“Hey, Edgar,” I said.

He harrumphed at my late arrival, and we both stared silently at the characters populating Edward Hopper’s diner. After a while, Edgar’s mood improved enough that he told me his usual story about Daniel Catton Rich, which I listened to as if I’d never heard it before. As we stood there, other people came and went to admire Nighthawks.

“So you said the police were looking for me?” I murmured when we were finally alone again. “Did they tell you why?”

“Nope. They just said that you were missing. I wasn’t worried. I figured you’d turn up sooner or later.”

“Did they say how long?”

Edgar shrugged. “Couple of days.”

My brow furrowed. “That’s all? Not like a week?”

“How could it be a week? We had dinner on Monday.”

“You saw me on Monday?”

Edgar stared at me through eyes that were sunk into the bags on his face. “You got bats in your belfry, kid? Of course I did. You brought in fried rice and chop suey from Sam Lee’s.”

I shook my head. “Edgar, Sam Lee’s closed six years ago.”

“Well, wherever, some Chinese place. I thought it was Sam Lee.”

“You’re sure it was Monday? Three days ago?”

“I know you think I’m losing my marbles, but yeah, it was Monday. Shit, Dylan, what’s wrong with you?”

I ignored his question, even though I was wondering the same thing. “Was I acting normal? Did I tell you about anything strange going on?”

“We didn’t talk. You and me never talk, remember? We watched the Cubs beat up the Phillies and ate chop suey. I got a fortune cookie that said, ‘Love is a four-letter word, but so is hell.’ I laughed so hard I snorted.”

I shook my head. Three days ago.

Three days ago, I was awake, conscious, and having dinner with my grandfather. If the police were looking to pick me up, why didn’t they do it then? Why didn’t I remember any of it?

And where had I been for the past two days?

I was quiet for another long stretch. More people came and went to stare at the painting. I thought about what Edgar had said: We didn’t talk. You and me never talk. That was true. We’d been hostile strangers since I was a teenager.

“Can I ask you something?”

Edgar didn’t say yes, but he didn’t say no, either. So I plunged ahead.

“What happened to my dad? Did you see it coming?”

Edgar looked at me as if I’d started speaking a foreign language. We never talked, and we definitely never talked about that. He chewed on the question like it was a bad shrimp, and I didn’t know if he’d actually say anything or just pretend that I’d never even brought it up.

“No,” he told me finally. “No, I never saw it coming. Your dad was an angry drunk, I knew that. And things were bad between him and your mother. But I never thought he’d go that far. Definitely not.”

“Do you hate him for it?”

Edgar sighed. “Hating my son’s not in the rulebook for parents. No matter what he did.”

“Well, I hate him. I hate that I’ve lived my whole life afraid of becoming him. Every time I get angry, I think, ‘This is the moment when I snap.’”

“You? Snap?” Edgar snorted. “I’d like to see that.”

“What do you mean?”

“I mean, a turtle’s more likely to walk out of his shell than you.”

“Are you kidding?” I practically laughed at the absurdity of that comment. I couldn’t imagine Edgar saying something like that about me. The kid who’d argued with him at the top of his lungs practically every day of his teenage life. The kid whose fighting nearly got him kicked out of school half a dozen times. If I was afraid of my temper, it was only because it had gotten the best of me so often.

“Kidding?” Edgar retorted. “Hell, no. Yeah, it was awful what your father did, but I think the worst thing was that it turned you into a goddamn robot. Face it, Dylan, you run away from emotion before it has a chance to get anywhere close to you. I thought maybe you’d change when you got married, but you froze her out, too.”

“That’s not true. I only froze her out over the affair, and that’s because I couldn’t stand the idea of being angry with her.”

Edgar shook his head. “Affair? What affair?”

I realized I had never told him what Karly had done. “It’s not important. Not anymore.”

“Look, Dylan, you feeling sick or something? You’re not looking good.”

“Yeah, I’m a little out of it. Sorry.”

I shut up at that point. My experiment in opening up to Edgar hadn’t exactly gone smoothly, and I didn’t need to argue with my grandfather on top of everything else that was going wrong in my life. I let him go back to Nighthawks.

That was when I felt my phone buzzing in my pocket. A text had come in. I checked it and saw that there was no caller ID associated with the number. Whoever was reaching out to me was anonymous.

I read the message and didn’t like it.

Meet me at the Horner Park house. We need to talk.

CHAPTER 15

The house across from Horner Park, where the police thought I’d killed Scotty Ryan, looked deserted. I stayed in the back of the park’s baseball field, which gave me a view of the entire street. No one watched the house from any of the parked cars, and I saw no one who resembled an undercover cop. If this was a trap, they’d done a good job of concealing it.

There was no police tape around the house, which surprised me. Then again, a week had passed since the murder, and no doubt the owners wanted to get back inside their house. They’d also taken down the FOR SALE sign; there was no large poster for Chance Properties outside. Crime scenes didn’t exactly fly on the Chicago real estate market.

I waited to make sure I was right about the lack of surveillance. Then I made my way across the street, still on the lookout for police, still ready to run. As I approached the house, I cursed silently, because of all the people I could meet, I spotted the same elderly woman walking her Westie who’d seen me after the fight. I doubted that she’d forgotten me or the blood on my hands. There was nothing I could do, so I gave her my friendliest I-am-not-a-serial-killer smile. We both stood outside the house’s white picket fence.

She smiled at me with no obvious recognition. “Hello.”

“Hi,” I replied. “That’s a sweet dog you’ve got there.”

“Thank you, yes, he’s a doll. Did you buy this house? Are you the new owner?”

“Me? No.”

“Oh, well, we all heard it was a young man. I wanted to welcome him to the neighborhood.”

“No, sorry, it wasn’t me.”

“All right. Well, you have a nice day.”

“You too.”

That was that. She waited while her dog lifted his leg at the boulevard tree, and then she continued down the street. I watched to see if she would look over her shoulder at me, but she didn’t.

New owner? The house had already sold?

I didn’t know what to make of that.

I let myself in through the gate. On the walkway, I studied the windows, but no one looked out at me. I checked the street again and then went up to the front door and rang the bell. There was no answer, even when I rang twice more and pounded on the door. With my apprehension growing, I turned the knob. The door was open.

“Is anyone home?” I called. “Hello?”

I got no reply.

The house still smelled as it had when I was last here, of sweet cut wood. A fine layer of sawdust coated everything. I went into the living room, where Scotty and I had argued. Somehow I expected to see a chalk outline marking the location of a body, with bloodstains dried on the plastic sheeting, but there was nothing like that. I saw no evidence that a crime had been committed here.

“Hello?” I called again. “It’s Dylan Moran. I got a note to meet someone here.”

Still no response. The house was empty.

I ventured deeper inside. There was no furniture. Everything had been removed. With each step, I listened for a noise to suggest that someone was hiding, but I heard nothing. I checked every room on the ground level, and then, with only the slightest hesitation, I went upstairs to the second floor.

The door to the master bedroom was closed.

I approached it with soft footfalls and knocked. “Is anyone there?”

I tensed, then opened the door. For some reason, I had visions of finding a body inside, but I was wrong. No one was here. However, the bedroom, unlike the rest of the house, showed signs of life. Someone was living and sleeping here. There were open moving boxes strewed across the floor, and a mattress with a rumpled blanket lay below the windows. When I glanced in the bathroom, I saw a towel bunched over the shower rod and a lineup of male toiletries on the sink.

It was time to go. I’d stayed here long enough.