by John Lutz
Bobby looked in the direction of the voice. A bald man behind the bar was waving what appeared to be a white towel at him. “Out! Get the fuck out!”
Bobby backed away, letting the door swing shut. Things had changed. Now he-and the police-knew the name of the Night Sniper:
Dante Vanya.
If he was the Night Sniper.
If he was the homeless man who didn’t belong.
If he was real.
So many ifs. Bobby jammed his fists into his pockets and bowed his head as he limped away on newly raised blisters.
That was the trouble. When you went to the police and they didn’t believe you, it made you doubt yourself.
Officer Tom Dillon hoped to hell somebody knew what they were doing. He wasn’t due at the precinct till tomorrow for his next shift, and here he was looking for a guy named Vanya who might be the Night Sniper.
It was all part of a Special Operations Division plan that had sprung into place because Repetto had called it in after somebody’d shot at his daughter. Dillon had been on the Job only two years, but he’d heard plenty about Repetto. The guy knew his shit, and that was the only thing that kept Dillon from thinking tonight might not be a total waste of time.
Fifteen minutes ago an RMP car had dropped him off three blocks away from the crime scene, and he’d been walking ever since. He’d been assigned to stay on the move, observe, and get the information out fast on his two-way if anything or anyone merited suspicion.
Dillon wished he were home in bed with his wife, Glorianne, who was pregnant. Even in her fifth month, Glorianne was capable of having and enjoying sex. That had been something of a surprise to Dillon. But the doctor had said—
The young officer stopped and stared. He was sure he’d just seen somebody start down the steps of a subway stop half a block away, near the next corner. Which didn’t make sense, because he knew the subway stop was closed and boarded up. Had been for months.
Or maybe it had been a trick of his vision, a play of shadow, and he hadn’t seen anything at all. Dillon couldn’t be sure.
He’d better make sure.
Telling himself this might fall into the category of something that merited suspicion, he went to investigate.
Dillon peered down the narrow concrete stairwell into darkness. There was no sound from below. The acrid smell of stale urine wafted up at him, almost strong enough to make him turn his head.
“Hey!” he yelled. “You, down there!”
If anybody’s down there.
He got out his flashlight and aimed it down the stairwell, tentatively descending three or four concrete steps so he might see better.
The figure he’d glimpsed had been real. A ragged, homeless man holding a brown paper bag was just beginning to settle down with his whiskey in the shadows at the base of the steps. He glared up at Dillon, surprised, frightened, and perhaps indignant. The expression on his face suggested Dillon was invading his home.
Dillon was no stranger to the proprietary nature of some vagrants. He relaxed but kept the beam of his flashlight trained on the man. “You! C’mon up here.”
The man stood up unsteadily, as if his legs were sore, facing away from Dillon with his feet widely planted. His lower arms and hands disappeared in front of him, a slight bend to the elbows.
He appeared to be urinating, and not for the first time in the odorous stairwell.
Dillon thought about telling him it was illegal to piss down there; then he decided to be patient, let the poor guy finish his business before making his painful way back up to the city’s surface world.
That was when the man turned around with a sudden nimbleness that aroused Dillon’s suspicion. He saw that the homeless guy hadn’t been pissing but had struck a match and was holding it in the same hand that held the brown paper bag.
No, not a match. Too much flame, and growing. A twisted rag sticking up from the neck of the bottle in the bag. A wick!
Dillon tried to spin his body and clamber up the steps at the same time, scraping the toe of his left shoe on concrete and going nowhere. His right foot slipped and he banged his shin. He heard his flashlight clatter down the steps.
The explosion was more of a whoosh! than a bang. Dillon picked up a momentary stench of gasoline and realized the man had thrown a Molotov cocktail at him, and he was standing where it had detonated.
His legs were on fire!
His screams drew attention, and through his pain he managed to wrest his 9mm from its holster and fire several shots blindly through the flames in the stairwell.
