by John Lutz
She grinned and shrugged. “Well, that’s a safe enough proposition.”
“I’m a safe enough guy. Really.”
She held out her hand and they shook. “I’m Zoe.”
“A nice name for a nice woman.” He seemed to catch himself; nice hadn’t been strong enough. “And a beautiful woman.”
“So now we know each other,” Zoe said, “however slightly. But I have to buy my arugula and get out of here or I’ll be late for that dinner party.”
“Wouldn’t want that,” Closeman said. “Take a chance and call me, Zoe.”
“Okay, Zoe,” she said with a big grin.
Herb appeared confused for a moment, then grinned back.
She favored him with her brightest smile, chose a plastic container of arugala, and left the store.
On the way to her apartment, she tossed the stuff in a trash receptacle.
An hour later she sat, brushing her hair and getting ready to meet some friends at a restaurant for dinner and drinks. She was proud of her long red hair, so thick and slightly wavy, what some men might call luxurious. Some, in fact, had called it that. Herb Closeman was right, she thought, observing her reflection in the mirror. Beautiful wasn’t too strong a word for her.
Neither was smart. And ambitious certainly applied.
She forgot about Closeman as she continued to brush, absently counting toward a hundred. Her mind drifted to Lora Repetto’s discovery of the theater stub in the pocket of Repetto’s suit. The seat number hadn’t been a wild coincidence.
The Night Sniper must have been shadowing Repetto, studying him, and followed him into the theater, maybe even sat near him. Repetto had been in seat 7-F in the Bernhardt Theatre, and now there was no doubt as to the reference in the Night Sniper’s message. This, Zoe thought as she brushed, was definitely creepy.
Taped unobtrusively on the bottom of the seat, where Repetto had sat a week ago to see War Bond Babes, a musical about New York debutantes during World War Two, police had found a small, folded note. Its typed message was simple and cryptic: Detective Repetto, perhaps this will help you find rhyme and reason.
The lab had matched the typeface with that of the Night Sniper’s previous message. The typewriter used was the Night Sniper’s. The meaning of the note had yet to be figured out.
The killer playing his game.
She closely examined her image in the mirror. There were crow’s-feet at the corners of her blue-green eyes, if she looked closely enough. The beginnings of bags beneath her eyes.
Is it age or booze? Am I drinking too much lately?
She pushed such a notion from her mind and thought not of Herb Closing but of Repetto. Maybe he intrigued her because he held a certain contempt for her. Men who disdained her for some reason attracted her. They frightened her, too, which was also an attraction.
Zoe had heard about Repetto, of course. Everybody in the NYPD had heard of him. She’d even been introduced to him once, at a police awards dinner about a year ago, and had struck up an acquaintance with his wife, Lora. Now, during her lunches with Lora, she tried to learn about Repetto while Lora tried to learn about the Night Sniper.
But like a cop’s good wife, Lora didn’t reveal much about her husband.
Zoe continued using the brush beyond a hundred, maybe because she was preoccupied thinking about Repetto.
Repetto had earned a rare respect from hard men. She’d expected him to be a macho type, and she supposed he was. But there was something else about him, after Dal Bricker’s death, that touched her. The pain in him was like an aura. So palpable was Repetto’s grief that Zoe felt she might extend a hand and touch it. A man who grieved for a friend so intensely, there must be a certain worth to him. And there was something more in him than pain and grief; there was a quiet rage, tightly sprung and dangerous, that she knew so well.
She’d seen it in some of the killers she interviewed in prison, the ones who, when pressed, would admit that if free they would kill again. They were way past any sort of identity crisis. They knew precisely who they were and what they must and would do. The dark power that drove them was a simple and accepted fact, and a commitment that lent them a terrible calculating strength.
Repetto wasn’t a killer. At least not that kind of killer. Zoe had met enough killers to know that about him. He wasn’t like the sick, delusional animals with pieces of themselves missing, who could freeze other humans with their utter contempt or disregard.
