Black Lightning

by John Saul

  Glen snapped the television off. “What the hell is going on?” he demanded, his voice so sharp that Kevin jumped in his chair.

  “What do you mean?” the boy asked. “All I asked was—”

  “Not that,” Glen interrupted, cutting Kevin off. “That murder! What the hell is going on?”

  Kevin’s eyes darted around the room as if seeking some way of escape. What was going on with his dad? What was he so mad about? But before he could say anything else, his father spoke again, this time fixing on Kevin with a burning intensity the boy had never seen before.

  “I want you to do something for me, Kevin. I want you to go home and get that file your mother’s been keeping. You know the one I mean? The one with all the stuff about Kraven in it?”

  Kevin shifted nervously. He knew where the file was, but he also knew he wasn’t supposed to go into his mother’s desk. “I thought you didn’t care about that stuff,” he said. “You said it was—” Kevin hesitated, trying to remember the word his father had used when his mother started talking about going to the execution. Before he could think of his word, his father fixed him with that stare again, like he was angry.

  “Maybe I changed my mind,” he said. Then he chuckled, but even the laugh didn’t sound right to Kevin. “Dr. Farber says I’m going to have to take at least a couple of months off work, and that I’m going to have to take up a hobby. So maybe I’ll just make your mother’s fixation on Richard Kraven my new hobby.” Once again his eyes bored into Kevin. “What do you think? Sound interesting?”

  Kevin said nothing. What was going on? His father didn’t have hobbies—he didn’t even like hobbies! And then he remembered the word his father had used whenever his mom started talking about Richard Kraven.

  Morbid.

  That was the word. His father had always called it morbid.

  So why was he suddenly so interested in Richard Kraven?

  But then Kevin remembered what his mother had told him the day before yesterday, when she’d come home from talking to Dr. Farber: “It’s going to be rough for a while, kids. Your dad’s going to have to change his whole lifestyle. He’s going to have to work a lot less, and rest a lot more. And that means it’s going to be different for all of us, too. So what do you think? Can you make some adjustments? Get used to some changes around here?”

  The day before yesterday, when he and Heather and his mother had all talked about it, it didn’t seem like a big deal at all. But now that he was all alone in the hospital room with his father, Kevin began to wonder. Suddenly his father didn’t seem like his father anymore. His mom had said his dad was going to be different, but if it meant his father would be mad all the time, and sounding weird, Kevin wasn’t sure how easy things were going to be after all.

  “Well, how about it?” Glen asked as Kevin’s silence stretched on. “Does my new hobby sound interesting, or not?”

  Kevin rose to his feet and edged toward the door. “Yeah, Dad,” he said, his eyes avoiding his father’s. “It sounds fine. And I’ll get the file for you, okay? I’ll be back in a while.”

  As he left the hospital he wondered what would happen if he just sort of forgot about the file and didn’t come back at all. A couple of weeks ago he would have known exactly what would happen: his dad—the one he’d known all his life—would get mad at him for a minute, and then it would be all over. But now everything was different—since the heart attack, anything might happen.

  He decided he’d better do as he’d been told.

  CHAPTER 19

  “I mean, like, Jeez, it’s not like she was committing a crime, you know? Like, so she was turning a few tricks—so who doesn’t? This is Capitol Hill, you know? If she got paid, like, good for her, know what I mean?”

  Anne Jeffers was on the sidewalk across from the building where Shawnelle Davis had both lived and conducted her business. Though she had been talking to the man of the laissez-faire sexual-economic theories for nearly twenty minutes, she still wasn’t quite certain if he’d even known Shawnelle, let alone held the bosom-buddy status to which he’d laid claim. Still, she’d let the photographer snap some pictures of him. If nothing else, they’d at least wind up decorating the bulletin boards at the Herald, complete with appropriately off-color captions. Certainly he was one of the more flamboyant of the crowd that had gathered on Boylston Street, and he’d managed to pierce parts of his body that made Anne wince simply by thinking about the pain he must have undergone. In fact, as she talked to the young man, she wondered for the first time if perhaps she and Glen might want to think about moving a little farther from the Broadway area, at least until Heather and Kevin were safely past their teen years.

