Fear the Night

by John Lutz

  “How’s she doing?”

  “Good, good, fine.” Britain had his cap on and was moving toward the door. “I’ll tell her you asked about her.”

  “Do that,” O’Day said. “Give her my best. She’s a fine woman just for putting up with you.”

  “Couldn’t argue with that,” Britain said, and was out into the night.

  O’Day sat for a moment looking at the framed photo of Derek Jeter smiling at him from beneath his NYPD cap.

  Not thinking about Jeter, though. Thinking about Bobby Mays, about what there was in the poor young guy that made it impossible for O’Day simply to dismiss him from his mind.

  Should he believe Mays was sane enough to make sense?

  Maybe.

  Buy into what Mays had said to Britain?

  Maybe.

  O’Day was a man who recognized a fork in the road when he came upon one, especially one that might skewer him. He knew he’d be sticking out his neck if he called about Mays’s conversation with Britain and got everyone including God and the NYPD stirred up over nothing. Mays was, after all, a homeless man who apparently hallucinated. But considering his previous contact with Mays, maybe O’Day’s neck would be stuck out even further if he didn’t call and the Sniper took a shot at Amelia Repetto.

  Maybe was reason enough.

  He picked up the phone.

  59

  Repetto listened carefully on his cell phone to what Melbourne was telling him. He found himself gripping the phone too hard and made a conscious effort to loosen the pressure of his thumb.

  When Melbourne was finished, Repetto waited a few seconds, then said, “To sum it up, we’ve got a homeless man who admittedly hallucinates telling us the Night Sniper is in the neighborhood, might be carrying a rifle, and might be moving toward Amelia.”

  Melbourne had known Repetto too long to be surprised by this note of skepticism. “We both know it’s something more than that.”

  “Do we?”

  “I know what you’re doing,” Melbourne said. “You’re trying to play devil’s advocate. Okay, I’ll go along. Our homeless man’s an ex-cop—”

  “Says he is.”

  “Okay, says so. This is the second time he’s reported seeing this guy who doesn’t set right with him as one of the homeless, thinks he might be a phony. Both sightings were when the Night Sniper might have been in the area.”

  “Might.”

  “Always,” Melbourne said. “Something else. We both know what it takes to prompt somebody like this Bobby Mays to contact the police. We’re the people who roust him for loitering or panhandling, make his life even harder. Still, he did his ex-cop citizen’s duty.”

  “All kinds of psychos,” Repetto said, “imagining and doing all kinds of things.”

  “All kinds, yes. But Mays isn’t imagining he was a cop. Philadelphia P.D. says he was one of theirs, and a good one till a family tragedy put him on the skids.”

  Repetto’s mind was working furiously, listening to Melbourne while unconsciously shuffling facts, priorities, and nuances, trying to synthesize what he knew with what he felt, which was often simply knowing on a deeper level.

  “That all we got?” he asked.

  “’Bout it.”

  “No, it isn’t,” Repetto said, switching positions with Melbourne. “We’ve got what Sergeant Dan O’Day’s gut tells him.”

  “That make it enough?” Melbourne asked. “What a veteran cop senses is the ore in the rock?”

  “I know O’Day slightly. Times I’ve seen him, he struck me as the type who lives the Job.”

  “I know him more than slightly,” Melbourne said. “He’s what you’re talking about. He’s a good cop. A good man. Ground smooth but not down.” Melbourne was silent for a couple of beats. “He’s not so unlike you, Vin. I’m gonna let this be your call.”

  “I’m calling it,” Repetto said. “We’re going on the assumption the Sniper’s in the trap. Let’s spring it. Send what we have. We’ll cordon off the neighborhood and tighten the perimeter while we search the surrounded area.”

  “Done,” Melbourne said. “Call Amelia and whoever you have posted there and alert them to what’s going on.”

  “Soon as this conversation’s finished,” Repetto said, and broke the connection.

