Fear the Night

by John Lutz

  He touched the hard plastic of the cell phone in the pocket where he usually kept the handouts he’d garnered. He thought about the Sniper. And Amelia Repetto. So maybe this’ll be the night. Or maybe he’ll let her sweat awhile longer. Let everybody sweat.

  Or maybe she wasn’t sweating. At twenty-one, he’d thought nothing could kill him. Amelia Repetto might still feel she was immortal.

  All the more dangerous.

  Bobby had a feeling about tonight. His rusty instincts from when he was a cop in Philly were working well and governing his actions, his plan.

  He felt good tonight. Meander had been right with his “once a cop always one” remark. Even a dickhead like Meander had that one figured out.

  Bobby was back even though he’d never really been away.

  Tonight, every night, he was a cop.

  “I know I shouldn’t call and tie up her line,” Lora said. “I’ll call her cell phone.”

  She was on the cell phone now. With Repetto. He was in an unmarked vehicle half a block down from his house, where Lora was inside and on the phone, but she didn’t know that. A radio car would arrive soon to take his place. Lora had to have police protection, too. In case the Sniper’s stated intention to try for Amelia was a feint. Repetto and Lora hadn’t discussed that possibility, but he knew she must be aware of it.

  But Repetto didn’t think the threat to Amelia was a feint. That wasn’t the way the Sniper would play the game. Not this stage of the game, anyway.

  “I want to go to her, Vin.” Lora said. “Every fiber of me wants to.”

  “That’s the last thing you should do. Maybe the thing the Sniper wants most.”

  “I tried again to talk her into leaving the city, but she wouldn’t listen.”

  “I tried too. She’s—”

  “Bullheaded, like you.”

  Repetto didn’t argue with her.

  “All right,” Lora said with a sigh, after ten or fifteen seconds of his silence. “I’ll get off the phone. But I want to know what’s going on.”

  “You will know,” Repetto said. “I promise.”

  “Our daughter—”

  “Only daughter,” Repetto said. “She has guts.”

  “Don’t give me that bullshit, Vin. I want her to stay alive. Dal had guts and look what happened.”

  Repetto really, really didn’t want to get into this. He felt his grip tighten on the phone.

  “I’m sorry,” Lora said, as if she were right there in the car with him and had seen the effect of her words.

  “That’s okay,” Repetto said. “It’ll all be okay if we let the police do their job.”

  He sounded as if he really believed it.

  The Night Sniper sat at the antique oak table in his gun room and worked the ramrod that was reaming the barrel of the Webb-Blakesmith competition rifle that was from his collection. This rifle didn’t disassemble down to caseable components for travel like a lot of the custom-made weapons in the collection, and wouldn’t fit in his backpack; but he wanted to use this particular weapon for its accuracy, and because it was one of his favorites. For such an important shot, there could be no other choice.

  As he usually did with rifles that wouldn’t break down and fit into his backpack, he would wear his long, lightweight raincoat to conceal the weapon. It could be carried in a sling beneath the tattered coat. That was easy to do, with the stock tucked in his armpit, and the sling’s hook run through the trigger guard behind the trigger. He could hold the rifle tight against his side beneath the coat and walk with the defeated shuffle of the homeless. He didn’t mind using the concealed sling, because he had no illusions about tonight. It would be best to keep the rifle handy in case he had to shoot his way out of an unfortunate situation. The odds were with him because he planned carefully, but still there was always the unexpected challenge.

  In the bright lamplight, he admired the cleanly designed and constructed steel mechanism of the rifle, the precision firing pin and gas ejection breech, the lightly sprung trigger and long, blued barrel with its matte black sights that reflected no light that might disrupt aim. Wonderful! Man had devised few mechanisms as precise and reliable as the firearm.

  Drawing the ramrod from the barrel, he sat back for better light. He examined the square of white cotton on the end of the ramrod and saw no dark markings. The rifle was clean. Ready and reliable. Still, he fitted a new square of cloth over the end of the ramrod and reinserted it in the barrel.

