Black Lightning

by John Saul

  He steeled himself against the unreasoning fear that gripped him now, and tried once more to convince himself that his panic was irrational: this building was going to be the best engineered and best constructed in the city, and barring some unforeseen calamity, there was no chance at all that either the platform surrounding the elevator shaft, the shaft itself, or the girders that formed the skeleton of the building would collapse. He and George Simmons had gone over it countless times, the engineer arguing that the building was overdesigned while Glen insisted on erring on the side of safety. Yet now, as he reviewed the specifications in his mind one more time, all the equations, all the coefficients of stress, all the statistics on tensile strength and rigidity suddenly became meaningless in the face of the terror that clasped him more tightly every second. A wave of dizziness swept over him, and he instinctively reached out to grip the mesh of the elevator cage with his right hand.

  “You okay, Glen?”

  Alan Cline’s voice seemed to be coming from far away and had the hollow sound of someone speaking from the depths of a cave. But Glen could see Alan standing right there, only a few feet from him. His fingers tightened on the metal mesh and he forced the burgeoning panic back down. Determined, he looked up at the sky, and for a moment everything seemed normal again. The last traces of this morning’s fog and drizzle were burning off, and nothing was left to mar the clear cerulean expanse overhead except for a few fluffy white wisps that seemed to evaporate even as he watched. He took a deep breath, and once more felt in control of himself. Finally easing his grip on the elevator cage, he shifted his gaze to his partner and managed a weak grin. “Great view from up here, huh?”

  “For those of us who can look at it, yes,” Alan Cline observed. By now only Glen was still in the elevator, and Jim Dover was already uncorking one of the bottles of champagne that had been waiting in the ice chest he’d brought up first thing this morning. “Are you going to join us, or shall we pass your glass into the elevator?”

  Gingerly, Glen stepped out onto the platform, which was constructed of several lengths of four-by-twelve planking, secured to the I beams with heavy bolts, resulting in an open ten-by-twelve-foot deck.

  Plenty of room, Glen silently assured himself, for four men to stand on perfectly safely.

  But even as he tried to reassure himself, the dizziness crept over him and he reached back to grip the elevator door. He concentrated on breathing deeply and evenly until the dizziness subsided. As Jim Dover passed him a glass of champagne, he finally risked taking a good look around. It was, indeed, a great view. High enough now to see over the crests of First Hill and Capitol Hill to the east, he could see a narrow slice of Lake Washington and the skyline of Bellevue rising in the distance. To the south, the Kingdome squatted like a huge orange squeezer at the near end of the industrial expanse that stretched all the way down to Boeing Field, and the entire Olympic range was now clearly visible. In the far distance he could see Mount Baker to the north, and Mount Rainier to the south. Nearly overwhelmed by the beauty of the panorama, Glen unconsciously released his grip on the elevator and stepped forward, raising his glass. “To the most fabulous place for a park in the history of Seattle,” he said. Raising his glass to his lips, he drained it, then tossed the plastic glass over the edge of the platform.

  And moved closer to the edge to watch it drop through the skeleton of the building.

  First he felt the instant tingling in his groin as his scrotum contracted to draw his testicles protectively upward. At the same time a black roiling pit seemed to open in his belly. Worst, though, was the terrible feeling of being drawn forward, pulled as if by some physical force over the edge to plunge into the abyss.

  He struggled against the urge; took a step backward.

  Then the bands tightened around his chest, his left arm began to tingle once again, and he felt that clammy sheen of sweat coat his body.

  “Glen?” he heard someone ask, but now the voice sounded too far away even to be readily identifiable. “Jesus, Glen, what is it?”

  Glen staggered backward, groping for something to steady himself with.

  Found nothing.

  His right hand moved wildly now, reached for the elevator.

  Missed.

  He staggered, his balance failing him, his knees buckling.

  It was his heart.

  Something had gone very wrong with his heart.

  He could hear it pounding in his ears, feel it beating crazily in his chest.

