by John Lutz
This time the note police found taped to the theater seat read, You would be wise to consider another profession.
“Where was this one found?” Zoe asked.
She’d heard another note had been located. She was waiting for Repetto and his team in their dank precinct basement office, thinking there was no way to make the place more depressing, when they returned. Either she’d chosen not to sit or had risen when she heard them coming. Meg thought Zoe looked tired. Her eyes were puffy, and her long red hair was slightly tangled, as if she hadn’t finished brushing it out.
“In an off-off-Broadway theater that used to be a produce warehouse,” Repetto said. He tossed a copy of the Night Sniper’s note on his desk for Zoe to read. The lab had the original. Nobody doubted that they’d learn nothing from it. “I’m getting tired of running around town just to find this asshole’s notes.”
“The theater still smelled like produce,” Birdy said. “Potatoes, I think.”
“That’s interesting,” Zoe said, slouched down in one of the chairs angled to face the desk.
“Potatoes?” Meg asked.
“No, that our guy would choose that kind of theater. What’s playing there?”
“Something called A Child of his Time,” Repetto said. “The premise is that Rudyard Kipling was secretly Josephine Baker’s real father.” He glanced at Birdy and Meg. “Josephine Baker was—”
“I know,” Meg interrupted. “A famous African-American beauty who danced in Paris in the twenties and thirties.”
“The infamous banana dance,” Birdy said.
Everyone looked at him.
“She used to do a sexy dance wearing nothing but these bunches of bananas. The French liked it.”
“Bananas . . . a produce warehouse,” Meg said to Zoe. “Is that some way meaningful?”
“I doubt it,” Zoe said. Her gaze wandered upward. Was that mold in the corner of the ceiling?
“It smelled like potatoes anyway,” Birdy said. He sat down in the chair next to Zoe’s and began to fidget.
“Maybe the Night Sniper has more than one reason for making us figure out where he’s hidden his notes,” Zoe said.
“I thought we’d settled on game playing,” Repetto said. He sat down behind the desk, at eye level now with Zoe. “He’d rather aggravate us than simply mail the note instead of the clue.”
“He might also want to keep us—us being the NYPD—busy searching theaters instead of searching for him.”
Repetto thought that over and nodded. “It wouldn’t be so stupid. A lot of good police work hasn’t been done because personnel was walking up and down aisles, examining theater seats.”
“Maybe there’s a third reason,” Zoe said. “Maybe the play titles have some kind of significance.”
Repetto sat forward, picked up a pen, and wrote down the titles in the order in which their corresponding notes were found.
“The plays are all for or about children, or have children or a child in the titles,” he said.
“Or as cast members,” Meg said.
Repetto asked her how she knew that.
“I made it a point to read all but the last play. They’re published and sold at bookstores, or the producers will turn them over if you ask in an official capacity.”
“Wonderful!” Zoe said. As if Meg were her prize student.
Repetto knew he should have thought to get the scripts. “That’s good work,” he said.
Birdy stopped playing an invisible piano on his knees and nodded. “Kudos to my partner.”
“Maybe coincidence, though,” Repetto said. “There are children in a lot of plays.”
“And our guy hasn’t killed a child,” Birdy pointed out.
“Yet,” Meg said.
Zoe shook her head. “No, our sniper isn’t a child killer. They’re a breed apart.” She looked at Repetto. “And you told me once what cops thought of coincidence.”
Meg shrugged. “So what’s it all mean?”
“That’s for you guys to detect,” Zoe said, standing up from her chair.
“It means something more than game playing’s going on,” Repetto said.
“Not necessarily,” Zoe said. “But it might mean the game’s more complicated and difficult than we first thought. And maybe we’ll have to play harder.”
When Zoe was gone, Repetto turned to Meg and Birdy. “She’s right. We can start by trying to find out more about the Candy Trupiano shooting.”
“It was pretty much the same as the others,” Meg said. “Single shot fired from a distance. Admirable accuracy. And she was killed by an odd-size bullet.”
