Black Lightning

by John Saul

  But today, when high noon came, there would be a different kind of showdown. This was no movie; this execution was going to be real. Further, the state of Connecticut had decreed that its first execution in almost forty years be carried out in the middle of the day, rather than in the dead of night—a decree Anne suspected was deliberately intended to remind the people that though they had the right to execute one of their fellow citizens, they couldn’t expect to have the action carried out clandestinely behind the dark cloak of midnight. Nor would there be a Gary Cooper for her to root for today. Instead, there would be only a nameless, faceless man throwing a switch.

  Then another man—someone whom Anne felt she had known for a very long time—would be dead.

  Anne shuddered, and felt instantly ashamed. At forty-two, after spending the last twenty years working for the Seattle Herald reporting on everything from fatal apartment fires to the AIDS epidemic, there shouldn’t be much left to make her shudder. She’d seen people die before; her own mother had passed away five years ago while she had held her hand, and Anne could still feel that last surge of strength that ran through her mother’s body, giving the dying woman just enough power in the last moments of her life to offer her a final smile and an encouraging squeeze of her fingers.

  Anne hadn’t shuddered that day; indeed, as her mother’s last breath emerged from her crumpled lips in a soft sigh of relief, and her wasted body finally retired from its long battle against the cancer that had inevitably defeated her, Anne felt only a quiet sense of gratitude that her mother’s pain had mercifully come to an end.

  Nor was her mother the only person Anne had watched in the last moments of life. She had sat helplessly with friends as they succumbed to the plague of AIDS, and she’d stood by in mute horror as victims of gang shootings died in the emergency room of Harborview Hospital.

  Once she’d even found herself cradling the broken body of a ten-year-old who had just been pulled from the wreckage of his father’s car on I-5. Anne had stanched the flow of blood from his neck with her handkerchief as she prayed for the medics to arrive in time, and sobbed in frustrated fury when the ambulance lost the race for the boy’s life to a crowd of rubber-necking onlookers who had choked traffic on the freeway to a standstill.

  The same kind of crowd who waited outside now, waited for the stroke of noon and the announcement that justice had been served.

  Justice, or Anne Jeffers?

  Was that why she was shuddering?

  Suddenly wanting to be alone to examine her feelings, Anne rose from the hard chair in the makeshift pressroom hastily set up for the fifty-odd journalists who had descended upon the prison to cover the execution of Richard Kraven. She made her way between two rows of long tables whose surfaces were littered with notebook computers and phones. She rapped once on the door of the single rest room that served all the men and women in the pressroom, then went inside, locking the door behind her. Stepping up to the cracked sink that was bolted to the wall next to a stained toilet, she stared at her reflection in the rectangle of polished metal screwed to the wall above the worn basin.

  At least her feelings weren’t showing, she thought with some relief. Her reflection—the image of an oval face with deep brown eyes and a straight nose—gazed steadily back at her, only slightly distorted by the ripples and dents in the makeshift mirror.

  She searched her features again, then turned away, annoyed with herself. What had she expected to find? Some brilliant insight into her conflicted feelings written across her forehead? The fact was, she knew perfectly well why she had found herself shuddering as she waited for Richard Kraven’s execution.

  She had shuddered because this time, when she watched someone die, she would know that she was at least partly responsible for his death.

  “Not true!”

  Anne spoke the words out loud, so sharply that they reverberated in the tight confines of the rest room.

  And it wasn’t true that Richard Kraven was being executed because of her.

  He was being executed because of what he had done.

  He was dying as punishment for his sins, and his sins were great enough that he should be executed ten times over.

  How many people had Richard Kraven actually killed as he roamed the country in pursuit of his “research,” as he called it, selecting victims for his horrific experiments?

  No one knew.

  Kraven had steadfastly denied killing anyone, but that was nothing more than the typical insistence of a sociopath that he’d done nothing wrong.

  Anne Jeffers knew better. In addition to the three people here in Connecticut, of whose murders Kraven had actually been convicted, she was certain there were scores more. The bodies of men and women, young and old, had been scattered across the country from Kraven’s home in Seattle down the coast to San Francisco and Los Angeles, and across the continent through Denver, Minneapolis, and Kansas City to Atlanta. Sometimes it seemed as if there wasn’t a major city in the country that Kraven’s cold shadow hadn’t fallen over; even now the list of crimes in which Richard Kraven was the prime suspect still grew.

  Yet even as Richard Kraven’s evil had spread, there had always been people to defend him, several of them among Anne’s own colleagues in the press. Some suggested the evidence presented in court hadn’t been strong enough to convict him; others sagely opined that Kraven should be kept alive to study. But every time someone had written a story advocating that Richard Kraven be allowed to live, Anne Jeffers answered it.

  Instantly, and strongly.

  In the end it was her view that prevailed. Richard Kraven had been sentenced to die.

  Now, two years after the sentencing, all the appeals had been filed, all the motions for new trials had been considered and denied, and all the other states having claims against Richard Kraven had agreed to save themselves the not inconsiderable expense of trying him for crimes indistinguishable from those for which he had already been convicted. Yet, in the years since he’d been convicted and sentenced, Richard Kraven had become steadily more famous, and the clamor to save his life had grown ever louder.

