Fear the Night

by John Lutz

  And they’d be motivated.

  He could hear his rasping breath, and every few steps feel the bite of sharp or angled rock beneath his soles.

  What if I turn an ankle now, fall, and become immobile? They’ll have me. Here in the tunnel they’ll do what they choose, their own notion of justice.

  He ignored the rifle barrel bumping his leg beneath his coat and ran harder, careful to avoid the live rail. Like everyone who’d spent time in the subway system, he’d seen the dead rats on the tracks that had died by electrocution, and it was obvious they had left this world in agony.

  His right side began to ache with each step. The intermittent, piercing pain grew sharper, slowing him down, making his stride erratic.

  This is insane! Don’t panic! Don’t!

  Think! Plan!

  He made himself slow to a brisk walk and worked to regulate his breathing. From a pocket he withdrew a fresh magazine for the rifle. He stopped completely for a moment, removed from the rifle the magazine that was missing the bullet he’d fired at Amelia Repetto, and replaced it with the fresh magazine. Soon, any second, every shot might count. The magazine a bullet short went into his pocket. He fitted the rifle back on the sling beneath his coat.

  Under way again, breathing more rhythmically, he picked up his pace and rounded a bend in the tunnel. After another hundred yards he reached a shallow alcove and pressed himself back into it. He switched off the flashlight and tucked it in his belt, then brought the rifle up from beneath his coat.

  Shifting position and bracing himself against hard tile, he raised the rifle and peered through its infrared scope. Whoever was after him would soon be rounding the bend in the tunnel.

  It felt good to be taking the initiative instead of acting, feeling, like a hunted animal. He had options other than mindless flight. He could plan. He could act.

  He could shoot.

  Oh, he could shoot!

  The Night Sniper felt confidence swell in him like a warm revelation. He’d stopped playing their game.

  Now they were playing his.

  Their flashlight beams became visible first. Now that he had a fix on his pursuers, the Sniper raised his eye from the scope and waited.

  Yellow fingers of light played over the tracks and tunnel walls. Then the figures holding the flashlights came into sight in dark silhouette, one quite a bit taller than the other. One of the yellow beams darted close and momentarily reflected off the damp tunnel wall to reveal two uniformed cops. They appeared to have their flashlights in their left hands, their handguns in their right. Their body language gave away their fear.

  The Night sniper squinted again through the night scope and took careful aim. He felt solid, steady, and the moment arrived as he knew it would.

  His first shot took down the tall cop, who seemed to melt into a dark heap.

  The Sniper worked the rifle’s bolt action smoothly, and before the startled shorter cop could get off a shot, sent a bullet into him.

  Through the scope, he studied the two still forms on the ground. The tall one had rolled against the tunnel wall and lay motionless. The short one hadn’t moved since he’d fallen and lay on his back near the tracks. The Sniper knew he’d hit both targets, and considered sending a shot into each of them to make sure they were dead.

  Then he decided against it. If they weren’t dead, they were surely wounded, probably unconscious, and couldn’t keep up with him.

  More confident now, he lowered the rifle and hooked it into its sling, then resumed his journey through the dark tunnel.

  He’d taken only a dozen steps before he felt the cool rush of air that told him a train was bearing down on him, coming toward him.

  No mistake this time.

  Without hesitation he ran back toward the alcove where he’d shot from to bring down the two cops. The rifle bumping against him slowed him down, and he slipped on something and almost fell. He could hear the train now, and feel its subtle vibration. Glancing over his shoulder, he saw a pinpoint of light staring at him like an unblinking hunter’s eye.

  He reached the alcove, ducked into it, and stood with his back pressed tightly against the tile wall as the train roared toward him. The tunnel shook. The wall at his back trembled.

  Then the train was passing him.

  Only a few feet away. How near the passengers were as they blurred past in the lighted cars. He knew he wasn’t visible to them in the black tunnel as they ticked by unaware, kept company by their reflections in the dark glass.