  His blood was racing but his mind was calm. This was what he used to live for, this moment when the balance might be shifting, when he could feel it shifting. Everything was suddenly gaining momentum in the same direction, rushing toward the telling instant, like a narrowing focus that would achieve laser intensity. The grueling teamwork of the past long weeks, the breakthroughs and revelations large and small, were all converging.

  O’Day’s gut instinct had become Repetto’s.

  As he pecked out Amelia’s number on his cell phone, Repetto knew that if it weren’t for the danger to Amelia, he’d be loving this.

  The Night Sniper was confident as he walked the dark streets of the West Eighties. His opponents knew now where he’d fired from when the mayor was shot, and had his general, useless description, compliments of the Marimont desk clerk. All the better, that description. The contrast between the Marimont shooting and what was about to happen to Amelia Repetto would be too much of a gap for them to leap. As would the contrast between the perceived shooters. Homeless people didn’t take suites at the Marimont Hotel. The police knew how wealthy he really was, and their mental image of him would be that of a cultured, influential man in a tailored suit, not one of the helpless and homeless wandering the avenues.

  Tonight, in his worn-out clothes, his tattered long raincoat concealing his rifle, he was treading the stage in costume perfect for the role. Beneath the darkened faux stubble that would wipe off easily, he couldn’t contain a thin smile. He feared his pursuers, feared the psychotically resolute Repetto especially, but he did love the game.

  When he reached a dark passageway, he glanced about, then entered the shadows and became one. The narrow passageway would take him to the next block, where he knew he could enter an apartment building through a side door whose lock he’d already neutralized.

  Good! He was sure no one had seen him entering the building. There was a laundry room in the basement, and he had to get past its door without being noticed. An obvious vagrant in the building would inspire curiosity if not immediate alarm.

  His luck held like an omen. Caution wasn’t necessary here. No one was washing or drying tonight.

  With a small pair of wire cutters from a coat pocket, he disabled the fire alarm system. He entered the interior fire escape stairwell without an alarm sounding and made his way to the third floor. Already in his hand was the key to the sparsely furnished apartment a handsome young executive about to be transferred to New York had subleased for a year. Of course, the information given to the apartment’s primary lessee, who’d placed an ad in the Times, was false, but that didn’t matter now. The information was backed up by competently forged identification, and a deposit check the Sniper knew had cleared a Los Angeles bank. The useless rental agreement would become known within a matter of weeks, but that was okay.

  The Sniper had required use of the apartment for only a short time. For the few visits he’d made in order to prepare.

  And for tonight.

  The apartment was in a vine-covered four-story brownstone diagonally across the street from Amelia Repetto’s apartment, three buildings down the block. Though it was on the third floor, observation had convinced the Sniper he could have a clear shot into Amelia’s lower-level living room, and into one of the bedrooms.

  He went to the window overlooking the street and raised it about six inches, adjusted the blinds, and sat down in a small but comfortable wing chair he’d pulled close. From where he sat he could peer down the street at Amelia’s apartment and calculate his shot if the opportunity arose. The angle was acute, but his field of fire would cover approximately a third of both rooms. The challenge was certainly easier than that which he’d faced when he m
ade the mayor a target.

  He settled into the softly upholstered chair and propped the Webb-Blakesmith rifle against one of its arms, where he could easily snatch it up.

  Though he was relaxed, he was alert, listening to the faint sounds of the city he’d slowed, and the subtle noises of the old building.

  He was confident Amelia Repetto was in her apartment across the street. She would be closely guarded, not only by cops on the street, but probably by someone in the apartment with her.

  But nobody was careful all the time. The Sniper had tonight and several more nights before the risk of occupying the subleased apartment would become too great to justify. Plenty of time.

  Patience ...

  A shooter’s patience was usually rewarded.

  It was merely a matter of waiting.

  Parked across the street from Dante Vanya’s apartment, Officer Nancy Weaver glanced at her unmarked’s dashboard clock and decided this had gone far enough. She could afford to wait no longer. She had to cover her ass and make the best of what she had.

