Fear the Night n-5

by John Lutz

  Or maybe after.

  They followed Weaver until she stopped and pointed. “See? Look careful and there’s a muddy footprint.”

  They did look.

  “About size ten,” Repetto said.

  “Narrows it down to a few million guys and me,” Birdy said.

  “There’s more of what looks like that kind of mud on the roof, where someone would be if he were attaching a rope to lower himself to the terrace. I checked the elevator, but it’s been used too many times to give up anything.”

  “Gotta be the killer’s print,” Birdy said, “if it’s the same kinda mud that’s on the roof.”

  “It wasn’t raining the evening Lee Nasad was shot,” Repetto said.

  “That’s what makes it odd that there’s mud,” Weaver said. “But it’s on the roof and here in the apartment. Out on the terrace, too.”

  It occurred to Meg that Weaver shouldn’t have taken them out there without telling them about the mud. But maybe she would have warned them if they were about to step on any evidence. That’s what Repetto and Birdy would say, anyway, if Meg said anything critical of Weaver. The little schemer worked these guys as if they were sock puppets without eyes.

  The mud was on the edge of the parapet, and more or less all over the terrace.

  “Techs are on the way,” Repetto said, “but I don’t think they’d mind this.” He used his forefinger to scoop a tiny amount of mud from the parapet. “Let’s go to the roof, see if this matches whatever’s up there.”

  The mud did match, at least to the eye and feel. Light brown and gritty. More like clay. Meg wasn’t surprised by the match. Probably Weaver had already been up here with her own mud sample, or she wouldn’t have mentioned the mud.

  When they went back down to the apartment to wait for the techs, the light had changed somewhat. Something tiny but with almost luminescent glitter caught Meg’s eye. Something near the forced lock of the French doors. She moved to the side and could no longer see it.

  But when she walked over to the door, there it was again. She leaned close and peered at a three-or four-inch strand of black hair stuck in the space where the brass handle rotated. There was something about the hair …

  Everyone had stopped talking and joined her.

  She didn’t touch the hair, but pointed it out to Repetto.

  “Let’s find out if the previous tenant or any of the workmen who were in here wore a hairpiece,” she said. “Unless the lab proves me wrong, I’m going with this not being a human hair.”

  31

  1990

  Dante spent a month in the burn unit of Roosevelt Hospital, then was transferred to the Holmes Burn Clinic in New Jersey. Another three months of skin grafts and pain followed. Hell was a lasting thing.

  At first Dante was in a ward, then a semiprivate room he shared with an old man who’d been in a gas fire. But soon he was in his own room, and able to get up and walk to his meals and for some of his medical procedures. For a long time he thought being burned had become his life, and he was ready for it to end anytime.

  The nurse who’d been assigned to his case kept his spirits up at least high enough to get him through his ordeal. Her name was Jane Jones. She was in her early thirties and liked to read to her patients, who were all burn victims. But Dante she enjoyed reading to more than anyone. He had an amazingly quick and bright mind and was often ahead of her in whatever story she was reading. He was particularly good at discerning the endings of mysteries.

  It didn’t hurt their relationship that she was an attractive, willowy blonde, and Dante developed a crush on her. She was something to think about other than the pain.

  One morning when Jane came into his room and sat in the chair by his bed, it was obvious she’d been crying.

  Dante wanted to help her but felt inadequate to the task. “You okay?” The question seemed awkward and inane.

  Jane smiled and touched a knuckle to the corner of one eye. “The thing is that you’re okay now, or getting to be.”

  Dante didn’t think he was okay. Not when he looked in the mirror. One side of his face was a drooping red and purple scar, and his hair grew not at all on the left side of his head, and only in patches on the right. He didn’t know how Jane could stand to look at him.

  She leaned forward in the chair and locked gazes with him. “You’re getting better fast now, Dante. It’s time for you to become an outpatient.”

  “What’s that?”

  “It means you won’t live here at the clinic anymore.”

