“Navy Pier is more than ten miles from here. How did you get there? Did you walk? Take a bus? Did someone take you there?”
“As I said, I don’t remember.”
“Well, what’s your last memory?” Bushing asked.
I hesitated, because nothing that had actually happened in this world meant anything to me. “Everything is pretty blurry. I remember I had dinner with my grandfather on Monday night. Chinese food.”
“But nothing after that?”
“I don’t think so.”
Bushing focused on Tai. “When did you say your husband left home?”
“Tuesday evening around nine. He was going to take a walk in the park.”
He turned to me again. “You don’t remember that, Mr. Moran?”
“No.”
“Do you remember anything at all from that evening?”
“Not a thing.”
“Have you ever had a blackout like this before?”
“Never.”
“Were you drinking that night?”
Tai interrupted. “My husband rarely drinks. The occasional beer or glass of wine, and that’s all. On Tuesday, I made Filipino food for dinner, and we had salabat with it. That’s ginger tea.”
I was surprised to learn that, in this world, Dylan Moran had no problems with alcohol. He’d also shut down his emotions and his temper. And he’d married Tai. Different man. Different choices.
“Do you usually follow a particular route when you walk?” Bushing asked.
“No, not really.”
“Did you see anyone?”
“I already told you, I don’t remember. If Tai says I left the house to go for a walk, that’s what I did. But after that, I have no memory until I found myself on that bench near the lake.”
Detective Bushing dug into the inside pocket of his ill-fitting sport coat and extracted a piece of paper. He unfolded it and handed it to me, and I saw a photograph that matched the picture I’d seen on the front page of the Tribune. It was the woman who’d been killed in River Park.
“Do you recognize this woman?” he asked me.
I shook my head. “No.”
“She doesn’t look familiar at all?”
“No.”
“Have you ever seen her around the neighborhood?”
“I told you, no. Who is she?”
Tai murmured near my ear. “She was murdered.”
I pasted surprise on my face. “Murdered? That’s terrible.”
“In fact, she was stabbed to death in River Park on Tuesday night, Mr. Moran,” Detective Bushing went on. “Her roommate said she went out for a run, right around the same time that you took a walk. Same time, same night, same park. Her body was found the next morning. You can understand why your disappearance was of considerable concern to us, Mr. Moran. Two people in the park, one dead, one missing. I can’t help but wonder if whatever happened to you was somehow connected to the murder.”
“I wish I could help you, Detective. I didn’t know this woman, and I don’t remember anything about Tuesday night.”
The detective’s eyes shifted to my left hand. He took note of the purplish bruises. “What happened to your hand, Mr. Moran?”
I wiggled my fingers, because they still hurt. “I don’t know.”
“You don’t remember how you injured yourself?”
“No.”
“It looks like you hit someone.”
Next to me, Tai laughed. “Dylan? Hit someone? That’s ridiculous.”
“I wish I could tell you what happened, Detective, but I can’t.” Then I added impatiently, “Is that all?”
“Yes, that’s all I have for now. If you do remember anything, please call me right away. Oh, and I wonder if you’d mind if I bagged the clothes you’re wearing and took them with me for analysis.”
“My clothes? Why?”
“Well, I’d like to run forensic tests that might fill in some of the blanks in your memory. For all we know, you may have seen the murder taking place and tried to intercede. If you were involved in some kind of fight in the park, perhaps the person you struggled with left behind traces of DNA on your clothes. Whoever that person is could be a killer.”
His hawk eyes stared at me, and I knew what he was thinking. Or maybe Betsy Kern left her DNA on your clothes. I was pretty sure that he didn’t believe my story of having no memory of the past two days. He thought I was lying, and he wanted me to know it.
“I’m sure my husband won’t object to any tests you want to run,” Tai said. “We both just want to find out what happened to him.”
I interrupted her politely but firmly. “Actually, Detective, I do object. Sorry. No warrant, no clothes. I’ve read about too many innocent people who got railroaded by the police while trying to do the right thing.”
“Dylan,” Tai said, her voice shocked.
Detective Bushing shrugged his bony shoulders as he got out of the chair. “That’s all right, Mrs. Moran. Your husband is within his rights. The fact is, we already have a DNA sample for Betsy Kern’s killer. He hit her while he was trying to subdue her, and he left some of his blood on her face. We’ll find a match.”
“He hit her?” Tai murmured, with an uncomfortable glance at my hand.
Detective Bushing curled his fingers into a fist and tapped it against his own chin. “Yup. Right in the jaw. You sure you don’t remember how you hurt yourself, Mr. Moran?”
I stared back at him without blinking. “I have no idea.”
I took a pounding shower to wash away days of dirt, but the water on my body was a kind of torture. Instead of clean, hot water from the tap, I imagined the slime of the river coating my skin like an oily film. When I closed my eyes, I was back in the blackness, assaulted by waves of debris whipped along by the swollen current. I held my breath as I dove to find Karly. Somewhere, lost in the river, was her voice. I swam hard, but her scream kept getting farther away.
Dylan, come back! I’m still here!
I shut off the water and crumpled into the shower wall. I pounded a fist against the tile in frustration, and the searing pain reminded me that my hand was probably fractured. The dripping water felt like cold fingers scraping down my back.
Outside the shower, I dried myself with a pink towel. Karly would have hated the idea of pink towels. I went back into the bedroom and stood in front of our open closet, which was now neatly organized to reflect Tai’s OCD tendencies. As I looked at the clothes, I was reminded of the fact that they weren’t mine. They belonged to someone else. Obviously, Tai had picked out my shirts, my ties, my pants. A few items matched things I’d bought in my single days, but Goodwill had apparently made out well after my marriage.
I wondered how long she and I had been married. How had I proposed? Where? What had led me to think that Tai was the one?
On my nightstand, I saw monogrammed cuff links, something I’d never owned. There was also a bottle of cologne, something I never wore. The Dylan who lived here had the same kind of computer tablet I had in my other life, but when I opened it and tapped in my pass code, it didn’t work. Of course not. My pass code had been Karly’s birth date, and there was no Karly in this life. However, I knew Tai’s birth date, and when I entered it, I found myself on the tablet home screen. I scrolled through a few photographs, staring at pictures of Tai, photos taken inside the LaSalle Plaza ballroom, and a few selfies of us near the lake. It was painfully obvious that the person in those pictures wasn’t me. The expressions weren’t the same: no joy, no anger, no life. There was a bland nothingness in my eyes.
I didn’t think I’d like this Dylan Moran. He seemed like a sanitized version of myself, someone who’d learned the wrong lessons from the death of his parents. Not that I was proud of the things I’d done, the drinking, the fighting. But at least I’d lived. I’d fallen in love, head over heels in love with Karly. Even if I’d made mistakes, even if I’d lost her in the river, I’d still had her in my life. I found it hard to imagine that this Dylan even knew what love was.