by John Lutz
“You’ve been fucking the Night Sniper,” she said in a stunned voice.
Zoe was calmer, relieved, now that somebody else knew. “I would’ve put it a different way, but yes.”
Weaver sat back and touched a finger to an earlobe, as if she were listening to some faint sound. Maybe the wheels of her mind turning. “He’s been pumping you for information. Literally.”
“Jesus!” Zoe said. “Can’t you think of a better way to put things?”
“No,” Weaver said honestly. “I gotta tell you, you’re in deep ... well, you’re in quicksand.”
“And breathing through a straw.”
“I’ve got my responsibilities,” Weaver said, still trying to digest this, figure it out.
“That’s what I wanted to talk to you about.”
“I’m sure he never gave you his real name.”
“He was just Otto—or Ott—for a while. Then that name he signed in with at the Marimont.”
“He’s quite the gamester, our killer.” Weaver wondered if this information, sensational though it might be, was going to be useful, or simply embarrassing and destructive to Zoe. A police profiler sleeping with the killer she was profiling. An earthquake for Zoe, but maybe nothing much for the investigation. Simply another of the Sniper’s infuriating taunts.
“I need your help,” Zoe said.
Uh-oh. Weaver looked at her. “I think I know the kinda help you want. You don’t want to tell Repetto or Melbourne about this.”
“Them or anyone else.”
“And you want me to keep quiet.”
“Yes.”
“This is bound to come out, Zoe.”
“Eventually, yes. Unless the Sniper is never caught, or is killed rather than be captured.”
Weaver was still trying to get a handle on this, figure out where Zoe was going with it. “Why me? Why did you tell me?”
“We’re both smart, ambitious women in more or less the same field.”
“Wouldn’t deny it.”
“We can help each other,” Zoe said. “This could be a career maker for you, and a way for me to solve my dilemma.”
“The Sniper must know you’re on to him now.”
“Yeah. I won’t see him again. I hope to hell I never see him.”
“If you simply wanted me to keep mum,” Weaver said, “we wouldn’t be sitting here talking.” Another sip of Coke. “Why should I give you anything? And what do you want other than my silence?”
“I think I can give you a direct way to discover the identity of the Night Sniper. You can make the collar every cop in the city dreams about. Think of the publicity and career advancement.”
“I’m not agreeing to do or not do anything at this point, but I’m interested. You told me why, now tell me what.”
“First I want information. Were my fingerprints found in that hotel suite at the Marimont?”
“Not unless it’s being kept secret. Course, Latent Print Section isn’t done, but the room looked like it was wiped clean of prints with damp towels. Do you remember what you touched?”
“Bathroom fixtures for sure. And the . . . headboard.”
“Headboard was wiped clean of prints. His must’ve been on it, too.”
“They were,” Zoe said, looking at the table, yearning for a long pull of that Guinness.
“Everything you touched that he might have, he wiped clean,” Weaver said. “He was thorough.” She was wondering if she’d already decided to agree to Zoe’s proposition. She leaned forward, her elbows on the table. “Listen, did you ever suspect this guy? I mean, all the time he was putting the wood to you . . . the night he tried to kill the mayor?”
“Never. And I’d had too much to drink that night. He saw to it.”
Weaver leaned back and crossed her arms. “I’ve got another question.”
“You don’t have to ask. Yes, we did it in my bed several times, but considering who he was—is—I’m sure he was just as careful about not leaving prints in my apartment.”
“It’d still be worth a look. LPS can work miracles.”
“I think we can keep it a more closely held secret than if we gave my apartment prints to the lab,” Zoe said. She reached down to where a plastic Barnes & Noble bag containing a laptop computer was leaning against her chair and lifted it to set it on the table. “I got up one night to use the bathroom and was sure my laptop had been moved. I felt it, and it was still warm from use. Didn’t think much of it at the time. Ott—he—was asleep, so I figured maybe he’d used it, but so what? He didn’t know my password to get online, but maybe he wanted to go online with his service, check his e-mail or something. I forgot to ask him about it in the morning. But I think now, since he was using me to gain information . . .”
