Fear the Night n-5

by John Lutz

  She summoned up her most official attitude, put her shield on display, and climbed out of the car.

  60

  Amelia’s relentless pacing was beginning to get on Meg’s nerves. The regular prushh, prushh, prushh of her slipper soles on the carpet was almost constant. Twenty-one-year-olds were restless, Meg reminded herself, even if they weren’t sniper targets.

  It meant Meg could never relax. There was always the danger that Amelia would wander into a far part of the apartment alone and do something foolish, or peer out a window before Meg could stop her, or instinctively answer a knock on the door that led out onto the exposed stoop and sidewalk.

  Local news was on TV with the sound off, but there was plenty to learn from the crawl at the bottom of the screen or by lipreading the anchorwoman. Meg, seated on the sofa and trying to keep one eye on Amelia and the other on the TV, decided that all the silent information insinuating itself into the living room might be too much. She used the remote to flip through the channels, stopping at a 1970s repeat of The Price is Right. It was all about profoundly excited people who needed haircuts and wore starched-looking loud clothes. They were ecstatic about prizes received if they came closest at guessing prices. Everything in life had its price, Meg reflected. And coming close was about as well as you could do.

  Meg’s cell phone chimed and Amelia stopped pacing. She stared as Meg pressed the phone to her ear and listened to Repetto.

  “We’re on high alert,” Repetto said.

  He told Meg about Bobby Mays, and the homeless man who didn’t quite fit even in Bobby’s remote and lonely world.

  “Doesn’t sound like enough,” Meg said, imagining dozens of RMP cars and scores of uniformed and plainclothes cops silently closing in on the blocks surrounding where she was sitting. They’d soon establish a loose cordon around the area; then they would inexorably tighten it. Inside its perimeter, others would position themselves near subway and bus stops, halt vehicles at intersections for traffic checks, or walk the neighborhood searching for the homeless man with a rifle who might be real.

  Whoever the Night Sniper was-and Meg had private doubts about this homeless guy another of the homeless had described-if he knew the forces closing in on him, he’d wish he’d chosen another night.

  “Amelia holding up all right?” Repetto asked.

  “Well as can be expected.” Meg decided not to mention Amelia’s incessant pacing, or the growing apprehension Amelia would describe as simply nerves. Better than simply terror.

  “Everything still tight there?”

  “Like the city budget. Don’t worry about this end.”

  Repetto hung up without asking to talk with Amelia. Things were moving fast and he was busy, his thoughts concentrated. He had to stay that way to remain on top of events that might be about to give him quite a ride. Meg understood. Amelia wouldn’t.

  “Who was it?” Amelia asked, watching Meg clip the phone back on her belt.

  “Your dad. I think he had more to say, but he got called away.”

  “So why’d he call?”

  Meg told her.

  “He puts a lot of faith in what he calls instinct,” Amelia said. “Or hunches.” She began to pace again. Prushh, prushh. . “It’s really just subconscious reasoning, what your mind knows before it lets you in on the secret.”

  Maybe she would understand.

  Meg decided it might be a good idea if they talked about this. She switched off the distracting TV, where a woman in an evening gown was grinning and caressing a refrigerator as if she were in love. Woman and appliance shrank and disappeared in a point of light.

  When Meg looked away from the blank screen, Amelia was approaching a window and reaching for the heavy closed drapes so she could part them and peer out.

  Meg was instantly up out of the sofa, crossing the room swiftly but smoothly, so she didn’t spook Amelia and cause her to yank at the drape.

  She saw Amelia’s fingers close on the thick velvet material and moved faster so she could rest a hand on her shoulder.

  “Amelia, don’t-”

  There was an almost inaudible snick! from the other side of the drape, and the unmistakable crack of a rifle shot echoed along the street.

  Meg saw the shock on Amelia’s face, the pattern of blood on her left cheek.

  Then Meg was sitting on the floor, dragging Amelia down with her.

  It all seemed to be happening slowly, but disjointedly in a way that ate up time.