  She’d actually realized this fifteen minutes ago and had been reasoning it out. She’d go back into the Elliott Arms, as a cop this time, and bullshit the doorman and whoever else needed bullshitting to give her access to Vanya’s apartment. Once inside, she could maybe find what she needed in order to contact Repetto, who could then obtain a warrant and prompt a wider search.

  Not quite legal, Weaver knew. If she found nothing suspicious in Vanya’s apartment, she’d politely thank everyone involved, make her exit, and hope for the best. Which would be that an infuriated honest citizen named Dante Vanya wouldn’t complain to the department.

  If she did find something definitive and incriminating, it might save Amelia Repetto’s young life; then Repetto, with Melbourne’s help, could smooth out any problems she might have with improper entry.

  Like hell he could.

  But being responsible for nailing the Night Sniper could overwhelm a lot of mistakes and make a lot of things right.

  What she was about to do was risky and Weaver knew it. She also knew she was at a point in her career where it was time to take a risk.

  And she knew this bastard was the Night Sniper.

  Taking a chance, though. Hell of a chance . . .

  Weaver glanced across the street at the grandly uniformed doorman standing like a sentinel at the building entrance, looking intimidating, or trying to. He’d be good at his job, but Weaver figured she could get around him, win him over, bully him if she had to do it that way. Who’d he think he was, anyway? Big jerk-off standing there like the president of some country with weapons of mass destruction. She had the entire force of the NYPD behind her. Fuck him!

  She summoned up her most official attitude, put her shield on display, and climbed out of the car.

  60

  Amelia’s relentless pacing was beginning to get on Meg’s nerves. The regular prushh, prushh, prushh of her slipper soles on the carpet was almost constant. Twenty-one-year-olds were restless, Meg reminded herself, even if they weren’t sniper targets.

  It meant Meg could never relax. There was always the danger that Amelia would wander into a far part of the apartment alone and do something foolish, or peer out a window before Meg could stop her, or instinctively answer a knock on the door that led out onto the exposed stoop and sidewalk.

  Local news was on TV with the sound off, but there was plenty to learn from the crawl at the bottom of the screen or by lipreading the anchorwoman. Meg, seated on the sofa and trying to keep one eye on Amelia and the other on the TV, decided that all the silent information insinuating itself into the living room might be too much. She used the remote to flip through the channels, stopping at a 1970s repeat of The Price is Right. It was all about profoundly excited people who needed haircuts and wore starched-looking loud clothes. They were ecstatic about prizes received if they came closest at guessing prices. Everything in life had its price, Meg reflected. And coming close was about as well as you could do.

  Meg’s cell phone chimed and Amelia stopped pacing. She stared as Meg pressed the phone to her ear and listened to Repetto.

  “We’re on high alert,” Repetto said.

  He told Meg about Bobby Mays, and the homeless man who didn’t quite fit even in Bobby’s remote and lonely world.

  “Doesn’t sound like enough,” Meg said, imagining dozens of RMP cars and scores of uniformed and plainclothes cops silently closing in on the blocks surrounding where she was sitting. They’d soon establish a loose cordon around the area; then they would inexorably tighten it. Inside its perimeter, others would position themselves near subway and bus stops, halt vehicles at intersections for traffic checks, or walk the neighborhood searching for the homeless man with a rifle who might be real.

  Whoever the Night Sniper was—and Meg had private doubts about this homeless guy another of the homeless had described—if he knew the forces closing in on him, he’d wish he’d chosen another night.

  “Amelia holding up all right?” Repetto asked.

  “Well as can be expected.” Meg decided not to mention Amelia’s incessant pacing, or the growing apprehension Amelia would describe as simply nerves. Better than simply terror.

  “Everything still tight there?”

  “Like the city budget. Don’t worry about this end.”

  Repetto hung up without asking to talk with Amelia. Things were moving fast and he was busy, his thoughts concentrated. He had to stay that way to remain on top of events that might be about to give him quite a ride. Meg understood. Amelia wouldn’t.

