John Lutz - Fear the Night

She danced, she drank, she gazed hypnotized into eyes like blue ice. God, he was handsome! He could even dance well. He was perfect!

By the time they rode the elevator up to his floor, she thought tomorrow would be soon enough to worry about the mayor.

At 3:00 AM Repetto crawled into bed alongside Lora, trying not to make the springs squeak. A calmer Melbourne had relented on his rash and impractical no-sleep policy. When mind and body were dead tired, both were trudging along in place, not tending to business but trying to ride the treadmill to some future respite that never quite arrived.

The area around Rockefeller Plaza was frozen, cordoned off by yellow crime scene ribbon, isolated from pedestrian and vehicular traffic by NYPD sawhorses and sleepy cops in parked patrol cars. What a nightmare the rerouted traffic would cause tomorrow morning, when people tried to make their way to work.

In the morning the investigation would begin again full force. The search area around the Plaza would be widened. The Night Sniper might seem like a phantom, but the bullet that struck the mayor was real and had to have come from somewhere. And somewhere could be found.

Repetto hadn’t been this exhausted in years. He sighed as he settled down on the mattress and pulled the light sheet up around him. Cool air from the vent near the ceiling flowed lightly over him, soothing him through the thin linen.

Lora stirred beside him. “You just get in?”

“A few minutes ago,” Repetto said. “I made straight for the bed.”

He heard her roll onto her side and felt the sheet pull taut. “So how’s the mayor?”

“They think he might make it.”

“Good. He’s not a bad guy. Not that I’m gonna vote for him.” She raised her upper body, dug an elbow into the mattress, and cupped her chin in her hand, staring down at Repetto. “Any progress finding out who shot him?”

“Not so far.”

“Others still working?”

“No. Skeleton crew’s got the area secure. It all starts again tomorrow morning.”

“It’s already tomorrow morning.”

“Um.”

She was silent for a while, unmoving. “I take it you don’t want to talk.”

“Too tired.”

Her lips were cool on his forehead, and he heard and felt her lie back down beside him.

Weary as he was, Repetto knew he wouldn’t fall asleep easily. Still too much adrenaline in his system.

“I’m worried about Meg,” he said.

Linen rustled, Lora sitting up now.

“She’s acting peculiar,” Repetto said. “Like she’s. .”

“In love?”

Repetto didn’t lift his head from the pillow, but craned his neck so he could look at Lora in the dimness. “Why do you say that?”

“I’ve had lunch with her a few times recently. I know the signs.”

Women and lunch, Repetto thought. If Lora wasn’t lunching with Zoe Brady, she was lunching with Meg. He really didn’t mind now, perhaps because he knew he was helpless to control the female tradition that kept so many Manhattan restaurants in business. Besides, food and gossip could be a revealing combination, and he was curious about both women.

“Also,” Lora said, “I shouldn’t tell you, but she mentioned to me she might have found someone.”

Repetto was wide awake now. “Ah! She say who?”

“No, she was very secretive.”

“That’s it?” Repetto asked. “Meg told you that much, then stopped talking?”

“About that subject, yes.”

“So why did she mention it to you in the first place?”

“She’s a woman. We all like to share the good news.”

Repetto lay for a few minutes listening to the faint and distant traffic sounds drifting on the night. New York. Never completely silent or completely still. Never completely predictable. Like people.

“What about Birdy as Meg’s secret suitor?” he asked.

“Be serious. Anyway, he’s married.”

“They spend a lot of time together.”

“Okay, they do. And love can be random. Do you think Meg might be involved with Birdy?”

“No.”

“I can tell you one thing for sure,” Lora said. “She’s hooked.”

We’re all hooked, Repetto thought. He listened to a siren wailing off in the distance. Trouble never let up, never eased up on people.

Resting a hand on Lora’s thigh, precious contact with the person he loved more than his life, he dropped into dreamless sleep.

Sooner or later, one way or another, we’re all hooked. .

Safely back in his suite, lying beside the sleeping Zoe, the Night Sniper watched the silent TV screen beyond the foot of the bed. Zoe’s bare foot extended from beneath the sheet so that her toes blocked his view of the screen’s lower right quarter.

A muted blond anchorwoman with seriously collagened lips was smiling widely as she soundlessly mouthed the news. The TV was set for closed caption. He read in white capital letters on a black background that the mayor was expected to survive.

The Sniper had to contain himself to keep from cursing out loud and waking Zoe.

No, she wouldn’t wake up. Not after all the alcohol she’d taken in tonight. Zoe was a smart, competent woman, but early in their relationship he’d noticed she liked to drink, maybe even had a developing problem. It was a weakness he’d homed in on, knowing its usefulness.

It hadn’t been difficult to accelerate her drinking. After a while it was no longer even necessary for him to be subtle. Zoe might have an understanding of the criminal mind-the average criminal mind-but like so many people, she was blind to her own vulnerabilities.

Her drinking made her easy to convince, and to manipulate. Usually they ended their dates in her bed, and while she lay in an alcohol- and sex-induced slumber, he would log on to her Toshiba laptop and learn what he could about the NYPD’s progress in the Night Sniper case. Those files he thought might be of further use to him, he copied.

Zoe snored softly, and her breathing became even deeper and more regular. She was hours away from so much as fluttering her eyelids.

The Night Sniper gazed again at the TV and he did curse out loud. He’d missed his shot. Not completely, but he had missed. It was unacceptable. He directed another expletive at the TV screen. Zoe didn’t stir.

He laced his fingers behind his head and stared at the ceiling, thinking. So his shot hadn’t been perfect and the mayor would survive. Perhaps, considering the innate difficulties and the variables, the shot actually was impossible. Maybe he’d asked too much of himself.

He smiled in the soft, flickering light from the TV, then scooted back on the mattress so he could watch the screen through eyes that weren’t narrowed by angle. He saw that mayoral aides and assorted sycophants were huddled grimly in what looked like a hospital waiting room. They knew that whatever the mayor’s chances for survival, the game wasn’t over.

The Sniper would settle on another target to strike soon and make up for the mayor’s narrow escape (so far) from death. Perhaps the target should be Repetto, who’d already lost his surrogate son and protege.

No, not Repetto. Not yet. Repetto deserved not death, but another loss, as the Night Sniper had lost two fathers.

The police would expect him to try for Repetto. Zoe might even tell them it was in the Sniper’s character and methodology. In fact, he might be able to steer her in that direction, advise the NYPD on how best to apprehend him. Intriguing idea. He absently reached over and gently twirled a long strand of Zoe’s red hair.

The Night Sniper’s genius was in doing the unexpected.

He knew what Zoe didn’t know. What the police didn’t know.

Repetto deserved more grief, more pain, another loss. And just when he was getting so close-or thought he was.