Fear the Night

32

The present

Meg stopped the unmarked for a traffic light and watched through the metronomic sweep of the windshield wipers as pedestrians stepped over a puddle near the curb and crossed the street. She’d taken the car home last night and was on her way this rainy morning to pick up Repetto. They were to meet Birdy at their precinct office.

When she pulled the car over to the curb in front of Repetto’s house in the Village, she saw him standing with Lora in the shelter of the small awning over the entrance. As soon as the car stopped, he leaned down and kissed Lora, then took the concrete steps to the sidewalk with the casual adroitness of a much younger man.

Lora followed, teetering on high heels and balancing her purse as she opened a black umbrella while on the way down the steps. A multitasker. She was on her way somewhere work-related, Meg thought, wearing a blue raincoat and dress-up shoes of the sort Meg could never wear to work unless going undercover as a hooker. When she saw Meg, Lora smiled and waved. Meg lifted her fingers that were curved around the top of the steering wheel and wagged them.

Repetto opened the passenger-side door and slid into the car, bringing heft and moisture and the scent of wet clothing with him. He shut the door in a hurry, trapping the dank morning scents inside the car.

“Lousy morning,” Meg remarked.

“You were right,” he said, smoothing back his damp hair with both hands, then glancing at his wet fingers. “About the hair.”

At first Meg thought he was referring to his hair; then she realized what he meant.

Repetto brushed his hands together to dry them. “The dark hair you spotted caught in the door latch in the apartment the Sniper used-it turned out to be synthetic, just as you predicted.”

Meg felt a flush of satisfaction. “So our guy wears a hairpiece or wig.”

“Looks that way, though he wouldn’t necessarily wear one all the time.”

Meg thought about Alex and his military buzz cut. Ideal hair to wear beneath a wig.

Repetto wasn’t finished with his good news. “You were right about the mud in the apartment, too. He must have tracked it in from some place in the neighborhood, or more mud would have come off his shoes before he entered the building. Mud on the lobby floor, incidentally, suggests that’s how he got into the building. He must have simply walked in when the doorman was occupied and wouldn’t notice him. Easy then for him to take the elevator to the top floor and make his way onto the roof. From there he dropped by rope to the terrace outside the apartment. There were traces of mud there, too, where he would have knelt or sat in order to shoot.”

“That mud could have been tracked out onto the terrace by me or Birdy, or one of the uniforms who got there before us.”

“Possibly,” Repetto said, “but Weaver said she was the only one who went out there after spotting the forced lock on the French window, and she was careful.”

“She would be.” In the corner of her vision, Meg saw Repetto glance over at her.

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

Huh? “Weaver’s ambitious, is all.”

“What is this, catfight time?”

Meg grinned. “You know me better than that. I think Weaver’s a solid cop. It’s just that she has … ambition.”

“Like you don’t?”

Does this guy want to argue? “You’re the one-”

“Okay,” Repetto said. “Enough. The mud matches, and Weaver’s sure she didn’t track any out on the terrace. And you’re right-I shouldn’t compare. You and Weaver are two different people entirely.”

Meg said nothing. She was irritated mostly at herself. Sure, Weaver was ambitious. So what? It wasn’t lack of ambition that had kept Meg down in the ranks. It was resistance to playing the political game.

And something else.

Maybe in comparing her to Weaver-Weaver of the flirtatious grin and the reputation for merriment and sleeping around-Repetto was trying to tell Meg that she, Meg, was too cynical. The male chauvinist might be saying the Job, on top of a rough marriage and divorce, could make a woman too hard, if she let it. Her mind, her thought processes, could become too rigid.

He might be right. Or she might be making too much of a chance remark.

Not that Repetto made many chance remarks.

Meg looked over at him and modulated her voice. Make-nice time. “Maybe this is a good morning to see if we can find similar mud in the neighborhood, someplace where water might stand for a few days and leave mud even during a short dry spell.”

“It’d be better to wait till tomorrow, when it’s not supposed to rain and most of this mess has dried up. Then we can go on a mud hunt.”

“True,” Meg said. At least I found the synthetic hair.

She braked for a school bus, breathing the yellow monster’s exhaust fumes that made their way into the car.

“Smells like Lora describes my cigars,” Repetto said.

Meg was watching half a dozen kids about the same age-eight or nine-emerge from an apartment doorway and trudge toward the waiting bus single file and perfectly spaced, like ducks in the rain.

They all looked glum; they were on their way to school. What did they know from real worries?

To be a kid that age again. .

A memory dropped like a coin in the back of Meg’s mind. It took her a few seconds to realize what it meant.

“Meg?”

Repetto was nudging her shoulder. The school bus had pulled away.

A horn blared behind Meg, and she spun the unmarked’s tires on wet pavement as she tried to get up to speed.

It was still raining when they reached the precinct house. They trudged through the area in front of the desk, then the detective squad room where a cluster of plainclothes cops sitting or leaning around a computer glanced over at them. A couple of uniforms guided a dejected-looking guy handcuffed and with arms covered with tattoos outside to drive him to Central Booking.

Repetto led the way downstairs to their basement office. It smelled mustier and more oppressively than usual this rainy morning. Former Police Commissioner Kerik, in his framed photo on the wall, appeared moody and depressed by the weather. The green mold in the corner up near the ceiling had thrived and was now about six inches down one of the walls. Meg wondered sometimes if they were in a race to solve the Night Sniper case before the mold took over the office.

Birdy must have just arrived and was finishing hanging up his wet raincoat as they entered. He used his hand to brush drops of water from it onto the floor. While Repetto briefed him on the hair and mud news, Meg examined the Night Sniper murder files. She wanted to make sure she was right about what she suspected after seeing the school bus and kids had jogged her memory.

Birdy slapped a hand to his forehead, as if he’d just remembered something himself, then went to a desk and opened a white paper bag. The scent of coffee wafted over to Meg, chasing away some of the mustiness. Birdy got three Styrofoam cups from the bag, handed one to Repetto, then walked over with another for Meg.

“The next Night Sniper victim will be low on the economic ladder,” she said casually, accepting the coffee and nodding her thanks.

She removed the cup’s plastic lid, waiting for Repetto to come over to her desk, knowing he’d overheard what she said to Birdy. If you think the synthetic hair was impressive. .

He was standing there giving her one of his level looks, as if he were a master craftsman trying to line up something delicate.

“Explain,” he said, taking a careful sip of his coffee.

She took a sip from her own cup. No need for caution. It was lukewarm. “Our Sniper is very much into playing games.”

“What he lives for,” Birdy said. “And Repetto is his opponent, at least in his mind.”

“And his mind is what we’re trying to get into. He gets his jollies planting clues, leaving us riddles to solve.”

“And you solved one?” Repetto asked.

“I just checked the murder files to make sure,” Meg said to both men. “If, in the Sniper’s mind, the game actually began when Repetto came to the case, the first victim was Vito Mestieri.”

“Sniper pretty much made that game thing clear,” Birdy said. “It started with Mestieri.”

“So to this point the victims are, in order, Mestieri, who owned and operated an appliance and TV repair shop. Ralph Evans, buyer for a chain of men’s clothing stores. Candy Trupiano, editor and National Guard corporal. Kelli Wilson, who sometimes spent the night on her boat docked in the city. And Lee Nasad, millionaire author. Tinker, tailor, soldier, sailor, rich man-”

“-poor man, beggar man, thief,” Repetto finished for her.

Meg nodded. “Child’s play.”