  Now the bands constricting his lungs tightened. He struggled for breath.

  “He’s having a heart attack,” he heard someone say as he felt strong hands grip his shoulders, steadying him as he crumbled onto the thick planks of the platform. “You got your phone, Jim?”

  Jim Dover was already punching 911 into the pad of his cellular phone, and as George Simmons and Alan Cline knelt next to Glen Jeffers’s supine figure, Dover ordered an ambulance, then began barking orders into the walkie-talkie that allowed him to communicate with the crew below. A moment later, all his instructions issued, he slapped the phone shut, dropped it into his pocket, and took charge of the situation on the tiny platform. Suddenly, even to Jim Dover, the sturdy planking seemed to be no more than an insignificant speck suspended in the middle of nothing. “We have to get him into the elevator. George, you and I should lift him up. Alan, hold his head. Not real high—just enough to slide him into the cage.”

  As the three men raised Glen Jeffers a few inches off the planking and eased him through the open gate of the elevator, the semiconscious man’s lips worked, and an incomprehensible sound came faintly from his lips.

  “What did he say?” Alan Cline demanded. When no one replied, Alan bent over his partner. “It’s okay, Glen,” he said, trying to keep his voice steady and reassuring. “Soon as we get you down, you’re going to be just fine.”

  The metal gate clanged shut and Jim Dover jabbed impatiently at the elevator’s controls. After a second’s hesitation, the cage jerked once, eliciting a barely audible grunt of pain from Glen Jeffers, then began inching its way downward at what seemed to be an impossibly slow pace.

  “For Christ’s sake,” Alan Cline demanded of no one in particular, “can’t you make this damned thing go any faster?” No one answered him, and he bent over his partner once more. “Take it easy, Glen. Just take it easy, okay?”

  Above his head, Jim Dover and George Simmons glanced uneasily at each other. Glen’s breathing was coming only in the shallowest of gasps, and his complexion had lost all its color, taking on a ghastly faint bluish pallor. “Either of you know CPR?” Dover asked. “I don’t think he’s going to make it.”

  Alan Cline glared up from his crouched position next to Glen. “Shut up, Jim, okay? Nobody’s going to die.” But as if to belie his partner’s words, a terrible rattling sound issued from Glen Jeffers’s lips, and now the blood drained from Alan Cline’s face. Racking his brain to remember what he’d been taught in the cardiopulmonary resuscitation course he’d taken almost a year ago, he pulled Glen’s mouth open, checked to make sure his tongue wasn’t blocking his throat, then began pressing rhythmically on his chest. As the elevator continued its agonizingly slow descent, he bent over, closed Glen’s nostrils with the fingers of his right hand, and began breathing directly into the unconscious man’s lungs.

  After three deep breaths he went back to work on Glen’s chest.

  They were only twenty feet above the building’s floor when finally another small groan escaped Glen Jeffers’s lips and his lungs began to work once again, though the most they appeared able to produce were spasmodic, gasping breaths that seemed incapable of sustaining life.

  “Come on, damn it,” Alan Cline whispered. “Breathe! For God’s sake, breathe!”

  As if in response to his partner’s voice, Glen seemed to gain a little strength, and his chest heaved.

  The elevator banged to a stop and Jim Dover threw the door open. “Where’s the ambulance?” he demanded of the a
ssistant foreman, who was waiting at the elevator’s base.

  The man’s eyes fixed on Dover for a moment, then shifted to Glen Jeffers, whose ragged breathing had abruptly stopped again. “Not here yet,” he said as Alan Cline went back to work on Glen. Then his gaze came back to the contractor and he shrugged helplessly. By the time the ambulance arrived, would it already be too late?

  CHAPTER 5

  The crowd of demonstrators had begun gathering the day before, and every hour since the first arrivals had set up their makeshift camps, more of them had poured into the field across from the prison, until now the entire space was filled with tents, trailers, cars, and people. All night long a bonfire had burned, the demonstrators clustering around it as they sang songs of protest and chanted their conviction that the condemned man must not die, that somewhere some nameless lawyer was feverishly working in an ill-lit office, finding new grounds upon which to challenge Richard Kraven’s sentence of death.