  Anne Jeffers had listened in amazement to the growing cacophony of protest. Were there really people who thought a man who had been convicted of murdering and dissecting a ten-year-old girl could be rehabilitated?

  How could anyone insist that Kraven was innocent in the face of all the evidence against him?

  Evidence that Anne Jeffers had recounted over and over again during the years she had covered this case.

  Evidence that Richard Kraven coldly insisted had been concocted, constructed, manipulated, or planted for the sole purpose of convicting him of crimes of which he was totally innocent.

  Not, of course, that Kraven had ever been able to present evidence of the nefarious plot that he insisted had made nearly a dozen separate states conspire to frame him. Anne was familiar enough with the paranoid mind to know that motive never entered into the certainty of persecution.

  The persecution was simply there.

  And Richard Kraven—to Anne’s mind the personification of the handsome and charming sociopath—had been able to convince thousands of people that the persecution was real and he would be executed wrongly.

  He’s guilty. Beyond a shadow of a doubt, Anne told herself, consciously straightening her back as she turned once more to gaze at her reflection in the warped metal above the sink. Richard Kraven had been tried, convicted, and sentenced, and it was the wisdom not only of the judge who had heard the case, but also of the appeals court that had reviewed it, that Richard Kraven should die today.

  And she would watch the execution, and she would not shudder as the executioner threw the switch. Yet even as she steeled herself for what was to come, her eyes burned and her vision blurred with tears.

  As she pulled a rough paper towel from the dispenser on the wall to blot the dampness under her eyes, a rap sounded at the door, immediately followed by a voice Anne recognized as belonging to the warden’s as
sistant.

  “Mrs. Jeffers? He wants to see you.”

  Crumpling the paper towel and dropping it into the wastebasket, Anne brusquely ran her fingers through her hair, glanced briefly at her reflection, then opened the door.

  “The warden?” she asked. “Why does he want to see me?”

  The assistant hesitated for a second, looked confused, then shook her head. “It’s not Mr. Rustin. It’s Richard Kraven. You’re on the list of people he wants to talk to this morning.”

  Anne felt a tightening in her belly as she entered the pressroom. Why would Richard Kraven want to talk to her today? What could he possibly have to say that he hadn’t already said in the numerous interviews she’d already conducted with him over the years? Was it possible that finally, at the last minute, he was going to confess? As the questions tumbled through her mind she became aware that the sound of fingers tapping keyboards had ceased. Silence fell over the pressroom as all her colleagues turned to look at her.

  Once again she steeled herself.

  If she could watch him die, certainly she could also listen to whatever he wanted to tell her before it happened.

  “All right,” she said to the assistant, who had followed her. Immediately, she wondered whether she’d spoken the words too loudly in the silence of the room. “Now?”

  The assistant shrugged. “I’m not sure. I was just told to bring you to the office. Mr. Rustin thought you might want to wait there.”

  Anne hesitated, then saw the other reporters already starting to formulate the questions they would ask her to relay to Richard Kraven. For a moment she felt a flash of annoyance, then realized that if someone else had been summoned to Kraven’s presence, she too would be scribbling down a final question in the hope of getting one last exclusive out of the story.

  But not now. Not this morning. As she walked through the room, she held up her hand against the proffered scraps of paper and the clamor of entreaties. At the door, she turned to face her colleagues. “I’m only going to listen to him,” she told the crowd of reporters. “I’m not going to ask him any questions. And whatever he says, believe me, I’ll give you every word of it. All I want is for this story to finally be over.” Then, before anyone could try to talk her into relaying just one question—“Come on Anne, be a sport!”—she slipped quickly out of the room.

  As she walked down the echoing corridor, she was already preparing herself to face Richard Kraven for the last time.

  CHAPTER 2

  On the opposite side of the country from his wife, Glen Jeffers lingered an extra five minutes in bed, wondering if maybe he shouldn’t skip his morning jog just this once. It was the kind of Seattle morning he hated—overcast, with a drizzling rain that promised to go on all day; not heavy enough to warrant a raincoat and umbrella, but just heavy enough to be annoying. Especially today, when he was going to have to be out in it all morning, inspecting the framework of the first high-rise his company had designed solely within their own firm.

  Jeffers and Cline, Architects.

  No partners; no other architectural firms listed on the big sign on the last developable block of the downtown sector; no other architects with whom he would have to share the glory for the spectacular design he had created. Soaring up forty-five stories, the building would step back from Fourth Avenue in a series of terraces as it rose toward the sky. But the feature he loved most was the park he’d designed for the top of the skyscraper. Covering more than half the block, it would provide a spectacular view of the city, the Sound, and the Olympic Mountains for anyone who cared to use the glass elevator that would ascend the north end of the building, carrying passengers directly from the sidewalk to any of the terraced levels or the park on the roof. In his building, at least, the best views would be open to the public, rather than reserved for the high-powered attorneys who were already vying for office space in what was rapidly becoming known as the Jeffers Building. It was a source of quiet pride for Glen that his building would be named for its architect, rather than its prime tenant.

