Gillian Flynn - Gone Girl:

“Okay, wait, that sounds really, really bad, Tanner,” Go said. “Like, bad, inadvisable bad.”

“Let me finish,” Tanner said. “One, I think you’re right, Nick. I think Boney isn’t convinced you’re a killer. I think she would be open to an alternate theory. She has a good reputation as a cop who’s actually fair. As a cop who has good instincts. I talked with her. I got a good vibe. I think the evidence is leading her in your direction, but I think her gut is telling her something’s off. More important, if we do go to trial, I wouldn’t use the Amy frame-up as your defense, anyway.”

“What do you mean?”

“Like I said, it’s too complicated, a jury wouldn’t be able to follow. If it’s not good TV, believe me, it’s not for a jury. We’d go with more of an O.J. thing. A simple story line: The cops are incompetent and out to get you, it’s all circumstantial, if the glove doesn’t fit, blah blah, blah.”

“Blah blah blah, that gives me a lot of confidence,” I said.

Tanner flashed a smile. “Juries love me, Nick. I’m one of them.”

“You’re the opposite of one of them, Tanner.”

“Reverse that: They’d like to think they’re one of me.”

Everything we did now, we did in front of small brambles of flashing paparazzi, so Go, Tanner, and I left the house under pops of light and pings of noise. (“Don’t look down,” Tanner advised, “don’t smile, but don’t look ashamed. Don’t rush either, just walk, let them take their shots, and shut the door before you call them names. Then you can call them whatever you want.”) We were headed down to St. Louis, where the interview would take place, so I could prep with Tanner’s wife, Betsy, a former TV news anchor turned lawyer. She was the other Bolt in Bolt & Bolt.

It was a creepy tailgate party: Tanner and I, followed by Go, followed by a half-dozen news vans, but by the time the Arch crept over the skyline, I was no longer thinking of the paparazzi.

By the time we reached Tanner’s penthouse hotel suite, I was ready to do the work I needed to nail the interview. Again I longed for my own theme music: the montage of me getting ready for the big fight. What’s the mental equivalent of a speed bag?

A gorgeous six-foot-tall black woman answered the door.

“Hi, Nick, I’m Betsy Bolt.”

In my mind Betsy Bolt was a diminutive blond Southern-belle white girl.

“Don’t worry, everyone is surprised when they meet me.” Betsy laughed, catching my look, shaking my hand. “Tanner and Betsy, we sound like we should be on the cover of The Official Preppy Guide , right?”

“ Preppy Handbook ,” Tanner corrected as he kissed her on the cheek.

“See? He actually knows,” she said.

She ushered us into an impressive penthouse suite—a living room sunlit by wall-to-wall windows, with bedrooms shooting off each side. Tanner had sworn he couldn’t stay in Carthage, at the Days Inn, out of respect for Amy’s parents, but Go and I both suspected he couldn’t stay in Carthage because the closest five-star hotel was in St. Louis.

We engaged in the preliminaries: small talk about Betsy’s family, college, career (all stellar, A-list, awesome), and drinks dispersed for everyone (soda pops and Clamato, which Go and I had come to believe was an affectation of Tanner’s, a quirk he thought would give him character, like my wearing fake glasses in college). Then Go and I sank down into the leather sofa, Betsy sitting across from us, her legs pressed together to one side, like a slash mark. Pretty/professional. Tanner paced behind us, listening.

“Okay. So, Nick,” Betsy said. “I’ll be frank, yes?”

“Yes.”

“You and TV. Aside from your bar-blog thingie, the Whodunnit.com thingie last night, you’re awful .”

“There was a reason I went to print journalism,” I said. “I see a camera, and my face freezes.”

“Exactly,” Betsy said. “You look like a mortician, so stiff. I got a trick to fix that, though.”

“Booze?” I asked. “That worked for me on the blog thingie.”

“That won’t work here,” Betsy said. She began setting up a video camera. “Thought we’d do a dry run first. I’ll be Sharon. I’ll ask the questions she’ll probably ask, and you answer the way you normally would. That way we can know how far off the mark you are.” She laughed again. “Hold on.” She was wearing a blue sheath dress, and from an oversize leather purse she pulled a string of pearls. The Sharon Schieber uniform. “Tanner?”

Her husband fastened the pearls for her, and when they were in place, Betsy grinned. “I aim for absolute authenticity. Aside from my Georgia accent. And being black.”

“I see only Sharon Schieber before me,” I said.

She turned the camera on, sat down across from me, let out a breath, looked down, and then looked up. “Nick, there have been many discrepancies in this case,” Betsy said in Sharon’s plummy broadcast voice. “To begin with, can you walk our audience through the day your wife went missing?”

“Here, Nick, you only discuss the anniversary breakfast you two had,” Tanner interrupted. “Since that is already out there. But you don’t give time lines, you don’t discuss before and after breakfast. You are emphasizing only this wonderful last breakfast you had. Okay, go.”

“Yes.” I cleared my throat. The camera was blinking red; Betsy had her quizzical-journalist expression on. “Uh, as you know, it was our five-year anniversary, and Amy got up early and was making crepes—”

Betsy’s arm shot out, and my cheek suddenly stung.

“What the hell?” I said, trying to figure out what had happened. A cherry-red jellybean was in my lap. I held it up.

“Every time you tense up, every time you turn that handsome face into an undertaker’s mask, I am going to hit you with a jellybean,” Betsy explained, as if the whole thing were quite reasonable.

“And that’s supposed to make me less tense?”

“It works,” Tanner said. “It’s how she taught me. I think she used rocks with me, though.” They exchanged oh, you! married smiles. I could tell already: They were one of those couples who always seemed to be starring in their own morning talk show.

“Now start again, but linger over the crepes,” Betsy said. “Were they your favorites? Or hers? And what were you doing that morning for your wife while she was making crepes for you?”

“I was sleeping.”

“What had you bought her for a gift?”

“I hadn’t yet.”

“Oh, boy.” She rolled her eyes over to her husband. “Then be really, really, really complimentary about those crepes, okay? And about what you were going to get her that day for a present. Because I know you were not coming back to that house without a present.”

We started again, and I described our crepe tradition that wasn’t really, and I described how careful and wonderful Amy was with picking out gifts (here another jellybean smacked just right of my nose, and I immediately loosened my jaw) and how I, dumb guy (“Definitely play up the doofus-husband stuff,” Betsy advised), was still trying to come up with something dazzling.

“It wasn’t like she even liked expensive or fancy presents,” I began, and was hit with a paper ball from Tanner.

“What?”

“Past tense. Stop using fucking past tense about your wife.”

“I understand you and your wife had some bumps,” Betsy continued.

“It had been a rough few years. We’d both lost our jobs.”

“Good, yes!” Tanner called. “You both had.”

“We’d moved back here to help care for my dad, who has Alzheimer’s, and my late mother, who had cancer, and on top of that I was working very hard at my new job.”