John Lutz - Fear the Night

As if they were blood.

“I’ll talk again with Lora.”

“That’d be best.”

But Repetto knew he wouldn’t initiate the conversation. It would be better if she broached the subject, made the suggestion herself. He knew Lora, and Bricker knew both of them. There was no way Lora could hold Repetto to his word and watch him stay on the sidelines while the Night Sniper took more victims. That would, in a way, make her and Repetto responsible for the dead; they’d be the killer’s once-removed accomplices.

Dal was right; it was Repetto’s call. But Repetto was patient, confident of the decision Lora would soon make. She was a good woman, a brave woman with a nagging conscience.

“Got time to stop in at the deli?” Repetto asked. They’d gone around the block, and the unmarked Ford was visible beyond the corner deli. “I’m gonna pick up something for breakfast to take back to the apartment. You can join us.”

Dal thought about it. “Sounds good, but I really got no time to stop. I’ll get some fruit, maybe. Eat while I drive.”

They walked to the deli’s outside produce and flower stalls. Like the flowers, most of the fruit was flown in from sunnier climes where it thrived this time of year. Repetto preferred it in season, so he’d wait until Dal had chosen, then go inside with him to the register and buy something sweet and sinful in shrink-wrap to take back to the apartment.

“Peaches look best,” Dal said.

He braced his thighs against the wooden stall, leaning forward and stretching out his right arm so he could reach a large, ripe peach in the last row.

Repetto saw the bullet slam into the back of Dal’s head and heard its impact a moment before the rolling crack! of the rifle.

Bricker settled down on the peaches, his arm still extended, the fingers of his right hand straining forward. Repetto was aware of peaches forced over the edge of the stall, bouncing and rolling at his feet. Bricker’s head tilted to the side, as if he were trying to get more comfortable on his pillow of peaches, and the blood came. And came and came.

Repetto backed away, unable to stop staring at Bricker, at the blood on the peaches, the blood now trickling from the stall onto the sidewalk.

“Christ!” he heard someone say. “Looka all the blood! Fuckin’ flood!”

People were moving around Repetto. He could hear their soles shuffling on the pavement, see them like shadows at the corners of his vision. It was unreal. All so unreal.

“. . guy’s clock has stopped … dead. .dead. .”

“Get back. Please, you get back from him!” Kim’s voice. The deli’s owner. Kim knew Repetto and had come outside despite the possibility of another shot.

“Don’t matter, man. He’s dead. Looka the fuckin’ blood!”

Does there have to be so much blood?

“Watch where you step. .”

“Get a cop!” a woman said.

Blood.

“Somebody inside’s calling the police.” Kim’s voice. “Somebody’s already calling.”

“Get a cop!” the woman insisted, as if he hadn’t spoken. “Get a cop.”

Repetto stood motionless except for his chest heaving with his rapid breathing. His face was pale stone. The people around him might have thought he was in shock, but he wasn’t. Not yet.

“I am a cop,” he said.

Well before sunrise, he awoke hot and heavily perspiring, lying on his back beside Lora. Repetto guessed she hadn’t been asleep, but had been crying since they’d gone to bed a few minutes past midnight.

For a moment he wondered why she was quietly sobbing; then the realization of yesterday collapsed in on him. He reached out gently with his left arm and pulled Lora to him, and she nestled her head against the base of his neck and continued to sob. Neither of them spoke. What had happened to Dal, to them, was black and ineffable.

After almost an hour, still welded together by grief, they fell asleep.

When the bedroom was slashed with morning light from the parted blinds, Repetto awoke as exhausted as he’d been last night. He carefully disentangled himself from Lora, who was still asleep. He thought about kissing her forehead, then decided against chancing that he might wake her. Instead he studied her as if she were a precious puzzle, loving her, knowing they needed each other now as never before. As quietly as possible, he climbed out of bed and went into the bathroom to shower.

With his left arm and hand he’d been gentle with Lora, but he became aware that the fingers of his right hand ached from having clutched the wadded sheet as he fell asleep, and perhaps as he slept.

When he was finished toweling dry, he stared at the man in the bathroom mirror.

Captain Vincent Albert Repetto stared back at him, the same as yesterday, yet unalterably changed.

Homicide Detective Meg Doyle steered the unmarked police car onto the exit ramp and watched for the turnoff for the service road. Beside her sat her partner, Bert (Birdy) Bellman. They’d left the city half an hour ago, after Meg had picked up Birdy at his house in Queens, and they’d had a quick breakfast of doughnuts and coffee as they drove. Cops eating doughnuts. Life imitating art, Meg thought. Blame it on Krispy Kreme.

They were up early and on the road because Dal Bricker’s funeral was in New Jersey. His graveside service, anyway, for friends and family. He was already buried, after a full-dress NYPD funeral complete with dignitaries, bagpipes, and rifle salute. Today was the quieter, more private good-bye to Sergeant Dal Bricker. Immediately after the service, Meg and Birdy would be introduced to Repetto.

Meg was looking forward to meeting Repetto. He was something of a legend in the NYPD, and she wasn’t surprised that the higher-ups would call on his expertise. That Repetto was also the Night Sniper’s choice simply made it unanimous. Stories still drifted around the department about Repetto, how he’d personally cornered the Midnight Leather Killer and traded shots with him before the suspect leaped to his death from forty stories up. About how two Mafia thugs had been sent around to intimidate Repetto and found themselves outmatched. Afterward, in their hospital beds, they’d been charged with assault, and their rights were read to them by Repetto.

Meg found the cemetery road and turned onto it. She was a diminutive woman of thirty-nine who would have risen higher in the NYPD by now if she’d been able to control her tongue. Not that she had a temper; it was more that her words were out and doing harm before she could stop them. Since her divorce from Chip she tended to say what she thought, what she knew, what was the truth-a dangerous habit and hard to break. Her figure was trim, her eyes a dark brown, her features elfin. Her dark, short-cropped hair grew in a cowlick that made it stand on end in front in a way reminiscent of a rooster comb. When she’d been a uniformed cop she’d kept her cap on as much as possible. Now aerosol hair spray battled her cowlick, not always successfully.

Birdy Bellman, on the other hand, was bald except for a few lank strands of hair plastered in a grid across his gleaming pate. His eyes were hooded and his face a series of vertical planes that made him always appear somber. He got tagged with the Birdy nickname because he often made silent pecking motions with his head when he was tense, which was almost always. Tense on the outside, anyway, while his brain was placidly and relentlessly working. Meg thought that if Birdy really was a bird he’d be a vulture. One that ate bad roadkill that had given him indigestion.

Some part of Birdy was always moving, fingers tapping, a foot bouncing in frantic rhythm, a hand clenching and unclenching, releasing the frustration and excess energy that plagued him. Sometimes Meg thought Birdy should see a shrink.