I couldn’t think about Karly now.

I needed a weapon. Something. Anything. I went to the kitchen counter and grabbed the butcher’s knife from our wooden block, but when I slid it out, I hissed in shock. When I held the knife high in the air, I could see that the blade was bathed in dried blood.

I knew what it was. Scotty’s blood. I was holding his murder weapon in my hand. Leaving my fingerprints. But wouldn’t they be mine anyway?

The grip of the knife was slippery. That was sweat. I started down the hallway, my eyes adjusting to the darkness. In here, I could have made my way blindfolded, because I knew every square inch of the house. As I approached the doorway to the bedroom, I looked inside, seeing the queen-size bed unmade, the way my hotel bed had been. I might leave a bed undone, but Karly never would. I realized that while I’d been staying in the hotel, he’d been staying here.

I kept going. I crossed into the dining room, where the ceramic tile changed to a hardwood floor. It should have been replaced years earlier; it had water stains and warped boards. With each footstep, I announced myself, but it didn’t matter. We both knew the score. We were both here. Strange glistening patches of wetness made the floor slippery. He was tracking water from somewhere. I continued past the dining room into the living room, all the way to the front windows. I looked outside, seeing no one illuminated under the streetlights. He hadn’t escaped. There were no places to hide in the rooms I’d checked, so that told me where he was.

I squeezed the handle of the knife even tighter in my hand. I retraced my steps and went back to the bedroom doorway. This room, so normal and familiar, now terrified me. I had to fight away memories again. Karly and I had made love in that bed hundreds of times, but it had been weeks since our bodies had joined together. First I’d been busy at work, distant, hassled, the way I usually was. And then, after her confession about Scotty, we’d avoided each other for days. I didn’t know the last time she’d been naked in my arms. I hated that I couldn’t remember. I hated that Scotty had been the last one to hold her, not me.

Inside the bedroom, a closed door led to our small closet, and a closed door led to our small bathroom. He had to be behind one of those doors. I thought about calling out to him, but I simply listened, trying to hear someone else breathing above the wild pounding of my own heart.

I approached the bathroom door slowly, expecting it to burst open as he charged me. I waited outside, listening again, hearing nothing. Finally, with the knife poised, I threw the door open and leaped inside, jabbing the blade forward as I did. He wasn’t there, but the shower curtain was stretched across the length of the tub. The floor was wet. Steam clouded the mirror and made the air in the tiny space close and damp. I pictured him, naked in the shower, dripping as he got out and ran to the front of the house. He could feel me coming.

I went to the tub and tensed as I threw the curtain back.

He wasn’t there. The bathroom was empty.

Which left one more hiding place.

I went back to the bedroom and stood outside the closet door. It was an old, heavy wooden door with a metal knob. The closet itself was small, not much bigger than a couple of phone booths. Karly was always complaining that she had no room for her clothes.

There was no point in pretending anymore.

“I know you’re in there,” I whispered.

This time, unlike in the park, he didn’t answer me. It made me think for a moment that I was wrong. That I was crazy. Then I slowly closed my hand around the doorknob, and with the knife ready in my other hand, I pulled hard.

The door didn’t open.

I yanked again, but as I put pressure on it, someone on the other side responded with an equal pressure in reverse. I couldn’t move the door. It stayed closed. He was every bit as strong as I was. In fact, if I thought about it, he was exactly as strong as I was. We were in equilibrium, with the door fixed like a wall between us. But he was inside, and I was outside. He had nowhere to go, no way to escape. I didn’t understand the point of this game.

And then I did.

Standing outside the closet door, trying frantically to get it open, I heard a voice from inside. It wasn’t my voice. This was a stranger’s calm voice, slightly muffled and staticky. A woman’s voice on a speakerphone.

“911. What’s your emergency?”

A long moment of silence passed, and the dispatcher spoke again.

“911. Hello? What’s your emergency?”

This time, the man in the closet replied, drawing out his words as if it were an echo in the canyon. I knew that voice. It was my voice. “Well, hello . . .”

He was speaking to me as much as to her.

“Sir? Hello? What’s your emergency?”

“My name is Dylan Moran. You need to send the police here right away.”

He rattled off the address—my address—and said, “You need to hurry.”

“Sir? Can you tell me what the problem is?”

“I’ve been a bad boy,” he told the operator, drawing out the adjective with a smirk in his voice that was meant for me. “I need to be stopped.”

“Sir? Are you in danger? Is it someone with you who’s in danger?”

“Everyone near me is in danger. I kill people. I murder them. I stab them. I drown them.”

He put an emphasis on that last one, and I felt myself ready to be sick. I pulled at the door again, but it wouldn’t budge. I wanted to shout, to say something, but my throat felt paralyzed with shock. I couldn’t get out the words.

“Send the police,” he said again.

“The police are on their way. Sir, are you alone? Is anyone with you?”

“No one’s with me,” he said, with an irony for me to savor. “I’m alone. Just me. Dylan Moran.”

“Stay right there, sir. The police are two minutes out.”

“I need to be punished,” he said intensely.

“Sir? Stay on the line, sir.”

“My evil is limitless. My evil is . . . infinite.”

He used the word.

Eve’s word.

Infinite.

I was still pulling on the closet door, but all of a sudden, the counterpressure disappeared. The door flew open in my hand, and I lost my balance, stumbling backward. I could still hear the dispatcher speaking on the phone.

“Sir? Sir, are you there? Sir?”

I charged the closet, but no one was inside now. I yanked the chain on the bulb overhead and squinted at the bright light. The closet was empty, nothing but Karly’s and my clothes hanging on hooks and a cell phone on the floor, still broadcasting the voice of the 911 dispatcher.

“Sir? Sir? Stay right there. The police are on their way.”

I was alone, and my doppelg?nger was gone. I was the only one here.

Dylan Moran, who’d just confessed to murder.

Dylan Moran, who held a bloody knife in his hand.

My fingers opened wide, and the knife clattered to the floor. I grabbed my head in wild despair and realized that I needed to get out of this house. To leave. To escape. To never come back. I ran from the bedroom, but as I did, I saw that I was already too late.

Sirens wailed. Flashing lights lit up the windows from the front and back.

The police were here.

CHAPTER 11

I met them at the building door.

Two burly Chicago cops stood on my front step, their squad car parked diagonally at the curb, its lights flashing. One had his hand close to the gun in his holster. The other was talking on a radio to another team of officers who’d obviously arrived at my house via the alley.

The cop who looked ready to shoot was six inches taller than me and about the size of a Hummer, with mottled black skin, a thin mustache, and hair trimmed on the top of his head to look like a skullcap. His eyes gauged whether I was any kind of threat.

“Sir? We received a 911 call from this address.”

I did the only thing I could think to do. I lied.

“911? From here? I’m sorry, officer, it must be a mistake. I’m the only one here, and I didn’t call about any emergency.”

“Can you give me your name, sir?”

I hesitated, and the cop obviously noticed. “Dylan Moran.”

The two officers glanced at each other. “Well, sir, that’s the name we were given on the 911 call.”

“My name? I don’t know what to tell you. It must be someone playing some kind of trick. I’ve heard about that kind of thing—you know, where people send the police to somebody’s house. What do they call it? Swatting?”

“Do you have some kind of identification, sir?”

“Of course.”

I dug into my pocket and found my wallet. I pried my driver’s license out of the slot and gave it to the cop. I’m sure he saw that my hand was shaking. When he handed it back to me, I needed a couple of tries to get the license back into my wallet.

“We’d like to take a look inside your apartment, Mr. Moran.”