a body, they’ll really want a confession. So they’ll try to overwhelm you with the evidence. And they may give us enough to really jumpstart our defense.’
    ‘And we give them everything, right?’ I said. ‘We give them the clues and the marionettes