Page 73 of Stay Awake
“We don’t have limitless resources,” Lavelle said. “Right now we have a likely suspect, and that suspect is Liv Reese. She found out that her ex was getting married. It upset her enough to pack up her life in London and travel back to New York. We know that for sure. Anger and betrayal. Liv Reese had one heck of a motive for murder.”
“Not everyone with a motive kills,” Halliday pointed out.
“True, but she had more than motive,” said Lavelle.
Motive was the final piece in the trifecta. Liv Reese had opportunity, they both agreed on that. Security camera footage showed her leaving the scene of the crime. She also had means. Ted Cole was stabbed while he was sleeping, possibly after drinking wine laced with sedatives. Liv’s fingerprints were on the bottle.
“You saw the long dark hairs on the pillow next to Cole. Liv Reese was most likely in bed with him on the night of the murder,” Lavelle said, sounding exasperated by Halliday’s refusal to be swayed. “And we know she was having mental health issues in London. She’d seen a psychiatrist. Even her social worker agreed that her insomnia might make her psychotic.”
“I’ll admit that it doesn’t look good for Liv Reese,” Halliday conceded. “Call me contrary, but I’m still keeping an open mind.”
The facts all lined up to support Lavelle’s theory. Liv Reese looked as guilty as sin. Still, Halliday felt in her gut they were missing something.
She looked through the windshield as they drove, trying to figure out what it was that bothered her enough to seriously consider the remote possibility that someone else had done it.
“You’re very quiet,” Lavelle commented after a while.
“That’s because we’re missing something.”
“What makes you think that?” Lavelle asked, flashing her a sideways glance.
“I don’t think any of this is as straightforward as it appears. It’s true all the evidence points to Liv Reese. She’s rightly our prime suspect,” Halliday admitted.
“Yes, she is. So why aren’t you convinced?”
“I worry it may be an optical illusion,” Halliday said. “We have only some of the pieces of the puzzle. It’s made us think the emerging pattern is something other than what it actually is.”
Halliday knew a thing or two about puzzles. When she’d left the military and was dealing with the emotional withdrawal of being alone after spending years with a tight-knit group of military buddies, she’d taken up doing complex jigsaw puzzles to keep her mind preoccupied.
The veterans’ counselor had recommended it as a strategy to eliminate stress and give her a sense of achievement. It helped lift her out of the depressive hole that so many veterans fell into during their transition into civilian life, especially those like her who’d spent so much of their service in combat zones.
Halliday took out her phone and Googled a phone number for Saint Vincent’s Hospital in London.
It was well after 11:00P.M.London time when the switchboard operator answered. Halliday asked for a phone number for Dr. Stanhope, Liv Reese’s psychiatrist.
“I’m a police detective in New York,” she explained. “I need tospeak to Dr. Stanhope urgently. It’s about one of his patients. She may be in serious trouble.”
The operator gave her a cell phone number for the doctor. Halliday dialed it immediately, hoping that he kept his phone on after hours. He did.
“Stanhope.” His voice was husky from being woken.
“I’m sorry for disturbing you so late in your night, Doctor. I’m a detective in New York and I’m investigating a case involving a patient of yours, Liv Reese,” Halliday said.
His bedsheets rustled over the phone line as he climbed out of bed.
“Liv Reese has turned up here in New York. I’m one of the detectives looking for her.”
“The hospital social worker told me earlier that you might get in touch,” he said. “I hope you understand that I’m quite limited in what I can tell you. There are certain things about my patient that I am not at liberty to discuss. Patient confidentiality. You understand.”
“I believe she may be in danger. I hope that gives you some leeway to talk to me about her. Incidentally, I know she has some sort of amnesia and I’d be interested in your take on it.”
“It’s a very rare condition. It’s a type of dissociative fugue. Except instead of one fugue episode, Liv is experiencing a series of repetitive fugue episodes. They begin every time Liv wakes and end every time she falls asleep.”
“Help me out here, Doctor. I’m not great with medical jargon,” Halliday said. “What do you mean by dissociative fugue?”
“It’s a type of amnesia that has a psychological cause. It’s often sparked by trauma and it presents with quite unusual characteristics.”
“Such as?”