  He’d watched carefully and was sure the conductor in the lead car hadn’t seen him.

  He could still feel the vibration as he listened to the roar of the train become fainter.

  Danger past.

  He let out the breath he’d been holding, though even as he did so he knew something wasn’t right.

  It was the way the train sounded, fainter yet no farther away. And he’d heard an underlying metallic squealing.

  When he stepped from the alcove, he was surprised to see that the train had slowed almost to a stop only a few hundred feet away.

  Okay, he could start running in the opposite direction and there was little chance anyone inside the last car would notice him even if they could see out into the close and ominous darkness.

  Another metallic squeal, and the train began gradually building speed.

  The Night Sniper realized what must have happened; the train had made contact with one or both of the dead cops. He remembered the short one who’d fallen near the tracks. Now the train had worked its way beyond the obstruction and was picking up speed.

  The Night Sniper was amazed how opportunity, fate, always turned out to be his unexpected ally. Amazed but not really surprised. Fortune favored the brave.

  He sprinted toward the last car that was now traveling about five miles per hour. He was aware of something soft beneath his foot as he passed the place where the cops had fallen, and caught a glimpse of the tall cop’s body still huddled against the tunnel wall. He didn’t have time to think about it. The train was picking up speed and he had to lengthen his stride to keep closing the distance to it.

  The pain in his side flared again, threatening to stop him, bend him, break him. He refused to let it. He strained even harder, lifting his knees higher, pumping his legs beneath the tattered coat, ignoring the pain that was like fire in his ribs.

  He was gaining on the car now. Slowly, but he was gaining.

  Lunging, he reached out his hand toward the metal rail on the car’s rear platform. Missed it, stumbled, and almost fell. Ran even harder, reached again, closed his hand over the rail, and squeezed it in a grip that matched its steel.

  With a shout of pain that no one heard, he closed his other hand on the rail, lifted his feet, and dragged himself up onto the car’s narrow back platform.

  He lay there gasping, feeling the train gaining speed, aware of something hard beneath his right hip.

  The rifle! Thank God he hadn’t lost it in his wild dash for the train. The most important train he’d ever caught.

  Rather, it would be if his luck held.

  He rolled over so he could kneel on the lurching platform, then crouch, then slowly stand. He peered through the dirty back window into the lighted subway car.

  His luck hadn’t deserted him!

  There was only one passenger in the rear car, a fiftyish woman slouched in one of the bench seats and reading a paperback book. She was wearing a gray blouse, dirty and wrinkled jeans, and her mouse-colored hair was lank and unkempt. Her ankles were crossed so her knees were separated in a posture that might have been obscene on a younger, more attractive woman. Her shoes were practical black lace-ups that were scuffed and badly worn. There was a faded red scarf or shawl over her shoulders that had fringe on it.

  The woman’s eyes appeared to be closed. At first the Night Sniper thought she might be asleep; then her right hand rose and went to her book, slowly turned a page, and returned to her side and was still. The rest of the woman hadn
’t moved.

  Deep into whatever she was reading, the Night Sniper thought. Good.

  He stood all the way up and opened the door.

  At the motion and sudden rush of sound, the woman raised her gaze from the book and turned her head to look at him. He closed the door and met her bleary-eyed, baleful stare.

  She knows something, everything. On a certain level, she knows.

  He opened his coat and raised the rifle from its sling, bringing it to his shoulder. The woman’s expression remained the same until an instant before he squeezed the trigger. There was a slight change in her eyes—perhaps they widened—and she opened her mouth to speak.

  The train was traveling fast now, making a racket. The shot was barely audible over the clatter of steel on steel. When the bullet tore into the woman’s heart, her body jerked and her book dropped to the floor. She slumped lower on the bench seat, as if settling down awkwardly for a nap.