  When a small eddy of whispered conversation rippled through the crowd, Anne cut the rambling interview short. Working her way to the front of the crowd, she saw that the door to Shawnelle Davis’s apartment had opened and a gurney was being wheeled out, its attendants taking as much care with it as they would have had its occupant been critically ill, rather than dead for more than two days. Glad for the excuse to cut the interview short, she stepped off the curb and crossed the street, unconsciously taking on the confident manner that often got her into crime scenes long before they’d been opened to the press. This morning, though, her jogging clothes undercut the act, along with the fact that Lois Ackerly was accompanying the gurney as the attendants bore it carefully down the stairs to the street level, then wheeled it toward the waiting panel truck that would convey it to the morgue.

  As the wheeled stretcher neared her, Anne was, as always, stricken by the peculiar anonymity of the body bag that hid the corpse from the eyes of the public. Rather than delicately concealing the victim’s wounds from the public, the bag had the effect of instantly making everyone who saw it wonder what it covered. Though Anne knew the modern plastic bags were far more efficient for their purpose, she still couldn’t help thinking the old-fashioned blanket had been far more humane, at least offering a kind of comfort to the victim, rather than advertising the violence of death; even after a decade of seeing them, she had never gotten used to them. Still, she had her job to do.

  “Any chance of getting a quick look?” she asked the detective, who was almost as casually dressed as Anne herself.

  Lois Ackerly shook her head. “Once they’re in the bag, they stay there until the M.E. takes them out.” As Anne started toward the stairs to the second floor, Ackerly stepped in front to block her way. “And the apartment is still a crime scene,” she added firmly.

  “Can’t blame a girl for trying,” Anne observed, grinning, and a flicker of humor glinted in the detective’s eye.

  “And you can’t blame a girl for stopping you, either. Come on, Jeffers—you know the rules.”

  Anne cast a wistful eye at the second floor, but knew better than to push. In the four years she’d known Lois Ackerly—since the first day Ackerly was assigned to the Kraven killings—Anne had rarely known the detective to bend a rule, let alone break one. And letting her or anyone else not connected directly with the Seattle Police Department enter a crime scene was a rule Ackerly never even dented. “So how about answering a few questions?” Anne ventured.

  Ackerly shook her head. “No time.” Turning her back, she started back up the stairs. Anne briefly considered trying to grab a few words with the detective on the stairs, but her attention was diverted as the engine of the vehicle that would take Shawnelle Davis to the morgue roared to life. Maybe she should follow it downtown and see if she could weasel her way into the autopsy. Then, from behind and above, she heard a familiar voice teasing her.

  “Don’t even think about it. Reporters still can’t get into medical examinations.”

  Feeling herself flush, Anne swung around and looked up to see Mark Blakemoor grinning down at her from the long gallery that provided access to all the apartments on the building’s second floor.

  “So they did call out the A team,” Anne deadpanned.

  “No rest for the wicked, to coin a
cliché,” Blakemoor said. “Did the paper call you, or were you listening to your own trusty scanner?”

  “The paper,” Anne confessed. “I gave up on the scanner after they convicted Kraven. So what’s the story? I assume there’s no connection.”

  “How about a cup of coffee?” Blakemoor countered. “We’re about done here for now, and Ackerly can baby-sit the lab guys. Want to see what you can pry out of me?”

  “You’re on,” Anne said. “Dutch treat, though. The press can’t be bought.”

  Blakemoor made an exaggeratedly sour face. “And cops can’t even take doughnuts anymore.”

  Five minutes later they went through the back door of Charlie’s, barely even glanced at the three people already nursing drinks although it wasn’t yet ten A.M., and went to the front of the restaurant to take one of the tables next to the windows facing Broadway. “I love this place,” Anne sighed, glancing around at the vaguely Victorian decor decorated with an eclectic collection of posters, pictures, and objects. It was a restaurant style that had both come and gone twenty years earlier.

