skills and makeup of a long-distance killer.
“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.
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
“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.”
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.
