still have Desi’s semen inside me from the last time he raped me, so the medical examination goes fine. My rope-wreathed wrists, my damaged vagina, my bruises – the body I present them is textbook. An older male doctor with humid breath and thick fingers performs the pelvic exam – scraping and wheezing in time – while Detective Rhonda Boney holds my hand. It is like being clutched by a cold bird claw. Not comforting at all. Once she breaks into a grin when she thinks I’m not looking. She is absolutely thrilled that Nick isn’t a bad guy after all. Yes, the women of America are collectively sighing.

Police have been dispatched to Desi’s home, where they’ll find him naked and drained, a stunned look on his face, a few strands of my hair in his clutches, the bed soaked in blood. The knife I used on him, and on my bonds, will be nearby on the floor where I dropped it, dazed, and walked barefoot, carrying nothing out of the house but his keys – to the car, to the gate – and climbed, still slick with his blood, into his vintage Jaguar and returned like some long-lost faithful pet, straight back home to my husband. I’d been reduced to an animal state; I didn’t think of anything but getting back to Nick.

The old doctor tells me the good news; no permanent damage and no need for a D&C – I miscarried too early. Boney keeps clutching my hand and murmuring, My God, what you’ve been through do you think you feel up to answering a few questions? That fast, from condolences to brass tacks. I find ugly women are usually overly deferential or incredibly rude.

You are Amazing Amy, and you’ve survived a brutal kidnapping involving repeated assaults. You’ve killed your captor, and you’ve made it back to a husband you’ve discovered was cheating. You:

a) Put yourself first and demand some time alone to collect yourself.

b) Hold it together just a little longer so you can help the police.

c) Decide which interview to give first – you might as well get something out of the ordeal, like a book deal.

Answer: B. Amazing Amy always puts others first.

I’m allowed to clean myself up in a private room in the hospital, and I change into a set of clothes Nick put together for me from the house – jeans with creases from being folded too long, a pretty blouse that smells of dust. Boney and I drive from the hospital to the police station in near silence. I ask weakly after my parents.

‘They’re waiting for you at the station,’ Boney says. ‘They wept when I told them. With joy. Absolute joy and relief. We’ll let them get some good hugs in with you before we do our questions, don’t worry.’

The cameras are already at the station. The parking lot has that hopeful, overlit look of a sports stadium. There is no underground parking, so we have to pull right up front as the madding crowd closes in: I see wet lips and spittle as everyone screams questions, the pops of flashbulbs and camera lights. The crowd pushes and pulls en masse, jerking a few inches to the right, then the left as everyone tries to reach me.

‘I can’t do this,’ I say to Boney. A man’s meaty palm smacks against the car window as a photographer tries to keep his balance. I grab her cold hand. ‘It’s too much.’

She pats me and says, wait. The station doors open, and every officer in the building files down the stairs and forms a line on either side of me, holding the press back, creating an honor guard for me, and Rhonda and I run in holding hands like reverse newlyweds, rushing straight up to my parents who are waiting just inside the doorway, and everyone gets the photos of us clutching each other with my mom whispering sweetgirlsweetgirlsweetgirl and my dad sobbing so loudly he almost chokes.

There is more whisking away of me, as if I haven’t been whisked away quite enough already. I am deposited in a closet of a room with comfortable but cheap office chairs, the kind that always seem to have bits of old food woven into the fabric. A camera blinking up in the corner and no windows. It is not what I pictured. It is not designed to make me feel safe.

I am surrounded by Boney, her partner, Gilpin, and two FBI agents up from St. Louis who remain nearly silent. They give me water, and then Boney starts.

B: Okay, Amy, first we have to thank you sincerely for talking with us after what you’ve been through. In a case like this, it’s very important to get everything down while the memory is fresh. You can’t imagine how important that is. So it’s good to talk now. If we can get all these details down, we can close the case, and you and Nick can go back to your lives.

A: I’d definitely like that.

B: You deserve that. So if you’re ready to begin, can we start with the time line: What time did Desi arrive at your door? Do you remember?

A: About ten a.m. A little after, because I remember hearing the Teverers talking as they walked to their car for church.

