Page 76 of Stay Awake
“Nine-one-one,” a woman says. “What is your emergency?”
“I’ve been stabbed,” I gasp into the receiver.
I whisper my address to her, panting heavily as I choke on my own blood.
“What’s your name?” the dispatcher asks.
“Liv,” I murmur. I can feel myself drifting into unconsciousness.
“Liv, there’s an ambulance nearby. It’s going to be there real soon. I’ll stay with you on the line until it arrives. Okay?”
“I’m so tired,” I slur.
“I know you are, honey. But you can’t go to sleep. Try to stay awake.… Liv, honey,” she says. “I need you to stay awake. Okay?”
I don’t have enough strength to answer her. I lie with my head on the carpet and stare at Amy’s kimono. It turns from pink to black and I pass out.
The dispatcher’s strained voice calls out: “Liv, are you awake?”
I snap my eyes open, focusing on the kimono like it’s a beacon. “Yeah,” I rasp. My voices fades away as darkness engulfs me again.
“Wake up, Liv.” Her voice is loud and urgent. “I need you to wake up. Can you do that for me? The ambulance is almost there. Stay with me.”
“I’m trying,” I gasp.
“You need to stay awake, Liv,” she orders. “The ambulance is downstairs. The paramedics are on their way up. Stay awake. You have to do that. Liv? You have to stay awake.”
Chapter
Forty-Three
Wednesday 5:29P.M.
The white bricks of the Ninetieth in Williamsburg had dulled over time, giving the Brooklyn precinct with the second-highest murder rate in the borough the grim air of a military-style bunker.
Detectives Lavelle and Halliday were met by their counterpart, Larry Regan, at the top of the stairs. Regan wore a thin black tie with a white business shirt, his sleeves rolled up to his elbows. He was a gangly young detective with chocolate-brown eyes and a crop of dark hair. In his arms was a huge document box with the files they’d come to collect.
“I’m going to need you to sign for it,” he said, handing over a clipboard.
Lavelle leaned the clipboard onto the stair railing and signed the forms before taking the box. The hefty weight was unexpected.
“There’s a lot of paperwork in there. It’ll take a lot of time for you to go through it all,” said Regan. “I worked on the case early on. I can give you a quick overview if you have a few minutes.”
“Sure. We can make time,” said Lavelle.
Regan fed coins into a vending machine and bought them each a can of soda. Drinks in hand, he led them to a “soft room” at the end of the corridor.
“We won’t be disturbed here,” he said, turning on the overhead fluorescent lights.
It was called a soft room because it was used for the families of victims and traumatized witnesses. Hard rooms were the hard-core interrogation rooms for suspects, often painted in sickly colors, with minimal furniture and no windows other than a one-way mirror.
The soft room had a table and chairs, a couple of sofas and a bookshelf with scuffed toys and magazines. At the far end was a square window that looked out onto the precinct parking lot, where squad cars and unmarked police vehicles were parked in untidy rows.
Regan unpacked three bulging files from the document box. Each file had several strategically placed elastic bands around it to stop documents from falling out.
“That’s a lot of material,” said Lavelle.
“The investigation was extensive.” Regan tapped the document box. “This case happened almost two and a half years ago. It officially remains ‘unsolved.’ Right now, it might as well be a cold case.”
