Fear the Night

“So why did she mention it to you in the first place?”

“She’s a woman. We all like to share the good news.”

Repetto lay for a few minutes listening to the faint and distant traffic sounds drifting on the night. New York. Never completely silent or completely still. Never completely predictable. Like people.

“What about Birdy as Meg’s secret suitor?” he asked.

“Be serious. Anyway, he’s married.”

“They spend a lot of time together.”

“Okay, they do. And love can be random. Do you think Meg might be involved with Birdy?”

“No.”

“I can tell you one thing for sure,” Lora said. “She’s hooked.”

We’re all hooked, Repetto thought. He listened to a siren wailing off in the distance. Trouble never let up, never eased up on people.

Resting a hand on Lora’s thigh, precious contact with the person he loved more than his life, he dropped into dreamless sleep.

Sooner or later, one way or another, we’re all hooked. .

Safely back in his suite, lying beside the sleeping Zoe, the Night Sniper watched the silent TV screen beyond the foot of the bed. Zoe’s bare foot extended from beneath the sheet so that her toes blocked his view of the screen’s lower right quarter.

A muted blond anchorwoman with seriously collagened lips was smiling widely as she soundlessly mouthed the news. The TV was set for closed caption. He read in white capital letters on a black background that the mayor was expected to survive.

The Sniper had to contain himself to keep from cursing out loud and waking Zoe.

No, she wouldn’t wake up. Not after all the alcohol she’d taken in tonight. Zoe was a smart, competent woman, but early in their relationship he’d noticed she liked to drink, maybe even had a developing problem. It was a weakness he’d homed in on, knowing its usefulness.

It hadn’t been difficult to accelerate her drinking. After a while it was no longer even necessary for him to be subtle. Zoe might have an understanding of the criminal mind-the average criminal mind-but like so many people, she was blind to her own vulnerabilities.

Her drinking made her easy to convince, and to manipulate. Usually they ended their dates in her bed, and while she lay in an alcohol- and sex-induced slumber, he would log on to her Toshiba laptop and learn what he could about the NYPD’s progress in the Night Sniper case. Those files he thought might be of further use to him, he copied.

Zoe snored softly, and her breathing became even deeper and more regular. She was hours away from so much as fluttering her eyelids.

The Night Sniper gazed again at the TV and he did curse out loud. He’d missed his shot. Not completely, but he had missed. It was unacceptable. He directed another expletive at the TV screen. Zoe didn’t stir.

He laced his fingers behind his head and stared at the ceiling, thinking. So his shot hadn’t been perfect and the mayor would survive. Perhaps, considering the innate difficulties and the variables, the shot actually was impossible. Maybe he’d asked too much of himself.

He smiled in the soft, flickering light from the TV, then scooted back on the mattress so he could watch the screen through eyes that weren’t narrowed by angle. He saw that mayoral aides and assorted sycophants were huddled grimly in what looked like a hospital waiting room. They knew that whatever the mayor’s chances for survival, the game wasn’t over.

The Sniper would settle on another target to strike soon and make up for the mayor’s narrow escape (so far) from death. Perhaps the target should be Repetto, who’d already lost his surrogate son and protege.

No, not Repetto. Not yet. Repetto deserved not death, but another loss, as the Night Sniper had lost two fathers.

The police would expect him to try for Repetto. Zoe might even tell them it was in the Sniper’s character and methodology. In fact, he might be able to steer her in that direction, advise the NYPD on how best to apprehend him. Intriguing idea. He absently reached over and gently twirled a long strand of Zoe’s red hair.

The Night Sniper’s genius was in doing the unexpected.

He knew what Zoe didn’t know. What the police didn’t know.

Repetto deserved more grief, more pain, another loss. And just when he was getting so close-or thought he was.

Loss, not pain.

The game had changed and the Sniper had even left Repetto clues to tantalize and torment. That was another good reason to save Repetto for later. He should suffer. He should know he’d been outsmarted. Let the law and the media think the Sniper was displaying the serial killer’s well-known subconscious desire to be stopped, to be caught. Zoe might even tell them that, encourage them. Wonderful!

But it was the game. The vengeance game.

Another loss for Repetto. Another grave. Another emotional bullet to the heart. No blood, no pulped flesh, but another rend that would never heal as long as Repetto lived.

Lying silently in the dim room, listening to Zoe breathe, the Night Sniper quietly composed in his mind his next theater seat note:

Rapunzel will take a tumble.

50

Bobby spent the night in the Dismas Shelter in Lower Manhattan. Ordinarily he preferred the street, especially during those times of year when the weather was bearable. But with the rally uptown, he thought the entire borough would be too active, not only with the people who roamed the streets before and after the affair at Rockefeller Plaza, but with those who saw them as prey. With all the muggers, rapists, pickpockets, con men, car thieves, and various other criminal types on the prowl, the shelter was a safer place.

The food was miserable but free-if you didn’t count the sermon-and the beds were little softer than park benches or subway seats. But once you warned away the crazies and resolved to sleep lightly, the shelters would do for a night or two.

The coffee was free that morning in small Styrofoam cups. Bobby took his outside the shelter, sniffing cool morning air that smelled fresh after the dormitory scent of stale booze, vomit, and pine-scented disinfectant he’d just left. Sipping the strong black brew, he trudged two blocks across town, then uptown, putting distance between himself and others who’d ventured from the shelter at about the same time.

No one had mentioned the news while Bobby was in the shelter. It was a place where life-changing events were smaller and more personal, and horizons nearer. When Bobby noticed a harried-looking business type dropping a folded Times in a trash basket, he stopped walking. He went to dig out the paper before it might become damp from discarded garbage, and saw for the first time the headlines proclaiming the mayor had been shot.

There was no place nearby to sit down, so he leaned his back against a building and read, ignoring the glances of people hurrying past on the sidewalk.

The mayor would live. That was good. The asshole Sniper had missed for the first time.

Why?

Too much security, Bobby figured. He knew a few things about being a sniper. It must have been necessary for the Night Sniper to set up and shoot from farther away than usual. And of course, if he’d set up too close to the Plaza, he’d have a harder time getting away after the shot.

Bobby read that the police thought the Sniper might be using subway tunnels to get around. Even hiding out