Fear the Night

by John Lutz

  A large bird flapped silently past off to his left, startling him. High for a pigeon, he thought. Maybe it had been a falcon. The Night Sniper knew there were falcons living among the ledges of New York’s tall buildings. The city was a man-made, ideal environment for predators.

  He sat down, getting comfortable, then assumed shooting position, using his knee to support his right elbow and steady the rifle. Feeling the high, cool breeze on his back and bare arms, he sighted through his rifle’s night scope. Even from the terrace parapet, this would be a difficult shot from a cross street, vectoring across a triangle at a corner of Central Park, and partially blocked by tree limbs. It might be an impossible shot if the target weren’t seated and still.

  It would require patience, waiting for the precise moment, when the shot was not only possible, but couldn’t miss: the confluence of breeze and action and time, when he knew where the bullet would end its flight. The Night Sniper was an observer of people. He knew that in groups of four or fewer there was always a time when conversation flagged, when sound and motion ceased, if only momentarily. A tableau. In that brief moment, the only thing alive with vibrant motion would be the bullet that raced to its target even before the sound of the shot.

  The tableau would end in death.

  The Night Sniper leaned back, glanced at his watch, then slipped a single round into the rifle’s breech.

  And waited.

  The evening was ideal for dining outdoors. The maitre d’ showed Lee and Marta to a table near the decorative wrought-iron rail that separated the restaurant’s dining area from the rest of the wide sidewalk.

  Fortunately they had reservations. Every one of the round, cloth-covered tables was occupied. As Lee and Marta sat down at the table and a waiter took their drink orders, Lee glanced inside through a window and saw that the restaurant’s interior was less crowded. Only about half the inside tables were in use, and there were fewer than a dozen people at the bar.

  But Lee decided it was too pleasant out here to go inside. There was only the slightest breeze. The mild temperature, the soft light from candles burning in the center of each table, the scent of spices, the contented buzz of conversation, was all very seducing. Lee thought that with this kind of ambience, how could anyone not like the food?

  Lee Nasad and Marta Kim had made the date two days ago to meet here at Peru North. They were uncommonly busy people, and the location was convenient for both of them. Besides, Marta wanted to try the new Peruvian restaurant everyone at Kolb Research Hospital, where she worked as a forensic medical technician, was raving about.

  Though they were casually dressed—Lee in tan pleated pants and a black blazer over a dark pullover shirt, Marta in jeans and a white blouse—and gave no outward appearance of great success, this was a couple about to enjoy the pinnacle of accomplishment.

  Their respective climbs had been difficult.

  Lee Nasad’s mother was born in Jamaica, making him a first-generation American. A delicate child, and still on the small side, he’d fought his way out of a tough neighborhood in Newark and attended school on grants and scholarships. He earned his MBA from Harvard and made good use of it. Recently he was promoted to financial stocks analyst at Cornog and Stoneman Investments. Lee had always enjoyed writing, and after two failed attempts to break into print, he seemed to have reached out from the carousel of chance and grabbed the golden ring. Where the Money Is, his book on the coming boom in financial stocks, was published six months ago, at approximately the same time his lone and much-derided call for a 20 percent increase in stock prices, led by financials, came to pass.

  Lee guested on one financial talk show after another, and his book was on several best-seller lists. The entire experience hadn’t yet sunk in. All of a sudden he was a financial genius, or so people thought. Genius or not, his bloated royalty check arrived from his literary agent last month. He was twenty-eight, rich, and fully invested.

  Tonight he was going to propose to his longtime and faithful lover, Marta Kim, the beautiful daughter of a long-dead British war correspondent and his South Vietnamese bride.

  Marta had been born in South Vietnam, educated in England, and had been in America five years on a temporary visa. Her professional accomplishments were drawing attention. Marta was as much an expert in DNA analysis as was Lee in equities. Not that she’d need the money success in her field would bring.

  Of course, she didn’t know that yet for sure.

  Tonight, when the time was right, Lee would suggest to Marta exactly that—the time was right. There was no doubt she’d say yes. Not only did the couple dearly love each other, but their marriage would automatically make her eligible to become a U.S. citizen. And a wealthy one.

  After their pleasant meal, the time seemed perfect. The waiter had just delivered their coffee, and mood and opportunity coincided. Lee wanted to prolong the moment before reaching into his blazer pocket for the obscenely expensive diamond ring he’d bought just yesterday.

  “You’re happy?” he asked.

  She smiled. “Generally and specifically, I couldn’t be happier.”

  “Spoken like a research scientist.”

  “God, yes, I’m happy!” She stretched her arms over her head, causing her breasts to be accented by the strained material of her blouse, and glanced around. “Who wouldn’t be happy? A magical night, a wonderful meal, a beautiful life.”

  “You never know, it might get better.”

  “Oh, I doubt it. I don’t see how it could.”

  The light from the table’s candle enhanced Marta’s smooth complexion and vibrant beauty. Lee couldn’t look away. Marta was seated motionless, gazing back at him.

  He drank his coffee black and knew it would be hot.

  So as not to spill any, he sat very still and slowly lifted the cup to his lips, staring at his wife to be, his life to be.

  The candle flame was perfect. It helped the Night Sniper to gauge wind drift precisely as he eased the crosshairs in his scope slightly to the left.

  He’d know when the profound moment came, as he always did. His gift.

  Steady . . .steady . . .patience . . .patience . . .

  He held his breath, maintaining stillness and oneness with his target.

  Like freezing time.

  Until his finger tightened on the trigger.

  The bullet struck Lee in the side of his neck an instant before the distant crack! of the rifle, severing his carotid artery before ricocheting off bone down into the chest cavity. He slumped dead facedown on the table before Marta. She sat stunned, her eyes horrified and her mouth slack with shock, as around her people ran or crawled screaming for cover.

  In less than a minute, the entire tablecloth was red with blood.

  29

  Repetto stood and watched the city begin to reassimilate the place where Lee Nasad had died. Soon people passing the restaurant in cars or on foot would cease to glance in its direction. Conversation would shift to other, more immediate subjects. Diners at the outdoor tables where violent death had visited would enjoy their meals unaware of any infamous past or association with the site. The name of the victim, the sense and presence of him, would fade except in the minds of those who’d loved him. New York would remain New York, where, if you dug long enough and deeply enough, you might find that any block harbored a history of violence.

  The block where Lee Nasad died had been closed at both ends, but was in the process of being reopened for traffic. The first vehicle, a cab, went swishing past on the pavement and was soon followed by a pack of cars, then a work van with a ladder rack on top but no ladders.

  The ambulance, flashing emergency lights but with siren muted, had left ten minutes ago with Lee Nasad’s dead body. Marta Kim was with police, a man whom Repetto thought was identified as her uncle, and with friends from the hospital where she worked. Repetto was told that one of those friends, a doctor, had sedated her.

  Lee Nasad had been a celebrity. Already the media was frenzy-feeding on th
is one and salivating for more. There was still a TV camera crew across the street, taping Repetto, Meg, and Birdy simply standing there inside the yellow crime scene tape and surveying the spilled food and overturned tables and chairs outside the closed restaurant.

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

  “Almost fiancée,” 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.”