Fear the Night n-5

by John Lutz

  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 about 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.

  “What were you thinking?” Amelia asked, wandering to the window and parting the drapes slightly so she could peer out.

  “How best to keep you safe. Uh, stay away from the window, please.”

  Amelia let the drape fall back in place. “I just wanted to peek outside, to reassure myself there still was an outside.” She smiled. “I know I’m a pain in the ass. It’s just that I’m not the type to h
ole up and wait for something to blow over.”

  “I understand,” Meg assured her. “Neither am I, but sometimes people like us have no choice. You’d rather be going about your business as usual, and I’d rather be clamping the cuffs on the sicko who’s causing all our problems.”

  “Most of our problems, anyway.”

  Meg wondered what she meant by that. What kind of problems could a beautiful twenty-one-year-old woman have, other than being stalked by a serial killer? “It’s gotta be tough for you. We all know that. Your dad sure knows it.”

  “He worries too much about me. So does my mom.”

  Meg looked closely at her. She didn’t appear to be kidding. Only because a stone-cold killer’s vowed to take your life. “That’s because they both know the danger. So do I. It’s real, Amelia, believe me.”

  Amelia hesitated, then nodded. “Oh, I know it’s real, but … well, I guess I’m a fatalist.”

  Or a dramatist. Or twenty-one years old. “You’re not afraid?”

  “I’m terrified. That’s why the headache, I suspect. That’s why I close my eyes but can’t sleep. But at the same time, it’s all on a certain level, almost like a bad dream. There’s no way I can get my mind around the idea that somebody really wants me dead so much that he’d risk his own life in an attempt to kill me. And if he does, what are the chances of him actually getting through my assigned bodyguards like you?”

  “On the level? There’s some possibility. You’re a cop’s daughter. You understand that there’s at least some chance he can bring it off.”

  Meg almost instantly regretted her candidness. Whether she was a dramatist or not, for an instant terror shone through Amelia’s pale features; she was an inch away from losing her composure and becoming a sobbing, terrified victim.

  “I’m plenty afraid,” Amelia said, “but I refuse to give in to panic.” She took a deep breath and her entire body trembled. “The truth is, I just want it to end. To be over.”

  “That’s what he wants,” Meg said. There had been something disturbing in Amelia’s voice. And it struck Meg that maybe that was how it worked-the intended victim’s fear finally manifested itself in a perverse cooperation with the killer. “I guess I’m a fatalist.”

  The Sniper would know that and how to use it.

  She decided not to mention this disturbing insight to Amelia. But it could be a problem, this condition of fear and impatience, resulting in an eager kind of resignation that made the victim complicit in victimization. It could lead to a sort of deliberate, inviting carelessness.

  “What I mean is, I want the tension to end, no matter how.”

  Meg stared at her. No, you don’t. Not really.

  Or do you?

  She watched as Amelia began to pace.

  Now that she was here, Weaver was even more impressed by Dante Vanya’s address. His apartment was in the Elliott Arms, a soaring structure of glass and steel rooted in three stories of pale stone, with a tinted glass front and a maroon-awninged entrance flanked by twisted green topiary in huge ceramic planters. It took a lot to intimidate Weaver, but as she crossed the street from her unmarked and gained the attention of a rigid, brightly uniformed doorman, she felt like saluting.

  The man was well over six feet, with the body of a weight lifter even though he was graying and probably in his fifties. He smiled at Weaver, but surveyed her suspiciously with steel-blue eyes as he held open one of the tall, tinted doors for her.

  The lobby was gray marble veined in red, the elevators discreetly hiding out of sight around a corner. Another uniformed man, this one not so grandly clad, sat in the recess of an angle of marble that was a reception desk. A tiny, decorative shaded lamp sat on one corner of the desk, looking out of place in such a vast, cool area.

  This guy was also in his fifties, gray and paunchy, and resembled everybody’s kind uncle. Weaver relaxed and gained confidence, telling herself she wasn’t so crazy coming here.

  The man smiled from behind the slab of marble that looked as if it had been lifted from a mausoleum one dark night and finely polished. “Help you?”

  Weaver decided not to identify herself as police. Not yet.

  “I’m here for Mr. Vanya.”

  She was sure the man would ask her name, but he didn’t. He merely consulted a logbook on a lower shelf behind the marble.

  He looked up at Weaver over half-lens reading glasses. “Not in, I’m afraid.”

  “Is he expected back soon?”

  “That I couldn’t say. He left about an hour ago.”

  “I don’t suppose he mentioned where he was going?”

  “No, ma’am. And we don’t ask.”

  Weaver had her choice. She could identify herself as police and push the issue, but she still couldn’t get into Vanya’s apartment without a warrant. Or she could play it low profile, leave, and wait across the street in the car for Vanya to return. He might not choose tonight to try for Amelia Repetto, and when he returned home and Weaver tried again to see him, there was no reason he shouldn’t invite her up. Especially if she identified herself as on old friend of Adam Strong.