  Shouts from outside. Running footfalls. Leather soles shuffling on concrete. The doorbell chiming over and over. A pounding on the door.

  Meg looked again at Amelia, who was sitting hugging her knees and staring wide-eyed back at her, still with the stunned expression. And something else. A kind of horror mixed with pity.

  A pain in Meg’s right shoulder made her gasp, and she curled to lie on her side on the deep, roughly napped carpet. She felt for her shoulder and found fiery pain. Blood was thick and scarlet on her fingers, and now she felt the warmth of fresh blood between her breasts, trickling down her ribs beneath her left arm. Her life trickling away.

  “Christ! I’ve been shot. . ”

  “Stay still,” Amelia said, calmer now, suddenly older than twenty-one and in charge. Her face was bloody, cut by flying glass. A small shard protruded from just below her left eye. “I’ll get help.”

  “Careful. . ”

  Amelia nodded as she scooted away, staying low, passing out of sight because Meg was too weak to turn her head to follow her movements.

  I’ve been shot. . Can’t be. . So many things left to do. .

  Motion. Shiny black shoes near her. Big. Men’s shoes. Cop’s shoes.

  Jesus! That’s reassuring. .

  A cop’s face looming over her. Knickerbocker’s.

  Mr. Chicken.

  Exhausted, no longer in pain, Meg closed her eyes.

  The Night Sniper knew he’d missed. He’d tried to make a head shot and failed. Carelessness of a sort. Or unlucky.

  Something made the blond woman in the window, who had to be Amelia Repetto, suddenly move-only a few inches, but enough to save her life. Life was always a matter of inches.

  Lucky Amelia.

  This time.

  There’ll be another time.

  Right now the challenge was to get out of the subleased apartment fast. He’d gone over it all in his mind, so his actions were almost automatic. He moved quickly and deliberately, a part of his mind seconds, minutes ahead of where he was and what he was doing.

  This rifle had a bolt action, so the Sniper didn’t have to use valuable time retrieving a shell casing; it remained in the breech. There weren’t as many tall buildings in this area as downtown, which meant the echo effect wasn’t as great. It wouldn’t take his opponents long to locate the source of the shot. If he weren’t fast enough they’d be on his heels.

  It was their time of temporary advantage in the game.

  Their move.

  His risk.

  Even as he was reviewing this in his mind, he was heading toward the door to the hall.

  He took the fire stairs fast, this time not caring if he made noise.

  Past the musty-smelling basement laundry room. Still unoccupied.

  Out the side door into the dark passageway. The fresh night air.

  He hurried toward the paler rectangle of light that was the block behind Amelia Repetto’s apartment, his long coat flapping as he took giant strides while fitting the rifle in its sling. Protruding from one pocket of his threadbare coat was a brown-wrapped bottle that would account for the uneven gait caused by the rifle extending down alongside his left leg. Its awkward, shifting weight only added to the suggestion of inebriation. As he walked across a subway grate, he worked the rifle’s bolt and let the spent shell drop from beneath his coat to fall into darkness. If he must, he could throw the coat open and raise and fire the rifle in an instant.

  If he must.

  Right now, he didn’t anticipate the nee
d. Though his shooting could have been more accurate, his escape from the area was going just fine. He would stay in his homeless costume this time, and make his way as one of the invisible into the vastness and anonymity of the city.

  He forced himself to move more slowly and deliberately, as if he were unafraid, as uninterested in his pursuers as they should be in him.

  Another ten minutes and he’d be safe. The ageless equation of the desperate: time equals distance equals safety. .

  He was unaware that a large percentage of the NYPD was in the area. And that they knew more than he imagined.

  As Repetto jogged the final few yards to Amelia’s apartment door and started up the concrete steps to the stoop, his cell phone chirped.

  “We got a name,” Melbourne told him.

  “We got a shooting here! My place!”

  “Amelia okay?”

  “Dunno. Gonna find out.”

