John Lutz - Fear the Night

“We’re talking about your life , Amelia.”

“Yes, my life. And I’m not going to let anyone dictate how I’m going to live it.”

“I’m not trying to do that. I’m trying to preserve your life. And the Night Sniper’s not trying to dictate how you live. He’s planning to end your life.”

“If I’m the Rapunzel in the note.”

“You don’t believe he means you?”

She couldn’t lie. Absently her right hand touched her luxurious long braid, slung over her shoulder and falling almost to the waist of the faded Levis she wore without a belt. “I suppose he means me.”

“Then you’ll get out?”

“No.”

Repetto felt like kicking a piece of furniture. Kids! Teenagers! No, Amelia was no longer a teenager, no longer a child. She was an adult making an adult decision, albeit a bad one. “You’re just like your mother.”

“I’m like my father. Maybe I’ll even be a cop someday.”

Here was something new. Repetto was thrown. The women in his life seemed to keep doing that to him.

“Will you at least accept police protection?” he pleaded.

“Of course,” Amelia said in an unemotional voice. “I’m not suicidal.”

“Could have fooled me.”

“Then you are fooled. I want to live, just like anyone else. Any of the other victims.”

He watched her throat work as she swallowed. A pale shadow seemed to move across her face, and for the first time he saw fear.

But beneath the fear, the courage.

He pulled her to him and hugged her tight.

“I admit I’m afraid,” she said. “Okay?” As if she were admitting getting home past curfew.

He kissed the top of her forehead. “Anyone would be. Will you at least not attend classes for a few days, stay here out of sight? For me and your mother?”

“Of course. I don’t want to cause either of you any pain. And I really don’t want to die! I don’t! More than that, I don’t want you to think that’s what I want. It’s just that I’m an adult. I have to make my stand here or I might regret it for the rest of my life.” She stared up at him so much the way Lora did sometimes. “Please try to understand, Dad.”

“I understand,” Repetto assured her. He knew she was wrong, that she wouldn’t always regret leaving, that this wasn’t her young life’s Waterloo. There would be plenty of other crises, other battles. He also knew he could never explain this to her so she’d believe it.

He held her tighter and waited until her sobs had quieted and her body had stopped shaking. The longer he held her the more he hated the idea of her staying here, in this street-level apartment. He wished Dal were still alive. He wished-

Fuck it! Dal was dead, and Repetto wanted Amelia to remain alive.

“I’ll have Birdy and Meg guard you in shifts, along with some uniforms outside.”

She nodded. The admission of fear had at least made her that compliant.

“Follow their instructions,” Repetto told her. “In the meantime, if you insist on staying here, don’t go near the windows, and of course make sure everything stays locked. Promise?”

“Promise.”

“I’ll call Birdy, then talk to Melbourne and get things set up. While we’re waiting for your angels to arrive, I’ll make sure the apartment’s sealed tight.”

“Angels?”

“The ones with guns who’ll be protecting you.”

“I’ll try hard to believe in angels,” Amelia told him. She almost managed to smile. “Better guns than wings.”

Repetto already had his cell phone out and was contacting Birdy. He explained the situation and told Birdy he couldn’t rule out another change of tactics by the Night Sniper. Maybe he’d start killing at close range, indoors, during daylight hours, with a handgun. Nothing seemed beyond him. Repetto told Birdy to stay inside the apartment with Amelia, not even to go out for food.

“This is my daughter,” he reminded Birdy.

“Then-if you don’t mind my asking-why don’t you get her out of there?”

“I would if I could and be sure she wouldn’t return. She considers this her date with destiny. Leaving isn’t what she wants. And she reminds me she’s twenty-one.”

“Ah, they do keep reminding you when that happens, whenever the shit gets deep. The good ones, anyway. Her father’s daughter.”

“Goddamned right.”

Repetto told Birdy he could have food delivered, or help himself to whatever was in the refrigerator.

He was to eat with his 9mm beside his plate.

“Look at this,” Meg said.

She was standing at the window of a high suite in the Marimont Hotel, pointing outside to the roof of a setback in the tall building.

Repetto looked. He saw shorter buildings beyond the parapet, and blue sky beyond buildings off in the distance.

“I mean look at the roof,” Meg said, noticing where he was staring.

At first Repetto didn’t see it. Then he noticed an irregularity in the tar and gravel roof, something small protruding. Another, identical object. Four in all, arranged as if marking the corners of a rectangle.

“So what are they?” he asked.

“We’re not sure. One of the uniforms noticed them and told me about them. He came up here to check the windows, to make sure they didn’t provide a view of the plaza and podium even though they’re three blocks away.”

“Be a hell of a shot,” Repetto said, “even if the mayor was visible from here.”

“C’mon out on the roof,” Meg said. She grinned when he didn’t reply immediately. “It’s only a three-foot drop.”

She opened the window, gracefully sat on the sill, then swiveled to step outside. Repetto followed, bumping his head on the window frame.

Meg led him to the four objects on the roof. Repetto stooped low and saw that they were metal painted a dull black so they weren’t very visible. Stubby, hollowed, and rectangular. Brackets of some kind.

He looked up and squinted in the direction of Rockefeller Plaza. The podium and lectern hadn’t been disassembled. From where he squatted, it appeared that part of the podium and about half the lectern were visible, but he couldn’t be sure from this distance. But they were what he was looking at; he could see them far beyond the corner of a building two blocks away.

“An impossible shot,” he said. “Even if the Sniper got it just right and barely cleared that building corner, he’d have to be unbelievably accurate.”

“And lucky,” Meg said. “But he wasn’t lucky all the way. The mayor is still alive.”

Repetto straightened up and stared at her. Then he glanced back at the building on which they stood. The window they’d exited was the only one that looked out on the setback’s roof, and only blank brick wall towered above. Where he and Meg stood, they were invisible from anyone else in the Marimont or from the surrounding shorter buildings. A perfect sniper’s nest. One that had to have been carefully scouted by an expert.

And they were dealing with an expert.

Still, so far away . .

Repetto breathed in the high, clean air above the traffic-clogged street. They were high enough that not even much sound reached them from below. “You’re thinking the brackets were used to support a tripod or something to steady the rifle.”

“Something steadier than a tripod. There are four brackets. Some kind of brace might have fit into them, and after the shooting, the Sniper disassembled it and took it with him.”

Repetto squinted again toward the Plaza and held his hand in saluting position over his eyes to shield them from the sun. “It still doesn’t seem possible, Meg. Did you ask anyone from the hotel what those brackets were?”