John Lutz - Fear the Night

“Mr. Closeman-”

“It’s Herb.”

“Okay, Herb.” She slid his card into a pocket. “It’s funny,” she said, “your name’s Herb and we met when I asked you about a herb.”

“Clearly it’s fate.”

“Clearly. I wouldn’t want you to think-”

“I’m not even going to ask for your name and phone number,” he said. “You have mine. Think about it, and if you’re at all interested, call me.”

She grinned and shrugged. “Well, that’s a safe enough proposition.”

“I’m a safe enough guy. Really.”

She held out her hand and they shook. “I’m Zoe.”

“A nice name for a nice woman.” He seemed to catch himself; nice hadn’t been strong enough. “And a beautiful woman.”

“So now we know each other,” Zoe said, “however slightly. But I have to buy my arugula and get out of here or I’ll be late for that dinner party.”

“Wouldn’t want that,” Closeman said. “Take a chance and call me, Zoe.”

“Okay, Zoe,” she said with a big grin.

Herb appeared confused for a moment, then grinned back.

She favored him with her brightest smile, chose a plastic container of arugala, and left the store.

On the way to her apartment, she tossed the stuff in a trash receptacle.

An hour later she sat, brushing her hair and getting ready to meet some friends at a restaurant for dinner and drinks. She was proud of her long red hair, so thick and slightly wavy, what some men might call luxurious. Some, in fact, had called it that. Herb Closeman was right, she thought, observing her reflection in the mirror. Beautiful wasn’t too strong a word for her.

Neither was smart. And ambitious certainly applied.

She forgot about Closeman as she continued to brush, absently counting toward a hundred. Her mind drifted to Lora Repetto’s discovery of the theater stub in the pocket of Repetto’s suit. The seat number hadn’t been a wild coincidence.

The Night Sniper must have been shadowing Repetto, studying him, and followed him into the theater, maybe even sat near him. Repetto had been in seat 7-F in the Bernhardt Theatre, and now there was no doubt as to the reference in the Night Sniper’s message. This, Zoe thought as she brushed, was definitely creepy.

Taped unobtrusively on the bottom of the seat, where Repetto had sat a week ago to see War Bond Babes, a musical about New York debutantes during World War Two, police had found a small, folded note. Its typed message was simple and cryptic: Detective Repetto, perhaps this will help you find rhyme and reason.

The lab had matched the typeface with that of the Night Sniper’s previous message. The typewriter used was the Night Sniper’s. The meaning of the note had yet to be figured out.

The killer playing his game.

She closely examined her image in the mirror. There were crow’s-feet at the corners of her blue-green eyes, if she looked closely enough. The beginnings of bags beneath her eyes.

Is it age or booze? Am I drinking too much lately?

She pushed such a notion from her mind and thought not of Herb Closing but of Repetto. Maybe he intrigued her because he held a certain contempt for her. Men who disdained her for some reason attracted her. They frightened her, too, which was also an attraction.

Zoe had heard about Repetto, of course. Everybody in the NYPD had heard of him. She’d even been introduced to him once, at a police awards dinner about a year ago, and had struck up an acquaintance with his wife, Lora. Now, during her lunches with Lora, she tried to learn about Repetto while Lora tried to learn about the Night Sniper.

But like a cop’s good wife, Lora didn’t reveal much about her husband.

Zoe continued using the brush beyond a hundred, maybe because she was preoccupied thinking about Repetto.

Repetto had earned a rare respect from hard men. She’d expected him to be a macho type, and she supposed he was. But there was something else about him, after Dal Bricker’s death, that touched her. The pain in him was like an aura. So palpable was Repetto’s grief that Zoe felt she might extend a hand and touch it. A man who grieved for a friend so intensely, there must be a certain worth to him. And there was something more in him than pain and grief; there was a quiet rage, tightly sprung and dangerous, that she knew so well.

She’d seen it in some of the killers she interviewed in prison, the ones who, when pressed, would admit that if free they would kill again. They were way past any sort of identity crisis. They knew precisely who they were and what they must and would do. The dark power that drove them was a simple and accepted fact, and a commitment that lent them a terrible calculating strength.

Repetto wasn’t a killer. At least not that kind of killer. Zoe had met enough killers to know that about him. He wasn’t like the sick, delusional animals with pieces of themselves missing, who could freeze other humans with their utter contempt or disregard.

Repetto was simply a good man who had made up his mind to kill. There was a difference.

Zoe listened to the brush’s stiff bristles sigh through her hair and told herself there was a difference.

Meg had dropped in at Kung Foo Go and was going to eat Chinese carryout in her West Side apartment. She didn’t mind living alone or eating alone. It had been two years since her divorce from Chip and she still hated the bastard. Who did he think he was? Swinging on me? Thinking he was going to beat me like the other pitiful women I see every week in my job?

She remembered slipping Chip’s second punch, after the first had broken her nose, then grabbing his arm and jerking him off balance, bending the arm back and back, hearing him scream as his elbow slipped its socket.

Meg could still hear that scream sometimes at night. It made her feel better.

Since Chip, Meg was off men. Couldn’t trust the bastards. It was built into them. Now distrust was built into her. She knew it and couldn’t care less.

She was attractive in a tomboy, scruffy way, so she’d had to get used to rebuffing men who were drawn by her dark eyes, the way her short black hair curled and made her face seem even more elfin despite her now habitual deadpan expression. She knew she looked like a somber leprechaun, but apparently some men liked that.

Like this character, young and fresh-faced, handsome in a naive way, with curly blond hair and a loping way of walking that reminded her of a big friendly puppy. He’d been watching her at the carryout counter in Kung Foo Go, and here he was loping along behind her like some amiable stray hoping for a scrap of food.

Meg turned. “Do we know each other?”

The kid stopped and looked stunned. “No. I, uh, saw you back in the restaurant and I. . I just wanted to talk to you.” He tried a smile but it died in a hurry.

“So talk.”

Hope flared in his wide, puppy eyes and his smile was back. “I-”

“Yeah, you,” Meg said impatiently.

“I found you so pretty I wanted to talk to you.” He raised a hand palm out. “Don’t get the wrong idea.”

“So what’s the right idea?”

“I was-I am-lonely, and there was something about you that made me think you, uh, might wanna talk, is all.”

“What’s your name?” Meg asked.

“Daryl.”

“Listen, Daryl, you’re fucking with a cop here.”

“Cop?” He backed up a step, stunned. “You?”

“Me. You know those big red peppers they put in Chinese food?”

“Yeah.”

“You bother me again and I’m gonna shove one up your ass.”

He looked small enough to dive into a crack in the sidewalk.

Meg turned and stalked away, keeping a tight grip on her carryout bag. She waited for the guy to yell at her, call her a bitch, or something worse. It was New York. That was the way it worked.