  A sob lodged in his throat. It hadn’t occurred to him-not consciously, anyway-that he’d ever have to leave here. It was possible that, despite the pain, he’d been safer and happier here than anywhere else. “But I’ll come in every day for treatment? Is that what you mean?”

  “Yes and no. You’ll be an outpatient, but you’ll live and your treatment will be in Arizona.”

  Dante let his head rest back on the pillow and tried to comprehend that. Arizona. He knew it was another state, but it might as well be another country. Desert and cactus, cowboys. A place you visited if you were rich, but no one really wanted to live there.

  “Why Arizona?” he asked.

  “That’s where the Strong Foundation is. Their headquarters is a ranch where the boys and girls live while they receive their remaining treatment.” She paused. Dante was looking blankly at her. “The foundation’s been paying your medical bills, Dante. Your treatment in New York and your stay here at Holmes.”

  It hadn’t actually occurred to Dante that someone must be paying his medical expenses. He thought it would be the state, or some other government entity. Or maybe the hospital and clinic themselves. Wasn’t that what hospitals and clinics did, made people well? “I don’t understand this foundation.”

  “It was started years ago by a very wealthy man named Charles Strong. Mr. Strong died long ago, and now the foundation’s managed by his son, Adam. Its mission is to save homeless children and provide whatever opportunity is left for them.”

  “A ranch. I’m supposed to be a cowboy?”

  Jane laughed. “Not exactly, though it is a working ranch that raises cattle. And you and the other children you’ll live with will work. That’s part of the reason for the ranch, to teach work and responsibility.”

  “Is everyone there sick or injured?”

  “In some way, inside or out. The foundation tries to make them whole again.”

  Dante turned away from her and gazed out the window at the branches of a willow tree. “It sounds like an orphans’ home.”

  “I suppose it is, in a way. But it’s also something more than that.”

  “The other kids there? Are they orphans like me?”

  Jane seemed to search for words. “They need someone to care for them, Dante. They have no one else.”

  “I have you.”

  “I’m your friend. We’ll remain friends. But I can’t care for you forever. I can’t afford it, and I have a life outside the clinic. . ” Jane’s voice broke. “Are you crying?”

  “No!”

  “You’ll like it at the ranch, Dante. In fact, you’ll learn to love it there. Other kids have. Are you crying? You can’t go back to living on the street. It’s dangerous. You’re too young. Nobody, whatever their age, should have to live on the street. Damn it, Dante, are you crying?”

  She leaned forward so she could see his face and kiss his undamaged cheek.

  He was crying.

  32

  The present

  Meg stopped the unmarked for a traffic light and watched through the metronomic sweep of the windshield wipers as pedestrians stepped over a puddle near the curb and crossed the street. She’d taken the car home last night and was on her way this rainy morning to pick up Repetto. They were to meet Birdy at their precinct office.

  When she pulled the car over to the curb in front of Repetto’s house in the Village, she saw him standing with Lora in the shelter of the small awning over the entrance. As soon as
the car stopped, he leaned down and kissed Lora, then took the concrete steps to the sidewalk with the casual adroitness of a much younger man.

  Lora followed, teetering on high heels and balancing her purse as she opened a black umbrella while on the way down the steps. A multitasker. She was on her way somewhere work-related, Meg thought, wearing a blue raincoat and dress-up shoes of the sort Meg could never wear to work unless going undercover as a hooker. When she saw Meg, Lora smiled and waved. Meg lifted her fingers that were curved around the top of the steering wheel and wagged them.

  Repetto opened the passenger-side door and slid into the car, bringing heft and moisture and the scent of wet clothing with him. He shut the door in a hurry, trapping the dank morning scents inside the car.

  “Lousy morning,” Meg remarked.

  “You were right,” he said, smoothing back his damp hair with both hands, then glancing at his wet fingers. “About the hair.”

  At first Meg thought he was referring to his hair; then she realized what he meant.

