Fear the Night

24

It was almost 8:30, and the cab was caught in stop-and-go traffic on East Fifty-second Street. Kelli was sure that getting out and walking would get them to Four Seasons earlier than if they stayed in the cab and gained ground ten feet at a time. Besides, Jason was beginning to fidget, his fingers absently working on the box containing his new radio-controlled car. No doubt he was thinking that Michael Schumacker in his red Ferrari race car would figure out a way to roar through or around this traffic.

“We’ll get out here,” Kelli told the driver, as the cab rolled forward a few feet, then lurched to a stop inches from the rear bumper of the car ahead.

“We’re almost there, lady. Another block.”

“Here’ll do fine,” Kelli said, digging in her purse. She handed the driver a ten-dollar bill and told him to keep the change.

She climbed out of the cab first, standing holding the door open while Jason slid across the backseat and scampered out, still tightly gripping the box from the toy store. Heat was rolling out from under the cab, warming her ankles, reinforcing her decision to leave the cab now; the vehicle could overheat if traffic didn’t start to move soon.

Kelli made sure Jason was clear, then shut the cab door and stepped up on the curb. They began walking the block and a half to the restaurant. After sitting cramped in the cab for so long, it felt good to Kelli to be stretching her muscles. She really should exercise more. She’d been slacking off lately, skipping some of her scheduled workouts. Her chiropractor had given her a large inflatable ball to use for low-impact exercises. It made working out seem like play and might help her resolve.

They were standing on the corner with a man and three women, waiting for the signal to change so they could cross Park, when Kelli released Jason’s hand and touched her chest high between her breasts. She’d felt a sudden, sharp pain and was having difficulty breathing.

Heart attack?

Not in my family.

The light changed to WALK and the people around her began crossing the street. Someone behind bumped her hip as they danced around her, a large woman in a hurry and not slowing down or saying excuse me.

“Mom?”

Jason. Why did he sound so far away?

She started to look down at him and noticed the bright red on her soft brown mink jacket.

What on earth …?

“Mom?”

Kelly touched the red brilliance and stared at her stained fingers when she withdrew her hand from the wet fur.

Blood?

“Mom?”

Blood?

Before she could figure it out, she was dead on the sidewalk.

“A vendetta against the city?” Meg said, when Repetto called and told her about Zoe’s revenge theory. It was almost nine o’clock. The windows were black mirrors. She’d been dozing when the phone rang. Now she was sitting on the edge of the sofa, clutching the receiver and watching on TV a man in a dark suit, a vaguely familiar political pundit, frowning fiercely and waving his arms behind the yellow letters MUTE.

“That’s the angle we’re going to start working tomorrow,” Repetto said. “Disgruntled former city employees.”

Meg tried to shake off her sleepiness. “If Melbourne goes for it.”

“Melbourne will go.” Repetto was at his desk in his study, thinking about smoking a cigar, thinking maybe he shouldn’t. Things were going more smoothly with Lora now that he’d agreed to lay out Zoe’s theory to Melbourne and request additional help.

“There must be a lot of disgruntled former city employees,” Meg said. “Just cops alone. .”

“Not a lot of them with the makeup of a serial killer.”

“How we gonna know we’re looking at that makeup if we come across it?”

“There’s the question.”

“You think there’s actually anything to it?” Meg asked. “The revenge motive?”

“Might be. There’s enough to it that Melbourne will have to cover his ass and send us searching.”

“Seems like a fuckin’ waste of time,” Meg said, thinking about a disgruntled former city employee with the skills and makeup of a long-distance killer. Comes back to Alex.

“It’s what profilers do.”

There was a god-awful taste in Meg’s mouth. She ran her tongue over her lips and teeth and made a face. She’d fallen asleep too early and would have a restless night. Nothing to read. Nothing on TV but the same news over and over, the same conversations about the same subjects, sandwiched between the same commercials. That was the news: everything’s going to hell in the same way.

“Wait a minute,” Repetto said. “My cell phone’s ringing.”