Repetto was simply a good man who had made up his mind to kill. There was a difference.
Zoe listened to the brush’s stiff bristles sigh through her hair and told herself there was a difference.
Meg had dropped in at Kung Foo Go and was going to eat Chinese carryout in her West Side apartment. She didn’t mind living alone or eating alone. It had been two years since her divorce from Chip and she still hated the bastard. Who did he think he was? Swinging on me? Thinking he was going to beat me like the other pitiful women I see every week in my job?
She remembered slipping Chip’s second punch, after the first had broken her nose, then grabbing his arm and jerking him off balance, bending the arm back and back, hearing him scream as his elbow slipped its socket.
Meg could still hear that scream sometimes at night. It made her feel better.
Since Chip, Meg was off men. Couldn’t trust the bastards. It was built into them. Now distrust was built into her. She knew it and couldn’t care less.
She was attractive in a tomboy, scruffy way, so she’d had to get used to rebuffing men who were drawn by her dark eyes, the way her short black hair curled and made her face seem even more elfin despite her now habitual deadpan expression. She knew she looked like a somber leprechaun, but apparently some men liked that.
Like this character, young and fresh-faced, handsome in a naive way, with curly blond hair and a loping way of walking that reminded her of a big friendly puppy. He’d been watching her at the carryout counter in Kung Foo Go, and here he was loping along behind her like some amiable stray hoping for a scrap of food.
Meg turned. “Do we know each other?”
The kid stopped and looked stunned. “No. I, uh, saw you back in the restaurant and I . . . I just wanted to talk to you.” He tried a smile but it died in a hurry.
“So talk.”
Hope flared in his wide, puppy eyes and his smile was back. “I—”
“Yeah, you,” Meg said impatiently.
“I found you so pretty I wanted to talk to you.” He raised a hand palm out. “Don’t get the wrong idea.”
“So what’s the right idea?”
“I was—I am—lonely, and there was something about you that made me think you, uh, might wanna talk, is all.”
“What’s your name?” Meg asked.
“Daryl.”
“Listen, Daryl, you’re fucking with a cop here.”
“Cop?” He backed up a step, stunned. “You?”
“Me. You know those big red peppers they put in Chinese food?”
“Yeah.”
“You bother me again and I’m gonna shove one up your ass.”
He looked small enough to dive into a crack in the sidewalk.
Meg turned and stalked away, keeping a tight grip on her carryout bag. She waited for the guy to yell at her, call her a bitch, or something worse. It was New York. That was the way it worked.
But the kid remained silent.
After half a block she turned around to glare at him, but he was gone. She calmed down some and walked on, listening to her heels tapping the pavement.
Nice young guy, really, Daryl. Playing out of his league. All he wanted was ... what they all want, and she’d cut him off at the knees and left him bleeding on the sidewalk. Now she felt bad about it.
But not real bad.
After locking herself in her apartment, Meg placed the white carryout containers on the coffee table, then went into the kitchen and returned with a can of Pepsi, a fork, and a paper towel to use as a napkin. Sh
e worked her shoes off her tired feet, then sat on the sofa and used the remote to switch on New York 1 news on TV.
She opened the white cartons and used her fork to take a bit of noodles, then sat back against the soft cushions and sipped from the soda can.
It had been a hell of a day, reviewing once again the Night Sniper murder files, interviewing witnesses who were tired of telling their stories, talking on the phone with other witnesses. None of it had gotten them anywhere yet, but it was good, solid police work and might still pay dividends. That was how it worked in the Job—thoroughness, doggedness, eventually paid off. Most of the time, anyway. Something would fit, or wouldn’t fit, and the picture would emerge. Though Meg was exhausted, she was satisfied with the work she and her fellow detectives had done. Her work was the one thing in life that did afford her some measure of satisfaction, a reason to anticipate tomorrow and to climb out of bed in the morning. Right now, it was enough. It gave her purpose and identity. It made her different from the furniture.
