John Lutz - Fear the Night

“Didn’t want to touch it.”

Repetto nodded.

“But I don’t think it was used so somebody could get back in off the roof,” Weaver added. “The door’s the kind that locks automatically if you let it close. It’d trap you out here. But look at the latch.”

Repetto did, and saw a faint rectangle. He touched a corner of it gently with the back of a knuckle. “Sticky.”

“That’s what I thought. It looks to me like tape was put there to keep the door from clicking locked. That way it wouldn’t be wedged open and maybe attract attention. Then, when whoever was up here left, they removed the tape. Could be they left a fingerprint.”

“More likely a glove print.”

Weaver smiled again and nodded. “Our guy’s smart, isn’t he?”

“Smart and evil go together all too often,” Repetto said. “Anything else?”

“Yes, sir. I found where the shooter mighta sat or kneeled.”

“Got an ejected shell casing?”

“Never that lucky,” Weaver said over her shoulder, as she led Repetto toward where a billboard was mounted near the roof’s edge. “He had a good view from there,” she said. “Mighta fired through an opening in that rusty iron support gizmo. There’s a clear shot to where Evans was killed, and look how the gravel’s been disturbed.”

Repetto looked. Weaver was right. The gravel that wasn’t embedded in the blacktop roof appeared to have been recently shifted around, perhaps by someone finding a comfortable shooting position.

“Of course,” Weaver added, “we can’t be sure.”

“True,” Repetto said, “but it’s something.”

He went back to the service door and looked again where the door frame might have been taped so the spring latch couldn’t protrude and do its job. “I’ll get the techs to look at this,” he said. “Nice work. Keep an eye on the scene and don’t let anybody else up here.”

“Yes, sir.” Weaver was staring at him, her head cocked to one side, the wind whipping the errant lock of hair.

“You look good in uniform,” Repetto said, “but you look even better in plainclothes. I’ll see you get credit for finding this.”

As he exited the roof, Weaver gave him her biggest smile.

By that afternoon they had the lab information. There were no discernible foot- or handprints on the disturbed roof surface or on any part of the billboard or its support frame. The service door’s lock had been blocked at some point with a common brand of duct tape, but the only print on the doorjamb near the tape’s adhesive residue was a partial finger, wearing a rubber or latex glove. The small wooden wedge yielded nothing other than that it was pine and didn’t figure in the investigation.

There was no way to prove it, but Repetto was reasonably sure they’d found the killer’s shooting position.

He got Meg and Birdy, and with three uniforms they concentrated their efforts on the building’s tenants.

No one remembered seeing anything unusual. Most had heard the echoing sound of the shot, but they weren’t sure what it was and weren’t concerned. Obviously it had come from outside the building. They were polite but seemed impatient for the police to finish with them and leave.

When they were back on the sidewalk, Repetto said, “Nobody in the Bermingale Arms can see or hear.”

“He came and went like a ghost,” Birdy said.

Like the Grim Reaper, Meg thought.

New York, 1989

Joel Vanya swung himself up onto the back of the trash hauler and watched the fog of his breath stream out into the crisp winter air. The compactor roared and whined on the truck’s bed, the sound so many New Yorkers woke up to in the morning. Joel sometimes added to the din by banging metal trash cans, but they were becoming scarce, what with all the plastic containers and trash bags.

Recycling, Joel thought. What a pain in the ass that is.

He glanced around. This was a nice block, rich people still sleeping in, hours after he’d had to drag himself out of bed and into work. He wished he had some metal to bang now, maybe a pair of trash can lids he could use as cymbals. Wake up the rich snobs, let them know he had some control over their lives. Even things out. One thing Joel was sure of was that the world was rigged; once you were born down, or knocked down, everyone higher on the dung pile wanted to keep you down.

With a roar, the truck lurched forward, rolled about fifty feet farther down the Lower West Side street, then hissed to a stop. Sal Vestamalo, the driver, dressed as warmly as Joel against the winter cold, opened the door and lowered himself to the street. A big man with a salt-and-pepper beard that seemed always to be crusted with frozen saliva or mucus, he swaggered around the front of the truck to start picking up the trash there, while Joel dropped back down to the street and headed for the mushroomed black trash bags piled at the curb behind the truck. It was a process they repeated, over and over, somewhere in the city almost every morning.

Joel had long ago decided this was a shit job even when the weather was good, but now he had seniority and no other marketable skills, so he couldn’t afford to leave the Department of Sanitation. He was stuck working for the city. He didn’t enjoy his work. The truth was, more and more, he didn’t enjoy much of anything.

Joel Vanya was a small man and had been a small child in a tough neighborhood in Newark, New Jersey. His father had deserted Joel and his mother when Joel was ten. The mean drunk wasn’t much of a loss. Joel’s mother repeated that often as he was growing up. Joel agreed. His father had beaten his mother severely before leaving, and permanently injured Joel’s right leg when he’d tried to interrupt the violence. In this weather, Joel’s artificial kneecap hurt almost as badly as when his father had struck his knee with a beer bottle. Joel still walked with the same limp that had drawn bullies to him as a child.

Every day, Joel hurt inside and out.

He swung a heavy black plastic trash bag into the back of the truck, turned to pick up another, and almost slipped and fell when he stepped on a patch of ice.

“We got no time for you to dance, short shit!” Sal yelled. “You wanna move that fast, do it with a load of trash.”

Joel didn’t answer. He was used to swallowing his hate.

Sal was already back in the cab and gunning the engine by the time Joel had returned with a cardboard box full of trash and another black plastic bag.

The crusher was coming down as he tossed the box in, then the bag. The steel lip of the compactor smashed the box and ruptured the bag, then began scooping the trash back toward the front of the truck’s hold, making room for more.

The truck lurched forward, then braked to a quick halt. Sal up to his tricks again.

“Better jump on board!” Sal shouted back at Joel, locking gazes with him in the rearview mirror.

Joel thought about flipping him the bird, but he didn’t want any trouble. He’d already complained to the boss, Frank Dugan, about Sal harassing him and had gotten nowhere. In fact, Sal had sold the idea that Joel was paranoid; then he’d stepped up his campaign of terror.

The truck roared and jumped forward again just as Joel clutched the grab bar and began swinging his body back on board. He lost his grip and stumbled backward, knowing the truck’s sudden acceleration, then stop had been deliberate. Sal would be laughing his ass off in the warm-or at least warmer-cab.

Joel walked toward the grab bar, determined to be more careful, and noticed a brown paper sack that had been in the plastic bag ruptured by the compactor. The sack had torn open. Something dark that it contained caught his eye.