by John Lutz
“Maybe this one would,” Birdy said. He was absently making those odd pecking motions with his head, thinking about it, how the killer they were chasing wasn’t standard issue.
“What did the kid see?” Repetto asked.
Calvin glanced in the boy’s direction. “Saw his mother fall over, is all he says. He’s in shock, wants his dad. Maise over there”—he pointed toward the boy and the kneeling policewoman—“is telling him Dad’s on the way.”
Meg looked over at the woman and boy. There were tears now in the boy’s eyes, and wet tracks on Maise’s broad cheeks. Meg looked away. “God damn this bastard!”
“We’ll get him,” Calvin said. He had a kind of drawl, like a cowboy, that made you tend to believe what he said.
Repetto got down on one knee and lifted a corner of the tarp. A blood-soaked fur jacket or some such thing made everything messier and harder to analyze. Kelli Wilson was on her back, one leg bent awkwardly beneath her, one arm thrown sideways, the other resting across her breasts. Her eyes were open, puzzled for eternity. Repetto wanted to close them but didn’t. Instead he went about lifting the other three corners of the tarp, getting a full view of the body.
“Medium-caliber bullet high on the chest,” Charlize said. “My guess is it clipped the heart and she was dead within seconds. But I’m talking on just the prelim, understand.”
“Understood,” Repetto said. He dropped the tarp.
Someone was calling his name.
He looked to his right and saw a cluster of journalists, two TV cameras, all set up a few feet off the curb in the street.
“Captain Repetto? Can you confirm this was the Night Sniper?” The questioner was a well-dressed man with incredibly fluffed hair, standing with one foot up on the curb.
Repetto ignored him and motioned Calvin back over. “Round up a couple more uniforms and keep the media wolves at bay. I especially don’t want them talking to the kid.”
Calvin turned and hurried away to get it done.
“One wound?” Repetto asked Charlize.
“That’s the way it looks. We were waiting for you before we moved the body.”
“Captain Repetto . . . ?”
Fluff Hair again. Repetto didn’t acknowledge that he’d heard. “You done here?” he asked Charlize.
“Yeah. So are the techs.”
So’s Kelli Wilson.
Repetto knew the area around the dead woman had yielded all it was going to, which wasn’t much. “Get her out of here then, away from all these people. Leave the purse.” Repetto turned to Meg. “Go talk to the boy. Stand so he can’t see them moving his mom.”
“I’ll be gentle,” Meg said, and went to join Maise with Jason. Jason without a mother.
While the EMS attendants worked what remained of Kelli Wilson onto a stretcher and loaded her into the ambulance, Repetto and Birdy stood looking around the area for potential sniper nests.
“Like all the others,” Birdy said. “He coulda been anywhere.”
“Which means we’ll have to look everywhere,” Repetto said.
Meg walked back over. “Jason’s in shock, trembling.”
“We need to get him to a hospital,” Repetto said.
“I dunno. He keeps repeating he wants his dad. Maise wants to wait with the kid in her car in front of the restaurant, stop the dad before he goes in. I don’t think it’s a bad idea. Those two are gonna need each other.”
“Go with them,” Repetto said. “Tell Maise to drive around the block. Maybe that’ll shake the media types. Make it as easy on the kid as you can, and watch how his father takes the news. Ask if that ringing cell phone in the victim’s purse was him calling to say he’d be late.”
“Will do.”
Repetto and Birdy stood watching the ambulance drive away, then the ME’s car. Behind them, making a show of it for the media types, was Maise’s cruiser with Jason and Meg inside.
The remaining cops who weren’t holding the gawkers back began removing the yellow crime scene tape, taking it down with one hand, holding it bunched and tangled in the other. Somebody from somewhere appeared with a bucket and broom and was told it was okay to start cleaning up the sidewalk. A big bald guy dragged a hose from a shop on the corner and called back for somebody inside to turn on the water.
Repetto watched them hose down and sweep the sidewalk. Red-tinted water trickled down the curb and ran in the gutter. A life’s blood, a life, being cleansed from the earth. The two TV crews were getting it all on tape.
“Ashes to ashes, blood to sewer,” Birdy said glumly. The flesh beneath his right eye did a crazy dance.
“Harsh,” Repetto said.
“Harsh.”
Lazy-eyed Calvin and another uniform were talking to the three witnesses, two men and a woman, who’d stayed around.
“Let’s go over there and see what we can get,” Repetto said.
What they got was pretty much what the boy Jason had said. An echoing shot like thunder that could have come from anywhere. Then “Mom fell down.”
“Know what I’m wondering?” Birdy asked, as he and Repetto were walking toward where the unmarked was angled in at the curb. The car was partially blocking traffic that was beginning to flow again on the block.
“I think so,” Repetto said. “Is it possible Jason was the target?”
“Right. The child angle.”
“I rule it out,” Repetto said. “It was a heart shot, and we’re dealing with a killer who hits what he aims at.”
“Has so far,” Birdy said. “But everybody misses sometimes.”