  She chose the latter option. With a smile, she said, “It wasn’t important, anyway. I’ll drop by later.”

  Back across the street, behind the wheel of the unmarked, she settled down to wait for men to enter who might be Dante Vanya. A photograph sure would have helped, but there hadn’t been any in the records, and she didn’t want to take time for a broader search.

  She tried to get more comfortable, sitting there with her impatience and ambition and hunter’s blood. Probably Vanya had gone out to get a bite to eat, or meet someone for drinks. Maybe he’d even return home with a woman. That would sure make things interesting.

  She gazed diagonally across the street at the Elliott Arms. The glass and steel entrance gleamed. The doorman stood at parade rest near one of the corkscrew yews.

  Some digs, she thought again. There was no doubt Vanya was wealthy enough to be the rare weapons collector, or was at least able to obtain such rifles for his use. There was less and less doubt in Weaver’s mind that he was the Night Sniper.

  Her way to a brighter future.

  Her prey.

  The car seemed to be closing in on her and smelled faintly of oil and musty upholstery. Weaver started the engine and turned on the air conditioner, even though the night was cooling down.

  Across the street, a man in a tan raincoat and wearing a black beret nodded to the doorman and entered the Elliott Arms.

  Not Vanya. Too old. She could tell not only by the fringe of white hair showing beneath the beret, but by the weary set of his narrow shoulders and unsteadiness of his stride.

  A while later a woman and a small child entered. Then a man who was also too old to be Vanya.

  Weaver yawned, but it wasn’t because she was tired. It was nerves.

  Surely he’d be back within the next few hours. She could wait, but it wouldn’t be pleasant.

  Waiting wasn’t her game. She was more the type to make something happen.

  57

  Almost an hour passed before Bobby saw the homeless man who didn’t belong. He emerged from a dark passageway across the street, then headed in the opposite direction, away from Bobby.

  Bobby squinted at the man. He was real, all right. He had to be real.

  Playing it casual, Bobby walked several more steps before pausing and removing the cell phone from his pocket.

  He pressed the power button and the tiny screen glowed dimly. One tiny rabbit icon. Still some battery power, anyway. Bobby had committed the phone number of the nearest precinct house to memory. № 6s. He punched out the number and listened to the phone ring on the other end of the connection.

  As he did this, he slowly turned and began following the man across the street, staying on the opposite sidewalk and well back, almost out of sight.

  He got through to someone who identified himself as Sergeant Britain.

  “My name’s Bobby Mays,” Bobby
said in a hoarse whisper, hoping the Amickson phone transmitted as clearly as it received. “I’m at Amsterdam and West Eighty-ninth Street, in Amelia Repetto’s neighborhood, and I’m following a man who might be the Night Sniper.”

  “And why would you suspect him?” Sergeant Britain sounded remotely interested. Probably this wasn’t the only Night Sniper tip he’d received this evening.

  “He’s wearing a long raincoat,” Bobby said. “One that could easily conceal a rifle. And he’s pretending to be one of us.”

  “Us?”

  “The homeless.”

  “You’re one of the homeless?”

  “That’s right. And he isn’t. I’m sure of it. I’m a former cop, a while back in Philadelphia. I got the eye. This isn’t a real homeless man.”

  “Ex-cop?”

  Was Britain hard of hearing? “Right. In Philly. Name’s Bobby Mays. I’ve seen this guy before and he doesn’t set right.”

  “How so?”

  “He isn’t one of us. He’s walking with too much haste and purpose.”

  Britain waited a few seconds. “That’s it? Other than the long raincoat?”

  “I’ve seen him before in the areas of some of the Night Sniper shootings.”

  “So where is he and where are you?”

  “I told you-”

  “I mean, are you in a car or a building, looking out a window?”

  “We’re both on foot. I’m following him along Eighty-ninth Street while I’m talking to you on my cell phone. He’s walking with too much haste and purpose.”

  “You told me that. You say you’re homeless, so where’d you get a cell phone?”

  “Bought it,” Bobby said. “Listen, this isn’t about me. It’s about-”

  “We get a lotta calls,” Britain said. His disinterested gaze went idly to a photo of Yankees shortstop Derek Jeter that was hanging on the wall across from the desk. Jeter was grinning, holding a bat, and wearing an NYPD cap. Young stud millionaire, Britain thought enviously. Not a care. “I gotta check.”

  Bobby forced calm on himself. “Yeah. Sure. But if you don’t do something this guy’s gonna get away from me. He’s average height, wearing a dark baseball cap, green or gray raincoat down almost to his ankles. Got a little hitch in his walk this time, as if he might be carrying a rifle in a sling.”