Page 106 of Stay Awake
Halliday was cruising around the block looking for a parking spot near her apartment building when a text message came through on her phone.
Help me,it said.
The phone number matched the number that Liv Reese had used to call the police information hotline earlier. She had also sent a tracking pin to allow Halliday to track her location. The tracking pin indicated that she was on the move, heading toward Queens.
Halliday called Lavelle’s phone. There was no answer. She made a sharp turn and drove toward the location on the tracking map on her phone screen as she tried to get hold of Lavelle again. His phone went directly to voicemail. She assumed he was still waiting for the crime scene team at the basement apartment, where the phone signal was poor.
“Jack, it’s Darcy. Liv Reese sent me a location tracking pin. I’m following it. She’s heading to Queens. I think she’s in trouble. Call me.”
She called the precinct and spoke to Rosco, who was still going through CCTV footage, and told him the same thing.
“It could be a trap,” he said dubiously.
“There’s only one way to find out. I’m following her. Tell Jack. I’ll keep you posted.”
The location marker kept moving farther away on the navigation map as Halliday drove toward it. It moved along the grid to Queens and then headed toward Maspeth, where it turned into a labyrinth of side streets. Halliday estimated she was ten minutes away when Lavelle called.
She updated him on what had happened and her current location. As she spoke, the map showed that Liv Reese’s car was driving through an industrial area of factories and warehouses.
“It’s stopped,” she said, when the tracker came to a sudden halt. “At an old storage warehouse. It’s about five minutes away.”
She gave him the address and asked him to get backup cars to meet her there. Halliday sped up. It was a bad sign that the tracking pin had stopped moving, especially in such a remote location. Nobody had any legitimate business in an old factory district so late at night.
Halliday turned into a narrow, unlit street lined with warehouses. The location marker for Liv Reese had stopped in a compound at the dead end of the street. She pulled to a stop while she was still out of view of the warehouse and radioed in her location. The dispatcher told her that backup was approximately ten minutes away.
She drew her weapon and entered the compound through a pedestrian gate that was bent and falling off its hinges. It rattled in the wind.
The asphalt parking area outside the warehouse was disintegrating and riddled with potholes. Most of the warehouse windows were boarded up. Some were defaced with graffiti.
A Lexus was parked in a delivery bay, the internal light still on. One of the car doors hadn’t been closed properly. Halliday opened thedoor and looked around. A Korean restaurant menu with her phone number scribbled on top was on the floor under the front passenger’s seat. Halliday moved behind a wall as she called in the plate number to Rosco.
“It’s a leased car,” he said after looking it up in the DMV database.
“Who does it belong to?”
“Don’t know. It’s a private company.”
“Liv’s location tracker is still on but it’s not moving. She’s somewhere in this compound. It doesn’t look good,” Halliday whispered.
“Hang tight. Backup will be there in under seven minutes.”
Two loud bursts echoing from the warehouse drowned out his voice. “Shots fired,” Halliday said. “I can’t wait for backup.”
Chapter
Sixty-Three
Wednesday 11:38P.M.
Brett pushes over a stack of chairs and they collapse on the floor with a deafening crash. “The police are looking for you, Liv. They think you killed Ted. There’s strong evidence this time.”
“What evidence?” I call out stupidly. He immediately moves toward my side of the room while he talks.
“The message on the bedroom window, for starters,” he says, bending down to look for me under a desk. “I wrote it after you disappeared with the knife. Then I went upstairs and waited until daybreak in a utility room. The elevator was packed with people when I left. Nobody noticed me. The police saw you leave, though, in the middle of the night. The CCTV footage of you fleeing after the murder has been running on the news all evening. Everyone believes you killed Ted Cole, especially the police. There’s only one thing that links me to his murder.”
“What is it?” I ask, again despite my better judgment.
“The knife,” he answers. “While I was cleaning up, I discoveredI nicked myself with the blade when I stabbed Ted. The knife has my blood on it. My DNA. When I came out of the bathroom after cleaning up with bleach, it was gone. You took the goddamn knife.” He sighs impatiently. “I need to know where you put it, Liv. But, of course, you don’t goddamn know what you did with it. Do you? You don’t remember. Well, you’re going to have to remember,” he hisses.