  Repetto was through the door now, shoving aside a uniform as he made his way toward the still form of a woman on the floor.

  Then he became aware of Amelia standing off to the side, holding a bloody towel to her face.

  She came to him and hugged him fiercely, dropping the towel and pressing her bloodied face to his shoulder. He hugged his only child tight, kissing her forehead, then leaned back to stare more closely at her.

  She didn’t appear to be injured badly, but she’d need treatment. He could see glass shards glittering in the small cuts that peppered her cheek. Outside, sirens were yowling, drawing near.

  “We got EMS on the way,” a voice near him said. Repetto turned to see a uniform, tried to recall his name but couldn’t.

  Amelia had moved away from Repetto. A guy wearing a bowling jacket and beard who Repetto knew was undercover was helping her over to the sofa, gently guiding her with a hand on her elbow so she’d sit down.

  Repetto began thinking more clearly through his fear and concern for Amelia. He understood now that the woman on the floor was Meg.

  He went to her on numbed legs, barely avoiding the blood. We’re going to get the bastard!

  The trap was closing.

  We’re going to get him.

  After making sure her wounds were only superficial, Repetto saw Amelia off not in an ambulance but in a patrol car. He called Lora, talking to her only briefly, to let her know what had happened, to reassure her that Amelia would be all right. Then he called Melbourne back.

  “Amelia. .?” Melbourne asked, when he heard Repetto’s voice.

  “She’ll be okay,” Repetto said.

  “Thank God for that.”

  “Meg’s not so good.”

  After Repetto had brought him up to speed on what had happened at the apartment, Melbourne said, “Our sniper’s name is Dante Vanya.” He spelled it for Repetto. “Weaver tracked him down. We did a rush through Central Warrants and tossed his apartment, swank place on the Upper East Side. He’s the son of a guy the Department of Sanitation fired sixteen years ago. Dad became depressed and shot Dante’s mom, then himself. Dante lived for a while as a street kid, got himself badly burned in a subway station fire, then rehabilitated at a charity foundation ranch out in Arizona. That’s where he learned from an expert how to shoot.”

  An orphan who’d grown up on the street, trying to kill a girl too stubborn to run. Sons and daughters, Repetto thought. Put the tape on rewind, and almost every crime could be prevented. “We sure about all this?”

  “We are. You were right about Weaver. She did a hell of a job gathering facts. Vanya’s also got a room in his apartment with a door that doesn’t look like a door, and inside it is the biggest collection of rifles and shooting paraphernalia you ever saw. Ballistics is gonna be in heaven.”

  “I take it Vanya wasn’t home when you arrived with the warrant.”

  “No, and we both know where he was.”

  We know. Repetto felt rage become determination in his gut. “We got his photo?”

  “None anywhere in the apartment, which is also curious. Vanya never had much to do with his neighbors-not so unusual in New York-but the doorman describes him as average height and build, in his thirties, black and blue, good-looking guy, and a sharp dresser.”

  “Get the name out to the media. Spread it all over the city, along with his description. Somebody’ll know him and tell us more.” Repetto thought about the NYPD personnel stationed in the neighborhood, and the cordon of cops in the wider area, closing in, tightening the trap so there were more and more cops to the square block, the square yard. “We have him. I can feel it.”

  “When he knows he’s trapped,” Melbourne said, “he’s gonna be desperate and even more dangerous. And he can shoot the buttons off your shirt, only he won’t be aiming at your buttons.”

  “We put out his description,” Repetto said, “and maybe he’ll surprise us and surrender in remorse.”

  “I believe you hope he doesn’t.”

  Repetto didn’t see any point in answering that one. “Better make sure the public knows he’s armed and dangerous.”

  “Right now I’m making sure you and the rest of your people know it,” Melbourne said. “Right now I’m reminding you, this guy is deadly.”

  Repetto said, “Tell it to Meg.”

  “Word just came in on another line, she was hit in the shoulder and should be okay. She look to you like she was gonna make it?”