“Besides, Zoe assured me again, this guy’s not a child killer.”
“Everybody misses sometimes,” Birdy repeated.
“It’s something to keep in mind,” Repetto said. “I’ll go talk with the media and tell them we don’t have any hard information yet and we’re finished here. On the sniper shootings in general, we’re making progress.”
“Lie to them.”
“Allay their doubts with partial truths,” Repetto said.
Birdy chuckled.
“Let’s call Melbourne and get some more uniforms down here so we can canvass those buildings.”
“We do a lot of that.”
“It’s what the Sniper wants,” Repetto said. “We do a lot of that.”
In his luxury East Side apartment, the Sniper sat at a glass-topped table and cleaned his Italian rifle. He reamed the barrel carefully with a soft cloth, then lightly oiled the mechanism and marveled again at its deadly precision.
When the rifle was reassembled, he put on the sterile white gloves he usually wore when handling his collection and wiped down the barrel and stock where his hands had touched. Oil from fingers could be a destructive element over time. Then he went to the gun room and replaced the rifle in its glass case.
The Night Sniper poured himself two fingers of premium scotch, added a splash of water to bring out the taste, then went into the living room and swung open the hinged frame of a numbered Marc Chagall print. Behind the print was a flat plasma TV. The Night Sniper sat on the sofa, used the remote to find the local channel he favored, then sipped scotch and watched reports on developing breaking news: the Night Sniper had claimed another victim. Cable news already had a photo of the victim, Kelli Wilson. Wonderful! Reporters had tried to interview the victim’s son, Jason, who was still at the scene of his mother’s death, but police kept them away. Police also kept journalists away from investigating officers headed by Captain Vincent Repetto. Repetto had glanced at reporters but refused comment and kept his distance until the body was removed.
Then there was a brief interview with Repetto, heavy midtown traffic moving slowly in the background.
The Night Sniper sat forward and stared at Repetto.
He looks tired. Frustrated. Craggier than ever. Gaunt like a fleet predator. Losing weight? On a worry diet?
Don’t be deceived, overconfident.
The Sniper used the remote to increase the volume.
So it went—not for sure, not imminent, not for sure. The only thing Repetto was sure of was that an arrest was simply a matter of time. Sorry, it was too soon to comment on this latest shooting. Too soon to know anything for sure. He turned away from the microphones.
“Thanks, Captain Repetto!” called the blond woman from Channel One. That surprised the Night Sniper. He’d glimpsed her in the background and assumed she was Zoe Brady, the profiler. Both of them were lookers, and in the reflected roof-bar light of a police car, the blond woman’s hair had appeared red like Zoe’s.
A quick grin from Repetto. “Sure.”
Turn on the charm for that one.
The Night Sniper smiled, sipped, smiled.
Lies, lies, lies ...
This time the theater seat note was found in the orchestra section of the off-off-Broadway theater MindWell: Solving the puzzle should be child’s play.
The play at the MindWell was Ripples, and was about how an abused child grew up to abuse his child.
“Children again,” Meg said, in the gloomy basement confines of the precinct office. “He had to go out of his way again to find a play about children.” She found herself looking at the patch of green mold in a corner near the ceiling. It had grown three or four inches down one of the walls. Some headquarters for a major investigation.
“I still don’t think he was aiming at Jason,” Repetto said.
“Jason was there, though. A child.”
“No denying that.”
Birdy was standing at the narrow sidewalk-level window, staring outside at the gray rain, tapping his foot on the floor, wondering if he should start smoking again. “Lucky Jason,” he said glumly.
Seated at his desk with the lamp on, Repetto was looking at the unpromising results of inquiries into disgruntled present and former city employees. The list of possibilities wasn’t yet half explored.
“Here’s a familiar name,” Repetto said, scanning down the list. “Alex Reyals.”
Now and then, Birdy decided. A cigarette now and then never hurt anyone.
“I’m thinking of taking up smoking again,” he said.
Repetto didn’t react, still staring at the list in front of him.
But Meg looked positively distressed. “I don’t think there’s much future in that,” she said.
Birdy thought it was nice that she cared.
25
1990
Dante Vanya lost his youth in a matter of months. The city saw to that.
Now people looked away from him or through him as he plodded wearily toward the Thirty-third Street subway stop, wearing the ragged clothes he’d stolen or scrounged from curbside trash. He was like all the others now, he thought. What the people he passed saw, if they saw him at all, was simply another lost and damaged human being who could never be fixed. One of a defeated and hopeless army.
They wouldn’t notice Dante was younger than most. His face was dirty, his hair lank and unshorn, his eyes old and hopeless. He was simply another of the city’s sick and despondent , lost and waiting for their time somehow to expire. In Dante’s dismal world everyone was the same age, calculated not from the beginning of life, but from the much more imminent end.
Over the past nine months, since he’d fled terrified from the apartment of his dead mother and his doomed father, Dante learned how to panhandle, then to steal. Then he’d resorted to making money selling sexual services, mostly to male clients. Now his health and appearance had declined so even that was impossible. He knew that if people looked directly at him, he in some way frightened them even through their superiority and disdain. Most of those he implored to help him usually decided not to part with their change as they hurried past.
