John Lutz - Fear the Night

“Do we?”

“I know what you’re doing,” Melbourne said. “You’re trying to play devil’s advocate. Okay, I’ll go along. Our homeless man’s an ex-cop-”

“Says he is.”

“Okay, says so. This is the second time he’s reported seeing this guy who doesn’t set right with him as one of the homeless, thinks he might be a phony. Both sightings were when the Night Sniper might have been in the area.”

“ Might.”

“Always,” Melbourne said. “Something else. We both know what it takes to prompt somebody like this Bobby Mays to contact the police. We’re the people who roust him for loitering or panhandling, make his life even harder. Still, he did his ex-cop citizen’s duty.”

“All kinds of psychos,” Repetto said, “imagining and doing all kinds of things.”

“All kinds, yes. But Mays isn’t imagining he was a cop. Philadelphia P.D. says he was one of theirs, and a good one till a family tragedy put him on the skids.”

Repetto’s mind was working furiously, listening to Melbourne while unconsciously shuffling facts, priorities, and nuances, trying to synthesize what he knew with what he felt, which was often simply knowing on a deeper level.

“That all we got?” he asked.

“’Bout it.”

“No, it isn’t,” Repetto said, switching positions with Melbourne. “We’ve got what Sergeant Dan O’Day’s gut tells him.”

“That make it enough?” Melbourne asked. “What a veteran cop senses is the ore in the rock?”

“I know O’Day slightly. Times I’ve seen him, he struck me as the type who lives the Job.”

“I know him more than slightly,” Melbourne said. “He’s what you’re talking about. He’s a good cop. A good man. Ground smooth but not down.” Melbourne was silent for a couple of beats. “He’s not so unlike you, Vin. I’m gonna let this be your call.”

“I’m calling it,” Repetto said. “We’re going on the assumption the Sniper’s in the trap. Let’s spring it. Send what we have. We’ll cordon off the neighborhood and tighten the perimeter while we search the surrounded area.”

“Done,” Melbourne said. “Call Amelia and whoever you have posted there and alert them to what’s going on.”

“Soon as this conversation’s finished,” Repetto said, and broke the connection.

His blood was racing but his mind was calm. This was what he used to live for, this moment when the balance might be shifting, when he could feel it shifting. Everything was suddenly gaining momentum in the same direction, rushing toward the telling instant, like a narrowing focus that would achieve laser intensity. The grueling teamwork of the past long weeks, the breakthroughs and revelations large and small, were all converging.

O’Day’s gut instinct had become Repetto’s.

As he pecked out Amelia’s number on his cell phone, Repetto knew that if it weren’t for the danger to Amelia, he’d be loving this.

The Night Sniper was confident as he walked the dark streets of the West Eighties. His opponents knew now where he’d fired from when the mayor was shot, and had his general, useless description, compliments of the Marimont desk clerk. All the better, that description. The contrast between the Marimont shooting and what was about to happen to Amelia Repetto would be too much of a gap for them to leap. As would the contrast between the perceived shooters. Homeless people didn’t take suites at the Marimont Hotel. The police knew how wealthy he really was, and their mental image of him would be that of a cultured, influential man in a tailored suit, not one of the helpless and homeless wandering the avenues.

Tonight, in his worn-out clothes, his tattered long raincoat concealing his rifle, he was treading the stage in costume perfect for the role. Beneath the darkened faux stubble that would wipe off easily, he couldn’t contain a thin smile. He feared his pursuers, feared the psychotically resolute Repetto especially, but he did love the game.

When he reached a dark passageway, he glanced about, then entered the shadows and became one. The narrow passageway would take him to the next block, where he knew he could enter an apartment building through a side door whose lock he’d already neutralized.

Good! He was sure no one had seen him entering the building. There was a laundry room in the basement, and he had to get past its door without being noticed. An obvious vagrant in the building would inspire curiosity if not immediate alarm.

His luck held like an omen. Caution wasn’t necessary here. No one was washing or drying tonight.

With a small pair of wire cutters from a coat pocket, he disabled the fire alarm system. He entered the interior fire escape stairwell without an alarm sounding and made his way to the third floor. Already in his hand was the key to the sparsely furnished apartment a handsome young executive about to be transferred to New York had subleased for a year. Of course, the information given to the apartment’s primary lessee, who’d placed an ad in the Times, was false, but that didn’t matter now. The information was backed up by competently forged identification, and a deposit check the Sniper knew had cleared a Los Angeles bank. The useless rental agreement would become known within a matter of weeks, but that was okay.

The Sniper had required use of the apartment for only a short time. For the few visits he’d made in order to prepare.

And for tonight.

The apartment was in a vine-covered four-story brownstone diagonally across the street from Amelia Repetto’s apartment, three buildings down the block. Though it was on the third floor, observation had convinced the Sniper he could have a clear shot into Amelia’s lower-level living room, and into one of the bedrooms.

He went to the window overlooking the street and raised it about six inches, adjusted the blinds, and sat down in a small but comfortable wing chair he’d pulled close. From where he sat he could peer down the street at Amelia’s apartment and calculate his shot if the opportunity arose. The angle was acute, but his field of fire would cover approximately a third of both rooms. The challenge was certainly easier than that which he’d faced when he made the mayor a target.

He settled into the softly upholstered chair and propped the Webb-Blakesmith rifle against one of its arms, where he could easily snatch it up.

Though he was relaxed, he was alert, listening to the faint sounds of the city he’d slowed, and the subtle noises of the old building.

He was confident Amelia Repetto was in her apartment across the street. She would be closely guarded, not only by cops on the street, but probably by someone in the apartment with her.

But nobody was careful all the time. The Sniper had tonight and several more nights before the risk of occupying the subleased apartment would become too great to justify. Plenty of time.

Patience …

A shooter’s patience was usually rewarded.

It was merely a matter of waiting.

Parked across the street from Dante Vanya’s apartment, Officer Nancy Weaver glanced at her unmarked’s dashboard clock and decided this had gone far enough. She could afford to wait no longer. She had to cover her ass and make the best of what she had.

She’d actually realized this fifteen minutes ago and had been reasoning it out. She’d go back into the Elliott Arms, as a cop this time, and bullshit the doorman and whoever else needed bullshitting to give her access to Vanya’s apartment. Once inside, she could maybe find what she needed in order to contact Repetto, who could then obtain a warrant and prompt a wider search.

Not quite legal, Weaver knew. If she found nothing suspicious in Vanya’s apartment, she’d politely thank everyone involved, make her exit, and hope for the best. Which would be that an infuriated honest citizen named Dante Vanya wouldn’t complain to the department.