B: What happened when you opened the door?

A: Something felt wrong immediately. First of all, Desi has written me letters all my life. But his obsession seemed to have become less intense over the years. He seemed to think of himself as just an old friend, and since the police couldn’t do anything about it, I made my peace with that. I never felt like he meant me active harm, although I really didn’t like being this close to him. Geographically. I think that’s what put him over the edge. Knowing I was so close. He walked into my house with … He was sweaty and sort of nervous but also determined-looking. I’d been upstairs, I’d been about to iron my dress when I noticed the big wooden handle of the Judy puppet on the floor – I guess it had fallen off. Bummer because I’d already hidden the puppets in the woodshed. So I grabbed the handle, and I had that in my hand when I opened the door.

B: Very good memory.

A: Thank you.

B: What happened next?

A: Desi barged in, and he was pacing around the living room, all flustered and kind of frantic, and he said, What are you doing for your anniversary? It frightened me, that he knew today was our anniversary, and he seemed angry about it, and then his arm flashed out and he had me by the wrist and was twisting it behind my back, and we struggled. I put up a real fight.

B: What next?

A: I kicked him and got away for a second and ran to the kitchen, and we struggled more and he clubbed me once with the big wooden Judy handle, and I went flying and then he hit me two or three more times. I remember not being able to see for a second, just dizzy, my head was throbbing and I tried to grab for the handle and he stabbed my arm with this pocketknife he was carrying. I still have the scar. See?

B: Yes, that was noted in your medical examination. You were lucky it was only a flesh wound.

A: It doesn’t feel like a flesh wound, believe me.

B: So he stabbed you? The angle is—

A: I’m not sure if he did it on purpose, or if I thrust myself onto the blade accidentally – I was so off balance. I remember the club falling to the floor, though, and I looked down and saw my blood from the stab wound pooling over the club. I think I passed out then.

B: Where were you when you woke up?

A: I woke up hog-tied in my living room.

B: Did you scream, try to get the neighbors’ attention?

A: Of course I screamed. I mean, did you hear me? I was beaten, stabbed, and hog-tied by a man who had been obsessed with me for decades, who once tried to kill himself in my dorm bedroom.

B: Okay, okay, Amy, I’m sorry, that question was not intended in the least to sound like we are blaming you, we just need to get a full picture here so we can close the investigation and you can get on with your life. Do you want another water, or coffee or something?

A: Something warm would be nice. I’m so cold.

B: No problem. Can you get her a coffee? So what happened then?

A: I think his original plan was to subdue me and kidnap me and let it look like a runaway-wife thing, because when I wake up, he’s just finished mopping the blood in the kitchen, and he’s straightened the table of little antique ornaments that fell over when I ran to the kitchen. He’s gotten rid of the club. But he’s running out of time, and I think what must have happened is: He sees this disheveled living room – and so he thinks, Leave it. Let it look like something bad happened here. So he throws the front door open, and then he knocks a few more things over in the living room. Overturns the ottoman. So that’s why the scene looked so weird: It was half true and half false.

B: Did Desi plant incriminating items at each of the treasure hunt sites: Nick’s office, Hannibal, his dad’s house, Go’s woodshed?

A: I don’t know what you mean?

B: There was a pair of women’s underwear, not your size, in Nick’s office.

A: I guess it must have been the girl he was … dating.

B: Not hers either.

A: Well, I can’t help on that one. Maybe he was seeing more than one girl.

B: Your diary was found in his father’s house. Partly burned in the furnace.

A: Did you read the diary? It’s awful. I’m sure Nick did want to get rid of it – I don’t blame him, considering you guys zeroed in on him so quickly.

B: I wonder why he would go to his father’s to burn it.

A: You should ask him. (Pause.) Nick went there a lot, to be alone. He likes his privacy. So I’m sure it didn’t feel that odd to him. I mean he couldn’t do it at our house, because it’s a crime scene – who knows if you guys will come back, find something in the ashes. At his dad’s, he has some discretion. I thought it was a smart move, considering you guys were basically railroading him.

B: The diary is very, very concerning. The diary alleges abuse and your fears that Nick didn’t want the baby, that he might want to kill you.

