Page 24 of Stay Awake
“Yup, she has a good reputation,” agreed the captain. As he spoke, he sorted through a pile of files on his desk.
“You don’t sound convinced?” Lavelle asked, noticing a file with Halliday’s name on it.
“Between you and me, I’m being pushed to consider changing Halliday’s status from temporary replacement for Al to his permanent replacement.” Noticing Lavelle’s raised eyebrow, the captain added, “Al’s putting in his papers. We’ll have a permanent opening next month.” “I want your input on Halliday. I don’t want to be arm-twisted into taking her just to meet a gender quota.”
“Is there a reason why you have reservations about her?” Lavelle asked.
“Her military records are sealed.”
“So?”
“I don’t like sealed records. They make me nervous.”
“I bet her records are sealed because she served in an intel unit,” Lavelle said.
“How do you know that she worked in military intelligence?” The captain sat forward, his interest piqued.
“She was on the phone earlier to a buddy from her old unit. He’s now in the CIA. I don’t think you have anything to worry about when it comes to her military record. Her record’s sealed because it’s classified.”
“Maybe.” The captain shrugged. “Still, I need to know who’s joining my team. Since the military won’t tell me, I need you to find out. I won’t risk hiring a detective who turns out to be a liability just to help boost the department’s percentage of female detectives on the job.”
“You’re asking me to spy on her? It’s not my style. You know that.”
“Not spy, Jack. I want you to observe Halliday in the field and tell me whether you’d put your life in her hands. That’ll be good enough for me.”
Chapter
Fifteen
Wednesday 12:01P.M.
Lunch is a crustless cheese sandwich with soggy alfalfa taken from an oversized platter ordered in for the design meeting. I have little appetite. I feel antsy, like I’m craving caffeine. I push a flavored coffee capsule into the coffee machine.
While the machine hisses and splutters noisily, I tune in to a whispered conversation going on somewhere behind me.
“I’m not surprised she seems so… lost and confused, with everything she’s been through.”
The conversation stops midsentence when they realize it’s me standing with my back to them. They quickly launch into a contrived discussion about weekend plans. Apparently, I’m supposed to believe that’s what they were discussing all along.
I take my coffee mug to the office window and drink, looking down at the street while trying to figure out what I should do. I tried to call Amy after the design meeting. Her phone wasn’t on, which usually means she’s at work. Marco’s phone is also turned off. I suppose I should leave the office and go down to the police precinct in person toask for their help, but I don’t trust the police and I’m afraid of what I might find out.
A noise explodes behind me and I whirl around. Someone has unmuted the office TV to listen to the noon news break without realizing the volume was on the highest setting.
As the newsreader talks, footage appears on the TV screen from outside an apartment building where the anchor says a murder took place. I recognize the building from the article I read earlier.
Crimson writing on an apartment window appears on the TV screen. The camera settles on the wordsWAKE UP!I stifle a sudden desire to check my wrist, where the same message is written in blue ballpoint letters.
“Police will be trying to determine what the message means and why the killer wrote it as they investigate the brutal murder of an as yet unidentified male,” the newsreader says.
Fresh footage flashes on the TV screen. This time it shows a close-up of two detectives quickly going down the stairs of the building to the street. One is an attractive woman with chestnut shoulder-length hair wearing a navy police jacket. The second detective has tightly cropped dark brown hair, stubble, and deep-set ink-blue eyes. They both ignore reporters shoving microphones in their direction and shouting out questions about the murder as they walk away.
The footage cuts to video of a stretcher with a black body bag being pushed into a van.
“Police aren’t divulging the name of the victim or saying whether they have any suspects at this point,” the newsreader says.
She calls the murderer “The Sleepless Killer.” Almost immediately a graphic appears at the bottom of the TV screen saying the same thing. The news program crosses to a reporter at the scene standing in front of the police tape.
“Not surprisingly, the building’s residents are afraid they might be next,” the reporter says. “The good news is they might not need toworry for much longer. A police source told me that evidence has been found at the scene that could help identify the killer within hours.”