  Perhaps there would be an error discovered in the court records, or some piece of evidence could be newly challenged.

  Or perhaps the governor would have a change of heart and commute Kraven’s sentence at the last minute.

  But as night faded into morning and the bonfire burned lower, until all that was left of it were glowing coals smoldering angrily beneath a thick layer of ash, a watchful silence had descended on the crowd.

  Anne Jeffers gazed down upon the scene from the window of Wendell Rustin’s office on the top floor of the prison’s administration building. A few curling wisps of smoke still rose from the last embers of the night’s bonfires, and the demonstrators still stood facing the prison, waiting in bitter anticipation for the last moment of Richard Kraven’s life.

  How many were there—five hundred? A thousand?

  And who was to say that their feelings about what was going to happen here today were any less valid than her own? An image of her daughter came to mind, and she saw once more the earnest expression on Heather’s fifteen-year-old face a few nights before, when they had once more debated capital punishment over the dinner table. With the absolute certainty of her youth, Heather had insisted that there was not—could not—be any justification for a government executing anyone.

  “Two wrongs don’t make a right,” she’d insisted. “And besides, aren’t we always making a big deal about being a Christian nation? What about the ten commandments? The Bible says ‘Thou shalt not kill.’ Which means that capital punishment is just plain wrong!”

  Now, her daughter’s words ringing in her ears, Anne wondered just when it was that she’d lost her own innocence, had lost the ability to see the world in black and white. It had not, she reflected, been that many years since she’d agreed with Heather wholeheartedly.

  Except that somewhere along the line she’d begun to believe that in some cases—cases like Richard Kraven’s—there was no other real choice. To some extent, she supposed that her work had hardened her, that her many years of observing and reporting on man’s cruelty to his own species had changed her.

  As she gazed down at the demonstrators in front of the prison, scanning their faces, she saw among the crowd scores of people her own age, and just as many who were twenty years older. Even as she watched, an elderly woman sitting in a wheelchair, swathed in a long peasant skirt and a rainbow-colored shawl, proudly waved a sign that read CAPITAL PUNISHMENT IS MURDER.

  I should talk to her, Anne thought. Before I go home, I should talk to that woman.

  Her thoughts were interrupted by the jangling of a telephone. She turned away from the window just as Wendell Rustin picked up the receiver on the second ring, spoke for a moment, then hung up. “It’s time,” he said. Pushing himself heavily to his feet, the warden came around the desk, strode to the door, and held it open for Anne. When she made no move to go through it, he hesitated for a moment, then gently reclosed it. “Are you going to be all right?”

  Anne frowned as she tried to formulate an answer to the question, and finally shrugged. “I don’t know,” she admitted. “I—Oh, God, I don’t know what I feel right now. I thought I was absolutely clear on this, but now …” Her voice trailed off.

  “You don’t have to witness it,” Rustin offered. “If you’d like, you can wait here.”

  For the slightest fraction of a second Anne felt tempted to take the warden up on the offer, but almost immediately shook her head. “This is something I have to do,” she said. “What kind of a hypocrite would I be if I refused to watch what I’ve been arguing for all this time?”

  Wendell Rustin’s head bobbed slightly. “I know,” he said. “But I have to tell you, Anne, believing in capital punishment and watching it are two different things. Take it from someone who knows.”

  In spite of herself, Anne hesitated. How much easier it would be simply to wait here in the relative comfort of the office until it was all over. Resolutely, she faced him and said, “I’ll be all right.” But even as she passed through the door into the hallway outside, she wondered if she’d spoken the truth. Conflicting emotions were still roiling inside her, but this time she reminded herself that she was here to do her job, and purposefully shifted her mind into work mode, a trick she’d learned years ago when she discovered that there were times when she simply had no choice but to separate herself from the task at hand.

