Page 66 of Stay Awake
“Sometimes she’d call and tell Ted that she couldn’t sleep and that she missed him. Other times, she’d cry and ask him to give her another chance. It tore him up. She’d been through a terrible ordeal. She was emotionally fragile. Ted felt guilty,” Elisabeth said. “That’s why we were so relieved when the calls stopped. We assumed she’d finally come to terms with the breakup.”
“Then why did you send her the invitation to your engagement party?” Lavelle asked.
“Actually, I’d already mailed her the invitation a week before the calls stopped,” Elisabeth said, her cheeks flushing again. “I sent it because I wanted her to know that our marriage was real. I wanted her torealize it was time for her to let go of Ted. When she suddenly stopped calling, I thought it had worked. That the invitation had given her closure. I was as surprised as Ted when she turned up at the party.”
Halliday jotted down a quick timeline in her notebook. Liv’s calls to Ted had stopped abruptly five weeks ago, around the time she’d received the invitation to his engagement party. That coincided with the time of Liv’s first known memory blackout, according to the social worker. Halliday wondered if Liv Reese stopped calling Ted because she had a memory blackout. Perhaps she simply didn’t remember him anymore.
It was possible that the invitation had been the catalyst that sparked Liv Reese’s amnesia. Maybe the shock of learning that she’d lost Ted for good caused her psyche to block out everything that had transpired in the last two years, all the trauma and all the heartbreak. Without her recent memories, it was as if her life was back to how it had been before she’d met Ted and before she’d been stabbed. It was the ultimate form of denial.
“Was she violent when she came to the engagement party? Did she make any threats?” Lavelle asked.
“No,” said Elisabeth. “Her presence alone was ruining our party. I should never have sent her the invitation. Ted was furious when he found out.”
Her shoulders shook again with sobs. Halliday and Lavelle exchanged glances. It was entirely possible that Ted Cole might still be alive if his fiancée hadn’t sent the invitation to his ex.
“Ted felt obliged to help her.” Elisabeth kept talking through her tears. “He told me last night that he’d found a doctor who was a world expert at treating memory problems. Normally there’s a long wait to see him, but Ted pulled strings to get her seen quickly.”
“Do you know the doctor’s name?” Halliday asked.
“Ted didn’t say. Do you think Ted’s ex is responsible? Did Liv Reese kill Ted?” Elisabeth looked up at them, waiting for their answer.
“Our investigation has just begun,” Halliday responded. “Did Ted do or say anything when he came here last night that you think might help us figure out what happened?”
“Not really,” Elisabeth said, after a moment’s thought. “Except for maybe one thing.” She stood up and went to her bedroom, returning a moment later with a piece of paper. It contained a photocopy of a sketch made from small dots that formed the shape of a lily. At the top was a phone number.
“What is that?” Halliday asked.
“A drawing of some sort,” said Elisabeth. “Ted received a call while he was here. It was Lou, a menswear designer we both know. I gathered that Ted had asked him about this design and he was calling Ted back with information.”
“Did you hear their conversation?”
“Only the start. Ted took the phone into our bedroom where he continued the call. It struck me as strange because he’d come here to tell me the truth about his ex and then he gets a call and he’s being secretive again. He left in a rush straight after the call. He must have accidentally dropped the paper with the sketch. I found it this morning on the carpet next to the bed.”
Halliday and Lavelle left the apartment carrying an evidence bag with the sketch, as well as evidence bags containing Ted Cole’s toothbrush, hairbrush, and wristwatch. The lab would, hopefully, match the DNA and any fingerprints on his personal belongings to the body they’d found in the apartment.
Halliday drove through heavy afternoon traffic toward the forensics lab to hand in the evidence bags as Lavelle updated the captain on the phone. Even as she listened to his side of the conversation, she couldn’t stop thinking of Elisabeth, Ted Cole’s heartbroken fiancée.
“Worst part of the job, telling people they’ve lost a loved one,” remarked Halliday when Lavelle was off the phone. “Worse even than the mountain of paperwork they bury us in.”
“Tell me about it,” said Lavelle. “I’ve done more of these than I care to count.”
She double-parked and waited at the wheel, while Lavelle took the evidence bags up to forensics. Halliday called the phone number that had been scrawled on the sketch, which she’d photographed on her phone before Lavelle had taken it up to the lab. Her call went straight to voicemail. She hung up without leaving a message.
Since Lavelle was taking longer than he’d anticipated, Halliday turned on the radio to distract herself with music. She’d been in plenty of tense situations. She’d driven in military convoys along roads mined with bombs disguised as rocks. She’d been shot at more times than she remembered. Since she’d joined the NYPD, she’d been involved in drug busts and undercover operations. Halliday could deal with danger. It was grief that tore her apart.
The click of the driver’s door opening interrupted her thoughts. Lavelle explained as he put on his safety belt that the lab technician had taken prints off Cole’s toothbrush while he’d waited. She’d then done a quick comparison with prints taken from the victim at the crime scene.
“It’s not an official ID, but it’s just as good for our purposes. Ted Cole is definitely the victim,” he said. “Oh, and there’s another update. They found traces of sedatives in the wine bottle, just as you’d suspected. The wine was spiked. That’s why Cole didn’t fight back when he was stabbed. He was fast asleep.”
“At least that’s a small mercy for him,” she said quietly.
As Halliday turned on the engine, Lavelle’s phone rang. He took it on speaker. It was a detective at the Ninetieth Precinct in Brooklyn, Detective Krause’s old precinct. His name was Larry Regan.
“We have the files you wanted,” Regan said.
“Any chance you could have them scanned and sent over?” Lavelle asked.
“They’re huge files,” said Regan. “There’s way too much to scan. Icould send you the originals, but it might only get to you in the morning. Or you could send someone to collect them.”
