Fear the Night n-5

by John Lutz

  “He was about to take a sip of coffee,” Repetto said. “Sitting ramrod straight, according to his fiancee.”

  “Almost fiancee,” Meg corrected. “And isn’t that some diamond ring she was about to get?”

  “The guy was a financial wizard and a hotshot writer,” Birdy said. “Money up the wazoo.”

  “And more on the way,” Repetto said. “Some great future that’ll never be lived.” He propped his fists on his hips and looked around, as if assessing the scene for the first time. “So we know precisely where Nasad was sitting, and the position of his body when he was shot. The bullet angled in from above, so the shooter had to be high, which means he didn’t fire from the park. We catch a break. The area of the park reduces by half the potential sites we have to consider. We can recreate the shooting and limit possible sources to five or six buildings in the next block.”

  “Or taller buildings behind them,” Meg pointed out.

  Repetto had thought of that. He was hoping the Night Sniper went for the nearer, easier shot. It was the sensible thing to do, and even in the irrational act of murder, people often did what was sensible.

  Meg was staring at the bloodstained concrete and thinking of Alex. Could the man she knew have callously, eagerly, snuffed out two bright futures? She reassured herself that he had alibis for most of the previous Night Sniper murders, whatever their credibility. But there was always the possibility of a copycat murder. Or murders. More than one sniper. To be a murderer, Alex needn’t have killed all the victims. The Night Sniper shootings were just the sort of crimes to provide the tickle or jolt that would compel a copycat killer, with the know-how and problems possessed by Alex, to start a secondary, parallel series of murders.

  And an ex-cop with connections could learn, and emulate, the Night Sniper’s moves.

  Meg wished she could purge her mind of these thoughts, but she couldn’t. Nor could she accept them.

  Beside her, Repetto sighed and dropped his arms, then buttoned his suit coat. “Work to do.”

  “Always,” Meg said.

  “The world,” Birdy said.

  Bobby Mays stood in an Upper West Side doorway and watched a windblown sheet of newspaper flutter against the base of a traffic light, then surrender to the breeze and skitter across the street. The backwash of a passing car altered the paper’s direction slightly, and the breeze seemed to shift. The newspaper page attached itself to a man’s leg like a lover, pinned there by the wind, but he kicked it loose and it sailed directly to Bobby and wrapped itself around his ankles.

  What’m I, a subscriber?

  Bobby leaned down and got a firm grip on the errant sheet of newsprint before it could sail away. He held it up and saw that it was from the Times and was two days old. It featured a story about a Night Sniper victim shot at an outdoor restaurant.

  Bobby wished he hadn’t broken his reading glasses last month. He had to hold the paper well away from him and squint in order to read it.

  It seemed to him that he’d already known about this shooting, but how could he have? Another thing was that reading about it reminded him of the homeless man he saw hurrying on the other side of the street. Some street. Somewhere.

  Bobby lowered the paper. How long ago was that? Had he seen the man after a different shooting, or had it been this one? There was something, some connection here, that Bobby couldn’t grasp. And the paper had come to him as if fate were blowing it along the streets. It all had to do with the homeless man Bobby was sure wasn’t really a homeless man.

  The newspaper page was fluttering and flapping in his hands now, trying to escape his grasp and sail free. He folded it in half, then in quarters, then eighths, and stuffed it in a pocket of his worn-out jacket. Maybe he should see a cop. Tell a cop about the man.

  He had an obligation, a duty, sort of, considering he was a former cop himself.

  He hunched his shoulders and walked toward Broadway, keeping an eye out for blue uniforms.

  There, finally, was a uniformed cop standing on a corner, giving some tourist types directions.

  Bobby waited. The cop talked, pointed, talked some more. Then the tourist types, the cop, everybody smiled at each other, and the tourists-if that’s what they were-hurried away.

  Bobby approached the cop, a tall man with a long nose and a dark mustache. He reminded Bobby of that old-time actor who used to play Sherlock Holmes, Basil Rathbone.

  The cop glanced at him and made a kind of face Bobby didn’t like.

  “I got some information,” Bobby said.

