Fear the Night

her eligible to become a U.S. citizen. And a wealthy one.

After their pleasant meal, the time seemed perfect. The waiter had just delivered their coffee, and mood and opportunity coincided. Lee wanted to prolong the moment before reaching into his blazer pocket for the obscenely expensive diamond ring he’d bought just yesterday.

“You’re happy?” he asked.

She smiled. “Generally and specifically, I couldn’t be happier.”

“Spoken like a research scientist.”

“God, yes, I’m happy!” She stretched her arms over her head, causing her breasts to be accented by the strained material of her blouse, and glanced around. “Who wouldn’t be happy? A magical night, a wonderful meal, a beautiful life.”

“You never know, it might get better.”

“Oh, I doubt it. I don’t see how it could.”

The light from the table’s candle enhanced Marta’s smooth complexion and vibrant beauty. Lee couldn’t look away. Marta was seated motionless, gazing back at him.

He drank his coffee black and knew it would be hot.

So as not to spill any, he sat very still and slowly lifted the cup to his lips, staring at his wife to be, his life to be.

The candle flame was perfect. It helped the Night Sniper to gauge wind drift precisely as he eased the crosshairs in his scope slightly to the left.

He’d know when the profound moment came, as he always did. His gift.

Steady. .steady. .patience. .patience. .

He held his breath, maintaining stillness and oneness with his target.

Like freezing time.

Until his finger tightened on the trigger.

The bullet struck Lee in the side of his neck an instant before the distant crack! of the rifle, severing his carotid artery before ricocheting off bone down into the chest cavity. He slumped dead facedown on the table before Marta. She sat stunned, her eyes horrified and her mouth slack with shock, as around her people ran or crawled screaming for cover.

In less than a minute, the entire tablecloth was red with blood.

29

Repetto stood and watched the city begin to reassimilate the place where Lee Nasad had died. Soon people passing the restaurant in cars or on foot would cease to glance in its direction. Conversation would shift to other, more immediate subjects. Diners at the outdoor tables where violent death had visited would enjoy their meals unaware of any infamous past or association with the site. The name of the victim, the sense and presence of him, would fade except in the minds of those who’d loved him. New York would remain New York, where, if you dug long enough and deeply enough, you might find that any block harbored a history of violence.

The block where Lee Nasad died had been closed at both ends, but was in the process of being reopened for traffic. The first vehicle, a cab, went swishing past on the pavement and was soon followed by a pack of cars, then a work van with a ladder rack on top but no ladders.

The ambulance, flashing emergency lights but with siren muted, had left ten minutes ago with Lee Nasad’s dead body. Marta Kim was with police, a man whom Repetto thought was identified as her uncle, and with friends from the hospital where she worked. Repetto was told that one of those friends, a doctor, had sedated her.

Lee Nasad had been a celebrity. Already the media was frenzy-feeding on this one and salivating for more. There was still a TV camera crew across the street, taping Repetto, Meg, and Birdy simply standing there inside the yellow crime scene tape and surveying the spilled food and overturned tables and chairs outside the closed restaurant.

“He was about to take a sip of coffee,” Repetto said. “Sitting ramrod straight, according to his fiancee.”

“Almost fiancee,” Meg corrected. “And isn’t that some diamond ring she was about to get?”

“The guy was a financial wizard and a hotshot writer,” Birdy said. “Money up the wazoo.”

“And more on the way,” Repetto said. “Some great future that’ll never be lived.” He propped his fists on his hips and looked around, as if assessing the scene for the first time. “So we know precisely where Nasad was sitting, and the position of his body when he was shot. The bullet angled in from above, so the shooter had to be high, which means he didn’t fire from the park. We catch a break. The area of the park reduces by half the potential sites we have to consider. We can recreate the shooting and limit possible sources to five or six buildings in the next block.”

“Or taller buildings behind them,” Meg pointed out.

Repetto had thought of that. He was hoping the Night Sniper went for the nearer, easier shot. It was the sensible thing to do, and even in the irrational act of murder, people often did what was sensible.

Meg was staring at the bloodstained concrete and thinking of Alex. Could the man she knew have callously, eagerly, snuffed out two bright futures? She reassured herself that he had alibis for most of the previous Night Sniper murders, whatever their credibility. But there was always the possibility of a copycat murder. Or murders. More than one sniper. To be a murderer, Alex needn’t have killed all the victims. The Night Sniper shootings were just the sort of crimes to provide the tickle or jolt that would compel a copycat killer, with the know-how and problems possessed by Alex, to start a secondary, parallel series of murders.

And an ex-cop with connections could learn, and emulate, the Night Sniper’s moves.

Meg wished she could purge her mind of these thoughts, but she couldn’t. Nor could she accept them.

Beside her, Repetto sighed and dropped his arms, then buttoned his suit coat. “Work to do.”

“Always,” Meg said.

“The world,” Birdy said.

Bobby Mays stood in an Upper West Side doorway and watched a windblown sheet of newspaper flutter against the base of a traffic light, then surrender to the breeze and skitter across the street. The backwash of a passing car altered the paper’s direction slightly, and the breeze seemed to shift. The newspaper page attached itself to a man’s leg like a lover, pinned there by the wind, but he kicked it loose and it sailed directly to Bobby and wrapped itself around his ankles.

What’m I, a subscriber?

Bobby leaned down and got a firm grip on the errant sheet of newsprint before it could sail away. He held it up and saw that it was from the Times and was two days old. It featured a story about a Night Sniper victim shot at an outdoor restaurant.

Bobby wished he hadn’t broken his reading glasses last month. He had to hold the paper well away from him and squint in order to read it.

It seemed to him that he’d already known about this shooting, but how could he have? Another thing was that reading about it reminded him of the homeless man he saw hurrying on the other side of the street. Some street. Somewhere.

Bobby lowered the paper. How long ago was that? Had he seen the man after a different shooting, or had it been this one? There was something, some connection here, that Bobby couldn’t grasp. And the paper had come to him as if fate were blowing it along the streets. It all had to do with the homeless man Bobby was sure wasn’t really a homeless man.

The newspaper page was fluttering and flapping in his hands now, trying to escape his grasp and sail free. He folded it in half, then in quarters, then eighths, and stuffed it in a pocket of his worn-out jacket. Maybe he should see a cop. Tell a cop about the man.

He had an obligation, a duty, sort of, considering he was a former cop himself.

He hunched his shoulders and walked toward Broadway, keeping an eye out for blue uniforms.