Fear the Night

“Follow their instructions,” Repetto told her. “In the meantime, if you insist on staying here, don’t go near the windows, and of course make sure everything stays locked. Promise?”

“Promise.”

“I’ll call Birdy, then talk to Melbourne and get things set up. While we’re waiting for your angels to arrive, I’ll make sure the apartment’s sealed tight.”

“Angels?”

“The ones with guns who’ll be protecting you.”

“I’ll try hard to believe in angels,” Amelia told him. She almost managed to smile. “Better guns than wings.”

Repetto already had his cell phone out and was contacting Birdy. He explained the situation and told Birdy he couldn’t rule out another change of tactics by the Night Sniper. Maybe he’d start killing at close range, indoors, during daylight hours, with a handgun. Nothing seemed beyond him. Repetto told Birdy to stay inside the apartment with Amelia, not even to go out for food.

“This is my daughter,” he reminded Birdy.

“Then-if you don’t mind my asking-why don’t you get her out of there?”

“I would if I could and be sure she wouldn’t return. She considers this her date with destiny. Leaving isn’t what she wants. And she reminds me she’s twenty-one.”

“Ah, they do keep reminding you when that happens, whenever the shit gets deep. The good ones, anyway. Her father’s daughter.”

“Goddamned right.”

Repetto told Birdy he could have food delivered, or help himself to whatever was in the refrigerator.

He was to eat with his 9mm beside his plate.

51

“Look at this,” Meg said.

She was standing at the window of a high suite in the Marimont Hotel, pointing outside to the roof of a setback in the tall building.

Repetto looked. He saw shorter buildings beyond the parapet, and blue sky beyond buildings off in the distance.

“I mean look at the roof,” Meg said, noticing where he was staring.

At first Repetto didn’t see it. Then he noticed an irregularity in the tar and gravel roof, something small protruding. Another, identical object. Four in all, arranged as if marking the corners of a rectangle.

“So what are they?” he asked.

“We’re not sure. One of the uniforms noticed them and told me about them. He came up here to check the windows, to make sure they didn’t provide a view of the plaza and podium even though they’re three blocks away.”

“Be a hell of a shot,” Repetto said, “even if the mayor was visible from here.”

“C’mon out on the roof,” Meg said. She grinned when he didn’t reply immediately. “It’s only a three-foot drop.”

She opened the window, gracefully sat on the sill, then swiveled to step outside. Repetto followed, bumping his head on the window frame.

Meg led him to the four objects on the roof. Repetto stooped low and saw that they were metal painted a dull black so they weren’t very visible. Stubby, hollowed, and rectangular. Brackets of some kind.

He looked up and squinted in the direction of Rockefeller Plaza. The podium and lectern hadn’t been disassembled. From where he squatted, it appeared that part of the podium and about half the lectern were visible, but he couldn’t be sure from this distance. But they were what he was looking at; he could see them far beyond the corner of a building two blocks away.

“An impossible shot,” he said. “Even if the Sniper got it just right and barely cleared that building corner, he’d have to be unbelievably accurate.”

“And lucky,” Meg said. “But he wasn’t lucky all the way. The mayor is still alive.”

Repetto straightened up and stared at her. Then he glanced back at the building on which they stood. The window they’d exited was the only one that looked out on the setback’s roof, and only blank brick wall towered above. Where he and Meg stood, they were invisible from anyone else in the Marimont or from the surrounding shorter buildings. A perfect sniper’s nest. One that had to have been carefully scouted by an expert.

And they were dealing with an expert.

Still, so far away . .

Repetto breathed in the high, clean air above the traffic-clogged street. They were high enough that not even much sound reached them from below. “You’re thinking the brackets were used to support a tripod or something to steady the rifle.”

“Something steadier than a tripod. There are four brackets. Some kind of brace might have fit into them, and after the shooting, the Sniper disassembled it and took it with him.”

Repetto squinted again toward the Plaza and held his hand in saluting position over his eyes to shield them from the sun. “It still doesn’t seem possible, Meg. Did you ask anyone from the hotel what those brackets were?”

“I described them downstairs to some of the maintenance crew. Nobody seems to know what they are. No one could come up with any possible use for them.”

Repetto folded his arms and stared toward the Plaza. “You’re theorizing that the Sniper broke into this suite-”

“Or got a key somehow. I examined the lock, and there’s no sign it’s been forced. He didn’t lower himself from the roof above. The hotel restaurant’s up there, the Pot-O-Gold.”

“So he must have sneaked into the suite somehow and gained access to this roof. If it were two blocks closer to the podium, it would have been a perfect place to shoot from, but then it would have been checked out and covered by us.”

“That might be exactly what appealed to him. It would have been written off as a threat. And this far away, it would’ve been easy for him to slip out of the hotel and disappear after firing the shot.”

“But how could he be sure we wrote it off? Simply the seeming impossibility of the shot?”

“That, or maybe he has a contact in the NYPD.”

Always possible, Repetto knew. “Suppose he did have a key, Meg? How could he know he wouldn’t open the door and be face-to-face with a guest?”

“He might work for the hotel.”

“It would have to be in a capacity where he could control who stayed in which room or suite. That’s the only way he could plan on this suite being unoccupied during the time he needed it. Did you check at the desk and see if anyone was staying in it at the time the mayor was shot?”

“Yes. It was registered to someone, but there’s no guarantee the guest was in the suite at that time. In a busy hotel like this, people come and go unnoticed.”

“Has anybody stayed in the suite since the mayor was shot?”

“No. It’s expensive and isn’t occupied as often as ordinary rooms.”

Repetto shook his head. “Even if the Sniper did manage to get in here, then out on the roof and use something to help brace his rifle, it still looks like an impossible shot.”

“The Sniper’s the sort who might enjoy the challenge.”

“Now you sound like Zoe.”

He was beginning to make Meg doubt. “Zoe’s not always wrong.” She was becoming argumentative, she knew, sounding petulant. But damn it. .

Repetto went back inside, careful not to bump his head this time, and Meg followed.

“Expensive suite, all right,” he said, looking around at the tasteful furniture and wall hangings. He could