How It All Goes Down
Nick Dunne—Eight Days Gone
- Nick's life is not going well at all. Seriously. If it was bad before, it just got worse. Let's take a look at what happens.
- First Nick didn't find any evidence of anything at his dad's house. He did every spy trick and investigative maneuver he could think of, but nothing came up, so as a result, Tanner, Nick, and Go start talking about their options.
- Option (1): Tell the cops about the woodshed. On the plus side, they get to that evidence before the cops. On the negative side, they'll probably accuse Go of either murder or being an accomplice to Nick's murder.
- Option (2): Get even further ahead of the cops by telling the cops that Amy is framing Nick. Unfortunately, Tanner thinks that the case for this is too flimsy—even the treasure hunt clues are incomprehensible to anyone except Nick, who knows Amy's inside jokes.
- Tanner asks Nick again where he was the morning of the disappearance when he wasn't with Andie. Nick is embarrassed to share the truth, but he does: he was in the garage of an abandoned house of the complex reading back issues of his old magazine. Go and Tanner clearly feel sorry for him, but we're not sure they actually believe him.
- This isn't the only setback Nick suffers, though. Later he returns home and has to dodge an army of reporters asking if he killed Amy or knew she was pregnant, just in order to take a shower in his own house. When he gets out, he finds that Rand and Marybeth have dropped by, but it's not to just shoot the bull and it's definitely not the excuse Marybeth uses—to get a piece of Amy's clothing as a comfort object.
- Marybeth lets loose on Nick. She accuses him of murder, says she doesn't know him anymore, that he has violated her trust, and that even if he didn't kill Amy, the lackadaisical manner he's handled the case with makes her sick. She runs out of the house crying, and Rand stays behind to grill him some more. He asks Nick point blank if he killed Amy, and Nick says he didn't hurt her. Rand says his response sounds like something from a movie and leaves with his wife. Nick has officially lost his in-laws' support.
- In a newfound fit of desperation, Nick decides to call Tommy O'Hara, a guy Amy accused of rape years ago who has called the tip line three times. Tommy believes that this is the kind of conversation one can only have in a bar, and goes to one before calling Nick back. He then unveils the true story behind the rape charge—and it's not comforting at all. In fact, it sounds vaguely familiar.
- Tommy met Amy at a party and thought she was really cool, funny, and hot. They started dating almost immediately, but after a few months, things started falling apart—Amy got distant, moody, and uninterested. Then one night she showed up at Tommy's place to watch a movie and eat burgers. One thing led to another, which led to a consensual, not out of the ordinary sexual encounter—except that the next day the cops showed up at his apartment, saying that they'd done a rape kit on Amy and she gave his name as her attacker. A couple of weeks later, Amy dropped the charges, and not long after that, Tommy got a note in the mail that read, "Maybe next time you'll think twice." About what? He still doesn't know.
- Tommy never heard from her again. In fact, the next time he even heard her name was when she was mentioned on the news. No matter what evidence comes up, Tommy knows Nick didn't do it. He knows the nastiness Amy is capable of and the punishment she loves to deliver.