Black Lightning

by John Saul

  He spent a few minutes touring the ground floor, then climbed the temporary stairs to the mezzanine level. But even as he began inspecting the structure, he found himself being drawn toward the elevator.

  What would happen if he went up?

  Would the acrophobia that had overcome him the day he’d had his heart attack engulf him for a second time, or had his unexpected panic just been some kind of crazy fluke? As he stood in front of the metal cage considering the wisdom of going higher up in the structure, the elevator clanged to a stop and one of the workmen looked at him inquiringly.

  “Great to have you back, Mr. Jeffers,” he said, with a wide smile. “You going up?”

  Glen hesitated, then made up his mind. It was like falling off a horse, he decided. If he didn’t get on the elevator right now, and conquer the fear that had nailed him a couple of weeks ago, he might never be able to overcome it at all. “Thanks,” Glen said. He stepped into the cage, the man closed the door, and a second later the machine came to life, rattling upward.

  Instantly, Glen felt the first stirrings of apprehension in the pit of his belly. But he said nothing, determined that today the acrophobia would not get the better of him. As the machine continued to rise, Glen forced himself to look straight down, through the heavy grating of the elevator’s floor, to the steadily receding mass of concrete upon which the steel skeleton of the skyscraper stood.

  With every floor they passed, with every twelve feet added to the distance of the drop, the queasiness in his stomach increased. Suddenly the elevator jerked to a stop, and Glen felt a moment of pure terror.

  Stuck! They were stuck! Trapped. A wild desperation seized him, blood pounding in his ears. He heard the workman’s voice distantly.

  “Utility floor,” the man announced. “This is where I get out.”

  The utility floor. Only thirteen stories up, Glen realized, on the floor he’d set aside to hold part of the mass of equipment that would run the huge building’s systems. Only a second ago he would have sworn they were much higher.

  This was ridiculous!

  “I think I’ll go on up to the top,” he said, forcing himself to sound matter-of-fact, hoping his nervousness wasn’t reflected in his voice.

  The hard hat hesitated, and Glen instinctively knew the man was remembering what had happened the last time the architect had visited the site. “You want me to go up with you?” he asked.

  Glen shook his head. “I’ll be fine.” But as the construction worker got out of the elevator and it began creaking upward, he wondered if he’d told the truth. When the elevator finally rattled to a stop a few minutes later, he knew he hadn’t.

  Determined to overcome the fear that was congealing in his gut, Glen opened the door and got out. The platform around the open shaft of the elevator had been expanded since the day he’d had his heart attack. A wide path of rough-cut four-by-twelves extended all the way to the edge of the framework. If he stayed in the center of that path, he would be perfectly safe.

  Taking a deep breath, Glen moved forward, telling himself it didn’t matter that there were no handrails, that there was, indeed, nothing at all to steady himself with. When he was still five feet short of the edge, he stopped.

  His stomach felt queasy, and he was finding it a little difficult to breathe.

  His heart was beating quickly, but not quite pounding, and there was none of the pain he’d felt in his chest and left arm before the heart attack.

  All he had to do was take a few more steps.

  Fixing his eyes on one of the steel girders that would soon support the outer skin of the building, knowing that if he could just get to it—touch it—he would be all right, he started forward.

  One step, then another, and another.

  Reaching out, his fingers touched the cold steel, then closed on one of the thick ridges of the I beam. He edged closer to the girder.

  And to the edge.

  Now he was starting to feel dizzy, but he struggled against it, determined not to give in to the panic that was threatening to overwhelm him.

  All he had to do was look down. Just one look, down to the sidewalk forty stories below, and he would have done it.

  He edged closer and looked down.

  Instantly, the chasm yawned open, drawing him outward, pulling him down. He felt himself leaning over, and an insane urge to jump blossomed inside him. Now he could feel it, feel the wind rushing past him as he dropped, feel the weightlessness of the fall. If he just let go …

  He felt his fingers loosen on the girder, felt himself begin to lean out over the precipice, felt the dizziness take control of him.

  No!

  The single barked command came out of nowhere, slashing through the panic that had fogged his mind. Instinctively spinning around, Glen swept the platform with his eyes, searching for the person whose voice had broken the terrible trance of the acrophobia.

  He saw no one.

  But the voice spoke again: Down. Now.

  Obeying the command, Glen started back toward the elevator. But as he crossed the platform this time, there was no trace of uncertainty in his step, no feeling of dizziness in his head, no hard knot of fear in his stomach.

  And no consciousness of what he was doing.

  CHAPTER 44

  The Experimenter felt good this morning. For the first time, he felt truly strong, strong enough that he would no longer have to put him to sleep.

  Even yesterday, when Glen had begun to wake up while the Experimenter was working on the cat, he hadn’t really tried to stop the Experimenter’s work. He’d merely watched at first, but the Experimenter had been certain that, in a way, Glen had actually enjoyed it. After all, the Experimenter had experienced every emotion Glen had felt as, together, they’d carried out the work on the cat.

  First there had been resistance, manifested by a faintly sick feeling in the pit of his belly. But the Experimenter had known that wouldn’t last long—perhaps if he’d tried to work with the dog, or even the bird, it would have been more difficult But the Experimenter had known that Glen didn’t really like the cat.

