Page 49 of Stay Awake
“I don’t remember. Wait! We sometimes get mail for her.”
She jumped up from the sofa and removed a couple of unopenedenvelopes from a basket on a white oak bookshelf. “Dr. Amy Decker,” she said, passing them the envelope.
“Go on,” said Halliday.
“It was very weird. When we told the woman to leave, she got all teary and told us that she’d lost her purse and phone and she had nowhere to go. Grant felt bad. He’s a pushover. He let her come up to use the phone. Next thing, she’s in our apartment accusing me of killing her cat and acting as if she owns the place. I was furious. She even went into our bedroom. We threatened to call the cops and she left.”
“Has this happened before?”
“Grant and I just came back from vacation a couple of days ago. Our neighbor mentioned hearing our doorbell ringing in the middle of the night while we were away. He said it happened more than once. Maybe it was the same woman. Maybe last night wasn’t the first time she came here. I couldn’t say for sure.”
“Any idea where she went, or what direction she took after she left your apartment?” Halliday asked.
“Grant went to sleep. I waited by the kitchen sink, which faces the street, to make sure she left. She was hanging around our stoop. Then she sat down on the stairs. I said to myself that if she was still there in five minutes I was definitely calling the cops.”
“Did you?” Halliday asked.
“No. She waved down a cab coming down our street.”
“Did you notice the name of the cab company or get a plate number?”
“It was too dark out for me to see the plates,” said Angela with a shrug. “I’m pretty sure the cab picked her up at about three in the morning, if that helps.
“She’s not dangerous, is she?” Angela asked, suddenly wary.
“You never can tell,” said Lavelle. “Call us if she comes back or if you think of anything else.” He handed her a card with his contact details.
Halliday called Tran as they walked back to the car. She asked himto call every cab company in the city and find out if they’d had a car at the Williamsburg address at around three that morning.
In the old days, that sort of job would wear holes in the soles of a cop’s shoes. It would mean going into the depots of every cab company in the city and looking through their log books. These days, cab companies worked with a GPS system. It would be a relatively quick and painless task for them to review their GPS data to see whether any vehicles had been there that morning.
“I need the cab driver’s name and phone number. I especially want to know where he dropped her off. The cab GPS should have that information even if the driver doesn’t remember,” Halliday told Tran. “We’re heading over to the liquor store now to look at the CCTV footage. I’m still waiting to get hold of Detective Krause’s file. Did his old precinct call?”
“No,” said Tran. “Do you want me to go over there and get the files?”
“We’ll take care of it. Can you run a name for us, in the meantime?” she asked.
“Sure. What’s the name?”
“Dr. Amy Decker.” Halliday read the name off the unopened letter. “Apparently she and Liv Reese shared an apartment a few years back.”
Chapter
Twenty-Nine
Wednesday 3:23P.M.
The beep of a delivery truck reversing to offload goods cuts through the hiss of white noise in my head. Someone is talking to me. I turn around.
“I already told you, it’s not open,” calls out a stocky man with a bushy gray mustache wearing a white apron covered in flour dust. He stands outside the pizza place across the street, smoking a cigarette. I get the impression I’ve been standing here for a while, staring into space.
“Lady,” he says, dropping cigarette ash onto the sidewalk. “The bar doesn’t open for hours.”
I look up. Above my head is a sign that readsNOCTURNAL.The bar looks seedy, as most bars do in the cold, hard light of day. Pressing my face to the stippled art deco glass doors, I look inside. The lights are off. From what little I can see there’s nobody here.
“It opens at five. The place next door sells liquor if you can’t wait until then,” the man calls out. He gestures toward a bodega next to hispizza shop before stubbing out his cigarette with the bottom of his shoe and going back inside.
My mouth is dry and I feel woozy like I’ve just been roused from a deep sleep. I’ve felt this way since I woke on the E train, my head pounding like the beat of a war drum. I have no recollection of getting onto the subway and no idea where I was going. It feels as if time has skipped ahead without me noticing.