  For a long time he sat at the table in the lamplight, working the ramrod back and forth in the long, grooved barrel, thinking about tonight.

  About Amelia Repetto.

  Rapunzel.

  54

  Amelia was having a migraine this evening, which Meg understood. The young woman’s head should be splitting open with fear. Right now she was lying down in the dim bedroom with a cold compress over both eyes. The drapes were closed, the bedroom lights turned low, and the windows locked. Amelia was protected not only by the NYPD personnel in the neighborhood, but by locked doors and steel-barred windows, and by Meg.

  Meg was confident and relaxed. That was partly because her charge, Amelia, was cooperative and at least temporarily safe from harm, and partly because Meg had, at Amelia’s insistence, sipped half a glass of what was left of last night’s cheap red wine with Amelia, while Amelia had three glasses in a futile attempt to fend off her developing headache. Probably, Meg thought, it had made the headache worse.

  No one had called or knocked on the door since Knickerbocker—Mr. Chicken—had delivered the nightly takeout meal, most of which was now in the refrigerator. Meg was tired but had no desire to go to bed like Amelia. Instead she sat on the sofa and found herself staring at the phone.

  Found herself thinking about Alex.

  It couldn’t have been the few ounces of wine she’d sipped to pacify Amelia, not even enough, to Meg’s way of thinking, to constitute drinking while on duty. So maybe it was the situation, the tension. Whatever the reason, she couldn’t stop thinking about Alex and had to fight an almost overwhelming desire to go to the phone and call him.

  If she could simply hear his voice, it might help. She might be able to chase him from her thoughts.

  It would be so easy to pick up the phone and call.

  Insane to think this way.

  But it would be so easy.

  Then she realized the apartment’s phone line might be tapped, in case the Sniper called. Not his MO thus far, but as he’d warned in his note, the game had changed. And he seemed to be the maker of the rules.

  Of course, Meg could always contact Alex with her cell phone. That call wouldn’t be picked up with a wiretap. Amelia was probably asleep, but even if she weren’t, she was unlikely to come out of the bedroom for quite a while. No one would know if Meg made a brief phone call. What was there to lose?

  She got up from the sofa and moved to a wing chair farther from the door, where her call was less likely to be overheard.

  Meg hesitated, knowing the possible consequences, but she had no real choice. Her heart was in control.

  She watched her hand, like someone else’s hand, peck out Alex’s number on her cell phone.

  He picked up on the second ring.

  Meg didn’t say anything after he’d identified herself. Then she said quickly, before he might hang up, “It’s Meg—Officer Doyle.”

  “More questions, Meg?” Alex sounded unsurprised to hear from her, even faintly amused. At the same time, she was sure she picked up pleasure in his voice, knowing she’d called him.

  “Yes. I had a few spare minutes and thought—”

  “You’d spend them with me.”

  This is hopeless. I’m hopeless. “All right, yes. That’s exactly what I thought. Spend them with you on the phone, I mean.” Why am I always so flustered around this man?

  “Good. So how’s the Night Sniper investigation going?”

  Now he wanted to talk business. “We’re progressing.”

  �
�That’s the sort of thing you tell the media.”

  “Or a—”

  “Suspect,” he finished for her. “Only you don’t really take me seriously as a suspect, do you?”

  “I phoned you,” Meg said. She heard his low laughter.

  “There’s an oblique answer. Looks to me like Repetto’s daughter might be the Sniper’s next target. I hope she went somewhere safe.”

  “She didn’t—listen, that’s not why I called.”

  “Wait a minute. You mean the daughter—what’s her name?—is hiding out someplace in New York City?”

  “I didn’t say that and didn’t mean it.”

  “Where are you calling from, Meg?”

  “I can’t say.”

  “I can guess. Jesus! Doesn’t Repetto have enough sense to—”

  “That isn’t what I called about, Alex.”