  Didn’t like her any more than the Experimenter himself did. And that made things even simpler, for with their mutual antipathy toward the animal, their two minds were already working in a primitive synchronicity.

  All the Experimenter had to do was reinforce that synchronicity, strengthen that tenuous bond that the cat herself had established between them. He’d worked slowly, letting Glen watch, letting him get used to what they were going to be doing. “It’s all right,” he’d whispered. “We’re not going to kill her. We’re only going to see what makes her live.”

  He’d felt Glen relax slightly, felt him begin to shed that peculiar sense of guilt that kept so many people from accomplishing all that they were able.

  The Experimenter had thought about guilt as he waited for the cat to fall into unconsciousness. It was a concept he understood in the abstract, but could not remember ever having experienced. For him, guilt was not something to be overcome, or cast off.

  It simply had never existed.

  Occasionally he’d wondered if his lack of guilt could be construed as a character flaw, and—again in the abstract—he’d supposed it could be, at least by people of far less intelligence than he. For himself, it was nothing of the sort; indeed, it offered him freedom. His studies—his experiments—were never hindered by any feelings that perhaps he shouldn’t be doing what interested him the most.

  And what interested him most—the only thing that had ever interested him at all—was the study of life.

  Not the meaning of life—he’d lost interest in that when he was still a boy and had come to the conclusion that life had no meaning.

  Life simply was.

  Ergo, since there was no “why,” the only important thing was “how.”

  Logic had long ago made it clear to him that his freedom from the restrictions that guilt imposed on other men allowed him to investigate the phenomenon of life w
ith the use of methods that were unavailable to those selfsame others.

  Unfettered, he had pursued his studies.

  Yesterday he had begun to teach Glen Jeffers to find the same joy in knowledge that he himself had.

  By the time the cat had fallen unconscious, he’d explained to Glen that its death was not their intention. Thus, when he began running the X-Acto knife from the cat’s belly up to its neck and Glen had not tried to stop him, the Experimenter knew that Glen had experienced the same thrill as a medical student witnessing his first surgery.

  Throughout the procedure, the Experimenter felt Glen’s interest grow. Even better, he had been able to experience for himself Glen’s own wonder when at last the living creature’s beating heart was exposed.

  “Touch it,” he’d whispered.

  Together, they’d touched the animal’s throbbing organ, and a surge of joy had gone through the Experimenter, transporting him with an exhilaration he hadn’t known in years, for this time he wasn’t merely savoring the experience himself, but reveling in Glen’s experience of it as well.

  The heat of life had poured into him.

  The power of the constantly working muscle infused his spirit.

  The tingling sensation on his skin thrilled him as he touched the innermost sanctum of life itself.

  Together, they had continued the experiment, finally squeezing the creature’s heart to the point where it stopped. The Experimenter had prepared a primitive defibrillator, stripping the insulation from the cut end of an extension cord he found hanging from a nail in the wall, but it hadn’t worked.

  Once again his experiment had ended in failure, as the cat’s body refused to respond to his efforts to bring it back to life. He’d worked frantically, inflating the cat’s lungs with his own breath. Twice, the heart had begun to flutter, but the uncontrolled energy of the makeshift defibrillator had done no good. Instead of shocking the organ into a steady rhythm, it had only put the animal into convulsions.

  Glen had begun to pull away as the Experimenter’s fury mounted. When at last the cat died, too abused, too mutilated to survive any longer, the Experimenter had felt Glen’s revulsion.

  The Experimenter had sent Glen back to sleep, wiping his memory almost clean of what he’d seen, but then his own rage had erupted. He’d dug his fingers deep into the cat, ripping its lifeless heart and lungs loose from their bloodied nest, lifting them out to expose the empty cavity.

  Snatching up the X-Acto knife, the Experimenter had slashed at the cat’s interior, the blade glinting in the fluorescent light that flickered above the workbench. At last, the experiment over, he’d cleaned up after himself, first disposing of the cat in the alley, shoving it partway under the deck where the garbage cans stood, leaving it where it would quickly be found. Then he had set about cleaning up the basement, carefully erasing every sign of what had happened there.

  Finally, he left the note for Anne, setting up her computer so his message would appear just long enough for her to read, then disappear forever.

  Only then had he let himself rest, sinking deep beneath Glen’s consciousness, not stirring until a few moments ago, when the man’s acrophobia had threatened to kill them both.

  The Experimenter did not intend to die.

  Not ever.

  Thus, he had stepped in instantly, seizing control, pulling Glen back from the precipice.

  He entered the elevator, studied the controls for a moment, then pressed the button that should take him downward. The machinery came to life and the cage began rattling down the shaft The Experimenter glanced idly through the grating of the floor, wondering what it was about heights that bothered some people.

  To him, they meant nothing.

  Nodding a greeting to each of the men who spoke to him, the Experimenter left the construction site. As he paused at the corner, his eyes fell on a newspaper box. Fishing in Glen’s pocket for the right change, he bought a copy of the Herald, then looked around for a coffee shop. Spotting a Starbucks less than a block away, he strode down the street, bought a latte, and began paging through the newspaper. He found Anne’s story on page three in the second section.

