He pushed himself up and trod with sleep-heavy steps to the bathroom. There he was struck by the smell of harsh cleanser and cheap soap. He saw a shower with a rust-stained plug and sagging curtain, gray-plaster walls holding it all in. At the sink he turned on the hot water, got a frigid trickle, but splashed it on his face anyway because he wanted to feel something. His hand cupped his chin to find a coarse stubble, but Sanderson avoided the mirror, not wanting to see what stared back. Thirty-five years of police work took a toll on a man, and whatever ill had found him would do nothing to rejuvenate things.

He walked at a deliberate pace to the front window and fingered back the curtain. A mist-shrouded scene gave him one answer—it was morning. He saw a nearly empty parking lot, and in the distance a busy loading yard full of trucks and trailers. Fog aside, Sanderson thought it all looked vaguely familiar. His more personal haze began to break and he remembered walking—wandering really—in the course of his search for Deadmarsh. Yes, that was it. He’d covered considerable ground and gotten nowhere.

Sanderson glanced up at a flat leaden sky, and asked himself, “What now?”

His detective’s brain craved a logical course, but he needed something to work with. He had no idea where Deadmarsh was heading, no picture of his suspect to show around. Sanderson had no authority. Not here, not anywhere. He was chasing a man who didn’t exist, one whose identity had been obliterated. His suspect knew how to disappear, and had a full day’s head start and an entire continent to work with. Against that, Sanderson had no more than his memory of the man’s face, a hunch that he was likely Israeli, likely an assassin, and an unverified claim that he was married to a woman who had also disappeared. There, in a sorry nutshell, was the state of his investigation.

He looked around the dank room and saw nothing to indicate how he’d gotten here. And now I’m forgetting things. He was fully dressed, his clothes perhaps more rumpled than usual, and his wallet was still in his pocket. The only thing in the room he recognized was his worn jacket hanging over the back of a chair. He knew he hadn’t been drinking, yet that was how it felt—like a thick hangover. A night unremembered.

What is wrong with me?