“Yeah, it’s a sure bet he figured out a way to hack into your computer.”
“He had to touch the thing all over, the case, the keys. But he’d figure I’d handle it and smudge all the prints within a few days. I didn’t, though. Not much, anyway. Soon as I realized what must have happened, I made sure I didn’t touch it again. It’s smooth plastic that’ll hold prints like glass. Even if he wiped it down carefully, there’s a good chance he missed a few prints. Gotta wipe it with the lid up, with the lid down. All those keys. It’s not easy to be sure you got everything. The rest of my apartment, if he didn’t wipe it, I did, while cleaning or accidentally, or at least I must have smudged everything over the past week or so.”
“And I don’t suppose you two ever went to his place, or we wouldn’t be having this conversation.”
“Never. For obvious reasons, he always had an excuse. He made sure that when we parted I’d know nothing about him.”
“So what’s the plan?” Weaver asked, already guessing but wanting to hear it from Zoe.
“Mine and his are the only prints that should be on this laptop. You dust it yourself and take any prints you find other than mine and run them through records. If you get a match, you have the identity of the Night Sniper. Later, if you have to explain where you got a print to match, you can say you went to his house or apartment earlier as part of your search for amateur or pro competition shooters. He wasn’t home, and you lifted the prints from the doorknob or his mailbox. Very industrious of you, but you’ve got that reputation.”
“I know my reputation. Is this guy a shooter—I mean, some kind of hunter or shooting sports competitor?”
“I don’t know. He must be. And it wouldn’t surprise me if he’s got a gun collection. He’s got the money.”
“You sneak a peek at his bankbook?”
“I didn’t have to. I could tell. He was money. Not necessarily born to it, but money.”
Weaver thought about it. The world might be opening up to her here. With even a partial print, she might be able to get a name and address or both; then she could make the collar, say she came across the suspect in her search for target shooters. He must be an expert shooter of some sort. She could spook him, then say his behavior under her questioning prompted her to arrest him. She could say he panicked and bolted and she’d stopped him. If he denied it later in court, who’d believe him? And she bet she could panic him. As for Zoe, he’d wiped the hotel suite clean of prints, so there’d be no evidence that she was ever there. And the laptop prints—if there were any—would be Zoe and Weaver’s secret.
“Can we work together to the benefit of both of us?” Zoe asked. “My salvation and your career path?”
Weaver carefully lifted the plastic bag containing the computer by its handle and stood. She smiled down at Zoe, looking surprisingly young and pretty in the restaurant’s soft light. “I think we should see where it takes us.”
Neither woman had to tell the other they were in it together now.
“I’ll keep you posted,” Weaver said. She turned and walked out the door with the laptop.
The restaurant was starting to get busy now. People wanted to eat and get home before it became really dark. A waiter led two men in business suits to a nearby ta
ble. They were laughing and yammering about some kind of deal they’d pulled off. Some guy they referred to as a schmuck had signed a contract not in his best interest. Unwise arrangements were made all the time.
Zoe knocked back the rest of her beer and got out of there.
55
Bobby noticed the police cruiser approaching but ignored it, continuing along the sidewalk with his dejected, shuffling gait. It wasn’t much of a stretch for him to act harmless, he realized ruefully. His joints did ache, especially his hip, and there was that recurring pain low in his gut that he suspected might be his appendix acting up. Medical insurance was a dream to Bobby, but at least if the damned thing burst he might be able to get himself to a hospital emergency room soon enough to stop the poison from spreading and killing him.
