Fear the Night

12

The Night Sniper carried nothing incriminating other than what was locked away in his mind. This was the time when he scouted in preparation. There were so many possibilities that it wasn’t much of a challenge.

He appeared unexceptional in his best khaki Eddie Bauer slacks he’d bought at a secondhand shop, his worn New Balance jogging shoes, his pale blue shirt and darker blue windbreaker. Then there were the baseball cap, the turned-up collar. Anyone who noticed such a forgettable figure at all would have a difficult time describing him to the police. With so many people in New York, it was easy to be unnoticeable.

His clothes might be common, but they were clean. He despised having fouled material next to his flesh. That worked out well. Their many washings gave the clothes a familiar aura and suggested he usually dressed in such a manner. But these clothes, and his other costume, never got to within ten feet of his real wardrobe.

Ah, here he was. At the Bermingale Arms.

The Night Sniper had learned something about the building. It was thirty-three stories, a combination of condos and rental units, with street-level shops facing the west side. No one even glanced in his direction as he went through the lobby and took the stairs instead of the elevator to the third floor.

He paused, waiting until a woman at one of the apartment doors finished balancing her many small grocery sacks while using her key. When she’d gone inside, he took the last few steps to the landing.

The third-floor hall was empty now. He could wait for the elevator here and no one would see him, as they might have in the lobby. If there was anyone in the elevator when it arrived, he simply wouldn’t step inside, as if he were waiting for one going down.

But the elevator was unoccupied, as he thought it would be this time of day, and it made no other stop all the way to the thirty-second floor.

As the elevator slowed, he slipped the flesh-colored latex gloves he’d bought at a medical supply house onto his hands. The gloves were made for burn victims with scarred or deformed hands, and passed for flesh unless someone looked closely and noticed their smooth texture, and that there were no fingernails.

The Night Sniper was pleased to find the narrow hall empty as he walked along it to the door to the fire stairs. The heavy door wouldn’t sound an alarm when he opened it, but it would close and lock behind him, leaving him to draw attention to himself or walk down more than thirty flights of stairs.

He removed a small roll of duct tape from his pocket, ripped off a rectangle, and placed it over the recess for the door’s spring lock so it wouldn’t latch behind him. Then he was on the fire stairs landing.

Not worrying about being seen now, he began climbing the stairs almost silently in his soft-soled joggers. He climbed fast, breathing evenly, keeping his feet to the sides of the wooden steps to minimize any squeaking.

It took him barely a minute to reach the top floor, then higher, to the service door to the roof. After using his duct tape again, in case the door was set up so a key was necessary for him to get back inside, he stepped out into the high breeze.

The view was terrific. Forty-fourth Street stretched beneath him away from the intersection almost directly below. He felt like the figure he remembered from one of the art books he’d leafed through years ago, Zeus (or was it God himself?) in the clouds, high above his subjects, muscular arm drawn back, about to hurl a thunderbolt toward the unsuspecting minions below. God was an older man, a father figure, bearded and wise and obviously with a terrible strength. He was about to mete out punishment. Justice.

Think about God later. About Justice.

The Night Sniper stooped low and settled in behind a billboard with a faded high-energy drink advertisement on it. It wasn’t very visible from below, and there were no lights illuminating it. The pretty girl in an evening gown, holding up a glass in a toast and smiling out at the scene below, had endured every kind of weather and was almost too faint to discern. One of her shoulders was peeling, the heavy shreds of signboard paper flapping gently in the breeze.

The breeze was probably constant up here, right now blowing at about ten miles per hour but without gusts. It would affect his aim but prove no problem. He had a feel now for how the wind played among the tall buildings, and he could adjust for different velocities at various heights. It was a talent, a synthesis of the physical senses and internal mathematics. He was proud of his increasing abilities, his growth. What he was doing had become an art within a game that itself would become an art.

The sign was supported about two feet higher than the parapet by a sturdy steel frame that was rusting badly. There were diagonal cross braces forming a kind of wide latticework. He knew he’d be able to crouch behind the steel braces and use one of them to help steady the rifle.

Staying low, he moved sideways along the bottom edge of the billboard, gazing through the steel framework, until he had a clear view of the spot he’d chosen in the street below. It was about fifty feet beyond the intersection, where a fire hydrant was located, and he’d noticed it was a natural place for people to try to hail taxis pulling away from the green light or turning the corner onto Forty-fourth Street. He smiled. He had the clear shot he’d imagined from ground level.

In his mind he aimed his imaginary rifle at a couple frantically waving at a cab. He stared unblinkingly through the night scope and centered the crosshairs, holding steady … steady on the woman in jeans and what looked from this height like a bright scarf or bandana around her neck.

There was a deep calm within him; right now he was as still as anything on earth. He waited for the moment, and when it came he squeezed the trigger and the woman fell.

Only she didn’t fall. She climbed into the cab that had pulled up to the curb near her.

Her lucky night.

She’d never know.