She thought about the Night Sniper’s note to Repetto: Perhaps this will help you find rhyme and reason.
The play in the theater where the note was found was War Bond Babes. Meg had read about it in the Post. Rhyme, reason, and debutantes . . . Was there any meaning there at all except in the mind of a deranged killer? Maybe the poor schmuck had married a debutante type and gotten what he should have expected.
Meg relaxed and let her subconscious worry at the puzzle. Probably she’d watch TV after supper and fall asleep on the sofa. Hers was a lonely life, and a defensive one. She was comfortable in her tiny apartment, chomping noodles, sipping soda, watching Seinfeld and Law and Order reruns, not unhappy, not exactly happy, passing time without incurring further injury.
It was a life.
12
The Night Sniper carried nothing incriminating other than what was locked away in his mind. This was the time when he scouted in preparation. There were so many possibilities that it wasn’t much of a challenge.
He appeared unexceptional in his best khaki Eddie Bauer slacks he’d bought at a secondhand shop, his worn New Balance jogging shoes, his pale blue shirt and darker blue windbreaker. Then there were the baseball cap, the turned-up collar. Anyone who noticed such a forgettable figure at all would have a difficult time describing him to the police. With so many people in New York, it was easy to be unnoticeable.
His clothes might be common, but they were clean. He despised having fouled material next to his flesh. That worked out well. Their many washings gave the clothes a familiar aura and suggested he usually dressed in such a manner. But these clothes, and his other costume, never got to within ten feet of his real wardrobe.
Ah, here he was. At the Bermingale Arms.
The Night Sniper had learned something about the building. It was thirty-three stories, a combination of condos and rental units, with street-level shops facing the west side. No one even glanced in his direction as he went through the lobby and took the stairs instead of the elevator to the third floor.
He paused, waiting until a woman at one of the apartment doors finished balancing her many small grocery sacks while using her key. When she’d gone inside, he took the last few steps to the landing.
The third-floor hall was empty now. He could wait for the elevator here and no one would see him, as they might have in the lobby. If there was anyone in the elevator when it arrived, he simply wouldn’t step inside, as if he were waiting for one going down.
But the elevator was unoccupied, as he thought it would be this time of day, and it made no other stop all the way to the thirty-second floor.
As the elevator slowed, he slipped the flesh-colored latex gloves he’d bought at a medical supply house onto his hands. The gloves were made for burn victims with scarred or deformed hands, and passed for flesh unless someone looked closely and noticed their smooth texture, and that there were no fingernails.
The Night Sniper was pleased to find the narrow hall empty as he walked along it to the door to the fire stairs. The heavy door wouldn’t sound an alarm when he opened it, but it would close and lock behind him, leaving him to draw attention to himself or walk down more than thirty flights of stairs.
He removed a small roll of duct tape from his pocket, ripped off a rectangle, and placed it over the recess for the door’s spring lock so it wouldn’t latch behind him. Then he was on the fire stairs landing.
Not worrying about being seen now, he began climbing the stairs almost silently in his soft-soled joggers. He climbed fast, breathing evenly, keeping his feet to the sides of the wooden steps to minimize any squeaking.
It took him barely a minute to reach the top floor, then higher, to the service door to the roof. After using his duct tape again, in case the door was set up so a key was necessary for him to get back inside, he stepped out into the high breeze.
The view was terrific. Forty-fourth Street stretched beneath him away from the intersection almost directly below. He felt like the figure he remembered from one of the art books he’d leafed through years ago, Zeus (or was it God himself?) in the clouds, high above his subjects, muscular arm drawn back, about to hurl a thunderbolt toward the unsuspecting minions below. God was an older man, a father figure, bearded and wise and obviously with a terrible strength. He was about to mete out punishment. Justice.
Think about God later. About Justice.