Meg could hear it faintly in the receiver. Repetto’s phone wasn’t ringing, it was chiming, the first seven or eight notes of a tune she couldn’t quite place. Some kind of march. Figures. Repetto must have pressed a button and the musical alert stopped.

Now Meg could hear him talking on the other phone but couldn’t make out what he was saying.

A few minutes later he was back on the line with her. “That was Melbourne. Another Night Sniper victim. A woman. Shot on East Fifty-second near Park.”

“Melbourne say it was our guy?”

“No,” Repetto said, “but it was. Can’t you feel it?”

Strangely enough, she could.

Kelli Wilson’s body was lying beneath a black rubberized tarp large enough to cover most of the bloodstain. Something on the order of a hundred people were crowding the yellow crime scene tape, staring at the lumpy black material. Repetto thought there would have been more if the streets in this area were as traveled as usual.

He elbowed his way through the crowd, past a uniform who recognized him and nodded deadpan, big man in his forties, with a receding chin and droopy eyelids. Meg and Birdy followed in Repetto’s wake. An assistant ME Repetto knew, a tall, husky woman named Charlize, was standing with her fists on her hips, talking with a couple of white-uniformed EMS attendants. About ten feet from them, a female uniform was down on one knee, obviously consoling a dark-eyed boy about ten who was in apparent shock.

Repetto prayed the dead woman wasn’t the boy’s mother.

Charlize left the EMS guys and walked over. She cocked her head briefly toward the boy. “His mother’s the one on the sidewalk.”

“I was afraid of that,” Repetto said.

The uniform who’d recognized Repetto joined them. “I’m Calvin. Me and my partner Len were first on the scene.”

“What do you know?” Repetto asked, making sure Meg and Birdy were within earshot.

Calvin gave them the woman’s name, along with the name of her son. “The kid says he and Mom were on the way to meet hubby at Four Seasons.”

“They almost made it,” Meg said.

“They were gonna have dinner, then spend the night on their boat.”

Repetto glanced at him. “Boat?”

Calvin shrugged. “So the kid said. It’s supposed to be docked at the Seventy-ninth Street Basin.”

“Hubby hasn’t arrived?”

“Not yet. Len’s at the restaurant waiting to intercept him, then bring him here so he can get the bad news.”

Birdy looked at his watch. “Hubby’s late, or the vic and her son were half an hour early.”

“I’d guess he’s late,” Calvin said. “While the ME was examining the body, the dead woman’s cell phone in her purse started to ring. By the time we got to it, the ringing had stopped.”

Meg must have known what Repetto was thinking. “The killer wouldn’t call,” she said.

“Maybe this one would,” Birdy said. He was absently making those odd pecking motions with his head, thinking about it, how the killer they were chasing wasn’t standard issue.

“What did the kid see?” Repetto asked.

Calvin glanced in the boy’s direction. “Saw his mother fall over, is all he says. He’s in shock, wants his dad. Maise over there”-he pointed toward the boy and the kneeling policewoman-“is telling him Dad’s on the way.”

Meg looked over at the woman and boy. There were tears now in the boy’s eyes, and wet tracks on Maise’s broad cheeks. Meg looked away. “God damn this bastard!”

“We’ll get him,” Calvin said. He had a kind of drawl, like a cowboy, that made you tend to believe what he said.

Repetto got down on one knee and lifted a corner of the tarp. A blood-soaked fur jacket or some such thing made everything messier and harder to analyze. Kelli Wilson was on her back, one leg bent awkwardly beneath her, one arm thrown sideways, the other resting across her breasts. Her eyes were open, puzzled for eternity. Repetto wanted to close them but didn’t. Instead he went about lifting the other three corners of the tarp, getting a full view of the body.

“Medium-caliber bullet high on the chest,” Charlize said. “My guess is it clipped the heart and she was dead within seconds. But I’m talking on just the prelim, understand.”

“Understood,” Repetto said. He dropped the tarp.

Someone was calling his name.

He looked to his right and saw a cluster of journalists, two TV cameras, all set up a few feet off the curb in the street.

