Fear the Night

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.

25

1990

Dante Vanya lost his youth in a matter of months. The city saw to that.

Now people looked away from him or through him as he plodded wearily toward the Thirty-third Street subway stop, wearing the ragged clothes he’d stolen or scrounged from curbside trash. He was like all the others now, he thought. What the people he passed saw, if they saw him at all, was simply another lost and damaged human being who could never be fixed. One of a defeated and hopeless army.

They wouldn’t notice Dante was younger than most. His face was dirty, his hair lank and unshorn, his eyes old and hopeless. He was simply another of the city’s sick and despondent , lost and waiting for their time somehow to expire. In Dante’s dismal world everyone was the same age, calculated not from the beginning of life, but from