Fear the Night

19

The present

In Repetto’s mail was another note containing what was assumedly a theater seat number: 9-D. Nothing more. Same typewriter, same envelope and paper stock and postmark. The Night Sniper.

When he showed them the note, Meg and Birdy looked at Repetto.

He shook his head no. “Lora and I are staying away from Broadway these days.”

Which meant someone else, or maybe the Night Sniper himself, had sat in seat 9-D. Only maybe. It was always possible the Sniper was simply choosing seats at random, on his way out of the theater, and unobtrusively affixing the notes in passing.

“It would help if the bastard gave us the name of the theater,” Meg said.

“It wouldn’t be a game then,” Birdy pointed out.

“One we’ve got no choice but to play,” Repetto said.

They began working the phones.

Locating the theater took almost an hour.

Stuck to the bottom of seat 9-D in the Circle One Theater, where a musical comedy titled Little Miss Muffet was playing, they found the carefully folded and taped note: Your move, Detective Repetto.

“Gamesmanship again!” Meg said in disgust.

Repetto said, “Zoe Brady would tell you it’s a male thing.”

“She’d probably be right.”

“Children,” Birdy said.

They turned to look at him.

“This theater’s playing Little Miss Muffet,” Birdy said. “It’s a nursery rhyme, and the killer mentioned rhymes in his first note: Rhyme and reason. .”

“And?” Meg said, cocking her head to the side, suspecting where he was going.

Birdy didn’t disappoint her. “You suppose the Night Sniper’s gonna shoot a kid?”

“It isn’t likely,” Zoe told Repetto later that afternoon, “that the Sniper will change his pattern and begin shooting children.”

They were in her One Police Plaza office. It was dimmer than it had to be. The vertical blinds behind her desk were still only barely cracked, admitting light but not much of a view. It was as if she might turn around now and then in her chair and see the world outside in vertical cross sections, slices of life.

“We can’t ignore the reference to rhymes,” Repetto said, “and that the theater where the last note was found is playing Little Miss Muffet. And the Night Sniper probably sat in the seat where he taped the note.”

“All true,” Zoe said, brushing back a strand of her long red hair that was interfering with her vision. “But it doesn’t add up to him killing kids. It does suggest that whatever’s compelling him to kill is connected to an incident, or at least circumstances, in his childhood. But there’s nothing new in that. Virtually all serial killers had wretched childhoods.”

“That’s hardly an excuse,” Repetto said.

“No, it isn’t. Most people who have wretched childhoods don’t grow up to be serial killers. The difference between them and the ones who do kill is something that’s still being studied.”

“By people like you,” Repetto said. “My job’s to stop the ones who kill.”

“Mine too,” Zoe said. “I told you what I think. This killer seems more hung up on game playing than on children. It’s probably simply coincidence that the theater where the Night Sniper decided to leave his note was playing a version of a nursery rhyme.”

“You know what cops think of coincidence?”

“Sure. That’s why I work for the city.” She smiled at Repetto. He thought a little smugly. “If the next note turns up on a seat where The Lion King’s playing, maybe we’ve got a pattern.”

Repetto left the office, his opinion of profilers unimproved.

Meg knew she could dismiss Alex Reyals from her mind until the investigation suggested otherwise. For some reason she simply couldn’t imagine him as the killer, whatever the evidence. Anyway, the evidence pointing to him was indeed thin.

Still, it wouldn’t hurt to talk to Reyals again. To make sure of a few things.

This time after buzzing her up, he wasn’t standing with the door open, waiting for her. But as soon as she drew back a fist to knock, a voice called from above:

“I’ve been painting. C’mon up.”

Reyals was leaning over the banister of the stairs leading to the landing above. He was holding a small, tapered paintbrush in one hand, a wadded towel in the other.

Remembering he’d said that he used the upstairs apartment as his workshop, she climbed the creaking wooden steps. She could smell something now-turpentine or thinner.

“Putting on finish?” she asked.

“No, actually painting,” he explained. “One of my customers ordered an enameled piece.”

As she stepped inside, she saw that the floor plan was exactly the same as the apartment below, but one of the walls had been removed. There were paint cans and various bottles on metal shelves, an electric mixer of the sort you saw in paint stores, a steel locker, a circular saw and another sort of table saw, and an entire wall that was Peg-Board on which were mounted various woodworking tools-chisels, hammers, jigsaws, several old-fashioned wood planes with glistening steel edges. Her gaze went to an ornate wooden rocking chair with a light oak finish. Its spindles were delicately turned, and there was a tapering grace to the chair’s long runners. It really was a work of art, as well as furniture.

“That’s beautiful,” she said.

He smiled. “I’d invite you to sit down in it, but the finish is still tacky.”

“Thanks for the warning.” She sat instead on a small green leather sofa. She saw then what he’d been painting, a coffee table with a tiled top and knobbed legs. Each knob was a different color. Meg didn’t like it as well as the chair. “Is doing this kind of thing relaxing?” she asked.

Reyals laid the paintbrush across a small, open can of red paint on the floor near the table. He tossed the towel aside and ran his hand over his dark stubble haircut. “Relaxing? Oh, you mean therapeutic? That’s why I started it, and maybe part of the reason I’ve stayed with it.” He smiled, and it hit her in the heart. “And of course, it’s nice to sell some of my work now and then.”