  The Night Sniper went to her and pulled her up so she was seated somewhat straighter. It was surprising how light she was. He retrieved her book from the floor, glancing at the cover. Six Secrets for Sexual Success. That didn’t seem at all like the woman. He placed her fingers around the cover and propped the book in her dead hands. Her heart had stopped pumping immediately, so there wasn’t much blood. He arranged her fringed red scarf so it tumbled down over her chest, concealing the glistening scarlet stain. With a deft, brushing motion of his fingertips, he closed her eyes.

  Gripping a vertical bar for support, he moved back and surveyed what he’d done. The woman appeared much as she had when he entered the car. She might be sleeping or reading.

  Or dead.

  He glanced again at her book and found himself wondering, what were the six secrets?

  The train rattled on through the dark tunnel toward its next stop. When it arrived, if the platform looked clear enough, the Sniper would get off and make his way up to the street. As sparse as subway passengers were these dangerous nights, it should take quite a while before someone discovered the woman slumped in her seat was dead and not reading or sleeping.

  Whatever the situation at the train’s next stop, the Sniper was sure that if he needed an alternate plan, one would come to him.

  He was confident in a new way and with a new knowledge. It was going to be impossible for Repetto and his minions to bring him down. He understood that now, and the understanding was like a gift granted at birth and finally found. He couldn’t fail and he wouldn’t.

  God or the devil was with him, and he didn’t know or care which.

  63

  “He can’t go far on foot,” Birdy said. “He’s gotta come up at the next stop or the one after.”

  He and Repetto were standing next to the unmarked Ford Victoria Birdy had just arrived in, parked well away from the subway stop where Dillon had burned. They could still hear the siren as the ambulance that had left with Dillon made its way through traffic. They both knew, after having seen and talked with Dillon, that there was no real rush. Nobody in Dillon’s condition could have lived, or would want to live, much longer.

  Three police cruisers were parked near the blackened area on the sidewalk where Dillon had lain, and techs from the crime scene unit were still busily measuring and photographing. Most of the cops were standing back. Two of them were smoking, one a cigarette, the other a cigar. They smoked for good reason. Burning tobacco created a different sort of smoke, with a different sort of odor that was definitely the lesser of two evils.

  Repetto and Birdy were also keeping their distance because of the sweet scent of burnt flesh that hung in the air and became taste at the back of the tongue. The stench was still too cloying and evocative even at this distance. If Repetto had a cigar on him, he would have lit it.

  “He comes to the surface, we’ll get him,” Birdy said confidently.

  “He might branch off and take another tunnel,” Repetto said. He knew Melbourne and some other NYPD brass types would be second-guessing him if the Night Sniper—Dante Vanya—escaped capture or death tonight.

  If they’d kept secret that they had the Sniper’s identity, he might have felt safe and returned to his apartment after his attempt to kill Amelia, and there encountered half the NYPD.

  Repetto had understood his choice and made it. He’d opted to put out the killer’s identity while they had him inside the cordon, rattled and on the run. They had his name and description now; they’d soon track him down. Someone who knew him might call the police. And if he did slip the police tonight, there was always the chance he might still return to his apartment without knowing the media had spread his identity all over the city.

  Odds. Everything was about odds.

  “Wherever our guy is,” Birdy said, “I bet he’s covering ground fast. Gonna make it hard for us.”

  Repetto pulled his cell phone from his pocket and pecked out the number for the Transit Bureau liaison, a lieutenant named Collingwood. He told Collingwood the situation.

  “What he’s doing, running around in those dark tunnels, is damned dangerous,” Collingwood said in a grating voice.

  “I wanna make it even more dangerous for him,” Repetto said. “How trapped is he?”

  “Where he is, there aren’t many transfer points along the way,” Collingwood rasped. “Until he gets to . . .” His voice trailed off as if he might be consulting a map. “. . . Lexington Avenue.”

  Repetto knew the stop, one of the major subway junctions in the city. If the Sniper shook himself loose there, he might slip away. “What trains travel along the tunnel he’s in?” Or at least entered.

