Fear the Night

“Couldn’t argue with that,” Britain said, and was out into the night.

O’Day sat for a moment looking at the framed photo of Derek Jeter smiling at him from beneath his NYPD cap.

Not thinking about Jeter, though. Thinking about Bobby Mays, about what there was in the poor young guy that made it impossible for O’Day simply to dismiss him from his mind.

Should he believe Mays was sane enough to make sense?

Maybe.

Buy into what Mays had said to Britain?

Maybe.

O’Day was a man who recognized a fork in the road when he came upon one, especially one that might skewer him. He knew he’d be sticking out his neck if he called about Mays’s conversation with Britain and got everyone including God and the NYPD stirred up over nothing. Mays was, after all, a homeless man who apparently hallucinated. But considering his previous contact with Mays, maybe O’Day’s neck would be stuck out even further if he didn’t call and the Sniper took a shot at Amelia Repetto.

Maybe was reason enough.

He picked up the phone.

59

Repetto listened carefully on his cell phone to what Melbourne was telling him. He found himself gripping the phone too hard and made a conscious effort to loosen the pressure of his thumb.

When Melbourne was finished, Repetto waited a few seconds, then said, “To sum it up, we’ve got a homeless man who admittedly hallucinates telling us the Night Sniper is in the neighborhood, might be carrying a rifle, and might be moving toward Amelia.”

Melbourne had known Repetto too long to be surprised by this note of skepticism. “We both know it’s something more than that.”

“Do we?”

“I know what you’re doing,” Melbourne said. “You’re trying to play devil’s advocate. Okay, I’ll go along. Our homeless man’s an ex-cop-”

“Says he is.”

“Okay, says so. This is the second time he’s reported seeing this guy who doesn’t set right with him as one of the homeless, thinks he might be a phony. Both sightings were when the Night Sniper might have been in the area.”

“Might.”

“Always,” Melbourne said. “Something else. We both know what it takes to prompt somebody like this Bobby Mays to contact the police. We’re the people who roust him for loitering or panhandling, make his life even harder. Still, he did his ex-cop citizen’s duty.”

“All kinds of psychos,” Repetto said, “imagining and doing all kinds of things.”

“All kinds, yes. But Mays isn’t imagining he was a cop. Philadelphia P.D. says he was one of theirs, and a good one till a family tragedy put him on the skids.”

Repetto’s mind was working furiously, listening to Melbourne while unconsciously shuffling facts, priorities, and nuances, trying to synthesize what he knew with what he felt, which was often simply knowing on a deeper level.

“That all we got?” he asked.

“’Bout it.”

“No, it isn’t,” Repetto said, switching positions with Melbourne. “We’ve got what Sergeant Dan O’Day’s gut tells him.”

“That make it enough?” Melbourne asked. “What a veteran cop senses is the ore in the rock?”

“I know O’Day slightly. Times I’ve seen him, he struck me as the type who lives the Job.”

“I know him more than slightly,” Melbourne said. “He’s what you’re talking about. He’s a good cop. A good man. Ground smooth but not down.” Melbourne was silent for a couple of beats. “He’s not so unlike you, Vin. I’m gonna let this be your call.”

“I’m calling it,” Repetto said. “We’re going on the assumption the Sniper’s in the trap. Let’s spring it. Send what we have. We’ll cordon off the neighborhood and tighten the perimeter while we search the surrounded area.”

“Done,” Melbourne said. “Call Amelia and whoever you have posted there and alert them to what’s going on.”

“Soon as this conversation’s finished,” Repetto said, and broke the connection.

His blood was racing but his mind was calm. This was what he used to live for, this moment when the balance might be shifting, when he could feel it shifting. Everything was suddenly gaining momentum in the same direction, rushing toward the telling instant, like a narrowing focus that would achieve laser intensity. The grueling teamwork of the past long weeks, the breakthroughs and revelations large and small, were all converging.

O’Day’s gut instinct had become Repetto’s.

As he pecked out Amelia’s number on his cell phone, Repetto knew that if it weren’t for the danger to Amelia, he’d be loving this.

The Night Sniper was confident as he walked the dark streets of the West Eighties. His opponents knew now where he’d fired from when the mayor was shot, and had his general, useless description, compliments of the Marimont desk clerk. All the better, that description. The contrast between the Marimont shooting and what was about to happen to Amelia Repetto would be too much of a gap for them to leap. As would the contrast between the perceived shooters. Homeless people didn’t take suites at the Marimont Hotel. The police knew how wealthy he really was, and their mental image of him would be that of a cultured, influential man in a tailored suit, not one of the helpless and homeless wandering the avenues.

Tonight, in his worn-out clothes, his tattered long raincoat concealing his rifle, he was treading the stage in costume perfect for the role. Beneath the darkened faux stubble that would wipe off easily, he couldn’t contain a thin smile. He feared his pursuers, feared the psychotically resolute Repetto especially, but he did love the game.

When he reached a dark passageway, he glanced about, then entered the shadows and became one. The narrow passageway would take him to the next block, where he knew he could enter an apartment building through a side door whose lock he’d already neutralized.

Good! He was sure no one had seen him entering the building. There was a laundry room in the basement, and he had to get past its door without being noticed. An obvious vagrant in the building would inspire curiosity if not immediate alarm.

His luck held like an omen. Caution wasn’t necessary here. No one was washing or drying tonight.

With a small pair of wire cutters from a coat pocket, he disabled the fire alarm system. He entered the interior fire escape stairwell without an alarm sounding and made his way to the third floor. Already in his hand was the key to the sparsely furnished apartment a handsome young executive about to be transferred to New York had subleased for a year. Of course, the information given to the apartment’s primary lessee, who’d placed an ad in the Times, was false, but that didn’t matter now. The information was backed up by competently forged identification, and a deposit check the Sniper knew had cleared a Los Angeles bank. The useless rental agreement would become known within a matter of weeks, but that was okay.

The Sniper had required use of the apartment for only a short time. For the few visits he’d made in order to prepare.

And for tonight.

The apartment was in a vine-covered four-story brownstone diagonally across the street from Amelia Repetto’s apartment, three buildings down the block. Though it was on the third floor, observation had convinced