  Repetto brushed his hands together to dry them. “The dark hair you spotted caught in the door latch in the apartment the Sniper used-it turned out to be synthetic, just as you predicted.”

  Meg felt a flush of satisfaction. “So our guy wears a hairpiece or wig.”

  “Looks that way, though he wouldn’t necessarily wear one all the time.”

  Meg thought about Alex and his military buzz cut. Ideal hair to wear beneath a wig.

  Repetto wasn’t finished with his good news. “You were right about the mud in the apartment, too. He must have tracked it in from some place in the neighborhood, or more mud would have come off his shoes before he entered the building. Mud on the lobby floor, incidentally, suggests that’s how he got into the building. He must have simply walked in when the doorman was occupied and wouldn’t notice him. Easy then for him to take the elevator to the top floor and make his way onto the roof. From there he dropped by rope to the terrace outside the apartment. There were traces of mud there, too, where he would have knelt or sat in order to shoot.”

  “That mud could have been tracked out onto the terrace by me or Birdy, or one of the uniforms who got there before us.”

  “Possibly,” Repetto said, “but Weaver said she was the only one who went out there after spotting the forced lock on the French window, and she was careful.”

  “She would be.” In the corner of her vision, Meg saw Repetto glance over at her.

  “What’s that supposed to mean?”

  Huh? “Weaver’s ambitious, is all.”

  “What is this, catfight time?”

  Meg grinned. “You know me better than that. I think Weaver’s a solid cop. It’s just that she has … ambition.”

  “Like you don’t?”

  Does this guy want to argue? “You’re the one-”

  “Okay,” Repetto said. “Enough. The mud matches, and Weaver’s sure she didn’t track any out on the terrace. And you’re right-I shouldn’t compare. You and Weaver are two different people entirely.”

  Meg said nothing. She was irritated mostly at herself. Sure, Weaver was ambitious. So what? It wasn’t lack of ambition that had kept Meg down in the ranks. It was resistance to playing the political game.

  And something else.

  Maybe in comparing her to Weaver-Weaver of the flirtatious grin and the reputation for merriment and sleeping around-Repetto was trying to tell Meg that she, Meg, was too cynical. The male chauvinist might be saying the Job, on top of a rough marriage and divorce, could make a woman too hard, if she let it. Her mind, her thought processes, could become too rigid.

  He might be right. Or she might be making too much of a chance remark.

  Not that Repetto made many chance remarks.

  Meg looked over at him and modulated her voice. Make-nice time. “Maybe this is a good morning to see if we can find similar mud in the neighborhood, someplace where water might stand for a few days and leave mud even during a short dry spell.”

  “It’d be better to wait till tomorrow, when it’s not supposed to rain and most of this mess has dried up. Then we can go on a mud hunt.”

  “True,” Meg said. At least I found the synthetic hair.

  She braked for a school bus, breathing the yellow monster’s exhaust fumes that made their way into the car.

  “Smells like Lora describes my cigars,” Repetto said.

  Meg was watching half a dozen kids about the same age-eight or nine-emerge from an apartment doorway and trudge toward the waiting bus single file and perfectly spaced, like ducks in the rain.

  They all looked glum; they were on their way to school. What did they know from real worries?

  To be a kid that age again. .

  A memory dropped like a coin in the back of Meg’s mind. It took her a few seconds to realize what it meant.

  “Meg?”

  Repetto was nudging her shoulder. The school bus had pulled away.

  A horn blared behind Meg, and she spun the unmarked’s tires on wet pavement as she tried to get up to speed.

  It was still raining when they reached the precinct house. They trudged through the area in front of the desk, then the detective squad room where a cluster of plainclothes cops sitting or leaning around a computer glanced over at them. A couple of uniforms guided a dejected-looking guy handcuffed and with arms covered with tattoos outside to drive him to Central Booking.

