Fear the Night

She seemed to think that over but didn’t say anything.

“You don’t strike me as the type who’s selling something, so what do you want?” he asked.

“My name’s Zoe Brady,” she said.

“I wondered when we’d get around to that. You obviously know things about me, including my name, I’m sure.”

“You’re Vincent Repetto. The legendary Repetto. Tough cop and true. Smart and every kind of honest.”

“Now I know you want something.”

“I’m a profiler in the NYPD,” Zoe said.

“And I know what you want.” Repetto stepped outside and closed the door behind him; it wouldn’t do for Lora to hear any of this. “Lou Melbourne sent you.”

“He okayed it. Coming here was my idea.”

“Whoever came up with the idea, it wasn’t a good one. I’m not going to change my mind about the sniper.”

“The thing is,” Zoe said, “he’s not going to change his mind about you. I’ve worked to get inside this guy’s head, and I’ve got some small idea of how he reasons-or thinks he reasons. He’s not going to give up on something he wants, and he wants you to engage in a contest with him.”

“He isn’t going to get what he wants.”

“Well, we want it too. Because we know how dangerous the sniper is. And we understand why he wants you as his nemesis. You’re legendary, and in his mind, he soon will be.” She stared earnestly at Repetto. “Have you at least given the matter any thought since Captain Melbourne talked with you?”

“I have,” he said. “I haven’t changed my mind. The game this sicko wants is one I’m finished playing.” He smiled at her. There was something he liked about her despite her mission, despite the fact she wasn’t really a cop. If only he didn’t have to get professionally involved with her. He’d never been crazy about profilers. In his experience they were more often wrong than right. And when they were right, it was about the obvious-male, certain age bracket, poor or unemployed, tough childhood … “I’m sorry, Zoe, but I’m not subject to threats from a psychotic killer. Next time the sniper contacts you, tell him I said no, I don’t want to play.”

She shrugged. “Okay, I tried and failed. The AC was right about you. You’re a hard man.”

“Was I just insulted?”

She backed down the steps gracefully and grinned up at him. “Not by me. I like hard and proud. That way I know where I stand.”

“You’ll tell Melbourne what I said?”

“I’ll tell him.” She nodded to Repetto, then started to stride down the sidewalk. After a few steps, she stopped and turned. “I’ll also tell him that the way I size you up, I don’t think you’re likely to change your mind.”

“You’ve got me profiled.”

“Sure. You’re a cinch.”

Repetto smiled at her, nodded good-bye, then opened the door and went back inside to his wife and his new life and his father’s gun.

5

Jim Lu had a talent given by his ancestors. Even as a child in Dom Ning he could sketch likenesses of anything, but especially of people. He had never attended school beyond his basic education in China, and never had the benefit of an art class. But what he saw, he could draw. He could look into it, understand it, see what made it what it was; then he could recreate it.

He and a dozen others made their livings as sketch artists, working mostly in Times Square after the theater curtains dropped and people spilled out into the streets to walk to subway stops or their hotels or futilely wave for taxis. For twenty dollars Jim Lu or his fellow sketch artists would provide a charcoal likeness of any person who would pose for ten minutes. For an additional fifteen dollars they would provide a sturdy cardboard frame. This was illegal, of course, but when the police chased them they would simply open shop on some other busy corner, often just across the street. There was much for the police to tend to in the theater district when it was jammed with people, and simple sketch artists moved them only to cursory efforts.

This woman-Betty Ern was her name, and Jim Lu had elicited from her that she was from Iowa-was quite easy to capture in charcoal. She had thick black hair and dark eyes, and a receding chin that Jim Lu would give definition. He knew how to flatter his subjects, removing a few years here, adding cheekbone or eye width there, and still they would look like themselves.

He sat on his wooden folding chair before his easel, his back to the traffic, facing pedestrians streaming past beyond those who’d decided to pose or simply to observe. Jim Lu began with the left eye, as he always did, working carefully and slowly. Once he had Betty’s left eye perfectly, her brow and the side of her nose, he would work faster, enlarging, keying off the eye. Every living thing he drew, he began with its left eye. He thought sometimes that the soul must live there.

Betty Ern seemed a nice enough lady. Every twenty seconds or so she’d become embarrassed by his quick, appraising glances, and a smile would sneak onto her face. Her husband or boyfriend, a large man in a gray suit, stood off to the side and watched, trying not to seem too impatient to be going.

Jim Lu ignored the man, ignored the traffic teeming noisily behind him on Broadway, ignored the mass of humanity flowing along the sidewalk before him. Gray Suit edged toward the curb so he could see what Jim Lu was doing, then grinned at Betty.

“Not much there yet,” he said, “but what there is sure looks like you.”

Jim Lu smiled and nodded at the compliment he’d barely heard in his deep concentration.

Yet a part of his mind thought of Michelle, as it had more and more often lately. Michelle who so liked to give and receive oral sex. When he was finished here-

A pain erupted in his back, then in his chest and arms. His head must have jerked backward because he was staring up through the haze of light at faint stars that became fainter …

Betty Ern heard the loud, echoing crack! and thought at first something had fallen from a building. But the artist, the little man with the neat dark beard and mustache, had slumped from his chair and crashed to the sidewalk with his easel. Betty stared numbly down at him, at the sketch paper on the pavement, at her single left eye staring back at her. Only her eye, but she knew it was her own.

She noticed specks of blood on it, around it.

Someone or something slapped her hard, high in the chest, just beneath her throat. She heard another of the loud, reverberating cracks and was aware that she’d fallen backward, aware of people surrounding her, arms supporting her upper body, screams off in the distance. Where am I? What happened? She tried to inhale but couldn’t, and the pain and panic carried her to cold dark spaces. Her last coherent thought was of the loud, reverberating noise she’d heard, like the screen door slamming on the farm where she grew up. It was a sound she’d loved. As a girl she always slammed the door going out … coming home.

The next morning he read the front page of the New York Post and smiled. It hadn’t taken the media long to decide what to call him: “The Night Sniper.” That was fine. Nights were most convenient for him. And since the media were giving him the night, he accepted.

The Night Sniper. Crisp and descriptive.

It would make wonderful headlines.

Repetto sat staring at the Times in the Bonaire Diner when Carrie placed his eggs, toast, and coffee before him.

“Hell of a thing last night in Times Square,” she said. “Must be a nut, this Night Sniper. World’s full of nuts, don’t you think?”

“Except for thee and me,” Repetto said, moving the folded newspaper aside to make room for his plate.