  “Who was it?” Amelia asked, watching Meg clip the phone back on her belt.

  “Your dad. I think he had more to say, but he got called away.”

  “So why’d he call?”

  Meg told her.

  “He puts a lot of faith in what he calls instinct,” Amelia said. “Or hunches.” She began to pace again. Prushh, prushh . . . “It’s really just subconscious reasoning, what your mind knows before it lets you in on the secret.”

  Maybe she would understand.

  Meg decided it might be a good idea if they talked about this. She switched off the distracting TV, where a woman in an evening gown was grinning and caressing a refrigerator as if she were in love. Woman and appliance shrank and disappeared in a point of light.

  When Meg looked away from the blank screen, Amelia was approaching a window and reaching for the heavy closed drapes so she could part them and peer out.

  Meg was instantly up out of the sofa, crossing the room swiftly but smoothly, so she didn’t spook Amelia and cause her to yank at the drape.

  She saw Amelia’s fingers close on the thick velvet material and moved faster so she could rest a hand on her shoulder.

  “Amelia, don’t—”

  There was an almost inaudible snick! from the other side of the drape, and the unmistakable crack of a rifle shot echoed along the street.

  Meg saw the shock on Amelia’s face, the pattern of blood on her left cheek.

  Then Meg was sitting on the floor, dragging Amelia down with her.

  It all seemed to be happening slowly, but disjointedly in a way that ate up time.

  Shouts from outside. Running footfalls. Leather soles shuffling on concrete. The doorbell chiming over and over. A pounding on the door.

  Meg looked again at Amelia, who was sitting hugging her knees and staring wide-eyed back at her, still with the stunned expression. And something else. A kind of horror mixed with pity.

  A pain in Meg’s right shoulder made her gasp, and she curled to lie on her side on the deep, roughly napped carpet. She felt for her shoulder and found fiery pain. Blood was thick and scarlet on her fingers, and now she felt the warmth of fresh blood between her breasts, trickling down her ribs beneath her left arm. Her life trickling away.

  “Christ! I’ve been shot. . . .”

  “Stay still,” Amelia said, calmer now, suddenly older than twenty-one and in charge. Her face was bloody, cut
by flying glass. A small shard protruded from just below her left eye. “I’ll get help.”

  “Careful. . . . ”

  Amelia nodded as she scooted away, staying low, passing out of sight because Meg was too weak to turn her head to follow her movements.

  I’ve been shot . . . Can’t be . . . So many things left to do . . .

  Motion. Shiny black shoes near her. Big. Men’s shoes. Cop’s shoes.

  Jesus! That’s reassuring. . . .

  A cop’s face looming over her. Knickerbocker’s.

  Mr. Chicken.

  Exhausted, no longer in pain, Meg closed her eyes.

  The Night Sniper knew he’d missed. He’d tried to make a head shot and failed. Carelessness of a sort. Or unlucky.

  Something made the blond woman in the window, who had to be Amelia Repetto, suddenly move—only a few inches, but enough to save her life. Life was always a matter of inches.

  Lucky Amelia.

  This time.

  There’ll be another time.

  Right now the challenge was to get out of the subleased apartment fast. He’d gone over it all in his mind, so his actions were almost automatic. He moved quickly and deliberately, a part of his mind seconds, minutes ahead of where he was and what he was doing.

  This rifle had a bolt action, so the Sniper didn’t have to use valuable time retrieving a shell casing; it remained in the breech. There weren’t as many tall buildings in this area as downtown, which meant the echo effect wasn’t as great. It wouldn’t take his opponents long to locate the source of the shot. If he weren’t fast enough they’d be on his heels.

  It was their time of temporary advantage in the game.

  Their move.

  His risk.

  Even as he was reviewing this in his mind, he was heading toward the door to the hall.

  He took the fire stairs fast, this time not caring if he made noise.