  Repetto led the way downstairs to their basement office. It smelled mustier and more oppressively than usual this rainy morning. Former Police Commissioner Kerik, in his framed photo on the wall, appeared moody and depressed by the weather. The green mold in the corner up near the ceiling had thrived and was now about six inches down one of the walls. Meg wondered sometimes if they were in a race to solve the Night Sniper case before the mold took over the office.

  Birdy must have just arrived and was finishing hanging up his wet raincoat as they entered. He used his hand to brush drops of water from it onto the floor. While Repetto briefed him on the hair and mud news, Meg examined the Night Sniper murder files. She wanted to make sure she was right about what she suspected after seeing the school bus and kids had jogged her memory.

  Birdy slapped a hand to his forehead, as if he’d just remembered something himself, then went to a desk and opened a white paper bag. The scent of coffee wafted over to Meg, chasing away some of the mustiness. Birdy got three Styrofoam cups from the bag, handed one to Repetto, then walked over with another for Meg.

  “The next Night Sniper victim will be low on the economic ladder,” she said casually, accepting the coffee and nodding her thanks.

  She removed the cup’s plastic lid, waiting for Repetto to come over to her desk, knowing he’d overheard what she said to Birdy. If you think the synthetic hair was impressive. .

  He was standing there giving her one of his level looks, as if he were a master craftsman trying to line up something delicate.

  “Explain,” he said, taking a careful sip of his coffee.

  She took a sip from her own cup. No need for caution. It was lukewarm. “Our Sniper is very much into playing games.”

  “What he lives for,” Birdy said. “And Repetto is his opponent, at least in his mind.”

  “And his mind is what we’re trying to get into. He gets his jollies planting clues, leaving us riddles to solve.”

  “And you solved one?” Repetto asked.

  “I just checked the murder files to make sure,” Meg said to both men. “If, in the Sniper’s mind, the game actually began when Repetto came to the case, the first victim was Vito Mestieri.”

  “Sniper pretty much made that game thing clear,” Birdy said. “It started with Mestieri.”

  “So to this point the victims are, in order, Mestieri, who owned and operated an appliance and TV repair shop. Ralph Evans, buyer for a chain of men’s clothing stores. Candy Trupiano, editor and National Guard corporal. Kelli Wilson, who sometimes spent the night on her boat docked in the city. And Lee
Nasad, millionaire author. Tinker, tailor, soldier, sailor, rich man-”

  “-poor man, beggar man, thief,” Repetto finished for her.

  Meg nodded. “Child’s play.”

  33

  1990

  Strong Ranch was 590 acres of flat, arid land roughly between Phoenix and Tucson in the Arizona desert. It was bisected by an arroyo that ran with water about twice a year during unusually heavy rainstorms. On one side of the arroyo was the main ranch house, the boys’ barracks, and various outbuildings including a tractor shed and hip-roofed barn. On the other side was the smaller, girls’ quarters, a scaled-down version of the boys’ stucco-and-lapboard one-story structure with rooftop air-conditioning units and solar panels.

  The barracks were divided into separate cubicles that afforded some privacy, and it was in one of those cubicles that Dante Vanya spent most of his time alone after being transferred to Strong Ranch. Being by himself was what he wanted, or told himself so, and the ranch wasn’t the kind of place where friendships were easily formed.

  In the dining area, Dante ate alone at a table away from the other ten boys currently at the ranch, his fellow … he wasn’t sure if they were prisoners or patients.

  With each passing day, Dante became more determined to go it alone at Strong Ranch. The others might have their problems, but none of them had Dante’s disfigurements.

  On the third day, a hulking fifteen-year-old named Orvey tried to pick a fight with Dante by perpetrating a shoving match. Instead of shoving back, Dante kicked him hard in the shin, then advanced on him. Dante wasn’t angry, and not at all frightened. He was obviously resigned to taking a beating from the much larger boy, but determined to give back what he could.

  The fight didn’t last long, and Dante was saved from a serious trouncing when two of the older boys separated the combatants out of fear the confrontation would draw attention and result in punishment.