John Lutz - Fear the Night

Repetto was standing over by the window, blowing on his coffee and waiting for it to cool. He shrugged. “It’s what mayors do.”

“Man’s got the brain of a piss ant,” Birdy said.

Meg grinned. She kind of liked the mayor, who wasn’t pure politician. “Are you politically motivated, Birdy?”

Birdy snorted, stopped with the foot, and began pumping his leg nervously. “I got enough trouble motivating myself to make it through the day.”

The air conditioner clicked on and a cool breeze wafted from the vents near the ceiling, bringing with it the scent of the booking area above: stale perspiration mixed with desperation. Repetto thought there really might be a smell of fear, and that it lingered.

“We all know the next line of the nursery rhyme,” Meg said. “ Doctor, lawyer, Indian chief. That schedule of victims seems to have been abandoned. What the mayor did accomplish is to take a lot of pressure off doctors.”

“There are scads of doctors,” Birdy said, “only one mayor. No brain.”

“I stayed up late last night,” Meg said.

Birdy winked at her. “That mean you’re gonna be short with us?”

“It means I was busy.” She’d been waiting to tell what she’d figured out, knowing it would top whatever the amorous and ambitious Weaver had done lately.

Birdy started pumping his leg faster and grinned. “You gonna tell us about your love life, Meg?”

Odd thing for him to say if they were having a secret affair, Repetto thought. Maybe not. Probably not. He looked at Meg, waiting.

“I checked all the Sniper crime scenes,” she said. “Wanted to make sure of something. For each murder, the most likely area of the shot’s origin has been worked out. In each of those areas is a permanently or temporarily closed subway stop.”

Birdy stopped his leg and stared at her. She knew he hadn’t reasoned out where she was going.

It took Repetto a few seconds; then he smiled at her like a proud father.

“The muddy footprint on a dry night,” he said. “In the apartment after the restaurant shooting near the park. Lee Nasad.”

“Right. I didn’t want to say anything until I had all the facts. I obtained a sample of mud from the closed, partly renovated subway stop in that neighborhood yesterday and dropped it by the lab. Then I got confirmation this morning. It matches the mud left by the Sniper’s shoe.” Take that, Weaver.

Birdy stood up from the desk corner. He was chewing on his lower lip, turning over in his mind what Meg had done. He stopped chewing and looked at her admiringly. “I like it, Meg.”

She gave him a slight nod to acknowledge the compliment. “I bet our Sniper’s using deserted subway tunnels for shelter and to get around the city unseen.”

“Which would explain why we button up a crime scene area minutes after the shot, and he’s gone,” Birdy said.

“Uh-huh. Poof, like that.”

Repetto was facing away from them now, staring at the slender bar of sunlight fighting its way in through the narrow, ground-level window. “Maybe something’s turned,” he said thoughtfully. “Maybe for once we can get out ahead of this bastard.”

“It’d make a nice change,” Birdy said.

“I’ll pass on this information to Murchison,” Repetto said, still staring at the light as if fascinated by it.

“Who’s he?” Birdy asked.

“Captain Lou Murchison. He’s going to be in charge of TBTC security.”

“Take Back The City rally?”

“Yeah. It’s already got an acronym.”

“No stopping it now,” Birdy said.

“Murchison’ll notify the mayor’s personal security so they and the NYPD can coordinate efforts.”

“Maybe the mayor will change his mind,” Meg said.

“No mind,” Birdy said.

“Something else,” Meg said. “Two blocks from Rockefeller Center there’s a subway stop closed for future renovations.”

Repetto turned back around. Birdy returned to perch on the desk and started pumping his leg again, faster and faster. He noticed what he was doing. Kicked the desk once, hard.

“Closed subway stop could be good or bad,” Repetto said.

“That’s what I thought,” Meg told him.

“Bad,” Birdy said.

A doughnut bag! That was good. Bobby wondered why so many people often threw away doughnut bags with one or two doughnuts still in them. Bought more than they could eat, maybe. Or calorie guilt caught up with them and they left a doughnut or two to reassure themselves they were still on their diets.

Bobby didn’t care. He reached farther down into the trash receptacle and pulled the crumpled white bag out from beneath a warped and water-stained old paperback somebody had thrown away. He glanced at the title: Six Rules for Sensational Sex. Self-help. Fuckin’ joke.

He ignored the book but did remove one of several discarded newspapers in the wire basket. This one, a Post, was barely used, as if whoever had thrown it away merely glanced at the headlines, then discarded it.

With the folded paper tucked beneath his arm, he opened the doughnut bag. Half a powdered jelly. Okay, that’d do.

Bobby shuffled down the block until he came to the doorway of an import shop that had its steel shutters down over the windows. He sat back so his lower legs wouldn’t be out on the sidewalk where he might trip somebody, then bit into the doughnut. Great. Still fresh.

It took him only a few seconds to down what was left of the doughnut. After swiping his hands together to brush away the sugar, he licked a stubborn glob of jelly from a knuckle, then leaned back against the shop door and unfolded the Post.

“Shit!” he said, loud enough that a guy in a dark business suit walking past turned his head and gave him a look.

Right there on the front page was more news about the Take Back The City rally, under the headline NEWYORKERSFIGHTBACK. Thousands were expected to attend.

Thousands of targets, Bobby thought. No, one target, really. TBTC, as it had come to be known, had seemed to Bobby a bad idea from the beginning. Somebody should have talked to the mayor and made him see reason. He was taunting the Night Sniper, the deadliest killer the city had seen in years, and a real sicko. Bobby was no profiler, but there was no doubt in his mind a guy like the Sniper couldn’t pass up a challenge like this one.

Across the street, a young woman hurrying toward a bus stop casually left behind a plastic water bottle on a display window ledge. Even from this distance Bobby could see that it was almost half-full.

He was thirsty, after the doughnut.

He stood up and stuffed the crumpled, empty doughnut bag into his hip pocket to be thrown away later. (Bobby was neat; didn’t foul up his city.) The newspaper he refolded and tucked beneath his arm. He’d read it later in the park.

When there was a break in traffic, he crossed the street to get the water bottle, still thinking about the TBTC mass of humanity that was going to be in Rockefeller Center. A wonderful place to die.

The mayor had balls. Bobby had to give him that. Maybe Bobby would even register so he could vote for him in the next election, if they were both still alive.

“This is a nightmare,” Captain Louis Murchison said to Repetto. He was a tall man with the slimness of youth and steel-gray hair. Repetto had seen him around over the years, usually in uniform. Today he had on a well-tailored gray suit and looked more like a Wall Street baron than a cop. “We don’t have enough people to cover every rooftop and window the Sniper can use for cover.”

The two men stood on Forty-ninth Street, adjacent to Rockefeller Plaza, and surveyed the surrounding neighborhood. Repetto saw that Murchison was right; this was one of the busiest areas of Manhattan and was vertically developed. There were possible shooting points from overlooking buildings even blocks away, taller than the buildings between them and the Plaza.