Dante had been abused and humiliated in every way possible. What was left of him was rock-bottom tough and cynical, and he knew with fierce certainty that his father had been right about this city and the people in it.
In the winter, he’d learned to live underground, in subway tunnels that were abandoned or under construction. There was a dark, rat-and-roach infested city beneath Manhattan, where people kept to themselves as much as possible, preferring their own pain to the dangers of association. Strength was respected there, and privacy was defended. There was little sharing, because no one had anything to share. If crowding was inevitable, which happened if the weather above was severe, it was wise not to sleep. This was especially true on cold winter nights. In the dark shelters belowground, death was always near and not at all selective. Everyone was there for one reason: it was preferable to freezing to death aboveground.
But tonight was warm. And still cloudless. Dante was probably one of the few homeless who happened to have heard the weather report was changed and thunder showers were now in the forecast. The abandoned subway stop might be crowded later tonight, but for a while there should be plenty of space.
When he lifted the two loose boards that allowed entry into the abandoned subway stop, there were only a few other dim figures in the darkness.
He edged around frozen turnstiles and made his way down a still escalator to the platform and tracks. The closest other homeless person to Dante was at least a hundred feet away.
Dante went to the base of the concrete steps leading down to the platform. He’d been here before and knew there was space beneath the steps, where it would be shadowed and darker, more private than simply lying down near one of the steel supporting posts.
He squatted low and stared into the darkness beneath the stairs, making sure the space wasn’t already occupied. Nothing visible. No movement. No sounds of stirring or breathing.
With a quick glance around, he scooted into the narrow space beneath the steps. There was a strong smell of urine there, but it at least overwhelmed the faint odor of rot that might have been something dead.
Dante struggled out of the threadbare jacket he’d been wearing despite the heat—it was always safer to wear what you intended to keep than to carry it—and laid it out on the hard concrete.
His hand brushed something and he jerked it back. Then he reached out cautiously and felt the object.
This was good. Among the trash that littered the floor was an approximately two-foot-square sheet of plastic bubble pack. The bubbles had all been crushed in one corner, but the rest still trapped air and, if the sheet were folded, it would provide a makeshift pillow.
Dante curled on his side on the jacket. He folded the bubble pack in half, then in quarters, and worked it beneath his head.
Soft. Almost like a real pillow.
He settled in and exhaled loudly. This was the first time he’d had a chance to rest since morning, when the cops patrolling the park at dawn failed to notice him. Someone coughed, but the sound came from far away down the tunnel. Dante pressed his legs together and folded his arms, then closed his eyes and lay listening. It was a long time before he fell asleep.
Two hours later Dante awoke from the horrors of his dreams, choking, struggling to breathe, in terrible pain. Around him was light. Dancing shadow.
Fire!
The litter and debris on the tunnel floor was on fire!
So was the plastic bubble pack he was using as a pillow!
Fire!
Pain was his world. Pain and panic.
There was no thought, no plan, only terror and instinct. Dante sprang to his feet, banging his head on the underside of the concrete steps, spun screaming until he had his direction, and ran. There were screams other than his own, other cries for help, but he didn’t hear them or even his own shrill screams as he fled to street level, the smoldering, melted plastic clin
ging to his face like a ferocious, chewing beast that would never let go.
In a way, it never did let go.
Dante learned weeks later that faulty wiring had caused the fire, and that electrical service to the abandoned subway stop should have been shut down months before.
The city’s mistake, and Dante’s bad luck for trespassing.
The city’s mistake.
26
The present
Late morning sunlight seemed to cleanse and purify Park Avenue, glinting off cars and striking silver rays from the buildings towering against a high blue sky. The green ribbon that was the broad avenue’s median looked mowed, trimmed, and freshly planted. New York might have been built yesterday.
Repetto was alone with Meg, driving along Park, Meg at the wheel, when he decided to bring up the subject.
“Do you know who Dwayne Easterbrook is?”
Meg skillfully passed a slow-moving van and slipped back into the stream of traffic. She smiled faintly, pleased by her driving ability. “Sounds familiar.”
“He’s a detective out of Homicide. Melbourne assigned him to help out with the disgruntled former city employee list.”
“And?” Traffic was slowing for the light at the Fifty-third Street intersection.
“He interviewed Alex Reyals yesterday. The former NYPD sharpshooter.”
They were approaching the intersection too fast. Meg braked hard and barely avoided missing the bumper of a cab in front of them that had already stopped for the red light.
“I already talked to Reyals,” she said.
“More than once, according to Easterbrook.”
“Reyals is a suspect.”
“Easterbrook said you talked to him several times.”
Meg stared straight ahead. “Fuck Easterbrook. Where’s he getting his information?”
“From Reyals.”
Meg knew what must have happened. Easterbrook was a good cop and had picked up vibes from Alex. Vibes that suggested there was something more than a cop-suspect relationship between Alex and Meg.