  The cop kept looking at him, dark eyes hard.

  “This shooting thing. .” Bobby yanked the newspaper from his jacket pocket. “I seen a guy-”

  “Guy with a gun?” the cop interrupted.

  “No, listen, I seen this guy. . he wasn’t right.”

  The cop nodded. “Lots of those kinds around, buddy.”

  “He was hurrying.”

  “Look around. Ain’t everybody hurrying? Don’t ask me why.”

  “I’m not. No. This guy wasn’t right. I been reading about this Night Sniper, you know the one.”

  “Don’t we all?”

  “Yeah, but-”

  “I need to get to Riverside Park, Officer.”

  A pretty girl about sixteen had approached for directions. Two other girls were with her, standing off to the side as if too shy to talk to the cop. They were all about the same size and build, and Bobby thought except for their hair they might have been triplets.

  “You keep walking just the way you’re going,” the cop was saying.

  “Hey, listen, this guy-”

  The three girls looked at Bobby, registered distaste, then looked away. He no longer existed.

  “Straight down this street.” The cop pointed.

  Bobby no longer existed to the cop, either.

  Give it up. Nobody cares. Fuck ’em!

  Bobby shambled off. No one tried to stop him.

  It made him angry, what had happened. But it didn’t surprise him. He wandered around for the next hour and had just about forgotten what he was angry about, when he saw a precinct house down the street.

  Bobby took a deep breath, continued down the block, then entered the building.

  It had been a long time since he’d been in a police station or precinct house. This one was like a lot of them. Waiting benches off to the side, a low wood rail with a gate in it, so not too many people could approach the desk at one time and make things confusing or even dangerous. There were rows of desks beyond where the desk sergeant sat, and doors leading to offices and interrogation rooms. On the wall between two doors was a framed photograph of Yankees shortstop Derek Jeter holding a bat and wearing an NYPD cap. From somewhere and everywhere came the muted chatter of radio traffic as cars were directed by a dispatcher. It was a sound that made Bobby miss being a cop.

  A woman sat at the end of one of the benches. She had a bruised face and her legs were drawn up so she was hugging her knees. She looked ashamed and embarrassed. A couple of uniformed cops walked past, swerving to avoid Bobby, who knew he didn’t smell so good indoors, then went outside.

  The cop behind the tall desk noticed Bobby and frowned at him. He was a big guy with gray hair and a smooth, flushed complexion. Irish-looking guy. A nameplate toward the front of the desk identified him as Sergeant Dan O’Day.

  “Lookin’ for a shelter?” he asked Bobby.

  “No. Looking to pass on some information. I used to be a cop.”

  No change of expression on the Irish face. “Don’t say. Where at?”

  “Philly.”

  “So what happened?”

  Bobby shrugged. “I’m not a cop anymore.”

  “Yeah, well … Then maybe you oughta go on outside and move along.”

  Maybe I oughta. Maybe coming here was a big mistake.

  One last try: “I said I had information.”

  Sergeant O’Day had begun to write something, thinking Bobby was on his way out. “That’s
right, you did.”

  “These shootings. .” Bobby paused, searching for words. Damn it, his mind, his throat, always locked up at times like this.

  “Night Sniper shootings?” the desk sergeant asked.

  “Yeah. Those. Anyway, I been seeing this so-called homeless man. And once I saw him in the neighborhood right after I heard a shot.”

  “Why so-called?”

  “Huh? Oh. He was walking with too much haste and purpose.”

  O’Day looked at Bobby. Too much haste and purpose. The words might have been out of a police report, the kind of language cops used when converting experience to official text. Could be this guy actually had been a cop.

  “You mean he was running like hell?” the sergeant asked. “Jogging along, walking fast, what?”

  “Too much haste and purpose.”

  “Yeah, you said.”

  “Walking like he had some place to go.”

  “Maybe he did.”

  “Not if he’s really … like me. That’s the thing, I know he’s not like me. Not homeless. Not really. Clothes not right, too clean. Shoes not right. I couldn’t tell you why. Too much not right. I know this guy doesn’t fit. I can tell. I still got the eye. I know.”