“I can see why your work sells. It’s original and impressive.”

“I have a feeling you mean that. Thanks.”

She was momentarily at a loss for words, as she sometimes found herself when in his presence.

“Is this official?” he asked.

“Huh? Oh, my being here. Yes, official. Some more questions. Ones I forgot.”

“Detective Meg, I don’t think you forget anything.”

“When’s the last time you were at the theater?”

“Movies?”

“Plays.”

He seemed disturbed by the question, or maybe she was imagining it. “Been years,” he said. “I never was much of a playgoer. But if you like the theater and you’re free tonight. .”

“Do you own a typewriter?”

“Ah! I get it. This is about the Night Sniper notes.”

Meg felt something cold crawl up her spine. The Night Sniper notes were one facet of the case that hadn’t been released to the media.

“You okay?” he asked, concerned.

“Yeah, sure.”

He gave her his smile again. “You’re probably wondering how I know about the notes. I’ve still got lots of contacts in the NYPD, Meg. Once a cop, always a cop. And you might have noticed, the NYPD leaks like the Titanic.”

That was true. She had noticed.

Jesus! I’m trying to reassure myself.

“Don’t worry,” Alex said, “I don’t leak.” He walked across the room and moved a folding screen aside to reveal a rolltop desk with something beneath a plastic cover on it. He lifted the cover and stood aside. “My typewriter.”

It was an old IBM Selectric, the kind with the replaceable lettered ball. Any police lab could identify one from the typeface immediately. Meg was relieved. The Night Sniper’s typewriter was an ancient Royal manual.

“You actually came to see me, right, Meg?”

“Detective Meg-Doyle. And of course I came to see you. You’re the only one who lives here, right?”

“Right. Please don’t get pissed at me, Detective Meg.”

“Doyle.”

“Meg, we both know this is primarily a social call. I have alibis for the Night Sniper murders.”

“You think they’re tight ones? Remember, you used to be a cop.”

“They’re tight as could be expected. Like you said, I’m the only one who lives here. So there’s nobody else to say for sure that, yes, I was home watching TV or reading a book or sanding a piece of furniture.”

“What about copycat murders?” Meg asked. “Who’s to say you didn’t commit one, on one of those weak-alibi nights?”

He frowned at her. “This is all hypothetical, of course.”

“Sure.”

“It’s possible that I could have committed one, or even more, of the Sniper murders. But I didn’t, and you know it.” He shot his smile at her again. “Tell me you know it, Meg.”

“I don’t regard you as a strong suspect,” Meg admitted.

“But you do have a point about copycat murders. The sniper used a different rifle for each murder-that was in the papers, Meg. Have you guys figured out that one yet?”

“We thought he might be a dealer or a collector, only we’ve gone down the list and checked all of them out, and they look clean.”

“Lots of people collect guns and don’t let anyone know. Especially long guns. They’re easier to buy outside the law because they’re mostly used as collectibles or for hunting, not for holding up convenience stores.”

“It could be somebody like that,” Meg said. “There are all sorts of gun nuts.”

He shook his head. “Not a nut, necessarily. Just a collector, a lover of precise mechanisms.”

She looked around at all of his precision tools that he used so precisely. “By nut I didn’t mean wacky, I meant he could be a gun enthusiast.”

“Yeah, enthusiast is better.”

He seemed mollified. Was he a gun nut? It wouldn’t be a surprise-he’d been a SWAT sniper.

Meg knew she shouldn’t be talking about the case this way with Alex. It was because he’d been a cop. That was why, once he got her talking, she couldn’t seem to shut up. She told herself that was the reason.

She stood up from the sofa.

“Not going so soon, I hope,” Alex said. He seemed genuinely disappointed.

“I got answers to my questions,” she said.

“About the theater and typewriter?”

“More or less.”

He moved closer to her, not much, but enough that his presence affected her just the way he planned. Clever bastard. Seducer. Paint thinner never smelled so good. “I’d like to see you again,” he said, “on an unofficial basis.”

“Not wise. Especially not while the Sniper case is hot.”

Now he put on a sad expression. “You don’t even want to see my rocking chair after it gets its final coat of finish?”

She did. Very much. But something told her it was time to leave. It was an instinct she’d learned to trust.

“Sorry, but I don’t have time.” She moved toward the door.

“You’re the first person other than me who’s been in here in months. Usually I don’t show people my work before it’s finished. I don’t want their reaction to influence me.” He reached out and touched her shoulder ever so lightly. “But for you I made an exception.”

“Don’t think of me as an exception,” Meg said. “It doesn’t make sense for either of us.”

“Yet you came here.”

“Yet I did.” She went to the door and opened it. “Thanks for your cooperation, Mr. Reyals.”

He was grinning.

“If you ever want to take in a play. .” she heard him say as she went out.

Her heart was banging away like the percussion section of a symphony orchestra as she made her way back downstairs and outside. Seeing Alex had been a mistake, made her infection worse.

I screwed up, coming here, she told herself over and over, crossing the street toward her parked car.

What would Repetto think if he knew about this visit? He wouldn’t buy that additional questions crap any more than Alex had.

I really screwed up!