The bullets splintered wood but missed the Night Sniper, who had bent down to pick up Dillon’s still-shining flashlight and shove it in a coat pocket. He hadn’t brought his own flashlight tonight because he hadn’t anticipated going underground.
The fire provided enough light to work by.
He got a fresh grip on the crooked panel and was through the plywood barrier and running down a frozen escalator, fumbling for the flashlight he’d need for the total darkness ahead.
It took a few minutes for the cops on the street to reach the subway stop and drag what was left of Dillon up to the sidewalk. Assuming, with a glance at his charred and smoldering body, that he was dead, they switched their efforts to trying to extinguish the fire at the top of the stairwell.
They had little other than the soles of their shoes and a shirt one of them had removed to try to smother the flames, but it didn’t take long for the remaining gasoline to burn itself out.
Convinced that Dillon had expired, but also knowing it could be a mistake to mentally pronounce someone dead at the scene of a crime, the three cops decided they couldn’t desert him. The shirtless cop, a big African-American named Wilson, was elected to stay with the fallen Dillon to wait for an ambulance.
It was a good thing. As if responding to their decision not to give up on him, the thing that Dillon had become began to moan.
While the other two uniforms made their way down the blackened steps and through the dark gap made by the pried plywood panel, Wilson used his two-way to call for medical transport and to get out the word:
The Night Sniper was in the subway system, on the run and under hot pursuit.
62
The Sniper ran stumbling along the tracks, staying close to the tunnel’s dark concrete wall, occasionally bumping it with his left shoulder. He knew that though the stop was closed, the E and V trains still roared through the tunnel. Now and then he thought he could feel the wind pressure of an approaching train shoving cool air ahead of it in the narrow tunnel. But there was no thunderous, clacking roar that accompanied the trains, and no approaching brilliant eye of light.
He knew he could find shelter in the occasional tile maintenance alcove along the tunnel, where he could press himself back while a train passed a few feet away from him. He’d done it more than once during his time as a street kid, and more recently while using the tunnels to get around the city undetected. It was a convenient and private way to move about, once you learned the train times and layout of the underground maze.
What he feared more than the trains was what he knew would soon be pursuing him. There’d been an army of cops in the area, and they’d see where he entered the tunnel. As soon as they’d tended to their burned comrade, and the fire blocking the stairwell was extinguished, they’d be after the cop’s killer.
And they’d be motivated.
He could hear his rasping breath, and every few steps feel the bite of sharp or angled rock beneath his soles.
What if I turn an ankle now, fall, and become immobile? They’ll have me. Here in the tunnel they’ll do what they choose, their own notion of justice.
He ignored the rifle barrel bumping his leg beneath his coat and ran harder, careful to avoid the live rail. Like everyone who’d spent time in the subway system, he’d seen the dead rats on the tracks that had died by electrocution, and it was obvious they had left this world in agony.
His right side began to ache with
each step. The intermittent, piercing pain grew sharper, slowing him down, making his stride erratic.
This is insane! Don’t panic! Don’t!
Think! Plan!
He made himself slow to a brisk walk and worked to regulate his breathing. From a pocket he withdrew a fresh magazine for the rifle. He stopped completely for a moment, removed from the rifle the magazine that was missing the bullet he’d fired at Amelia Repetto, and replaced it with the fresh magazine. Soon, any second, every shot might count. The magazine a bullet short went into his pocket. He fitted the rifle back on the sling beneath his coat.
Under way again, breathing more rhythmically, he picked up his pace and rounded a bend in the tunnel. After another hundred yards he reached a shallow alcove and pressed himself back into it. He switched off the flashlight and tucked it in his belt, then brought the rifle up from beneath his coat.
Shifting position and bracing himself against hard tile, he raised the rifle and peered through its infrared scope. Whoever was after him would soon be rounding the bend in the tunnel.
It felt good to be taking the initiative instead of acting, feeling, like a hunted animal. He had options other than mindless flight. He could plan. He could act.
