John Lutz - Fear the Night

It was their time of temporary advantage in the game.

Their move.

His risk.

Even as he was reviewing this in his mind, he was heading toward the door to the hall.

He took the fire stairs fast, this time not caring if he made noise.

Past the musty-smelling basement laundry room. Still unoccupied.

Out the side door into the dark passageway. The fresh night air.

He hurried toward the paler rectangle of light that was the block behind Amelia Repetto’s apartment, his long coat flapping as he took giant strides while fitting the rifle in its sling. Protruding from one pocket of his threadbare coat was a brown-wrapped bottle that would account for the uneven gait caused by the rifle extending down alongside his left leg. Its awkward, shifting weight only added to the suggestion of inebriation. As he walked across a subway grate, he worked the rifle’s bolt and let the spent shell drop from beneath his coat to fall into darkness. If he must, he could throw the coat open and raise and fire the rifle in an instant.

If he must.

Right now, he didn’t anticipate the need. Though his shooting could have been more accurate, his escape from the area was going just fine. He would stay in his homeless costume this time, and make his way as one of the invisible into the vastness and anonymity of the city.

He forced himself to move more slowly and deliberately, as if he were unafraid, as uninterested in his pursuers as they should be in him.

Another ten minutes and he’d be safe. The ageless equation of the desperate: time equals distance equals safety. .

He was unaware that a large percentage of the NYPD was in the area. And that they knew more than he imagined.

As Repetto jogged the final few yards to Amelia’s apartment door and started up the concrete steps to the stoop, his cell phone chirped.

“We got a name,” Melbourne told him.

“We got a shooting here! My place!”

“Amelia okay?”

“Dunno. Gonna find out.”

Repetto was through the door now, shoving aside a uniform as he made his way toward the still form of a woman on the floor.

Then he became aware of Amelia standing off to the side, holding a bloody towel to her face.

She came to him and hugged him fiercely, dropping the towel and pressing her bloodied face to his shoulder. He hugged his only child tight, kissing her forehead, then leaned back to stare more closely at her.

She didn’t appear to be injured badly, but she’d need treatment. He could see glass shards glittering in the small cuts that peppered her cheek. Outside, sirens were yowling, drawing near.

“We got EMS on the way,” a voice near him said. Repetto turned to see a uniform, tried to recall his name but couldn’t.

Amelia had moved away from Repetto. A guy wearing a bowling jacket and beard who Repetto knew was undercover was helping her over to the sofa, gently guiding her with a hand on her elbow so she’d sit down.

Repetto began thinking more clearly through his fear and concern for Amelia. He understood now that the woman on the floor was Meg.

He went to her on numbed legs, barely avoiding the blood. We’re going to get the bastard!

The trap was closing.

We’re going to get him.

After making sure her wounds were only superficial, Repetto saw Amelia off not in an ambulance but in a patrol car. He called Lora, talking to her only briefly, to let her know what had happened, to reassure her that Amelia would be all right. Then he called Melbourne back.

“Amelia. .?” Melbourne asked, when he heard Repetto’s voice.

“She’ll be okay,” Repetto said.

“Thank God for that.”

“Meg’s not so good.”

After Repetto had brought him up to speed on what had happened at the apartment, Melbourne said, “Our sniper’s name is Dante Vanya.” He spelled it for Repetto. “Weaver tracked him down. We did a rush through Central Warrants and tossed his apartment, swank place on the Upper East Side. He’s the son of a guy the Department of Sanitation fired sixteen years ago. Dad became depressed and shot Dante’s mom, then himself. Dante lived for a while as a street kid, got himself badly burned in a subway station fire, then rehabilitated at a charity foundation ranch out in Arizona. That’s where he learned from an expert how to shoot.”

An orphan who’d grown up on the street, trying to kill a girl too stubborn to run. Sons and daughters, Repetto thought. Put the tape on rewind, and almost every crime could be prevented. “We sure about all this?”

“We are. You were right about Weaver. She did a hell of a job gathering facts. Vanya’s also got a room in his apartment with a door that doesn’t look like a door, and inside it is the biggest collection of rifles and shooting paraphernalia you ever saw. Ballistics is gonna be in heaven.”

“I take it Vanya wasn’t home when you arrived with the warrant.”

“No, and we both know where he was.”

We know. Repetto felt rage become determination in his gut. “We got his photo?”

“None anywhere in the apartment, which is also curious. Vanya never had much to do with his neighbors-not so unusual in New York-but the doorman describes him as average height and build, in his thirties, black and blue, good-looking guy, and a sharp dresser.”

“Get the name out to the media. Spread it all over the city, along with his description. Somebody’ll know him and tell us more.” Repetto thought about the NYPD personnel stationed in the neighborhood, and the cordon of cops in the wider area, closing in, tightening the trap so there were more and more cops to the square block, the square yard. “We have him. I can feel it.”

“When he knows he’s trapped,” Melbourne said, “he’s gonna be desperate and even more dangerous. And he can shoot the buttons off your shirt, only he won’t be aiming at your buttons.”

“We put out his description,” Repetto said, “and maybe he’ll surprise us and surrender in remorse.”

“I believe you hope he doesn’t.”

Repetto didn’t see any point in answering that one. “Better make sure the public knows he’s armed and dangerous.”

“Right now I’m making sure you and the rest of your people know it,” Melbourne said. “Right now I’m reminding you, this guy is deadly.”

Repetto said, “Tell it to Meg.”

“Word just came in on another line, she was hit in the shoulder and should be okay. She look to you like she was gonna make it?”

“There is no okay when you’ve got a bullet in you,” Repetto said. “And we’ll find out soon who’s gonna make it, and who isn’t.”

A chill ran through the Night Sniper as he saw a man carrying what looked like a small duffel bag, crossing the street half a block down. He slowed his pace, stalling until the man had climbed half a dozen steps to a concrete stoop and disappeared into a building.

Relieved, the Sniper picked up his pace.

He hadn’t expected this kind of security. Since leaving the apartment across the street from Repetto’s, he’d spotted uniformed cops, then people who might be working undercover. Real or suspected, he’d managed to avoid them all.

Other people walking the dark streets, who fortunately weren’t police, paid little attention to the homeless man in his long, rumpled coat, shuffling dazedly along the sidewalk. The fact that there were somewhat fewer homeless in New York these days seemed to make him even less noticeable, less of an actual person. He was a problem that was ended, or at least made manageable, and was no longer of concern. If anyone did look at him closely, the brown paper bag jutting from a pocket would explain his apparent disorientation. There was nothing unusual about people like him in New York. They existed in the thousands and drew no particular interest.