“Nobody at the publishing company where she worked thinks the victim had any enemies,” Birdy said, “only friends. You know how it goes. People get killed and achieve sainthood for a while before anybody says nasty things about them.”
“Such a cynic,” Meg said, but it annoyed her, and kind of scared her, to think he might have something there.
“We’ll hit the neighborhood again where she was shot,” Repetto said. “Also around where she lived. Talk to her neighbors, or the doormen or shopkeepers who might have been in position to witness the shooting.”
“Word is she jogged regularly in the park,” Meg said. “Maybe some of the other joggers knew her.”
“I dunno,” Birdy said. “People don’t tend to strike up conversations when they’re out of breath.”
“At least the ones who are still jogging might have the balls to speak up if they do know anything helpful.”
“She has a good point,” Repetto said.
“The city’s getting more shook,” Birdy said. “People scared of sudden loud noises. The mayor’s catching hell from talk show hosts and TV-news dickheads.”
“He’ll get over it,” Meg said.
“Police are catching hell, too,” Birdy said. “And people got a right to be scared.”
Repetto knew that whether they had a right or not, they were scared.
Candy Trupiano had been shot at 8:17 PM. The earliest the Night Sniper had claimed a victim, the media had pointed out.
Beginning that night, after 8:30 every night, there would be noticeably fewer people on the streets of Manhattan.
22
Alex Reyals came to the door this time wearing faded jeans, a black T-shirt, and in his stocking feet. He needed a shave, so his dark beard seemed almost as long as his buzz-cut hair. He smelled not unpleasantly of turpentine and raw wood.
“Been upstairs in your workshop?” she asked.
He smiled. “Yeah, but it’s nothing that can’t wait.” He moved back so she could enter.
The apartment was neat and clean today, squared up in a way that reminded Meg of military quarters. Definitely the place could use the application of some simple decorating basics. Meg thought Repetto’s wife, Lora, should see this. Lora understood interior decorating and would know a man lived here alone and devoid of color sense.
On the other hand, Alex must have some sense of color and design. He was more than a simple craftsman and furniture maker; he was an artist. She glanced again at the example of his work in the apartment, the massive, multilayered desk.
“It’s mahogany,” he said, noticing where she was looking. “Inlaid with teak.”
“It looks futuristic,” she said, of the desk’s sharply angled planes, “and yet it doesn’t.”
“It’s the present,” Alex said. “Stuck right in the middle of now.”
“Waxed slippery and full of angles?”
“Aren’t you perceptive?”
“My job.”
“Sit down,” he invited, motioning toward the sofa. “Want some coffee?”
“Kind of late for coffee.”
“I drink it all day long.”
She declined the coffee, but she sat. “Speaking of my job, I’m interested in where you were two nights ago.”
He rubbed his unshaven chin. Meg could hear the friction. “I was here.”
“Alone?”
He looked at her in a way that was unsettling. “Ah! Two nights ago. I know what you’re up to, Detective Meg.”
“Doyle.”
“Two nights ago was when that woman was shot in the park. The editor . . .”
“Candy Trupiano,” Meg reminded him.
“Yeah. I had the Candy part. Listen, do I need an alibi? If I’d known you were coming I would have made something up.”
“You don’t seem to be taking this seriously.”
“It’s wearing a little thin, trying to keep track of my life in case I might be questioned about the who, where, what, when, why.”
“You should know how it is. We’re both stuck with the routine. You said you were here two nights ago. Were you alone?”
“Yes. Unfortunately, I didn’t choose that night to have a party.”
His joking manner was beginning to aggravate Meg. “Feel like talking about why you left the NYPD?”
That caused a dark cloud to pass over. She was instantly sorry she’d brought up the subject when she saw the look of pure pain cross his features.
“I think you know that, or you wouldn’t be here.” His voice had changed, too. If she wanted serious, she’d gotten it.
“You’re not the first person to shoot and miss,” she said. God! Now I’m trying to cheer him up.