  Charlie’s, though, had remained, slowly evolving from its original celebrity as Broadway’s newest-and-nicest restaurant into its current status as a nostalgic relic from a long-ago past when something called “Three-Steak Charlie” wasn’t considered politically incorrect.

  “Double-tall, no foam?” Blakemoor asked Anne as the waitress came over. When Anne nodded, he held up two fingers. As they waited for the lattes, Anne reached into her gritchel, fishing out her tape recorder.

  “Uh-uh,” Blakemoor grunted, shaking his head. “You might be able to pry something out of me, but it won’t be in my voice, on tape. No interviews until we know a lot more than we do so far. Okay?”

  Anne dropped the recorder back into the depths of the leather bag. “You know me—I take whatever I can get. So, what’s going on? The rumor is that the task force may have been broken up prematurely.”

  Mark Blakemoor’s eyes rolled scornfully. “Don’t believe everything you hear from the dispatcher, okay?”

  “Not a problem,” Anne replied. “On the other hand, I wouldn’t be doing my job if I didn’t ask why the dispatcher would say something like that. What’s the scoop? Copycat?”

  The detective hesitated, and Anne could almost see him going over the crime scene in his head. Finally he shrugged. “If it’s a copycat, it’s the worst one I ever saw. And copycats usually start up right away. Richard Kraven’s been out of circulation for two years, and even when he was working, we didn’t have any copycats.”

  “You’re sure?” Anne asked, eyeing the detective suspiciously.

  “I’m sure,” Blakemoor told her. “There are still things no one knows about Kraven’s M.O., and that includes you.” He fell silent as the waitress arrived and set two steaming glasses of mocha-colored liquid in front of them. Without even tasting it, the detective added two spoonfuls of sugar to the latte, stirred it and took a sip. “The bitch of it is, there were certain resemblances between this one and Kraven’s work.”

  Anne’s reportorial antenna began to quiver. “Such as?” she prompted, trying not to let her eagerness creep into her voice.

  Once again Blakemoor’s face took on a look of intense concentration, and then he began slowly ticking several points off on his fingers: “First, there was no sign of a struggle. Remember how Kraven’s victims used to just disappear, as if they’d gone with him voluntarily? Well, it was the same way with Davis. ‘Course, she was a whore, so she probably thought she’d picked up a John.” He moved on to the next finger. “Her chest was opened up, and her organs were torn out.”

  Anne’s jaw tightened, and, as always, she felt sickened by the carnage man was capable of inflicting on his fellows. “Exactly like Richard Kraven.”

  “Except that compared to Kraven, this guy is an amateur,” Blakemoor went on. “Also, he broke her neck first.”

  Anne frowned. “That’s nothing Richard Kraven ever did. He never killed them until after he opened them up, did he?”

  “Not as far as we know,” Blakemoor agreed. He glanced around as if to see if anyone was listening, then leaned forward. “The thing is,” he added, his voice dropping, “from the amount of blood that came out of the wounds, it looks like this guy opened Davis up before she died, too.”

  Anne’s unblinking eves fixed on the detective. “So what are you saying?” she asked. “Is it a copycat, or isn’t it?”

  Blakemoor fingered the rim of his coffee cup, thinking hard. He knew he really shouldn’t be talking to a reporter at all, at least not this early in the investigation, but he was confident that Anne Jeffers wouldn’t print anything that would get him into trouble. Besides, during all the years he’d been on the trail of Richard Kraven, he’d always found her to be a good sounding board. And, of course, he just plain liked her. “I don’t know,” he finally said. “If he hadn’t cut open the chest and spread her organs all over the kitchen, I’d say it was someone Davis knew, who was pissed off at her. No sign of a struggle, no sign of a forced entry. But with that kind of killing, the creep usually just makes the hit and takes off.”

  “What about a john?” Anne asked.

  Blakemoor shook his head. “No sign of any sex at all, kinky or otherwise.” He sighed. “And that’s what worries me. If it wasn’t sex, and it wasn’t a fight with someone she knew, what was it?”

