Page 95 of Stay Awake
“How does he know that Ted Cole was supposed to have accompanied her?”
“Because Cole set it up. He contacted Brenner through a mutual friend a couple of weeks ago to beg him to help an ex-girlfriend who was suffering from memory loss,” Lavelle told her. “Ted Cole brought Liv Reese to Brenner for an initial appointment, and took her to the hospital to get brain scans. He was supposed to be there with her today to get the results.”
“What kind of doctor is Brenner?”
“He’s a neurologist. Apparently, he’s a world leader at helping amnesiacs get their memories back,” said Lavelle. “He said Liv Reese was very upset after her appointment this afternoon. He said she’s likelyvery confused and disoriented. He thinks there’s a good chance she’ll reach out to a friend for help the next time she wakes without any memory.”
“I’ll go through the Decker-Reggio murder files and put together a list of people she might contact,” Halliday offered.
“Good. By the way, the captain wants us to brief him as soon as he gets in.”
The captain’s interest in the case was at a fever pitch. It had risen over the course of the day along with the storm of media coverage.
Halliday went back to her desk to go through the files. The ringing of the hotline phones was so loud that eventually she took the document box to a vacant interview room so she could concentrate.
She spread the contents of the files in small piles along the table and wrote key names on the whiteboard. Halliday’s phone rang while she was adding another name to the list.
“Detective Halliday,” she said.
“It’s Gene Tawalski here, from Eastern Island Cabs. We got a request to go over our GPS data. Turns out we had a car on the street in question a few minutes after three this morning. I just got off the phone with the driver. He picked up a woman.”
“Did he describe her?”
“Long hair. He told me that she was out of it, but not in an addict-on-a-high sort of way. He said that she reminded him of his mom who has Alzheimer’s. The woman was confused. She couldn’t decide where she wanted to go. Halfway into the ride, she changed her mind. Asked to be dropped somewhere else.”
“Where did he drop her off?”
“At a bar. It’s called Nocturnal.”
Chapter
Fifty-Three
Wednesday 9:35P.M.
Laughter spills onto the street as the glass doors of Nocturnal are pushed open. A man and a woman step unsteadily onto the sidewalk, their arms drunkenly entangled. Their voices are decibels too loud for the hushed street. I slip past them into the riotous roar of the crowded bar.
I squeeze past a table of men in dress shirts and loosened ties as they raise their glasses and toss down their drinks in unison. The thud of empty glasses slamming onto a table hits me like an aftershock. I head toward the bar where I was instructed to wait.
“Hey, honey. I like your new look.” The warm drunken voice in my ear is quickly followed by a hand snaking around my waist, pulling me in. “Come here.” A ruddy-faced man leans in to kiss me with foul whiskey breath. Instead he kisses air as I evade his grasp and disappear into the crowd.
Hoots of laughter and shouted conversations assault me as I push through a tight crush of people. I’m hit by an eerie sense of déjà vu when I glimpse my flushed face in a triple paneled mirror behind thebar. It’s as if I’m looking at an alternate version of myself in a parallel universe.
A bartender with dark hair and a goatee pours drinks from a beer tap nozzle. His shirt sleeves are pushed to his elbows, displaying a tattoo on his forearm.
I slide onto an empty barstool near the black-painted window facing the street. Looking into the mirror, I check to see if anyone is beelining toward me through the sea of drinkers. So far nobody seems to have noticed me, except the bartender.
He looks up and winks as he pours tequila into shot glasses, barely spilling a drop before adding a plate of lime wedges and crushed salt to the tray. A waitress picks up the tray and takes it to the table of businessmen.
“You’re looking great tonight, Liv,” the bartender says. “What can I get you?”
“I don’t suppose you serve coffee!” I stifle a yawn, certain I must have imagined the bartender saying my name. “I need something to wake me up.”
“How about an espresso martini?”
“Is it any good?”
“It must be. You drink a couple of them a night.”
