Fear the Night

“All right,” Lora said with a sigh, after ten or fifteen seconds of his silence. “I’ll get off the phone. But I want to know what’s going on.”

“You will know,” Repetto said. “I promise.”

“Our daughter-”

“Only daughter,” Repetto said. “She has guts.”

“Don’t give me that bullshit, Vin. I want her to stay alive. Dal had guts and look what happened.”

Repetto really, really didn’t want to get into this. He felt his grip tighten on the phone.

“I’m sorry,” Lora said, as if she were right there in the car with him and had seen the effect of her words.

“That’s okay,” Repetto said. “It’ll all be okay if we let the police do their job.”

He sounded as if he really believed it.

The Night Sniper sat at the antique oak table in his gun room and worked the ramrod that was reaming the barrel of the Webb-Blakesmith competition rifle that was from his collection. This rifle didn’t disassemble down to caseable components for travel like a lot of the custom-made weapons in the collection, and wouldn’t fit in his backpack; but he wanted to use this particular weapon for its accuracy, and because it was one of his favorites. For such an important shot, there could be no other choice.

As he usually did with rifles that wouldn’t break down and fit into his backpack, he would wear his long, lightweight raincoat to conceal the weapon. It could be carried in a sling beneath the tattered coat. That was easy to do, with the stock tucked in his armpit, and the sling’s hook run through the trigger guard behind the trigger. He could hold the rifle tight against his side beneath the coat and walk with the defeated shuffle of the homeless. He didn’t mind using the concealed sling, because he had no illusions about tonight. It would be best to keep the rifle handy in case he had to shoot his way out of an unfortunate situation. The odds were with him because he planned carefully, but still there was always the unexpected challenge.

In the bright lamplight, he admired the cleanly designed and constructed steel mechanism of the rifle, the precision firing pin and gas ejection breech, the lightly sprung trigger and long, blued barrel with its matte black sights that reflected no light that might disrupt aim. Wonderful! Man had devised few mechanisms as precise and reliable as the firearm.

Drawing the ramrod from the barrel, he sat back for better light. He examined the square of white cotton on the end of the ramrod and saw no dark markings. The rifle was clean. Ready and reliable. Still, he fitted a new square of cloth over the end of the ramrod and reinserted it in the barrel.

For a long time he sat at the table in the lamplight, working the ramrod back and forth in the long, grooved barrel, thinking about tonight.

About Amelia Repetto.

Rapunzel.

54

Amelia was having a migraine this evening, which Meg understood. The young woman’s head should be splitting open with fear. Right now she was lying down in the dim bedroom with a cold compress over both eyes. The drapes were closed, the bedroom lights turned low, and the windows locked. Amelia was protected not only by the NYPD personnel in the neighborhood, but by locked doors and steel-barred windows, and by Meg.

Meg was confident and relaxed. That was partly because her charge, Amelia, was cooperative and at least temporarily safe from harm, and partly because Meg had, at Amelia’s insistence, sipped half a glass of what was left of last night’s cheap red wine with Amelia, while Amelia had three glasses in a futile attempt to fend off her developing headache. Probably, Meg thought, it had made the headache worse.

No one had called or knocked on the door since Knickerbocker-Mr. Chicken-had delivered the nightly takeout meal, most of which was now in the refrigerator. Meg was tired but had no desire to go to bed like Amelia. Instead she sat on the sofa and found herself staring at the phone.

Found herself thinking about Alex.

It couldn’t have been the few ounces of wine she’d sipped to pacify Amelia, not even enough, to Meg’s way of thinking, to constitute drinking while on duty. So maybe it was the situation, the tension. Whatever the reason, she couldn’t stop thinking about Alex and had to fight an almost overwhelming desire to go to the phone and call him.

If she could simply hear his voice, it might help. She might be able to chase him from her thoughts.

It would be so easy to pick up the phone and call.

Insane to think this way.

But it would be so easy.

Then she realized the apartment’s phone line might be tapped, in case the Sniper called. Not his MO thus far, but as he’d warned in his note, the game had changed. And he seemed to be the maker of the rules.

Of course, Meg could always contact Alex with her cell phone. That call wouldn’t be picked up with a wiretap. Amelia was probably asleep, but even if she weren’t, she was unlikely to come out of the bedroom for quite a while. No one would know if Meg made a brief phone call. What was there to lose?

She got up from the sofa and moved to a wing chair farther from the door, where her call was less likely to be overheard.

Meg hesitated, knowing the possible consequences, but she had no real choice. Her heart was in control.

She watched her hand, like someone else’s hand, peck out Alex’s number on her cell phone.

He picked up on the second ring.

Meg didn’t say anything after he’d identified herself. Then she said quickly, before he might hang up, “It’s Meg-Officer Doyle.”

“More questions, Meg?” Alex sounded unsurprised to hear from her, even faintly amused. At the same time, she was sure she picked up pleasure in his voice, knowing she’d called him.

“Yes. I had a few spare minutes and thought-”

“You’d spend them with me.”

This is hopeless. I’m hopeless. “All right, yes. That’s exactly what I thought. Spend them with you on the phone, I mean.” Why am I always so flustered around this man?

“Good. So how’s the Night Sniper investigation going?”

Now he wanted to talk business. “We’re progressing.”

“That’s the sort of thing you tell the media.”

“Or a-”

“Suspect,” he finished for her. “Only you don’t really take me seriously as a suspect, do you?”

“I phoned you,” Meg said. She heard his low laughter.

“There’s an oblique answer. Looks to me like Repetto’s daughter might be the Sniper’s next target. I hope she went somewhere safe.”

“She didn’t-listen, that’s not why I called.”

“Wait a minute. You mean the daughter-what’s her name? — is hiding out someplace in New York City?”

“I didn’t say that and didn’t mean it.”

“Where are you calling from, Meg?”

“I can’t say.”

“I can guess. Jesus! Doesn’t Repetto have enough sense to-”

“That isn’t what I called about, Alex.”

He sighed. “Okay, I’m sorry. I hope you called just to hear my voice, and so I could hear yours.”

Which was true, but Meg didn’t want to admit it. “I think we need to be realistic. I admit I’m attracted to you.”

“Then why don’t we-”