  Anne hesitated, knowing what she was about to say was heresy among the press. On the other hand, she’d come to trust Blakemoor as much as he trusted her. “There’s been a lot of coverage on Kraven lately,” she began carefully. “With me right up there with the best of them. I suppose it’s possible we pushed someone over the brink.”

  Blakemoor’s eyes met hers. “That’s exactly the thought that occurred to me,” he told her. “I have a real bad feeling about this one, Anne. It’s almost like now that Kraven’s dead, someone’s decided to emulate him, just to mess up our heads.”

  “And if that’s true?” Anne asked, though she already knew the answer.

  Blakemoor’s lips tightened into a hard line. “Then there will be more.” He sighed, then uttered a disgusted grunt. “Sometimes I just don’t get it, Jeffers. It’s like now that we’ve gotten rid of one wacko, we’re just going to have to deal with another.”

  “Maybe it won’t happen,” Anne suggested.

  Blakemoor listlessly stirred his latte. “Maybe it won’t.”

  Neither of them believed it.

  CHAPTER 20

  Though he saw nothing, the boy knew the cat was there. This was where it always hid, skulking behind the house, doing its best to conceal itself in the thick foliage of the rhododendrons his mother had planted along the fence. The boy didn’t know why the cat never actually left the backyard, but since it never did, he guessed there must be something outside the yard that terrified the creature even more than he did himself.

  Or possibly—and the boy was becoming more and more certain that this was the real truth—the cat enjoyed the game as much as he did.

  The boy crouched low, settling down on his haunches, balancing perfectly so he was almost as still as the cat when it was stalking one of the birds that occasionally ventured into its domain. Only the boy’s eyes moved now, and even they moved so slowly the motion was all but imperceptible, scanning the shadowy interior of the rhododendrons, searching for the slightest movement that would betray the cat’s presence.

  Then he saw it—no more than a twitch of the animal’s tail, but enough to betray its hiding place.

  Taking on the same grace as the cat itself, the boy began moving, first rocking forward until his hands touched the lawn, the sensitive skin of his palms feeling every blade of grass just as he imagined the cat’s paws experienced whatever surface they trod. His confidence growing as the cat remained crouched where it was—not yet certain it had been spotted—the boy began to inch his way forward. Now he felt as if he had become the cat, felt all the muscles in his lithe body tense, felt time s
tretch out as he crept forward, each movement slow and liquid, so he felt as if he was oozing across the lawn toward the bushes.

  Now he could see the cat tense—but it was more than seeing; it was as if it were happening to him. He and the cat were becoming as one; he was experiencing what the cat felt, while the cat, in its turn, lived the boy’s life as well as its own.

  Was that why the cat never tried to escape the yard? For the same reason the boy hadn’t, either?

  The cat tensed as the boy crept closer, and now he could see not only the end of its tail twitching nervously, but its whiskers as well. As if in sympathy, the boy’s own face began to tingle, and he felt the down on his jaw stand up.

  He edged closer, and saw the cat draw back. “Nice kitty,” the boy breathed, so softly only he and the cat could hear the soothing words. Reaching into his pocket, he drew out a pair of thin black leather gloves and carefully pulled them on. “That’s a good cat,” he crooned. “Nice, nice, kitty.”

  As though mesmerized by the caressing whisper, the cat calmed slightly, and its ruffling coat began to flatten.

  The boy slipped closer to the shrubs.

  His right hand reached out, winding through the foliage as silently as a serpent. Once more the cat tensed, this time rising to its feet, its back arching as every hair on its body stood on end. A thrill—like a light charge of electricity—ran through the boy, and now, like black lightning, his hand struck, his fingers closing on the cat long before it could spring away to safety. Drawing his prize from the shelter of the rhododendrons, the boy held it at eye level.

  The cat’s eyes met his own, and it hissed. Then one of its forepaws shot out, claws extended, as it tried to slash his face. The boy’s other leather-clad hand closed on the paw, and the cat, as if finally truly assessing the precariousness of its position, didn’t even try to struggle.