  Entering the gallery adjacent to the execution chamber, she was surprised at how many people had already gathered. Some of them she recognized: most of the lawyers who had been involved in Kraven’s various appeals were there, as were a number of policemen she recognized from various states.

  Mark Blakemoor, who had headed up Seattle’s own task force when it became obvious that a serial killer was working in the city, sat in the front row, and as Anne came in, he nodded to her and gestured for her to take the seat next to him. Feeling an oddly incongruous sense of relief at seeing Blakemoor, she moved quickly down the aisle and slipped into the empty seat.

  And found herself staring directly into the small chamber that held the electric chair.

  Mutely, she stared at the executioner’s toy.

  It was wooden, constructed in what struck Anne as a cruelly simple design.

  No cushioning, not even slightly relaxing angles.

  Wide, flat arms equipped with heavy straps to hold the victim’s arms in place.

  More straps to hold the torso immobile, and still more to bind the legs and ankles.

  Two electrodes, attached to thick cables.

  All of it illuminated by the harsh white light of four powerful incandescent lamps suspended from the ceiling.

  Anne stared at it wordlessly, her mouth going dry. Abruptly, the lights in the gallery dimmed, almost as if they were in a theater, and then a door to the left of the chair opened. A moment later Richard Kraven appeared in the doorway. He paused, his eyes fixing on the chair.

  As Kraven stared at the instrument of death, Anne thought that a flicker of a smile crossed his lips, but if so, it was gone so quickly she couldn’t be certain she’d seen it at all.

  With two guards escorting him, Richard Kraven moved into the chamber and took his seat. He was barefoot, and wearing only a loose-fitting pair of pants and a short-sleeved shirt. Though she loathed this cold-blooded killer, the clothing struck Anne as unseemly, as if someone had decided it wasn’t enough simply to execute him, but that he must be stripped of his last vestiges of dignity before being sent to his death.

  The guards began strapping Richard Kraven to the heavy wooden chair.

  His ankles were bound to the legs of the chair, his wrists to its arms, his torso to its back.

  A priest came into the room and spoke to Kraven, but Anne could hear nothing through the heavy glass that separated the killing chamber from the viewing gallery. Whatever the clergyman said seemed not to affect Kraven in the slightest, and he made no reply.

  After lingering for only a few more seconds, the priest left.

  The guards dampened one of the electrodes with saltwate
r, and taped it securely to Richard Kraven’s shaved scalp.

  They attached the second electrode to the calf of his right leg.

  After checking their work one last time, the two guards left the chamber, closing the door behind them.

  It was only after the guards had left that Anne realized an eerie silence had fallen over the gallery.

  She glanced up at the clock.

  Thirty seconds before noon.

  Now she found herself glancing around for a telephone, and realized she was half expecting that the event she was witnessing would suddenly be ended by a loud ringing, just as it used to happen in the movies.

  But there was no phone; if it existed at all, it was somewhere beyond her field of vision.

  Beyond Richard Kraven’s, too?

  Was he, too, waiting for the last minute reprieve that would release him from the chair?

  She made herself look once more at Kraven, and though she had been told that the glass was a one-way mirror and he wouldn’t be able to see the execution’s witnesses, she nonetheless had the sensation that his eyes were focused on her, and that he knew exactly at whom he was staring.

  Those cold, expressionless eyes had lost their deathly flatness. In the last moments of Richard Kraven’s life, his eyes had at last come alive and were projecting an emotion.

  A strong, powerful emotion.

  Hatred.

  Anne could feel it burning out from him, searing through the thick glass of the window, snaking toward her—

  She recoiled from Kraven’s hate-filled gaze as from a striking cobra, and had to fight against a powerful impulse to abandon her chair and escape from the scene that was unfolding in front of her eyes. But before she could move at all, Richard Kraven jerked spasmodically as every muscle and nerve in his body reacted to the two thousand volts of electricity that shot through him.