by John Lutz
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. She 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 throug
h 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 of 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.
A dusty cab roared past. Its driver ignored Evans’s wave. Evans hadn’t seen a passenger in the back of the cab. He felt a tingle of anger.
New York. Get used to it.
Another cab without a passenger sped past. This time the driver glanced over at Evans but didn’t stop.
What is it, the roof light’s on when they have a fare or a call, or is it off? Bastards probably don’t bother with it anyway.
The light changed at the corner, and a cab in the far lane darted out ahead of the accelerating traffic and crossed in front of it at an angle, speeding toward Evans and his wife. The driver must have seen them waving for the other cab. This cab drew a few angry horn blasts as it veered toward the curb to pick them up, then coasted smoothly to a stop alongside where they were standing.
Evans opened the back door and stepped back for Venus to enter first.
She got into the cramped space, smelling leather and some kind of cologne or perfume from the previous passenger. The driver had classical music playing softly, a piano concerto, and it was warm in the cab.
Venus worked herself across the slick seat to give Ralph room.
He had one foot in the cab and was lowering himself to slide across the seat toward her, when she heard him grunt. Almost at the same time there was what sounded like a crack of thunder, but she couldn’t tell where it had come from, the way it echoed. People on the sidewalks seemed to stop or break stride, and the cabdriver hunkered down on the other side of the clear panel that separated him from his passengers.
Ralph removed his shiny black shoe from the cab and she thought he was going to stand up straight so he could see what had made the noise. Instead he slumped down and fell forward so the upper part of his body was inside the cab, the lower half in the gutter. His head was in Venus’s lap, turned so she could see his face. He looked puzzled and scared.
“Ralph. .?” she heard herself say. Something dark and heavy weighted his name and made it difficult to forge into sound.
“Ralph?”
He tried to answer, but when he opened his mouth blood gushed out.
Venus began screaming his name over and over.
The Night Sniper thought at first he might have missed, and his target would climb into the cab and be driven away.
Then the target seemed to change his mind about getting into the cab with the woman. He removed the one foot he’d put inside and started to straighten up; then he bent forward and almost dived back into the cab, leaving his lower body outside the vehicle. The Night Sniper could tell by the way the target’s legs shuffled, as if he were dreaming of walking, then were still in an awkward, splayed position, that his bullet had found its mark.
The target was dead.
The Night Sniper had seen enough. He was satisfied. He backed away from the parapet and the steel framework supporting the billboard. It took him only a second to find the expelled brass casing and slip it into a pocket.
Moving with practiced precision and speed, he disassembled the rifle and fit stock and barrel into his backpack. He was still zipping the pack closed as he strode across the roof toward the service door.
He opened the door, then removed the rectangle of tape he’d used to block the spring lock.
The heavy door closed itself silently behind him, as he worked his arms through the pack’s thick straps and wrestled its familiar bulk onto his back.
He made it to the lobby unseen, and few people glanced at him as he stepped out into the street. Those who did glance would wonder what such a person was doing in the lobby; then they would forget him almost instantly, reject him.
As he strode along the sidewalk, the people around him seemed slowed and erratic in their movements. Frightened.
Not wanting to be noticeable, he made himself slow to below their speed and assumed his unsteady, shuffling gait.
Sirens were wailing now, yodeling through the backed-up traffic. They didn’t bother the Night Sniper. The vehicles sounding the sirens were making their way toward the commotion down the block, where blinking and dancing red and blue lights dashed formless, flickering shapes against the buildings.
Behind him.
14
Meg stood with Repetto and Birdy on West Forty-fourth Street, near the stain remaining on the sidewalk where Ralph Evans’s body had lain after it was dragged from the cab. Traffic slowed as it passed and drivers glanced over at the scene.
They knew. It was obvious from their expressions. Less than an hour had passed since it had happened, and already what promised to be the latest Night Sniper murder was on the news. There were still several reporters and a cable TV camera crew milling around behind the police cordon. One of the journalists, an on-camera, handsome guy Meg recognized because of his cleft chin and million-dollar haircut, caught her eye, grinned, and beckoned her over, knowing she wouldn’t fall for it.
Venus Evans’s story had been straightforward and simple: her husband was getting into the cab when he grunted and then collapsed half in and half ou
t of the vehicle. She was back at her hotel now, being comforted by her other traveling companions.
It was apparent that the Night Sniper had struck, so when the shot was fired no one assumed Evans had suffered a heart attack or some other sudden illness. Instead of good Samaritans rushing to his aid, everyone remained hunkered down, fearing a second shot, or had disappeared into shops or doorways. Only Venus and the cabbie remained near Evans, Venus screaming for help while the cabbie pulled Evans from the taxi and laid him on the sidewalk. The cabbie was ex-military and knew immediately that Evans was dead.
“Doesn’t look like there are as many people on the streets as there should be,” Birdy said, glancing around.
Meg looked up and down the block and thought he was right. “Murder will do that, I guess.” But the ambulance had left only fifteen minutes ago with Evans’s body, and she knew the theater district, the city, would soon return to normal. Normal considering there was a serial killer at large, randomly taking lives.
Birdy buttoned his suit coat so the breeze wouldn’t cause it to flap open and reveal his holstered 9mm. “He’s like the Grim Reaper. I mean, he could harvest anyone at any time.”
“Very biblical,” Meg said.
“Where do you suppose the Grim Reaper concealed himself this time when he swung his scythe?” Repetto asked. He’d been figuring how the bullet must have entered Evans. It was difficult to judge the angle of the shot, since the cabbie had dragged the body from his taxi.
“What witnesses we have all give the same story,” Birdy said. “There was the sound of the shot, echoing all over the place, and they ducked down or got to cover. When a few minutes passed, they poked their heads up and some of them heard Mrs. Evans screaming and saw Evans on the sidewalk with the cabbie standing over him.”
Repetto had talked briefly to Venus Evans, who was in shock now that she’d come down from her hysteria. The Ohio couple who’d traveled to New York with the Evanses related how the four of them had come to the city, and told about the coin toss and that Ralph and Venus were on their way to TKTS to buy show tickets.