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.”