  O’Day looked at him, not smiling, not frowning, nothing. Cop’s blue eyes made more blue by the blue shirt. Blue, blue, in the blood. Bobby’s blood, still. Always. While his heart still beat.

  “I don’t hear nothing yet we can use,” the sergeant said. “But I’ll pass it on.”

  Bobby knew he was lying. The man behind the desk hadn’t believed his story, or hadn’t thought it important if he had believed it.

  “What’s your name?” Sergeant O’Day asked.

  Bobby backed away. “Never mind.” There was nothing in it now for him or for anybody else. He’d made a mistake coming here, imagining he’d be believed. “Too much haste and purpose. I still got the eye. I know. That’s all. I just wanted to help.” Bobby was moving toward the door. Nobody-not O’Day, not another uniformed cop who’d just walked in from one of the offices, nobody-tried to stop him. Nobody gave a fuck. “I still got the eye,” Bobby repeated.

  “Maybe you do,” said the sergeant in a patient, kind voice. But not the kind of voice he’d have used if he believed. “Maybe you do, son.”

  “Not son,” Bobby said. “Don’t give me that shit.”

  “Okay, I won’t.”

  Bobby was out the door, down the steps, back in the night air and smells and sounds of the city. Back on the street.

  Where he knew he belonged.

  “That one’s not ripe,” the man said.

  Zoe was in the produce department of the neighborhood grocery store, actually shopping for food this time. She put down the casaba melon she was considering and looked at the man who’d spoken to her.

  My, my! He was about average height and extremely handsome; one of those men so perfect that there was a suggestion he might be effeminate. But there was also something about this guy that said otherwise-that shouted otherwise. He was wearing an obviously expensive tan raincoat, unbuttoned to reveal a dark suit, white on white shirt, and silky red tie. A gold ring, then a gold watch, glittered as he pointed at the melon.

  “Sorry to interrupt your melon squeezing,” he said with a great smile, “but I already tested that one.”

  “I don’t resent a kind gesture,” Zoe said, scrambling to maintain her mental balance. “Kindness is what makes the world go round.”

  “Don’t we all wish?”

  “Should make the world go round,” she amended. This was a fish she didn’t want to swim away. “What I was really looking for was arugula. I’m going to a dinner party and I promised the hostess I’d buy some for the salad. I was too ashamed to tell her I didn’t know what it was. Do you have any idea what it looks like?”

  He studied her with steady, calm eyes, so appraisingly, the way he might size up the produce.

  His smile again, wider. “You know perfectly well what arugula is.”

  Huh? She shifted her weight from leg to leg like an embarrassed schoolgirl. “Yeah, I guess I do.”

  “That’s not to say there’s nothing I could teach you,” he said, still smiling.

  Zoe was grinning now. She knew this drill. “Aren’t you the bold one?”

  “The realistic one. Maybe the simple one.”

  “Simple?”

  “When I see a woman as desirable as you, I try to get to know her better. Simple as that.”

  “Suppose I’m attached, maybe married?”

  “You’re not. I’ve seen you shopping in this grocery store before.”

  “Alone, you mean?”

  “I don’t want you to walk out of here and out of my life,” he said, ignoring her question.

  “That isn’t likely,” she said.

  “I didn’t think so,” he said.

  Now Zoe sat at her dresser, brushing her long red hair. She wanted to finish with her hair, get it just right, before slipping into the black dress she was going to wear tonight. She was sure she could work the dress over her head without having to rearrange her hair, and this way there wouldn’t be any brushed-out hair on the dress’s shoulders.

  The last date she’d had, with an intellectual type who was an out-of-work museum curator, hadn’t developed into anything near the kind of relationship she sought. Zoe didn’t give up. Single women living alone and working in New York didn’t lose spirit easily, or they wouldn’t live in New York.

  This man she’d picked up (or maybe he’d picked her up) at her favorite hunting grounds, the neighborhood grocery store, was an exception. Maybe the exception. Of course, she’d thought that before about men she’d met in the produce aisle. There had been more than a few such men. She wasn’t sure why the produce aisle was such a good place to meet men, but she sensed it had something primal to do with the juxtaposition of women and raw food. At least in the minds of men.