The Night Sniper stooped low and settled in behind a billboard with a faded high-energy drink advertisement on it. It wasn’t very visible from below, and there were no lights illuminating it. The pretty girl in an evening gown, holding up a glass in a toast and smiling out at the scene below, had endured every kind of weather and was almost too faint to discern. One of her shoulders was peeling, the heavy shreds of signboard paper flapping gently in the breeze.
The breeze was probably constant up here, right now blowing at about ten miles per hour but without gusts. It would affect his aim but prove no problem. He had a feel now for how the wind played among the tall buildings, and he could adjust for different velocities at various heights. It was a talent, a synthesis of the physical senses and internal mathematics. He was proud of his increasing abilities, his growth. What he was doing had become an art within a game that itself would become an art.
The sign was supported about two feet higher than the parapet by a sturdy steel frame that was rusting badly. There were diagonal cross braces forming a kind of wide latticework. He knew he’d be able to crouch behind the steel braces and use one of them to help steady the rifle.
Staying low, he moved sideways along the bottom edge of the billboard, gazing through the steel framework, until he had a clear view of the spot he’d chosen in the street below. It was about fifty feet beyond the intersection, where a fire hydrant was located, and he’d noticed it was a natural place for people to try to hail taxis pulling away from the green light or turning the corner onto Forty-fourth Street. He smiled. He had the clear shot he’d imagined from ground level.
In his mind he aimed his imaginary rifle at a couple frantically waving at a cab. He stared unblinkingly through the night scope and centered the crosshairs, holding steady ... steady on the woman in jeans and what looked from this height like a bright scarf or bandana around her neck.
There was a deep calm within him; right now he was as still as anything on earth. He waited for the moment, and when it came he squeezed the trigger and the woman fell.
Only she didn’t fall. She climbed into the cab that had pulled up to the curb near her.
Her lucky night.
She’d never know.
13
Ralph Evans walked with Venus, guiding her gently by the elbow as they wove through the mass of pedestrians on the sidewalks of West Forty-fourth Street. Vehicular traffic was heavy but moving swiftly, horns blaring, cabs jouncing over the potholed street. At the corner was a swirl of sound and activity.
“All the people, all the cars,” Venus said, keeping pace with Evans. “Kind o
f exciting.”
“Not like Ohio,” Evans said. “Wakes you up.”
“Ohio has its charms.”
“When you’re there.”
They walked along for a while, deftly avoiding collisions with people coming the other way, and stopped now and then to glance in a shop window.
“I like it here,” Venus said, “noise, exhaust fumes, and all, but I won’t be sorry to get back to Columbus.”
“You’re not in New York mode yet. You’ll see, hon, the place’ll grow on you. I didn’t like the city either, first time the company sent me here . . . what, five years ago?”
“More like ten, Ralph. Time’s rushing past like that traffic.”
“I guess it is. Faster’n we know.”
They stopped at an intersection to wait for a walk signal, then stepped down off the curb swiftly to avoid being trampled.
“Know what?” Venus said. “These high heels are killing me. How far is it to where we’re gonna buy tickets?”
Evans slowed their pace. He realized he’d been walking too fast, forcing her to keep up. It got to be habit, after you visited this city enough. Five minutes and you were a New Yorker living by the New York minute. “It’s a way yet. We can get a cab if you’d rather.”
She paused to lift one foot and bent sideways, balancing herself, to adjust her shoe. It was a graceful pose he’d never tired of appreciating. “I think I’d rather.”
As they continued walking, only more slowly, Evans glanced from time to time at the traffic. Now that they needed a cab, there were none in sight.
At the next intersection, he steered Venus away from the pedestrians packed at the corner waiting to cross when the light changed. He gazed down the line of parked cars.
“There’s a space where we can stand. Let’s move away from all these people to where we can hail a cab.”
They stepped off the curb, then waited for a break in traffic. Evans led the way as they walked single file alongside the parked cars to where there was a clear spot near a fire hydrant, where Venus could stand behind him well away from the rushing cars and trucks.