  He sighed. “Okay, I’m sorry. I hope you called just to hear my voice, and so I could hear yours.”

  Which was true, but Meg didn’t want to admit it. “I think we need to be realistic. I admit I’m attracted to you.”

  “Then why don’t we—”

  “Because I’m a cop working an open homicide case. A lot of open homicide cases.”

  “And I’m a suspect?”

  “Back to that again, are we? I’m not worried about you being a suspect.”

  “Then you’re worried about what would happen to your career if someone found out about us.”

  “No. Well, yes. But that’s not all. It simply isn’t right. We’re goddamn adults, Alex. We can wait until this investigation is closed.”

  “You called me, Meg.”

  “Because sometimes I’m stupid.”

  “I don’t think so. But what if the investigation’s never closed? I’ve been a cop, Meg. I know how many unsolved homicides there are out there. How many nutcase killers are never caught. This sicko might stop killing people; then the news about him would taper off, something else newsworthy would happen, and that’d be that.”

  “He isn’t going to stop. He can’t.”

  “Because some profiler says so?”

  “No. Because I say so. You don’t know all the details or you’d agree.”

  The sigh again, like a rush of warm air in her ear. “Okay, Meg. But I’m glad you called. You don’t know how glad.”

  “I hope as glad as I am. When this is over . . .”

  “Until then, do you want to have phone sex?”

  “Alex!”

  He was laughing.

  “Phone sex wouldn’t be bad,” she said, “but I’m too busy.”

  “Right after I met you, Meg, I bought a bottle of the best champagne I could find, and I’m keeping it iced up for as long as it takes until you’re back here with me. Until we’re together. Really together.”

  “Alex—”

  She heard a noise from the bedroom.

  “I have to hang up,” she said, almost in a whisper.

  “I understand. Call again when you can. Promise me.”

  Meg didn’t answer, but quickly broke the connection and slipped the phone back into her purse.

  The bedroom door opened and Amelia stood there. She was barefoot and her clothes were wrinkled from her time in bed. Her hairdo was flat on one side. Her eyes and forehead were reddened and she held the ice-filled compress in her right hand. She was squinting either from the comparatively bright light or because of pain, and had her head tilted back slightly as if from the weight of her long braid.

  “Headache better?” Meg asked.

  “Monstrous,” Amelia said. “I need more ice.”

  Meg rose to get it for her.

  An RMP car patrolled the blocks south of the Repetto apartment, while another drove regularly back and forth along the blocks to the north. All the while the precinct car regularly assigned to that area drove its usual routes, with the addition of several passes in front of the apartment containing Amelia Repetto and Meg. There were undercover cops borrowed from the Vice Enforcement Division at each end of the block, one hanging around the deli, the other in a parked cab that wasn’t really a cab. Inside the Repetto apartment with Amelia was Meg. Across the street in another, vacant apartment was Birdy, watching the street. Repetto oversaw it all, roaming the area in a five-year-old Dodge minivan borrowed from the Motor Transport Division. If anything suspicious occurred, more NYPD could be called in to seal off the area as quickly and completely as possible.

  The life of the neighborhood had to go on with at least the outward appearance of normality. Though darkness had closed in and there were fewer people and vehicles on the streets than there would be without the Night Sniper threat hanging over the city, the area seemed no different essentially from any other New York neighborhood. Delivery vehicles made their stops with takeout food, taxis haunted the streets like restless yellow spirits, the homeless wandered, lovers strolled, late workers straggled home from their jobs.

  Bumping along in the dirty white minivan that had been confiscated after a drug bust, Repetto knew it could all change in a moment. The trap was set.

  He didn’t like to think about the bait.

  Question was, how far could she trust Nancy Weaver?

  Answer was, she didn’t know but had to find out.