“I didn’t miss.” He turned away from her. “I hit. Trouble is, what I hit was the hostage instead of the suspect.”
“It wasn’t your fault. It’s the kind of shit the bumper stickers say happens. How were you supposed to know someone was going to move at the same time you squeezed the trigger?”
“It was my job to know, just like it’s your job to be here and work at making yourself a pain in the ass. Which, as far as I’m concerned, you are not.” He wasn’t looking at her. Staring out the window. “I didn’t do my job. A woman died. Case closed.”
Without realizing she’d crossed the room she was at his side, touching his shoulder. “Then let it be closed. Stop torturing yourself about it.”
He turned slightly so he could look at her, his smile faint and sad. “It isn’t that easy. Guns can kill or maim in a lot of ways. Isn’t that the hypothesis—rogue cop tortured by guilt goes crazy and starts shooting people?”
“Not my hypothesis.”
“What’s yours?”
“I don’t have one yet. I’m doing my job, like you were doing yours when you got unlucky.”
“We talk an awful lot about the Job.”
“People are what they do,” Meg said.
“Did. Now I create things out of wood.”
“With sharp tools.”
He glanced at her. “Somebody been murdered with a band saw?”
“I don’t even know what a band saw is,” Meg said. “But I can’t imagine you murdering someone set to music.”
He moved away from her and sat down in a chair, crossing his legs. “Then you’ve never really listened to the blues.”
“Oh, but I have.”
He regarded her without changing expression. “What I sensed about you from the start is you might lie to me, but you’re honest.”
“Of course. I’m a cop.”
The sad smile again. “We keep things light so we don’t sink in quicksand.”
“Lots of us play it that way,” Meg said. “The cop’s world is a kind of swamp.”
He didn’t answer and wasn’t looking at her now. She knew where he was. Back in his personal swamp he could never quite escape, where he would eventually fall prey to the thing he kept alive there.
She walked to the door. The motion stirred enough air to raise again the acrid but pleasant scent of turpentine and freshly hewn or sanded wood. She imagined his muscle-corded arms and powerful hands working the wood, shaping it, creating ...
“Interview over?” he asked, sounding disappointed.
“For now.”
“Learn anything?”
“Yeah.”
“Got any wise words for me?”
“Yeah.” She opened the door and looked back at him before stepping into the hall, giving him a mock serious expression. “Don’t leave town.” A touch of humor to show he could get out of the quicksand if only he’d try hard enough.
It hadn’t quite worked. She felt as if she were slowly sinking with him.
He nodded as if giving her instruction careful consideration. “Okay. Don’t be a stranger.”
Back in the unmarked she sat squeezing the steering wheel with both hands, staring straight ahead at nothing beyond the windshield.
I’m falling for him. A suspect in a serial murder investigation.
Be careful here. Be careful.
23
Kelli Wilson and her ten-year-old son, Jason, left Grand Central Station after riding the train in from Stamford. They took a cab to the Frick Museum, Kelli’s favorite. The museum was open extended hours to accommodate public demand for its Impressionist Masters exhibition.
Kelli and Jason spent almost three hours roaming the spacious rooms. Kelli was an amateur painter and knew she didn’t have as much talent as Jason, whose art teachers at the Bennett School were mightily impressed.
So Kelli was the mother of a superior child. Thinking about it made her smile. She liked to remind herself and smile. Heredity could be a wonderful thing.
Jason liked art, and loved painting almost as much as playing ice hockey. He was receptive when the recorded voice in the earphones of the tape players worn at the Frick explained the histories of the paintings and their creators. Kelli enjoyed watching the expression in his guileless blue eyes as he listened while he stared at the paintings with something like religious awe.
