Gone Girl

everywhere, just like that.
    God bless the faithful Elliotts. Marybeth phoned me last night, as I was trying to recover from the bombshell police interrogation. My mother-in-law had seen the Ellen Abbott show and pronounced the woman ‘an opportunistic ratings whore.’ Nevertheless, we’d spent most of today strategizing how to handle the media.
    The media (my former clan, my people!) was shaping its story, and the media loved the Amazing Amy angle and the long-married Elliotts. No snarky commentary on the dismantling of the series or the authors’ near-bankruptcy – right now it was all hearts and flowers for the Elliotts. The media loved them.
    Me, not so much. The media was already turning up items of concern . Not only the stuff that had been leaked – my lack of alibi, the possibly ‘staged’ crime scene – but actual personality traits. They reported that back in high school, I’d never dated one girl longer than a few months and thus was clearly a ladies’ man. They found out we had my father in Comfort Hill and that I rarely visited, and thus I was an ingrate dad-abandoner. ‘It’s a problem – they don’t like you,’ Go said after every bit of news coverage. ‘It’s a real, real problem, Lance.’ The media had resurrected my first name, which I’d hated since grade school, stifled at the start of every school year when the teacher called roll: ‘It’s Nick, I go by Nick!’ Every September, an opening-day rite: ‘Nick-I-go-by-Nick!’ Always some smart-ass kid would spendrecess parading around like a mincing gallant: ‘Hi, I’m Laaaance,’ in a flowy-shirted voice. Then it would be forgotten again until the following year.
    But not now. Now it was all over the news, the dreaded three-name judgment reserved for serial killers and assassins – Lance Nicholas Dunne – and there was no one I could interrupt.
    Rand and Marybeth Elliott, Go and I carpooled to the vigil together. It was unclear how much information the Elliotts were receiving, how many damning updates about their son-in-law. I knew they were aware of the ‘staged’ scene: ‘I’m going to get some of my own people in there, and they’ll tell us just the opposite – that it clearly was the scene of a struggle,’ Rand said confidently. ‘The truth is malleable; you just need to pick the right expert.’
    Rand didn’t know about the other stuff, the credit cards and the life insurance and the blood and Noelle, my wife’s bitter best friend with the damning claims: abuse, greed, fear. She was booked on Ellen Abbott tonight, post-vigil. Noelle and Ellen could be mutually disgusted by me for the viewing audience.
    Not everyone was repulsed by me. In the past week, The Bar’s business was booming: Hundreds of customers packed in to sip beers and nibble popcorn at the place owned by Lance Nicholas Dunne, the maybe-killer. Go had to hire four new kids to tend The Bar; she’d dropped by once and said she couldn’t go again, couldn’t stand seeing how packed it was, fucking gawkers, ghouls, all drinking our booze and swapping stories about me. It was disgusting. Still, Go reasoned, the money would be helpful if …
    If. Amy gone six days, and we were all thinking in if s.
    We approached the park in a car gone silent except for Marybeth’s constant nail drumming on the window.
    ‘Feels almost like a double date.’ Rand laughed, the laughter curving toward the hysterical: high-pitched and squeaky. Rand Elliott, genius psychologist, best-selling author, friend to all, was unraveling. Marybeth had taken to self-medication: shots of clear liquor administered with absolute precision, enough to take the edge off but stay sharp. Rand, on the other hand, was literally losing his head; I half expected to see it shoot off his shoulders on a jack-in-the-box spring – cuckoooooo! Rand’s schmoozy nature had turned manic: He got desperately chummy with everyone he met, wrapping his arms around cops, reporters, volunteers. He was particularly tight with our Days Inn ‘liaison,’ a gawky, shy kid named Donnie who Rand liked to razz and inform he was doingso. ‘Ah, I’m just razzing you, Donnie,’ he’d say, and Donnie would break into a joyous grin.
    ‘Can’t that kid go get validation somewhere else?’ I groused to Go the other night. She said I was just jealous that my father figure liked someone better. I was.
    Marybeth patted Rand’s back as we walked toward the park, and I thought about how much I wanted someone to