He sensed rather than saw the cruiser slow as it passed him; then it picked up speed and turned the corner two intersections up. Bobby was sure the officers in the car hadn’t paid much attention to him; he wasn’t the only person on the block. It was even possible the car had slowed down so the cops could appraise the lean Hispanic man down the street, wearing jeans and a numbered sleeveless jersey, dribbling a basketball and dashing around as if to take shots at an imaginary basket fixed somewhere above the concrete stoop of the nearest building. Serial killers had adopted stranger disguises.
Bobby continued to roam with apparent aimlessness, making circuitous routes around the Repetto apartment but keeping his distance. Everything in the neighborhood seemed normal, but he could feel something in the air. It was almost the way it felt years ago, just before a tornado touched down near him in Illinois. Or that time in Philadelphia, minutes before a big warehouse robbery and shoot-out.
He knew this was different. And the Sniper seemed to want his prospective victims, the city itself, to sweat. He was a sadist, though he might not think so. And not stupid. Anxious, but not eager. Probably nothing would happen tonight.
Yet there was that feeling . . . Bobby’s cop’s instincts reawakened.
With all the security for Amelia Repetto, the precinct basement office was deserted. Glad of the fact, Weaver sat hunched over the glowing computer on the desk. The air in the office was damp and stale and smelled faintly of insecticide or disinfectant, but she didn’t notice.
Weaver hadn’t been able to lift any prints from Zoe’s laptop. But she wasn’t an expert, and now that she was in league with Zoe, she didn’t want to give up on their scheme. She decided to take someone else into her confidence, someone who couldn’t and wouldn’t reveal any involvement.
Weaver had once been embroiled in a torrid love affair with a married tech in Latent Prints, so she managed to get a confidential rush job on the laptop. The tech was a man with three kids, still with his longtime wife, so he knew how to keep a secret. Weaver wasn’t worried about him talking.
Zoe had spoken the truth. There had been only two sets of prints on the laptop. But there had been only three prints total, very faint. Two, on the keys, had been Zoe’s. The remaining print, on the bottom of the computer, was missed when the laptop was obviously wiped down.
It didn’t take much time for Weaver to run the print through Central Records Division and come up with the name Dante Vanya. He’d been fingerprinted on a prostitution charge, which was later dropped, in 1989 as a juvenile. Still as a boy, his prints went on record again when he was in the jurisdiction of the New York Administration for Children’s Services, in 1990, after a lengthy hospital stay.
Fascinated, hopeful, Weaver did a search on Vanya and found city records revealing that he’d been treated for burns and later placed in the care of a guardian ad litem, while a trespassing-on-city-property charge was considered. In this case the guardian was a charitable foundation called the Strong Society that provided a home for the boy while he recuperated from his burns. Custody had become long-term. Dante had remained a resident of the Strong Society until he attained legal adulthood.
More computer work. Weaver thought, not for the first time, that the Internet was a wondrous thing. The Strong Society had operated a rehabilitation ranch for children in Arizona that filed for Chapter Eleven in 2001. The steward and CEO of the foundation, Adam Strong, had subsequently committed suicide.
Weaver could feel her heart beating faster. She was closing in on something. Every instinct in her body told her so.
She did a computer search on Adam Strong, her fingers darting over the keyboard almost of their own volition.
Within twenty minutes she found him. Adam Wellmont Strong had been born poor but became a wealthy man in the steel fabrication industry during World War Two. He’d died in 1987 at the age of seventy-nine.
Not Weaver’s Adam Strong.
Discouraged for the first time since she’d logged on to the computer, Weaver desperately clicked on various links—until a name jumped out at her: Adam Wellmont Strong, Jr.
She was back on point, squirming now in her chair with eagerness.
Quite a guy, Adam Strong, Jr. He’d been a star quarterback in high school in Flagstaff, Arizona, then suffered a knee injury that ended football for him. But it didn’t stop him from attending college, graduating with honors, then spending two years in the Peace Corps. After the Peace Corps, he’d done some government social work, obtaining mortgage loans for low-income families, then gone to work for his wealthy father’s foundation. While doing social work, he won several skeet and target shooting titles, then had become an alternate shooter on the U.S. Olympic team.