He could shoot.
Oh, he could shoot!
The Night Sniper felt confidence swell in him like a warm revelation. He’d stopped playing their game.
Now they were playing his.
Their flashlight beams became visible first. Now that he had a fix on his pursuers, the Sniper raised his eye from the scope and waited.
Yellow fingers of light played over the tracks and tunnel walls. Then the figures holding the flashlights came into sight in dark silhouette, one quite a bit taller than the other. One of the yellow beams darted close and momentarily reflected off the damp tunnel wall to reveal two uniformed cops. They appeared to have their flashlights in their left hands, their handguns in their right. Their body language gave away their fear.
The Night sniper squinted again through the night scope and took careful aim. He felt solid, steady, and the moment arrived as he knew it would.
His first shot took down the tall cop, who seemed to melt into a dark heap.
The Sniper worked the rifle’s bolt action smoothly, and before the startled shorter cop could get off a shot, sent a bullet into him.
Through the scope, he studied the two still forms on the ground. The tall one had rolled against the tunnel wall and lay motionless. The short one hadn’t moved since he’d fallen and lay on his back near the tracks. The Sniper knew he’d hit both targets, and considered sending a shot into each of them to make sure they were dead.
Then he decided against it. If they weren’t dead, they were surely wounded, probably unconscious, and couldn’t keep up with him.
More confident now, he lowered the rifle and hooked it into its sling, then resumed his journey through the dark tunnel.
He’d taken only a dozen steps before he felt the cool rush of air that told him a train was bearing down on him, coming toward him.
No mistake this time.
Without hesitation he ran back toward the alcove where he’d shot from to bring down the two cops. The rifle bumping against him slowed him down, and he slipped on something and almost fell. He could hear the train now, and feel its subtle vibration. Glancing over his shoulder, he saw a pinpoint of light staring at him like an unblinking hunter’s eye.
He reached the alcove, ducked into it, and stood with his back pressed tightly against the tile wall as the train roared toward him. The tunnel shook. The wall at his back trembled.
Then the train was passing him.
Only a few feet away. How near the passengers were as they blurred past in the lighted cars. He knew he wasn’t visible to them in the black tunnel as they ticked by unaware, kept company by their reflections in the dark glass.
He’d watched carefully and was sure the conductor in the lead car hadn’t seen him.
He could still feel the vibration as he listened to the roar of the train become fainter.
Danger past.
He let out the breath he’d been holding, though even as he did so he knew something wasn’t right.
It was the way the train sounded, fainter yet no farther away. And he’d heard an underlying metallic squealing.
When he stepped from the alcove, he was surprised to see that the train had slowed almost to a stop only a few hundred feet away.
Okay, he could start running in the opposite direction and there was little chance anyone inside the last car would notice him even if they could see out into the close and ominous darkness.
Another metallic squeal, and the train began gradually building speed.
The Night Sniper realized what must have happened; the train had made contact with one or both of the dead cops. He remembered the short one who’d fallen near the tracks. Now the train had worked its way beyond the obstruction and was picking up speed.
The Night Sniper was amazed how opportunity, fate, always turned out to be his unexpected ally. Amazed but not really surprised. Fortune favored the brave.
He sprinted toward the last car that was now traveling about five miles per hour. He was aware of something soft beneath his foot as he passed the place where the cops had fallen, and caught a glimpse of the tall cop’s body still huddled against the tunnel wall. He didn’t have time to think about it. The train was picking up speed and he had to lengthen his stride to keep closing the distance to it.
The pain in his side flared again, threatening to stop him, bend him, break him. He refused to let it. He strained even harder, lifting his knees higher, pumping his legs beneath the tattered coat, ignoring the pain that was like fire in his ribs.
He was gaining on the car now. Slowly, but he was gaining.
