Since my house was crawling with police, I decided to take the Elliotts up on their offer to stay the night in their suite. Which would have been a fine idea, except for the fact that they were planning on having sex that night. That fake, extra-loud gay sex people have when they’re trying to hide they’re both gay.
As I lay wide awake on the pull-out couch listening to their fake orgasms, I decided that I was going to go talk to Desi myself. Hilary Handy obviously wasn’t a suspect, so there was no need to talk to her. And I knew the police would talk to Desi, but that might take a week, maybe more. And I couldn’t wait that long. If Amy was gone for good, I wanted to know now! It’s like when you’re a kid, and it’s two days before your birthday, and you can’t help but search around the house for where your parents have hidden your presents.
The Days Inn had donated an underused function room to serve as the Find Amy Dunne headquarters, and after I woke up from my one hour of sleep I headed down there. There was a bank of phones, some volunteers, a table of pastries and coffee, and several homeless people. Apparently word had gotten out that there was free food and shelter nonstop at the Days Inn function room.
A moment after I walked in, Boney came up to me. “Hi Nick,” she said. “Just wanted to give you a little word of advice. See those women over there?”
She pointed at two OK-looking women in their 40s.
“Yeah, what about ‘em?”
“Watch out for them. I think they might be crime victim groupies.”
“Really? Such things exist?”
“Oh yeah. They see a husband on TV who’s lost his wife, and they get a little too interested in ‘consoling’ him, if you know what I mean.”
“You don’t say,” I said, and walked over to the two women. “’Sup ladies?” I said, and began working my Nick Dunne magic. I was minutes away from getting them back to the Elliotts’ suite for a three-way when I was cock-blocked by my mother’s friend Vicky, who had brought her grandkids over to help search for Amy and wanted to say hi.
Grandkids. My mother had really wanted them. Go and I had seriously considered having a kid ourselves, but Mom passed away before we could pull the trigger. We still hadn’t completely ruled it out, though.
As for having kids with Amy, once I realized how batshit crazy she was, there was no way it was happening. I did the math once: if you have a kid and then get divorced, and have to pay both alimony and child support every month, it comes to 143% of your total monthly income. You are literally better off being a homeless person. I secretly think a large proportion of homeless guys are divorced dudes with a kid who stopped trying to make money. That’s why homeless people often seem so carefree in spite of what would seem to be a miserable existence. To them, their life is way better than the alternative.
After saying hi to Vicky, I tried to get back to the two fortysomethings to salvage whatever momentum still remained, but any hope of that was dashed when I was interrupted yet again, this time by Stucks Buckley, a local guy with a handlebar mustache who I’d known forever.
“Cops are messin’ this search up,” Stucks said.
“Good,” I said.
“Whaddya mean, good?”
“Uh…I mean Good Lord I hope they stop messing this up soon!”
“A start would be investigating the Book Boys,” said Stucks.
The Book Boys were a bunch of guys who up until recently had worked at the local book printing plant that printed college textbooks. But since kids in college don’t read anymore, bye bye book printing plant! Now the Book Boys spent their endless hours of unemployment drinking and harassing people. They were even worse than the Tube TV Boys.
I thanked Stucks for his suggestion, and then headed out to check out the public searches the police had set up for today. There were three areas being searched: the woods, the “beach” area by the river, and the Karate Center. My plan was to show up at each spot for five minutes and then say I had to go because I was spending all day at one of the other spots, and I’d do that at all three spots. So I’d only have to spend fifteen minutes total at the searches and could take the rest of the day off and catch up on my TiVo.
My plans changed, however, when I got to the first search site and saw who was searching. It was like every cute girl in Missouri had come out to the search, I guess ‘cause they’d identified with Amy. Game on.
I rolled up to a cutie in Juicy short-shorts. “Search here often?” I said, and she laughed. Ended up getting her number. Boom. My writer skills were on full display as I produced some A-level pickup lines. The one that seemed to work best was, “Looks like my search just ended!” But my personal favorite was, “I’d like to search your woods.”
I ended up getting 11 numbers, so in my book the woods search was a success. It was almost an off-the-charts success, because I nearly got this super-hot chick to come home with me with the line, “I still need to search my bedroom and I could really use some help.” But then her mom came to take her to high school volleyball practice. In retrospect, I should’ve worked the mom and tried for the three-way.
Stupid, Nick. Stupid.