A: I really do wish that diary had burned. (Pause.) Let me be honest: The diary includes some of Nick’s and my struggles these past few years. It doesn’t paint the greatest picture of our marriage or of Nick, but I have to admit: I never wrote in the diary unless I was super-happy, or I was really, really unhappy and wanted to vent and then … I can get a little dramatic when it’s just me stewing on things. I mean, a lot of that is the ugly truth – he did shove me once, and he didn’t want a baby, and he did have money problems. But me being afraid of him? I have to admit, it pains me to admit, but that’s my dramatic streak. I think the problem is, I’ve been stalked several times – it’s been a lifelong issue – people getting obsessed with me – and so I get a little paranoid.

B: You tried to buy a gun.

A: I get a lot paranoid, okay? I’m sorry. If you had my history, you’d understand.

B: There’s an entry about a night of drinks when you suffered from what sounds like textbook antifreeze poisoning.

A: (Long silence.) That’s bizarre. Yes, I did get ill.

B: Okay, back to the treasure hunt. You did hide the Punch and Judy dolls in the woodshed?

A: I did.

B: A lot of our case has focused on Nick’s debt, some extensive credit-card purchases, and our discovery of all those items hidden in the woodshed. What did you think when you opened the woodshed and saw all this stuff?

A: I was on Go’s property, and Go and I aren’t especially close, so mostly, I felt like I was nosing around in something that wasn’t my business. I remember thinking at the time that it must have been her stuff from New York. And then I saw on the news – Desi made me watch everything – that it corresponded with Nick’s purchases, and … I knew Nick had some money troubles, he was a spender. I think he was probably embarrassed. Impulse purchases he couldn’t undo, so he hid them from me until he could sell them online.

B: The Punch and Judy puppets, they seem a little ominous for an anniversary present.

A: I know! Now I know. I didn’t remember the whole backstory of Punch and Judy. I was just seeing a husband and wife and a baby, and they were made of wood, and I was pregnant. I scanned the Internet and saw Punch’s line: That’s the way to do it! And I thought it was cute – I didn’t know what it meant.

B: So you were hog-tied. How did Desi get you to the car?

A: He pulled the car into the garage and lowered the garage door, dragged me in, threw me in the trunk, and drove away.

B: And did you yell then?

A: Yes, I fucking yelled. I am a complete coward. And if I’d known that, every night for the next month, Desi was going to rape me, then snuggle in next to me with a martini and a sleeping pill so he wouldn’t be awakened by my sobbing, and that the police were going to actually interview him and still not have a clue, still sit around with their thumbs up their asses, I might have yelled harder. Yes, I might have.

B: Again, my apologies. Can we get Ms Dunne some tissues, please? And where’s her coff—Thank you. Okay, where did you go from there, Amy?

A: We drove toward St. Louis, and I remember on the way there he stopped at Hannibal – I heard the steamboat whistle. He threw my purse out. It was the one other thing he did so it would look like foul play.

B: This is so interesting. There seem to be so many strange coincidences in this case. Like, that Desi would happen to toss out the purse right at Hannibal, where your clue would make Nick go – and we in turn would believe that Nick tossed the purse there. Or how you decided to hide a present in the very place where Nick was hiding goods he’d bought on secret credit cards.

A: Really? I have to tell you, none of this sounds like coincidence to me. It sounds like a bunch of cops who got hung up on my husband being guilty, and now that I am alive and he’s clearly not guilty, they look like giant idiots, and they’re scrambling to cover their asses. Instead of accepting responsibility for the fact that, if this case had been left in your extremely fucking incompetent hands, Nick would be on death row and I’d be chained to a bed, being raped every day from now until I died.

B: I’m sorry, it’s—

A: I saved myself, which saved Nick, which saved your sorry fucking asses.

B: That is an incredibly good point, Amy. I’m sorry, we’re so … We’ve spent so long on this case, we want to figure out every detail that we missed so we don’t repeat our mistakes. But you’re absolutely right, we’re missing the big picture, which is: You are a hero. You are an absolute hero.

A: Thank you. I appreciate you saying that.