Lunging, he reached out his hand toward the metal rail on the car’s rear platform. Missed it, stumbled, and almost fell. Ran even harder, reached again, closed his hand over the rail, and squeezed it in a grip that matched its steel.
With a shout of pain that no one heard, he closed his other hand on the rail, lifted his feet, and dragged himself up onto the car’s narrow back platform.
He lay there gasping, feeling the train gaining speed, aware of something hard beneath his right hip.
The rifle! Thank God he hadn’t lost it in his wild dash for the train. The most important train he’d ever caught.
Rather, it would be if his luck held.
He rolled over so he could kneel on the lurching platform, then crouch, then slowly stand. He peered through the dirty back window into the lighted subway car.
His luck hadn’t deserted him!
There was only one passenger in the rear car, a fiftyish woman slouched in one of the bench seats and reading a paperback book. She was wearing a gray blouse, dirty and wrinkled jeans, and her mouse-colored hair was lank and unkempt. Her ankles were crossed so her knees were separated in a posture that might have been obscene on a younger, more attractive woman. Her shoes were practical black lace-ups that were scuffed and badly worn. There was a faded red scarf or shawl over her shoulders that had fringe on it.
The woman’s eyes appeared to be closed. At first the Night Sniper thought she might be asleep; then her right hand rose and went to her book, slowly turned a page, and returned to her side and was still. The rest of the woman hadn’t moved.
Deep into whatever she was reading, the Night Sniper thought. Good.
He stood all the way up and opened the door.
At the motion and sudden rush of sound, the woman raised her gaze from the book and turned her head to look at him. He closed the door and met her bleary-eyed, baleful stare.
She knows something, everything. On a certain level, she knows.
He opened his coat and raised the rifle from its sling, bringing it to his shoulder. The woman’s expression remained the same until an instant before he squeezed the trigger. There was a slight change in her eyes-perhaps they widened-and she opened h
er mouth to speak.
The train was traveling fast now, making a racket. The shot was barely audible over the clatter of steel on steel. When the bullet tore into the woman’s heart, her body jerked and her book dropped to the floor. She slumped lower on the bench seat, as if settling down awkwardly for a nap.
The Night Sniper went to her and pulled her up so she was seated somewhat straighter. It was surprising how light she was. He retrieved her book from the floor, glancing at the cover. Six Secrets for Sexual Success. That didn’t seem at all like the woman. He placed her fingers around the cover and propped the book in her dead hands. Her heart had stopped pumping immediately, so there wasn’t much blood. He arranged her fringed red scarf so it tumbled down over her chest, concealing the glistening scarlet stain. With a deft, brushing motion of his fingertips, he closed her eyes.
Gripping a vertical bar for support, he moved back and surveyed what he’d done. The woman appeared much as she had when he entered the car. She might be sleeping or reading.
Or dead.
He glanced again at her book and found himself wondering, what were the six secrets?
The train rattled on through the dark tunnel toward its next stop. When it arrived, if the platform looked clear enough, the Sniper would get off and make his way up to the street. As sparse as subway passengers were these dangerous nights, it should take quite a while before someone discovered the woman slumped in her seat was dead and not reading or sleeping.
Whatever the situation at the train’s next stop, the Sniper was sure that if he needed an alternate plan, one would come to him.
He was confident in a new way and with a new knowledge. It was going to be impossible for Repetto and his minions to bring him down. He understood that now, and the understanding was like a gift granted at birth and finally found. He couldn’t fail and he wouldn’t.
God or the devil was with him, and he didn’t know or care which.
63
“He can’t go far on foot,” Birdy said. “He’s gotta come up at the next stop or the one after.”
He and Repetto were standing next to the unmarked Ford Victoria Birdy had just arrived in, parked well away from the subway stop where Dillon had burned. They could still hear the siren as the ambulance that had left with Dillon made its way through traffic. They both knew, after having seen and talked with Dillon, that there was no real rush. Nobody in Dillon’s condition could have lived, or would want to live, much longer.