  He lay in bed for another few minutes, savoring the feeling of well-being that warmed him this morning despite the rain, and listened to the creaking of the old house he and Anne had bought nearly twenty years before, when they’d first gotten married. The house had been bigger than they really needed, and in terrible condition, but Glen had talked Anne into it After all, he was an architect; he would turn it into a showplace for next to nothing. What he hadn’t told her was that his skills as a carpenter, plumber, electrician, plasterer, and roofer were nil. But Anne, of course, had known that all along, and was pretty good with a hammer herself. In the end, the crumbling wreck of a house they’d picked up for only forty thousand dollars was now worth the better part of a million, and the neighborhood had come back along with the house. Anne and Glen, and the two children they’d had along the way, were now smack in the middle of one of the better parts of Capitol Hill, only a block from Volunteer Park, on a tree-lined street filled with other houses that had also been restored over the years since the Jefferses had moved in.

  Though Glen liked to think he’d been prescient enough to foresee the resurgence of the neighborhood, the truth was that the best he’d hoped for was to fix the old place up, make a few dollars selling it, and move on. But as they’d worked on the house, both he and Anne had fallen in love with it, and when first Heather had arrived, fifteen years ago, then Kevin, five years later, they’d decided simply to stay where they were. Though they got offers for the house every few months, it had been years now since either of them had thought of moving. Meanwhile, a calico cat named Kumquat, then a small black and white mutt named Boots, and finally an only somewhat raucous green parrot named Hector, had been added to the family, at which point the house no longer felt too big. Indeed, when Boots decided to tease Hector, the combined clamor of the dog and the bird sometimes made the house seem far smaller than it actually was.

  Now, as the television downstairs went on—its earsplitting volume telling Glen that Kevin was in possession of the remote control—he reluctantly shoved the covers aside, swung his feet to the floor, and decided he felt just old and stiff enough that if he skipped jogging he’d suffer pangs of guilt all day. Pulling on some pants and a sweatshirt, he took the stairs two at a time, then paused to glance into the living room before heading out the front door.

  Both his kids were sitting in front of the television set, glued to an image of the prison in Connecticut where Richard Kraven was scheduled to die three hours from now. “Don’t you guys think you’ve seen enough of that?” he asked, remembering how he’d finally had to order them to shut off the television last night, when it seemed they might be ready to stay up until dawn watching the live coverage of the vigil going on in front of the prison.

  “Maybe Mom will be on,” Kevin said, using a gambit that had often worked in the past.

  “Maybe she would, if this were a local station,” Glen agreed. “But somehow I don’t think even your mother is quite famous enough for CNN yet. Now why don’t you turn off that deathwatch and fix yourselves some breakfast?”

  “It’s not a deathwatch,” Heather objected, fixing her father with a scornful glare. “It’s a protest. And I still don’t see why you wouldn’t let me go. I don’t believe in capital punishment, and I should be there!”

  Glen decided to ignore the bait, unwilling to let himself be dragged into yet another recitation of the importance of school over a protest in which neither he nor Anne believed. Pointing out one more time that the protest in question was taking place an entire continent away would, he knew, gain him nothing more than another of Heather’s pronouncements that “right and wrong doesn’t have anything to do with geography.” Sometimes he wondered if it wouldn’t be easier to have a daughter who was caught up in the music scene and spent most of her time hanging out on Broadway. Still, he and Anne had raised Heather to have a social conscience, and the fact was, he didn’t believe in capital punishment, either.

 
Except for a couple of special cases.

  Ted Bundy, for one, whose execution Glen had fully supported, being as certain as everyone else that had Bundy ever been given an opportunity, he would kill again and again and again.

  And now Richard Kraven, who, like Ted Bundy, had apparently committed most of his crimes in Seattle, but had finally been caught, tried, and sentenced on the other side of the continent. This morning the state of Connecticut would free the country from Kraven in exactly the same way Florida had liberated it from Bundy. Anne, Glen suspected, was probably working on a final story about the strange parallels between the two killers even as he was thinking about them.

  Heather, though, was still young enough not to let her ideals be tainted by any exceptions at all, and Glen didn’t feel like arguing the point this morning. “All right,” he sighed. “But do me a favor, okay? Put on some coffee, and make some orange juice? I’ll be back in half an hour.”

  By the time he’d gone out the front door and started up the street toward the park, both kids had already shifted their attention back to the television set, and as he trotted into the park a few minutes later to join the other joggers making their regular laps around the reservoir across from the old Art Museum, he began marshaling all the arguments he would need to convince them that even this morning it was more important for them to go to school than to stay in front of the television “just in case Mom is on.”

  Which, of course, she would be, since it had already been announced by one of the Seattle independent channels that “crusading Seattle Herald journalist Anne Jeffers” would be interviewed immediately after the execution.

  If he hurried, he could finish the inspection of the building in plenty of time to catch the broadcast at the office. Picking up his pace, he completed his usual six laps in five minutes less than his normal time, and felt a sense of aerobic virtue flood through him as his heart pounded during the final two-block sprint home.