“Captain Repetto? Can you confirm this was the Night Sniper?” The questioner was a well-dressed man with incredibly fluffed hair, standing with one foot up on the curb.

Repetto ignored him and motioned Calvin back over. “Round up a couple more uniforms and keep the media wolves at bay. I especially don’t want them talking to the kid.”

Calvin turned and hurried away to get it done.

“One wound?” Repetto asked Charlize.

“That’s the way it looks. We were waiting for you before we moved the body.”

“Captain Repetto. .?”

Fluff Hair again. Repetto didn’t acknowledge that he’d heard. “You done here?” he asked Charlize.

“Yeah. So are the techs.”

So’s Kelli Wilson.

Repetto knew the area around the dead woman had yielded all it was going to, which wasn’t much. “Get her out of here then, away from all these people. Leave the purse.” Repetto turned to Meg. “Go talk to the boy. Stand so he can’t see them moving his mom.”

“I’ll be gentle,” Meg said, and went to join Maise with Jason. Jason without a mother.

While the EMS attendants worked what remained of Kelli Wilson onto a stretcher and loaded her into the ambulance, Repetto and Birdy stood looking around the area for potential sniper nests.

“Like all the others,” Birdy said. “He coulda been anywhere.”

“Which means we’ll have to look everywhere,” Repetto said.

Meg walked back over. “Jason’s in shock, trembling.”

“We need to get him to a hospital,” Repetto said.

“I dunno. He keeps repeating he wants his dad. Maise wants to wait with the kid in her car in front of the restaurant, stop the dad before he goes in. I don’t think it’s a bad idea. Those two are gonna need each other.”

“Go with them,” Repetto said. “Tell Maise to drive around the block. Maybe that’ll shake the media types. Make it as easy on the kid as you can, and watch how his father takes the news. Ask if that ringing cell phone in the victim’s purse was him calling to say he’d be late.”

“Will do.”

Repetto and Birdy stood watching the ambulance drive away, then the ME’s car. Behind them, making a show of it for the media types, was Maise’s cruiser with Jason and Meg inside.

The remaining cops who weren’t holding the gawkers back began removing the yellow crime scene tape, taking it down with one hand, holding it bunched and tangled in the other. Somebody from somewhere appeared with a bucket and broom and was told it was okay to start cleaning up the sidewalk. A big bald guy dragged a hose from a shop on the corner and called back for somebody inside to turn on the water.

Repetto watched them hose down and sweep the sidewalk. Red-tinted water trickled down the curb and ran in the gutter. A life’s blood, a life, being cleansed from the earth. The two TV crews were getting it all on tape.

“Ashes to ashes, blood to sewer,” Birdy said glumly. The flesh beneath his right eye did a crazy dance.

“Harsh,” Repetto said.

“Harsh.”

Lazy-eyed Calvin and another uniform were talking to the three witnesses, two men and a woman, who’d stayed around.

“Let’s go over there and see what we can get,” Repetto said.

What they got was pretty much what the boy Jason had said. An echoing shot like thunder that could have come from anywhere. Then “Mom fell down.”

“Know what I’m wondering?” Birdy asked, as he and Repetto were walking toward where the unmarked was angled in at the curb. The car was partially blocking traffic that was beginning to flow again on the block.

“I think so,” Repetto said. “Is it possible Jason was the target?”

“Right. The child angle.”

“I rule it out,” Repetto said. “It was a heart shot, and we’re dealing with a killer who hits what he aims at.”

“Has so far,” Birdy said. “But everybody misses sometimes.”

“Besides, Zoe assured me again, this guy’s not a child killer.”

“Everybody misses sometimes,” Birdy repeated.

“It’s something to keep in mind,” Repetto said. “I’ll go talk with the media and tell them we don’t have any hard information yet and we’re finished here. On the sniper shootings in general, we’re making progress.”

“Lie to them.”

“Allay their doubts with partial truths,” Repetto said.

Birdy chuckled.

