Infinite(53)

Eventually, the cemetery caretaker kicked me out. I had nowhere else to go, so the only thing I could do was head home to the apartment. When I got there, things got even worse.

Detective Bushing was waiting for me. He sat in the wicker chair where he’d been the day before, his face like a dry desert except for those sharp eyes. Tai sat on the sofa with her hands in her lap. She wouldn’t even look at me.

“Mr. Moran,” the detective croaked. “Welcome home.”

I took a seat on the opposite end of the sofa from Tai. Her coolness gave a chill to the apartment.

“What do you want, Detective?” I asked.

Bushing pulled his briefcase into his lap and drew out a yellow pad, along with a stubby pencil in need of sharpening. “It’s been a whole day since you got back. I was hoping you’ve started to remember things from when you were gone. Like what you did in the park that night when you went for a walk.”

“I still don’t remember anything.”

“That’s too bad.”

“It is what it is, Detective. I can’t help you.”

Bushing nodded, seemingly unconcerned. “What about last night? You remember that, right? Where did you go last night?”

I saw the twitch of a smile on his lips. He knew something. I glanced at Tai, who was uncomfortably quiet.

“I went to visit a friend on the South Side. Roscoe Tate.”

“Yes, your wife told me. She also said she called to check on you and found out that you left the parish where your friend works midevening. You didn’t come home for several hours after that. Where did you go?”

“What business is it of yours, Detective? Why do you care?”

“I’m investigating a homicide, Mr. Moran. I care about everything.”

“I don’t see what that has to do with my whereabouts last night.”

Bushing played with the pencil between his fingers. “Then let me explain it to you. The fact is, in this city, some murders are more equal than others. Ten black kids get shot on a holiday weekend, nobody seems to blink. But a pretty white girl gets stabbed in a park? People notice that. They see it in the paper; they remember it. It tends to generate a lot of tips. Most of them go nowhere, but every now and then, you find a needle in a haystack.”

“You’ve lost me,” I said.

“Well, see, a tip came in late last night. Someone in campus security at Northwestern called us. Seems a grad student reported a strange man stalking her near one of the residence halls. She gave a pretty good description of him, too. That kind of thing wouldn’t typically make it onto our radar, but the security guy remembered the photo of Betsy Kern from the newspaper. He said the two women looked a lot alike.”

Bushing removed two photographs from his briefcase. One was of Betsy Kern, the same photo I’d seen in the newspaper. The other was the young woman who’d confronted me near Goodrich Hall the previous night. The woman I’d thought was Karly.

“That security guard had good instincts,” Bushing said. “These two women do resemble each other. Now, that in and of itself wouldn’t really trip my trigger, but the security guy also sent along the description of the suspect. Figured it might help us. That got my attention. Short white guy, late twenties or early thirties, scruffy dark hair, heavy stubble. Sound like anybody you know, Mr. Moran?”

I didn’t answer.

“The grad student also said the man who followed her was wearing a dark-red button-down shirt. According to your wife, you were wearing a shirt like that when you went out last night. Was that you on the Northwestern campus, Mr. Moran?”

He had me cornered, and we both knew it. All it would take was a photograph for the woman at Northwestern to identify me, if she hadn’t done so already. I couldn’t pretend that I hadn’t been there.

“Yes,” I admitted. “That was me.”

“Why were you following that woman, Mr. Moran?”

“I wasn’t. I saw someone else following her, and I was concerned. I was trying to intervene to make sure she was okay.”

“She didn’t see anyone else behind her. She saw you. She also said she was pretty sure you had a knife.”

“I didn’t.”

“If we search your car, will we find a knife?”

“No.”

“Because you got rid of it?”

“Because I never had one.”

“Betsy Kern was killed with a knife.”

“Yes, that’s what you said.”

“Did you kill Betsy Kern, Mr. Moran?”

“No,” I hissed.

“Well, you say you don’t remember anything from the night you disappeared. So how can you be sure?”

“I think I’d remember killing someone.”

“Right. Or maybe this whole memory-loss story is nothing but a big pile of steaming dog shit on the bottom of your shoe.”

“I’m telling you the truth. I don’t remember that night. But I would never kill anyone.”

“Then what were you doing up at Northwestern?”

I sighed, because I had no explanation that made any rational sense. I couldn’t mention Karly. I had no connection with her, no reason to be looking for her. But even if I kept her name secret, it wouldn’t take Bushing long to track down the calls I’d made and the people I’d talked to about Karly. He’d find a photograph of her and see the resemblance to the other two women.