  “He’s following a route still used by the E and V lines.”

  “What I want is to flood stops along those lines with cops, along with intersecting lines at transfer points. And soon as possible I want the subway system shut down temporarily for a police action.”

  “I’ll pass along the order for the troops to be deployed,” Collingwood said, “but I think you oughta call Melbourne for authorization to shut down the line.”

  “Not the line,” Repetto said, “the system. I don’t want there to be any possibility the Sniper can get into another tunnel or somehow board a train traveling who knows where.”

  “The entire system? I dunno . . . Like I said, you better call Melbourne.”

  “I’ll call him,” Repetto said. “Then I’ll see your ass is called on the carpet if you don’t shut down the system.”

  “Hold on, now. The whole system can’t be shut down just like that. What you’re asking—”

  Repetto broke the connection and punched out his number for Melbourne.

  “Problem?” Birdy asked, while Repetto was pacing and waiting to get through.

  “Goddamn disconnect,” Repetto said.

  “Phone, you mean?”

  “Fuckin’ bureaucracy!”

  “Ah,” Birdy said, understanding. He started to fidget, drumming his fingertips against each other, gazing up the block toward where Dillon had burned.

  Still with the cell phone pressed to his ear, waiting for an answer, Repetto moved toward the car. “Let’s drive,” he said.

  Birdy stopped fidgeting and stepped off the curb to walk around to the driver’s side. “Where to?”

  Repetto was already lowering his bulk into the car, so Birdy got in behind the wheel before expecting a reply.

  “Melbourne?” Repetto said, as his call was answered. Then to Birdy, his hand over the tiny phone’s flip mouthpiece: “Third and Lex.”

  Approximately two minutes after his conversation with Melbourne, Repetto’s cell phone chirped.

  “Collingwood,” said a phlegmy voice, after Repetto had identified himself.

  Repetto waited, knowing the lieutenant had been contacted by Deputy Chief Melbourne. He didn’t want contrition out of Collingwood, only cooperation. And fast.

  “Conductor on the V train called in a little while ago and said he felt resistance after seeing what looked like a bundle of rags near the tracks.”<
br />
  “He say exactly where?”

  “Not far from the stop where Officer Dillon was burned.”

  Repetto felt his breathing pick up. Any aggravation he’d felt for Collingwood was suddenly gone. Minor. He knew what the bundle must have been. The two uniforms who’d gone into the tunnel after the Night Sniper might no longer be chasing him toward the next stop.

  There’d be no one on the Sniper’s heels now. He’d no longer be panicked—if he ever had been.

  He’d be thinking.

  “Shut down the system,” Repetto said firmly, knowing Melbourne must have phoned this guy and reamed him out. He wouldn’t be so quick to question an order next time.

  “We’re working on it,” Collingwood said, not wanting to give up everything at once.

  Repetto broke the connection and pointed out the windshield toward a van that was blocking traffic on the narrow street. “Go around that asshole.”

  Birdy touched off the siren, put a wheel up on the curb, and went.

  Zoe took another sip of vodka and sat staring at the framed certificates on her office wall. The drapes were closed, the door locked. Private office. Right now it was private. Too warm, but she didn’t notice. Her mind was set in one direction, and she hadn’t had enough drinks for it to change course, or for the pressure that had become a headache behind her right eye to ease.

  All the work she’d done, everything she’d lived for, given so much to accomplish, might be about to collapse in on her and crush her.

  She felt crushed already.

  Another sip. After putting down the glass, she used the tips of her forefingers to massage her temples. Her drinking was out of control and she knew it. Had been out of control for months. That’s what explained the fling with—she knew his name now—Dante Vanya.

  She looked away from the framed affirmations and validations of her scholastic and professional triumphs and stared at the simple memo on her desk. It was from Deputy Chief Melbourne and, in his jagged but readable handwriting, asked if it was consistent with what she knew about the Night Sniper that he might sometimes wear a red wig.