“Let’s call Melbourne and get some more uniforms down here so we can canvass those buildings.”

“We do a lot of that.”

“It’s what the Sniper wants,” Repetto said. “We do a lot of that.”

In his luxury East Side apartment, the Sniper sat at a glass-topped table and cleaned his Italian rifle. He reamed the barrel carefully with a soft cloth, then lightly oiled the mechanism and marveled again at its deadly precision.

When the rifle was reassembled, he put on the sterile white gloves he usually wore when handling his collection and wiped down the barrel and stock where his hands had touched. Oil from fingers could be a destructive element over time. Then he went to the gun room and replaced the rifle in its glass case.

The Night Sniper poured himself two fingers of premium scotch, added a splash of water to bring out the taste, then went into the living room and swung open the hinged frame of a numbered Marc Chagall print. Behind the print was a flat plasma TV. The Night Sniper sat on the sofa, used the remote to find the local channel he favored, then sipped scotch and watched reports on developing breaking news: the Night Sniper had claimed another victim. Cable news already had a photo of the victim, Kelli Wilson. Wonderful! Reporters had tried to interview the victim’s son, Jason, who was still at the scene of his mother’s death, but police kept them away. Police also kept journalists away from investigating officers headed by Captain Vincent Repetto. Repetto had glanced at reporters but refused comment and kept his distance until the body was removed.

Then there was a brief interview with Repetto, heavy midtown traffic moving slowly in the background.

The Night Sniper sat forward and stared at Repetto.

He looks tired. Frustrated. Craggier than ever. Gaunt like a fleet predator. Losing weight? On a worry diet?

Don’t be deceived, overconfident.

The Sniper used the remote to increase the volume.

Repetto said every way he could into a phalanx of microphones that he and his team of detectives knew nothing yet for sure. Was this shooting the work of the Night Sniper? It was too soon to know for sure. Did police know where the shot was fired from? Not for sure. Were they making progress on the Night Sniper investigation? Satisfactory progress, yes, but an arrest wasn’t imminent. Were there any suspects? Not for sure.

So it went-not for sure, not imminent, not for sure. The only thing Repetto was sure of was that an arrest was simply a matter of time. Sorry, it was too soon to comment on this latest shooting. Too soon to know anything for sure. He turned away from the microphones.

“Thanks, Captain Repetto!” called the blond woman from Channel One. That surprised the Night Sniper. He’d glimpsed her in the background and assumed she was Zoe Brady, the profiler. Both of them were lookers, and in the reflected roof-bar light of a police car, the blond woman’s hair had appeared red like Zoe’s.

A quick grin from Repetto. “Sure.”

Turn on the charm for that one.

The Night Sniper smiled, sipped, smiled.

Lies, lies, lies …

This time the theater seat note was found in the orchestra section of the off-off-Broadway theater MindWell: Solving the puzzle should be child’s play.

The play at the MindWell was Ripples, and was about how an abused child grew up to abuse his child.

“Children again,” Meg said, in the gloomy basement confines of the precinct office. “He had to go out of his way again to find a play about children.” She found herself looking at the patch of green mold in a corner near the ceiling. It had grown three or four inches down one of the walls. Some headquarters for a major investigation.

“I still don’t think he was aiming at Jason,” Repetto said.

“Jason was there, though. A child.”

“No denying that.”

Birdy was standing at the narrow sidewalk-level window, staring outside at the gray rain, tapping his foot on the floor, wondering if he should start smoking again. “Lucky Jason,” he said glumly.

Seated at his desk with the lamp on, Repetto was looking at the unpromising results of inquiries into disgruntled present and former city employees. The list of possibilities wasn’t yet half explored.

“Here’s a familiar name,” Repetto said, scanning down the list. “Alex Reyals.”

Now and then, Birdy decided. A cigarette now and then never hurt anyone.

“I’m thinking of taking up smoking again,” he said.

Repetto didn’t react, still staring at the list in front of him.

But Meg looked positively distressed. “I don’t think there’s much future in that,” she said.

Birdy thought it was nice that she cared.