  “There is no okay when you’ve got a bullet in you,” Repetto said. “And we’ll find out soon who’s gonna make it, and who isn’t.”

  61

  A chill ran through the Night Sniper as he saw a man carrying what looked like a small duffel bag, crossing the street half a block down. He slowed his pace, stalling until the man had climbed half a dozen steps to a concrete stoop and disappeared into a building.

  Relieved, the Sniper picked up his pace.

  He hadn’t expected this kind of security. Since leaving the apartment across the street from Repetto’s, he’d spotted uniformed cops, then people who might be working undercover. Real or suspected, he’d managed to avoid them all.

  Other people walking the dark streets, who fortunately weren’t police, paid little attention to the homeless man in his long, rumpled coat, shuffling dazedly along the sidewalk. The fact that there were somewhat fewer homeless in New York these days seemed to make him even less noticeable, less of an actual person. He was a problem that was ended, or at least made manageable, and was no longer of concern. If anyone did look at him closely, the brown paper bag jutting from a pocket would explain his apparent disorientation. There was nothing unusual about people like him in New York. They existed in the thousands and drew no particular interest.

  Yet he didn’t feel the smug invulnerability that usually sustained him when in his homeless persona. His heart was beating faster and he was slightly out of breath, hyperalert. Adrenaline. Terrifying, but like a drug.

  There was another police car, gliding across the intersection at the next block. The Sniper barely managed to halt and become part of the shadows. Again, he was sure he hadn’t been noticed.

  Reasonably sure.

  How long before they see me? Approach me?

  What was going on here? Security in Amelia Repetto’s neighborhood, yes. But this sudden and relentless tightening of a net was beyond what he’d anticipated.

  What do they know?

  How do they know it?

  One thing was for sure. They knew something. They’d been ready for him and had a plan that was now in effect. No surprise there. Everyone in the game knew that Amelia Repetto was being used to lure him. Like a staked lamb. But the number and intensity of the Sniper’s pursuers were upsetting.

  For the first time since the game had begun, his confidence was shaken.

  He was frightened.

  He had to admit it. Afraid.

  But, as always, he knew where he was, and what he had to do. He changed direction and walked several blocks to the west. To a subway stop that had been closed for several months, awa
iting renovation.

  He managed a smile but didn’t like the nervous twitch at the corner of his mouth. Like a fox, he’d go to ground and let the hounds pass over him, near him, unaware of his presence, not realizing how lucky they were not to find him. He was pleased by the analogy. He drew comfort from it.

  Like a fox. But dangerous.

  When he reached the darkened subway stop, he paused near the narrow concrete stairwell descending to the plywood-boarded entrance. No one seemed to be observing him, but just in case, he removed the bagged whiskey bottle from his pocket, pretended to take a swig, then started down the stairs that descended to blackness.

  He was in familiar territory now, where a part of him had never left and still knew where it belonged, a discard and a freak hiding away from the rest of humanity.

  His probing fingers found a rough wooden edge in the darkness, and he inserted them beneath it and began prying a plywood panel loose on one side to provide entry.

  Through his fear he knew he was going home. Home to the ferocious security of a demon in hell.

  Vanya. Dante Vanya.

  Bobby had heard two guys standing outside Rocko Bill’s Sports Lounge talking about this Vanya, about the Night Sniper. They’d observed something on TV inside the lounge and seemed to think Vanya and the Sniper were one and the same.

  One of the guys gave Bobby a shit-kicker look, and Bobby moved on.

  They were both big and they might have been a little drunk, so he waited until they’d left before returning to the lounge entrance. He edged the door open to the sound of talking, laughing, and a baseball announcer doing a Braves game on the channel out of Atlanta. Bobby had a clear view of one of the big TVs above the bar. There was a news crawl across the bottom of the screen, but he couldn’t make out what it said. He did hear the name again-“Vanya”-in the conversation of people seated near the door.

  Dante Vanya.

  “Hey, you!”