Fear the Night

older, larger theater uptown had been renovated or demolished. They were bolted to the plywood risers and still clearly numbered.

Repetto led the way to 12-F, the number in the Night Sniper’s note, and raised the seat to check beneath it.

He looked, felt.

“Nothing.”

“I think you better talk to Irv,” a voice said.

Repetto turned and saw Jack Straithorn, the young production manager who’d met them at the theater entrance to admit them. Lurking behind Straithorn was a short, potbellied man in a gray work outfit that was too tight on him everywhere. He had a slightly crooked, smarmy smile that Repetto figured stayed stuck to him even when he slept. Irv, Repetto assumed.

Correctly. “I found this ’bout twenty minutes ago when I was sweepin’ up,” Irv said, holding out a tightly folded scrap of paper. “Had some tape on it, but I tore it off.”

Meg moved out of the way so Repetto could accept the note from Irv. He thought about lecturing the man on tampering with evidence but figured it would serve no purpose.

“I was gonna call you guys,” Irv said, reading Repetto’s mind.

Repetto simply nodded as he unfolded the note and read: The show will go on.

He handed the note to Meg, who read it with Birdy peering over her shoulder.

“So what’s it mean?” Birdy asked.

“Irv looked at the note earlier,” Straithorn said in a voice spiked with irony. He made a theatrical motion toward Irv, who was smirking.

“Means he’s gonna kill again,” Irv said. “There’s gonna be another act, and ain’t nothin’ nobody can do to stop it.”

The Night Sniper stood at a bus stop down the block, watching the entrance to Candle in the Night, with its makeshift marquee and movielike glassed show-poster frames. He was wearing a black beret and the Madre Verdi sunglasses he’d bought last year on the Costa del Sol. The glass’s lenses were dark green mirrors on the outside, but he could see out quite clearly.

Meg Doyle emerged from the theater first. Then Repetto and Birdy Bellman. The opposition. The Night Sniper smiled. They thought they were taking control, having figured out early this time which theater to go to and find his message. They didn’t know he’d been waiting for them here.

A bus rumbled up and he moved back, making it clear to the driver that there was no need to stop.

But there had been a need. The bus’s air brakes hissed, and it pulled up to the curb. Its rear door opened and a large woman laden with plastic shopping bags stepped down onto the sidewalk. The woman stood with her feet far apart and looked around, as if trying to orient herself, then walked swiftly away in the opposite direction from where the Night Sniper stood. She’d only glanced over toward where he stood and paid him little attention. The bus roared and belched foul exhaust fumes, then lumbered away.

Repetto and his team were still standing in front of the theater. It looked as if they were studying the message that had been taped beneath the theater seat. Repetto was holding what appeared to be a slip of paper while Meg was pointing to it and talking. When she was finished, Birdy Bellman began to speak. Repetto was the listener. It amused the Night Sniper to see them standing there discussing his message. If they only knew, they could simply walk half a block down and discuss it with the man in the dark beret and sunglasses. If they only knew.

Repetto refolded the message, then slipped it into what looked like a plastic folder-an evidence bag-and slid it into an inside pocket of his sport coat. When the coat flapped open, the Night Sniper got a brief view of a handgun in a tan leather shoulder holster.

The three detectives crossed the street toward a white Ford sedan, their unmarked car for the day. Detective Meg got in behind the steering wheel. Repetto sat up front on the passenger side, Bellman in the rear.

The Night Sniper watched as the car’s tailpipe emitted faint dancing fumes. A few seconds later it pulled away from the curb.

He had his own car parked nearby, but he made no attempt to follow. He’d come here to make sure they’d figured out the correct theater, that they were moving along the tracks he’d laid. Mission accomplished. Anyway, he knew where all three of the detectives lived, knew more about them than they dreamed. If he wanted them, he could find them.

Right now, he didn’t want to find them. He had other things to do.

He glanced at his watch and began walking down the block at a brisk pace. He had a luncheon engagement, and he didn’t want to be late.

Zoe’s apartment this time. Her new lover wasn’t only handsome, he somehow knew precisely what she wanted, and how much and when and where. She lay on her back, her bare legs clamped around his sweating body as he thrust into her again and again. Her arms were twisted over her head and somehow he managed to clasp both her wrists together with one powerful hand as he skillfully altered his rhythm and force so she remained on the edge of her third orgasm. Each time she almost climaxed he tightened his grip on her arms so the brief pain brought her back; then he slowly began to take her up again. The bedsprings sang as if in accompaniment to the internal crescendos of her body. Even as she lay there suffering so wonderfully, a part of her thought that he must have a lot of experience to be so good at this.

He drove into her harder and more determinedly, relentlessly, and she knew that this time he would let her reach the peak.

Afterward she was too exhausted to move. He released her limp arms, kissed her perspiring forehead, then unwound her legs from around him and rolled off to lie beside her. The ceiling fan played cool air over the length of her sweat-damp body. She felt empty. Spent. When she tried to speak, she was unable to find words. She turned to him, and as if expecting it, he kissed her lips, then the tip of her nose, and lay back. It was like a routine he’d practiced.

“You’re all right?” he asked.

“Better than,” she said, her breath still ragged.

He propped himself up on an elbow and gazed down at her. “You’re a wonderful creation, Zoe.” She felt his hand slide over her left breast, gently squeezing her nipple, then moving lower.

“I’m a creation that’s going to be late for work,” she told him with a weak smile, grasping his wrist.

He immediately withdrew his hand, knowing when not to pressure her. “Want to shower together?”

“I should say no, but I won’t.”

“That’s my Zoe.”

She was, of course, much later getting back to her office than she’d planned.

She also hadn’t planned on drinking a martini and two glasses of wine at lunch, then going to her apartment and getting her brains fucked out. The drinks they’d taken into the shower hadn’t helped, either. She was sure she no longer smelled of sex, and wasn’t tipsy enough for anyone to notice, but it wouldn’t hurt if she had about an hour alone in her private office to let the effects of the afternoon wear off.

After telling her assistant she wasn’t to be disturbed, especially not for phone calls, she closed her office door and went to her desk. She had to be especially wary of the phone, since she might unintentionally slur a word. Settling back in her leather desk chair, she sighed. Now she was getting sleepy. Great.

Resolution: No more love in the afternoon. It’s all too. . inebriating.

She caught herself smiling and felt a twinge of anger. What was she thinking? It made more sense to chastise herself. She covered her face with her hands, which were unexpectedly cool.

Damn, I didn’t want this to happen today. Where was my vaunted willpower? Am I sorry it happened? Of course not. Okay, then. You’ve been a big girl for a long while. Stop your bitching, Zoe. Self- recrimination is nothing if not self-defeating.

How does he do this to me?

Peeking through her fingertips, she saw a file folder on her desk that hadn’t been there when she left … over two hours ago.

She leaned forward and opened the folder. Repetto had sent her a copy of the latest Night Sniper theater