When they left the Frick the evening had turned cooler, and she was glad she’d brought her retro mink jacket into the city. Kelli was an attractive blond woman in her forties and had never owned anything mink before the jacket. Always she’d been antifur, but when she had a chance to buy the jacket at an estate sale, she reasoned that it was secondhand, the minks used to make it were long dead, and there would be no real difference in the world if she wore the jacket or if someone else did. The jacket was made of light-colored female mink fur and was incredibly soft. It looked just right with her pale complexion, and it did the magical thing expensive mink could do for a woman. When she wore it, she looked and felt ten years younger, and far more beautiful than she knew she actually was; the mirror didn’t exactly lie, but it became her friend.
Kelli put her hand on Jason’s shoulder to get his attention, and they stopped at the corner and moved out of the flow of pedestrian traffic. She dug her cell phone from her purse and speed-dialed the work number of her husband, Warren, who was an architect with Lohan and Berner. Warren had been with the firm almost five years, and lately was doing very well. Which was how they’d managed to buy their eighteen-foot cabin cruiser Dream Waver.
They kept the boat docked in a slip at the Seventy-ninth Street Boat Basin. When Warren had to work late, which was often, he would stay in the city and spend the night on the Dream Waver. The boat slept six, so there was plenty of room on the nights when Kelli and Jason took a train into the city and met Warren for a late supper. The family would sleep on the boat. Kelli had resisted the idea at first, but Warren explained that the hotel bills they saved on the times he’d have to spend nights in the city would help to defray the cost of the boat.
The three years they’d owned the boat had proved him right. Not only that, Kelli came to love sleeping on the boat, feeling the gentle bobbing as water lapped at the hull, hearing the soft and subtle sounds of strain on wood, metal, and fiberglass. She also discovered that sex on a small boat was great, though not exactly private. Of course, it only happened on those rare nights when Jason wasn’t aboard. Kelli wondered if they might call Jennifer, the babysitter who sometimes stayed all night with Jason. Jennifer understood—
Warren picked up on the third ring.
“I’m in the middle of a meeting right now, hon,” he said, when he he
ard Kelli’s voice.
“Sorry. I’ll keep it short. We still on tonight for dinner at Four Seasons?” Kelli had never dined at the famous and expensive restaurant. This was to be a special dinner, celebrating the third anniversary of their purchase of Dream Waver.
“We’re still on. But I’m gonna be tied up here for a while longer discussing soil samples and city ordinances. I called and changed the reservation for eight-thirty. That okay with you?”
It has to be. But Kelli was only mildly annoyed. “Kind of late for Jason.”
“He never minded staying up past his bedtime.”
“That’s for sure. Jason and I can find someplace to kill time.”
“There’s a big new toy store over on Fifth Avenue.”
“I know the one you mean. We can cab over there and explore. But I can’t promise not to buy something.”
“With Jason along, it’s a given. Listen, I really gotta get back.”
“Of course. We’ll meet at Four Seasons a little before eight-thirty. Love you.”
“Love you back.”
The connection was broken.
“So what’re we gonna do?” Jason asked, as Kelli flipped the cell phone closed and slipped it back in her purse.
“Oh, I’m not sure. Maybe we could go explore a new toy store.”
“Kids’ toys?”
She had to grin. “I sure hope so.”
“We gonna buy something?”
She tried to ruffle his hair but he pulled away. Grinning, though.
“It’s a given,” she said.
The Night Sniper overheard most of what Kelli had said on the cell phone, her side of the conversation, on the corner near the Frick Museum. And he’d overheard both sides of the brief conversation between mother and child.
Time, place, opportunity. How carelessly people revealed themselves.
Crouching on the rooftop in the cool wind, he fitted the barrel and scope onto the collapsible aluminum stock of his custom-made Italian game rifle and smiled. The rifle was one of the more valuable in his collection, and it had a wonderful provenance. It had been a gift from Mussolini to Hermann Goering, himself an avid hunter, in 1939, only months before the beginning of World War Two. It was perfectly balanced, its hand-tooled components precise, its trigger pressure slight. So smooth was the mechanism that it was a pleasure for the Night Sniper to squeeze the trigger when the rifle was unloaded, simply to hear the buttery working of steel on steel. Steel that was machined to infinitesimal fractions of an inch.