  Zoe sat at a corner table in P.J. Clark’s and waited nervously for Weaver. Before her was a glass of Guinness from which she’d taken exactly three sips. She desperately needed something to relax her, but she also desperately needed to have a clear head when Officer Weaver arrived.

  It was Zoe who’d requested the meeting. Zoe who’d been unable to sleep since the night the mayor was shot. Zoe who’d gotten rotten drunk at home when she realized what must have happened. Her finger touched the cold beer glass. Only touched.

  It was drink that had helped get her into this horrible mess. So easy to see now, when it was too late. But still she hadn’t learned.

  She shouldn’t have ordered the Guinness. But she couldn’t climb on the wagon all at once. She goddamn needed something .

  Maybe a bullet in the head, if she couldn’t convince Weaver to cooperate with her.

  She almost did take a drink when she realized the idea didn’t seem so far-fetched.

  Zoe hadn’t caught on at first when she learned the Sniper had fired at the mayor from a setback roof of the Marimont Hotel. She’d entered the same hotel shortly before the rifle shot. When the bullet had struck the mayor, she was cozily ensconced in the hotel’s plush restaurant, having her first cocktail.

  A coincidence. One not necessarily worth mentioning.

  Then, in a later report, she’d read the room number: 2233. She actually almost fell out of her chair.

  Zoe had known what it meant even before reasoning it out. Suite 2233 was where she and Otto (Everyone calls me Ott) Smith had gone after dinner and dancing in the hotel restaurant. It was where they’d made violent and passionate love. After their lovemaking he’d admitted to her his real name wasn’t Smith, but Eperrepinsi, an old Sicilian family name that became his German mother’s married name; he seldom used it because it was difficult to pronounce and confused people. There was also an old story about his grandfather being executed by the Mafia for conducting an affair with the don’s wife.

  It seemed to amuse him, finally letting her in on his secret. Now she understood why.

  She reached for the glass of beer with a trembling hand, then withdrew it. She was staring at the end of her career and the ruination of her life. What she needed wasn’t more alcohol—it was Weaver. Rather, Weaver’s understanding and cooperation. Zoe knew she’d better keep herself together for the most important conversation of her life.

  Weaver had come through the bar and was standing at the restaurant entrance. She wasn’t in uniform—working plainclothes for the assignment she’d been given of finding and questioning competition target shooters. She looked businesslike in a blue skirt, white blouse, and sensible black shoes. Her hair was short and dark and purposely mussed in a spik
y way that made her look devilish. From everything Zoe’d heard about her, she was devilish. Devilish and ambitious. Not so unlike Zoe. Zoe was counting on that.

  Weaver saw her, smiled, and walked across the restaurant to the table. Male heads turned. She wasn’t exactly beautiful, but there was something about her; men sensed a vitality in her that was unmistakably sexual.

  By all accounts, Weaver made good use of it.

  She sat down opposite Zoe, placed a dark purse on the table, and nodded, still with the smile.

  “I’m glad you could come,” Zoe said. “Buy you a drink? Something to eat?”

  “Diet Coke,” Weaver said, playing it safe and not drinking alcohol on duty. A hovering waiter heard her and hurried off to fill her order.

  “How are you doing in your effort to track down target shooters in the area?” Zoe asked, after a few minutes of nervous small talk.

  “There are a surprising number, but a lot of them are connected with law enforcement or security, and we already vetted them. We’ve got some gun club members and skeet shooters in the new mix. Even a fast-draw artist.”

  “Cowboys and Indians.”

  “That’s what we play,” Weaver said, locking gazes with Zoe. Her expression said she was a busy woman and didn’t want to waste a lot of time here, if that was what was going to happen. “You said on the phone you have something to tell me.”

  “Share with you, I said.”

  Weaver took a sip of the Coke the waiter had delivered and nodded, waiting.

  Zoe took a deep breath and explained.

  Weaver sat unnaturally still and listened. She appeared as shocked as Zoe had been, when she’d fully absorbed what she’d just heard. What it must mean.