Fear the Night

But the transparent figure in the glass didn’t raise his drink in response, and now appeared to be weeping. Loneliness. The glittering night world of the city was spread out behind him, and he was alone, fragile as the glass itself.

He turned away, swiping a tear from the corner of his eye with a finger of his free hand.

There on the TV was another City Hall spokesperson, this one a severe-looking middle-aged woman with dark bangs. She was speaking earnestly into a microphone held by one of the male journalists who appeared regularly on local TV, but too softly to be understood. The Night Sniper went to the sofa, picked up the remote, and increased the volume:

“. . for the Take Back The City rally,” the woman was saying. “It will be at Rockefeller Center on a date to be determined. Its purpose will be to demonstrate that life can go on as usual in New York despite the Sniper murders.”

“Has the mayor okayed this idea?” asked Media Man with the microphone, a male version of Serious Blonde.

“Not only has he okayed it,” said the woman with the bangs, “he’ll personally speak at the rally.”

The Night Sniper suddenly became as still as if he were sighting in on a difficult target.

A juicier target than either Lora or Amelia Repetto.

He switched off the TV and went into his combination office and collection room. With the practiced ease of a surgeon, he slipped thin, flesh-colored rubber gloves on his hands. From a cabinet beneath a bookshelf he got out the ancient Royal typewriter he’d bought at a roadside antique shop in New Jersey for twenty-five dollars. He’d made minor repairs on the manual typewriter himself, then bought a ribbon at an office supply store and fed it onto one of the old reels. The typewriter worked fine and was perfect for his purpose. Let the police trace the typeface of a fifty-year-old machine in the century of technology.

No point in wasting time. He placed the typewriter on his desk and got an envelope and sheet of paper from a bottom drawer. He addressed the envelope, then rolled the paper onto the machine’s platen.

The note he typed was brief:

Game changed. Stakes Higher.

When the paper was folded and sealed in the envelope, he placed the envelope in an inside pocket of one of his blue blazers. He removed the gloves from his hands and stuffed them into a side pocket.

After shrugging into the blazer, he lightly tapped its pockets to make sure nothing had fallen out.

Then he left to buy a theater ticket.

45

“Game changed,” Meg said. She dropped the copy of the latest Night Sniper theater note back on Repetto’s desk in their precinct basement headquarters. It caught a draft and almost slid off the back of the desk. “Do we all agree on what he means by that?”

“Next target’s gotta be the mayor,” Birdy said. He was perched on the desk corner, absently working one foot as if trying to shake something from his sole. “Why the idiot had to announce when and where he was gonna be is beyond sound reason.”

Repetto was standing over by the window, blowing on his coffee and waiting for it to cool. He shrugged. “It’s what mayors do.”

“Man’s got the brain of a piss ant,” Birdy said.

Meg grinned. She kind of liked the mayor, who wasn’t pure politician. “Are you politically motivated, Birdy?”

Birdy snorted, stopped with the foot, and began pumping his leg nervously. “I got enough trouble motivating myself to make it through the day.”

The air conditioner clicked on and a cool breeze wafted from the vents near the ceiling, bringing with it the scent of the booking area above: stale perspiration mixed with desperation. Repetto thought there really might be a smell of fear, and that it lingered.

“We all know the next line of the nursery rhyme,” Meg said. “Doctor, lawyer, Indian chief. That schedule of victims seems to have been abandoned. What the mayor did accomplish is to take a lot of pressure off doctors.”

“There are scads of doctors,” Birdy said, “only one mayor. No brain.”

“I stayed up late last night,” Meg said.

Birdy winked at her. “That mean you’re gonna be short with us?”

“It means I was busy.” She’d been waiting to tell what she’d figured out, knowing it would top whatever the amorous and ambitious Weaver had done lately.

Birdy started pumping his leg faster and grinned. “You gonna tell us about your love life, Meg?”

Odd thing for him to say if they were having a secret affair, Repetto thought. Maybe not. Probably not. He looked at Meg, waiting.

“I checked all the Sniper crime scenes,” she said. “Wanted to make sure of something. For each murder, the most likely area of the shot’s origin has been worked out. In each of those areas is a permanently or temporarily closed subway stop.”

Birdy stopped his leg and stared at her. She knew he hadn’t reasoned out where she was going.

It took Repetto a few seconds; then he smiled at her like a proud father.

“The muddy footprint on a dry night,” he said. “In the apartment after the restaurant shooting near the park. Lee Nasad.”

“Right. I didn’t want to say anything until I had all the facts. I obtained a sample of mud from the closed, partly renovated subway stop in that neighborhood yesterday and dropped it by the lab. Then I got confirmation this morning. It matches the mud left by the Sniper’s shoe.” Take that, Weaver.

Birdy stood up from the desk corner. He was chewing on his lower lip, turning over in his mind what Meg had done. He stopped chewing and looked at her admiringly. “I like it, Meg.”

She gave him a slight nod to acknowledge the compliment. “I bet our Sniper’s using deserted subway tunnels for shelter and to get around the city unseen.”

“Which would explain why we button up a crime scene area minutes after the shot, and he’s gone,” Birdy said.

“Uh-huh. Poof, like that.”

Repetto was facing away from them now, staring at the slender bar of sunlight fighting its way in through the narrow, ground-level window. “Maybe something’s turned,” he said thoughtfully. “Maybe for once we can get out ahead of this bastard.”

“It’d make a nice change,” Birdy said.

“I’ll pass on this information to Murchison,” Repetto said, still staring at the light as if fascinated by it.

“Who’s he?” Birdy asked.

“Captain Lou Murchison. He’s going to be in charge of TBTC security.”

“Take Back The City rally?”

“Yeah. It’s already got an acronym.”

“No stopping it now,” Birdy said.

“Murchison’ll notify the mayor’s personal security so they and the NYPD can coordinate efforts.”

“Maybe the mayor will change his mind,” Meg said.

“No mind,” Birdy said.

“Something else,” Meg said. “Two blocks from Rockefeller Center there’s a subway stop closed for future renovations.”

Repetto turned back around. Birdy returned to perch on the desk and started pumping his leg again, faster and faster. He noticed what he was doing. Kicked the desk once, hard.

“Closed subway stop could be good or bad,” Repetto said.

“That’s what I thought,” Meg told him.

“Bad,” Birdy said.