  Zoe knew little about this one other than that he was smooth, extremely handsome, and if his clothes were any indication, very rich. His pickup patter was intelligent and charming, and disturbingly knowing. Definitely a guy worth taking a chance on, since he seemed harmless.

  She smiled at the thought of her dinner date also dressing to impress her before coming to the apartment. If he wasn’t married, gay, or terminally ill, he had to be one of the most eligible bachelors she’d ever met. Handsome, rich, and intelligent. The trifecta. Now if only he was honest and had a kind heart. Something about him made her think he might have both those attributes.

  She did suspect that he might wear a toupee, but nobody was perfect.

  30

  Nothing came easy. Working from diagrams and the autopsy report, Meg, Birdy, and half a dozen uniforms took almost a week to locate the sniper’s nest.

  It was Officer Nancy Weaver who found it. At least, she was the one who called Meg on her two-way.

  When Meg and Birdy got to the address, Weaver led them upstairs to the top two floors of the building, which were being renovated. At the end of the hall on the top floor was an apartment with the door standing open.

  Weaver stepped aside so they could enter.

  No furniture. A newly drywalled, unpainted living room. There was old padding, but no carpet on the floors. The place smelled like plaster dust. More than smelled. Meg sneezed. Birdy hoped God would bless her.

  “They’re renovating all these places,” Weaver said. Another uniform, who’d been securing the apartment, nodded in somber verification. The light streaming through bare windows didn’t shine on anything that would reflect it other than steel staples in the carpet pad.

  “Looks like work stopped some time ago,” Birdy said.

  “Four months,” Weaver confirmed. “The manager told me the owners ran out of money. They’re trying to get refinancing now.”

  Meg walked back to the hall door. “Lock looks okay.”

  “Not this one,” Weaver said, and led them into a bedroom.

  Meg s
aw what she meant. The locking latch on one of the French windows leading out to a terrace had been forced. There was some furniture in the bedroom, an abandoned dresser without drawers, a wooden headboard with the veneer peeling off. The furniture was dusty and hadn’t been touched in a long time. Carpet padding in here, too, prevented any footprints.

  “Looks like he fired from the terrace,” Weaver said. “Out there at the corner.”

  Meg went out onto the terrace and imagined herself lining up a shot at someone in Peru Norte’s outdoor dining area. She leaned forward slightly and could barely see the restaurant. The sidewalk table area had been cleaned up but was still closed. The table where Lee Nasad and his fiancee had sat was visible.

  Backing away from the terrace’s low parapet, Meg shielded her eyes from the late afternoon sun and looked straight up. Had to be.

  Weaver had been watching her figure it out. “I’ve been up there,” she said. “The Night Sniper lowered himself from the roof to the terrace, then let himself into the apartment so he could make his getaway. Probably just took the elevator down and left without anybody seeing him.”

  Meg thought about it. Uh-huh, it would work. The Sniper was probably out of the building before anybody at the restaurant fully realized what happened. Shock played hell with logic. Eyewitnesses, too.

  “Reminds me of that Night Spider case,” Weaver said, “where the killer dropped from the roof on a line, like a spider, and entered the victims’ bedrooms through their windows.”

  “Sort of,” Birdy said. “But looks to me like the Sniper was just following the easiest course of getting into firing position without attracting attention.”

  “He was probably here before the night he fired the shot, too,” Meg said. “Figuring out where he wanted to shoot from. And he didn’t want to walk away leaving a sign that one of the apartments had been broken into.”

  “Say what?”

  Repetto had arrived. He nodded to Weaver, then listened while Meg and Birdy filled him in.

  “Nice work again, Weaver,” Repetto said.

  “Thanks. But there’s more.” She walked carefully across the carpet padding toward a spot near the French doors. Meg and Birdy exchanged looks. Weaver had obviously waited until Repetto had arrived to spring her big find. The woman wanted a promotion. Meg had to smile. She begrudgingly admired Weaver at the same time she resented her ambition and manipulation. Reminded her of someone a few years ago, before that someone had wised up.