  Except it wasn’t Anne’s story: there was no mention of a copycat, let alone of himself. And no byline. Someone else must have written it.

  Why?

  What were they afraid of?

  A copycat?

  But a copycat was nothing but a nuisance.

  Particularly this copycat.

  The Experimenter dropped the newspaper into a wastebasket.

  The police might well spend weeks trying to figure out who had killed the whore over near Broadway, and the woman next door.

  The Experimenter knew who had done it

  He even knew why the murders had been committed.

  And that was all they had been—murders, pure and simple.

  Nothing had been accomplished, no new bit of knowledge gained, no basic truth uncovered. It had been killing for the sake of killing.

  Worse, it had been killing for no other purpose than to gain attention.

  The Experimenter had been thinking about it since the moment he recognized the man who carried Joyce Cottrell’s butchered corpse through her backyard and out into the alley. Reluctantly, he’d come to a decision about what he must do.

  Unless he acted, other people would die for no better reason than to gain attention for a fool. That was wasteful.

  Any way he looked at it, it was wasteful.

  But there was another reason for him to carry out the work of the police, the courts, and the executioner. A reason that appealed to the Experimenter’s sense of irony, his sense of style, even his sense of humor. Justice would be served, and Anne—finally—would understand exactly what game was truly afoot.

  Dropping a quarter in the pay phone at the back of the coffee shop, the Experimenter dialed a number from memory. On the third ring, a familiar voice answered.

  “Hello?” The voice sounded nervous.

  The Experimenter said nothing.

  “Hello?” the voice said again, and now the Experimenter could clearly hear the terror in it.

  The Experimenter knew why the voice sounded nervous.

  And he knew more than that—he knew where the man lived, and he knew he hadn’t gone to work.

  The Experimenter would pay him a visit.

  First, though, he would need certain supplies.

  Leaving the coffee shop, the Experimenter found a cab and took it to the Broadway Market.

  He began picking up the things he would need.

  A pen, the kind you could buy anywhere.

  A box of notepaper, again the kind you could buy anywhere.

  Gloves—cheap knitted ones, nondescript, the kind everyone had.

  A roll of transparent plastic.

  Paying for it all with cash from Glen Jeffers’s wallet, he left the market and started south, walking at a steady pace, neither too fast nor too slow, doing nothing that would attract unwanted attention. Anonymity, he had discovered years ago, was by far the best protection.

  He came finally to John Street, turned left, and started toward Fifteenth East Less than ten minutes later he was across the street from the building in which lived the man he had come to kill. Gazing up at the second floor, he saw the man peering out of the window.

  The man looked nervous.

  The man was staring right at him.

  The man did not, of course, recognize him.

  The Experimenter smiled to himself, crossed the street, and entered the building.…

  CHAPTER 45

  The plans the Butcher began making after reading the story in that morning’s Herald had grown, until he’d finally shaped a perfect structure for his next killing.

  It would be a man—he’d definitely made up his mind on that. And he knew where he could find the perfect prey: there were plenty of them over on Broadway, shopping in the QFC, or hanging around the Broadway Market, or just sitting drinking coffee at one of the smal
l espresso bars scattered along both sides of the street. Even better, they were always watching each other, playing their endless mating game. He even knew how they did it, because he’d watched them operate practically every time he’d gone over there. One would be walking toward another on the street, and often, after the two men passed, one would turn around to look at the other. If the second man had turned around, too, they might strike up a conversation and, after a few minutes, head off together. Sometimes one of them only glanced back and smiled, but kept walking. When that happened, the other would pause, watching. If the first one glanced back again, or stopped to look in a window, the watcher would follow him.

  Twice, the Butcher had trailed behind to see what would happen, always making sure no one knew what he was doing, so he knew the pattern of pursuit and surrender well.

  Once or twice he himself had been followed, but both times he’d gone into the magazine store, or Bartell’s drugstore, and browsed through the shelves until his admirer finally got the message that he just wasn’t interested and disappeared.

  So that was what he would do today.

  When he went out to buy the photo album, he would watch the men on the sidewalk, and when he found the right one, he would follow him. The person he chose would not be too big—certainly no taller than himself—and he’d try to select someone who didn’t look too strong, either. But it would be easy—even easier than picking up Shawnelle Davis had been. And when they got to the guy’s apartment and his quarry made a pass at him, he would act.

  The Butcher’s reputation would grow.

  Just thinking about it excited him. With sudden inspiration, he thought maybe he’d do to the guy he followed home what he’d done to Joyce Cottrell the night before last. That thought excited him even more. He was starting to feel a tingling in his crotch when the phone jangled, the unexpected sound startling him so badly that he almost dropped the Coke he’d been drinking.

  “Is that you?” his mother demanded when he picked up the phone on the third ring, her voice carrying an inculpatory tone that made his stomach churn. Could she already know what he’d done? But how could she? Then she spoke again, and his fears eased somewhat. “I called over to Boeing’s,” she said. “They told me you weren’t there again today. Are you all right?”