Page 8 of Stay Awake
“We’ll get the lab to do a rush job on the bottle. I’ll tell them to check for fingerprints and DNA. Maybe there’s saliva on the rim.”
“We’ll need toxicology as well,” Halliday added.
“Why toxicology?”
“I think the victim was sedated. That would explain the absence of defense wounds. We’ll need to get the apartment owner’s name and find out who booked it,” Halliday said. “We’ll also need to rustle up some extra hands to see if the murder weapon was discarded in a Dumpster nearby, and collect and run through security footage. I’m sure this building has plenty of surveillance cameras.”
“I took down the owner’s name and details from the doorman on my way up here,” Lavelle said. “The owner’s on a flight to Hong Kong.Business trip. I’ve arranged for a team of uniforms to help with the grunt work.”
A sudden racket outside the apartment announced the arrival of the forensics team. Halliday and Lavelle waited in the living room while the crime scene photographer filmed the bedroom. The rest of the crime scene team arranged their equipment in the hallway by the elevators.
“Detective Halliday,” someone called from the doorway.
Halliday headed over to the threshold where a patrol cop who’d gone down to the trash room with the cleaner swung a white garbage bag in his gloved hand.
“How do we know this is the trash the cleaner threw out?” Halliday asked, unknotting the handles of the garbage bag and peering inside.
“Olga’s one hundred percent certain. She’ll put it in her statement. She says there wasn’t much trash in the bag. This was the only bag that fitted her description.”
Halliday rifled through the trash inside the bag with her gloved hands. There was an apple core and an empty yogurt container, the same brand as the ones in the fridge. At the bottom were yellow Post-it notes crumpled into balls of paper. One note, written in black marker, said:STAY AWAKE. The others had messages that were no less weird.DON’T OPEN THE DOOR. DON’T ANSWER THE PHONE.
“Detective Halliday, you’d better come over here,” Lavelle called. “You’re going to want to see this.”
She handed the trash bag to a crime scene technician to collect as evidence and joined Lavelle in the bedroom. While she’d been going through the trash, the crime scene photographer had ripped off the bedsheet to continue photographing the victim. With the top sheet gone, the soles of the victim’s feet were visible. They were cut up and drenched in blood.
“There are multiple slashes to his feet,” Lavelle said.
“Strange. Why go to the trouble of shredding the victim’s feet whenthere’s only one stab wound in his torso?” Halliday squatted down at the end of the bed to take a close look at the gashes. “It’s as if the killer couldn’t decide whether to be frenzied or restrained.”
“Maybe the killer had a foot fetish,” said Lavelle. “Why else cut his feet to ribbons?”
“For the blood.” Halliday rose. Her eyes scanned the bedroom. “The killer needed his blood.”
“Why would the killer need his blood?” the crime scene photographer asked. He bent down and twisted his camera lens to take a close-up of the victim’s feet.
Halliday ran her flashlight around the bed looking for the answer. The beam hit a tiny drop of blood on the plush gray carpet. And then another, and another. The trail led to the window shades. Halliday pulled at a toggle and lifted the shades to expose an expansive floor-to-ceiling window.
Written across a glass pane in blood was a message:!PU EKAW. A camera flash lit up the room as the crime scene photographer took a photo.
“It looks like gibberish,” he said.
“It’s sign writing. It was written backward so it can be read properly from the outside,” said Halliday.
“What does it say?” the photographer asked, taking a burst of photos.
“It says:WAKE UP!”
Chapter
Six
Wednesday 8:35A.M.
Pigeons warble by my feet as I doze on a park bench. My body sways like a pendulum, moving left to right as I drift to sleep, snap awake, and then do it all over again. All the while, I’m riddled with a nagging feeling that something is wrong.
The urgent siren of a fire truck startles me. I open my eyes only to be blinded by the sun. Shielding my face with my arm, I blink rapidly as my eyes adjust to the explosion of light. My disorientation disappears like a burst bubble when a shape emerges from the blinding light and morphs into an arch.
I’m at Washington Square Park. The arch reassures me. I often come here in the summer to drink coffee in the sunshine before heading to the madhouse that’s my office a block away.
