Fear the Night Read Online Free PDF Page A

change his mind about you. I’ve worked to get inside this guy’s head, and I’ve got some small idea of how he reasons—or thinks he reasons. He’s not going to give up on something he wants, and he wants you to engage in a contest with him.”
    “He isn’t going to get what he wants.”
    “Well, we want it too. Because we know how dangerous the sniper is. And we understand why he wants you as his nemesis. You’re legendary, and in his mind, he soon will be.” She stared earnestly at Repetto. “Have you at least given the matter any thought since Captain Melbourne talked with you?”
    “I have,” he said. “I haven’t changed my mind. The game this sicko wants is one I’m finished playing.” He smiled at her. There was something he liked about her despite her mission, despite the fact she wasn’t really a cop. If only he didn’t have to get professionally involved with her. He’d never been crazy about profilers. In his experience they were more often wrong than right. And when they were right, it was about the obvious—male, certain age bracket, poor or unemployed, tough childhood ... “I’m sorry, Zoe, but I’m not subject to threats from a psychotic killer. Next time the sniper contacts you, tell him I said no, I don’t want to play.”
    She shrugged. “Okay, I tried and failed. The AC was right about you. You’re a hard man.”
    “Was I just insulted?”
    She backed down the steps gracefully and grinned up at him. “Not by me. I like hard and proud. That way I know where I stand.”
    “You’ll tell Melbourne what I said?”
    “I’ll tell him.” She nodded to Repetto, then started to stride down the sidewalk. After a few steps, she stopped and turned. “I’ll also tell him that the way I size you up, I don’t think you’re likely to change your mind.”
    “You’ve got me profiled.”
    “Sure. You’re a cinch.”
    Repetto smiled at her, nodded good-bye, then opened the door and went back inside to his wife and his new life and his father’s gun.

5
    Jim Lu had a talent given by his ancestors. Even as a child in Dom Ning he could sketch likenesses of anything, but especially of people. He had never attended school beyond his basic education in China, and never had the benefit of an art class. But what he saw, he could draw. He could look into it, understand it, see what made it what it was; then he could recreate it.
    He and a dozen others made their livings as sketch artists, working mostly in Times Square after the theater curtains dropped and people spilled out into the streets to walk to subway stops or their hotels or futilely wave for taxis. For twenty dollars Jim Lu or his fellow sketch artists would provide a charcoal likeness of any person who would pose for ten minutes. For an additional fifteen dollars they would provide a sturdy cardboard frame. This was illegal, of course, but when the police chased them they would simply open shop on some other busy corner, often just across the street. There was much for the police to tend to in the theater district when it was jammed with people, and simple sketch artists moved them only to cursory efforts.
    This woman—Betty Ern was her name, and Jim Lu had elicited from her that she was from Iowa—was quite easy to capture in charcoal. She had thick black hair and dark eyes, and a receding chin that Jim Lu would give definition. He knew how to flatter his subjects, removing a few years here, adding cheekbone or eye width there, and still they would look like themselves.
    He sat on his wooden folding chair before his easel, his back to the traffic, facing pedestrians streaming past beyond those who’d decided to pose or simply to observe. Jim Lu began with the left eye, as he always did, working carefully and slowly. Once he had Betty’s left eye perfectly, her brow and the side of her nose, he would work faster, enlarging, keying off the eye. Every living thing he drew, he began with its left eye. He thought sometimes that the