Page 30 of Stay Awake
“Sure,” I say, pointing to a knee-high boot in the shop window display. “Do you have it in a size seven?”
She disappears into a back storeroom and returns carrying an oversized shoe box.
“What’s going on out there?” I ask.
“Someone was murdered in the building across the street.” She whispers discreetly even though there’re no other customers in the store.
She lifts up the shoebox lid and removes the boots, extolling the virtues of the Italian-made leather soles and inner lining.
She stops in the middle of her explanation as a police officer comes inside. “Why don’t you try on the boots and see for yourself how comfortable they are,” she suggests, before rushing over to the police officer and leading him to a corner near the cash register.
I listen intently to their hushed conversation as I put on the boots. He tells her the police are collecting security camera footage from the stores along the street.
“We think the killer might have been filmed leaving the scene of the murder,” he says. “We’re talking to all the stores along this block to get surveillance footage from early this morning.”
The saleswoman noticeably lowers her voice. “We have cameras facing the street. You’ll need to speak with my manager to get copies. Do you have any idea who might have done it?” she asks. “The murder, I mean.”
“A woman with long dark hair down to her waist was seen with the victim. Have you seen anyone answering that description in the vicinity over the past few days?” he asks.
“Not that I recall,” she says.
Self-consciously, I touch my short hair as creeping panic runs through me. My hair was long when I woke up in the park this morning, just as the cop described. The wordsWAKE UP!are written on my wrist. It’s more than a coincidence. I have a terrible feeling that I’m connected to this crime.
I pace around the store in the boots, making what I hope is a convincing show of pretending to deliberate whether to buy them. By the time the police officer leaves the store, I’ve taken off the boots and slipped into my own shoes.
“Aren’t those boots just to die for?” the saleswoman says.
“They’re lovely, but I have very wide feet and they just don’t feel right. I’ll come again to try on another style when I have more time,” I say, before hastily rushing out.
I barge straight into a throng of people craning their necks on the sidewalk as they look up at the apartment building across the street.
“Someone was killed there today. Murdered.” A man in jeans and a khaki windbreaker points up at the sixth-floor window. “The killer wrote a message on the window. Can you see it?”
I look up, squinting. I can’t see the writing from this distance.
“I heard on the news that the message is written in the victim’s own blood. That’s why I came down here. I wanted to see it for myself,” says someone in the crowd as he holds out an iPhone and tries to zoom in on the window in question.
“What do you think it means?” a woman asks nobody in particular.
“The murderer is sending us a message,” a man responds.
“It’s a warning,” says someone else, his voice rising hysterically. “We must wake up and repent for our sins before it’s too late.”
Chapter
Nineteen
Wednesday 12:42P.M.
The crime scene was transformed by the time Darcy Halliday and Jack Lavelle signed their names on the log sheet and ducked under the yellow crime scene tape strung across the entrance of the apartment.
Kneeling on the floor in the living room, a forensic technician carefully removed fingerprints from the arm of a leather sofa. Another technician was painstakingly brushing black dust across the stainless steel fridge door to look for prints.
In the bedroom, numbered cards were scattered across the room to indicate where trace evidence had been found. The mattress was stripped bare. The sheets had been bagged as evidence. Bloodstains were evident on the mattress.
In the corner, Detective James Bowen was drawing a plan of the bedroom with precise measurements. Bowen was a bear of a man with a furrowed brow and a full beard that was a mix of brown and gray.
“Tell me you found something to help us ID the victim? A dry cleaning ticket? A cell phone? Better yet, his missing wallet?” Halliday asked.