Weaver found herself grinning wide enough to make her face hurt.
After his father’s death, Adam, Jr., inherited both the position as head of the foundation as well as the family land in Arizona, where he created the Strong Society Ranch.
Where Dante Vanya had spent some of his formative years.
Weaver needed to learn more about Dante Vanya. After a more thorough search, she uncovered a New York Times article about a homeless boy who’d been badly burned in a subway station fire. A subsequent article revealed that the boy’s father, a former New York Department of Sanitation worker, had murdered his wife, who was Dante’s mother, then shot himself.
Weaver leaned back from the computer, staring at the monitor. Though the past few hours had required practically no physical energy, she found herself exhausted. Now the air in the office did seem stifling. She was perspiring and her breathing was ragged.
Almost there.
Calmer now, she used the computer to check the various online borough phone books.
No Dante Vanya.
But he could be using a different name. Or simply have an unlisted number.
Weaver went from online phone directories to actual various cross and residence directories.
Dante Vanya didn’t have a listed phone number, but he did have an address on the Upper East Side of Manhattan.
She didn’t want to get her hopes too high, but how many Dante Vanyas could there be?
Weaver couldn’t stop staring at the address as she went over what she’d learned about Dante Vanya. A homeless kid; then, judging by his present address, he’d obtained wealth. After the murder of his mother and suicide of his father, a New York City sanitation employee, Dante had spent time on the streets, then in the custody of a world-class competition shooter.
The boy’s relationship with Adam Strong, who possibly taught him to shoot, might have been surrogate son to father. Then Strong, like Dante’s real father, had committed suicide.
Dante was an Upper East Side New York resident who could probably afford an extensive firearms collection.
Dante might very well be a crack marksman.
Dante’s fingerprint was on Zoe Brady’s computer.
Gotcha!
Weaver knew she should act fast, not because Dante Vanya was likely to bolt, but because the longer she kept this hot information to herself, the more explaining she might have to do.
She was going to hold what she knew close, then act on it.
Zoe had been right a
bout something else. It would be a career maker for any cop who made the Night Sniper collar.
And I have his name and address!
It took Weaver’s nimble and ambitious mind only a few minutes to decide on a cover story. She would stay with the one that had occurred to her even as she was talking with Zoe. After the arrest, she’d maintain that Vanya’s name had cropped up when she was investigating target shooters. She’d tracked down his address, then gone there to question him. During their conversation, she began to suspect him more and more as he’d become increasingly nervous and evasive, and when he panicked and bolted, she’d stopped him—either with a shout or a warning shot—then cuffed him and read him his rights. The fact that he ran would open all the legal doors and ensure his conviction.
The only problem was in getting him to bolt.
The only question was whether she would shoot him if he refused to bolt.
She was sure that if she had to make such a decision, it would be the right one.
56
Meg looked up from the sofa, where she’d been sitting watching but not seeing television with the sound off.
There was Amelia, back in the living room. Pretty college girl, showing some fear in her eyes. Meg thought it might be because the reality of the situation was catching up with her. Meg thought Amelia was that dangerous combination of young and nuts, not brave. In her place, Meg would have gotten as far away from New York and the Night Sniper as possible.
Amelia still looked a bit rumpled and disheveled from sleep, but this time she’d left the ice pack behind. She was wearing fluffy white slippers that made her feet look gigantic.
“Headache better?” Meg asked.
“Not much, and it’s constant. But I’m tired of lying around in the dark and waiting for it to go away.” Amelia’s gaze went to the silent TV. “Anything new?”
“New?”
“About the Night Sniper. You’re watching the news.”
“Oh! So I am. Not really, though. I was just sitting here thinking. Anyway, when there’s news on the Sniper, we should hear it before they do.” Meg nodded toward the anchorwoman mouthing silently on-screen.