Black Lightning

by John Saul

  By the time he arrived at the construction site an hour and a half later, though, Glen’s feeling of well-being was fading. When he first began to feel an odd hollowness in the pit of his stomach as he gazed up at the skeleton of girders soaring above him, he attributed it to nothing more than excitement at the structure finally being topped out. But as he studied the network of beams, struts, and girders—and the open cage of the construction elevator that seemed to rise upward to nowhere—the hollowness in his belly congealed into a tight knot of pain, and he felt a clammy sheen of sweat break out over his whole body despite the cool of the morning.

  Could he be coming down with some kind of bug?

  But he’d felt fine just a couple of minutes earlier. Deciding to ignore the strange sensations in his body, he took a tour of the ground floor, talking rapidly to the contractor and the foreman as he inspected the building’s structural framework. Though his stomach lurched as they took the elevator to the fifth level, he focused his mind tightly on the job at hand, and managed to put down the slight wave of dizziness that broke over him when he neared the precipitous edge of the subflooring, unguarded by even the most vestigial of safety railings. “Shouldn’t there at least be warning tapes across here?” he asked the construction chief, trying not to let his voice betray the faint feelings of panic he was experiencing.

  “Only gets in the crew’s way,” Jim Dover replied. “By the end of the first day, they’d all be torn out, and the whole street’d be littered with ’em.” The foreman eyed the architect uncertainly. “You okay, Glen? You look kinda green around the gills.”

  “I’m okay,” Glen said quickly, but as they progressed up the next twenty floors, he suddenly realized what was happening to him.

  Acrophobia.

  But where had it come from? He’d never had trouble with heights before—he’d always loved the sensation of shooting up the sides of buildings in glass elevators, watching the ground drop away from him. But this morning, unaccountably, he found himself growing increasingly reluctant to get back into the elevator after each of the incremental inspections had been completed. He told himself it was nothing serious, that all he was feeling was the natural insecurity brought on by having nothing solid between him and the abyss below. He decided to ignore the fear growing inside him, determined that whatever it took, he would make it to the top of the building, where he himself would crack open the bottle of champagne Alan Cline had brought to celebrate the building’s topping out.

  “Quite a view if you look straight down.” As George Simmons, the chief engineer on the project, spoke the words, Glen had to steel himself from automatically glancing down through the heavy grate that was all that separated him from a twenty-story plunge to the concrete floor of the shaft.

  “You sure you’re okay?” Alan Cline asked as the elevator jerked to a stop and the contractor and foreman stepped off, leaving the two architects alone in the cage.

  Up here, even the subflooring hadn’t been installed yet, and all there was to support them was a series of thick wooden planks laid in what looked to Glen like a very precarious manner across the huge I-beams of which the building was constructed. “You sure those are safe?” Ignoring Alan’s question, and struggling to control the terror that was now threatening to overwhelm him, he directed his question to Jim Dover.

  Dover grinned. He was a ruddy-faced, six-foot-four-inch bear of a man who had worked his way up from a one-man odd-job operation to running one of Seattle’s biggest construction firms. “They’re fine, as long as they don’t collapse under your feet.” Then, seeing Glen’s face pale, his smile faded. “You look kind of sick, Glen.”

  “I thought it was flu,” Glen replied. “But now it’s starting to feel a lot more like something else.” He forced a grin, trying to make light of his ballooning terror. “A high-rise architect with acrophobia—kind of like someone who’s scared of the water joining the navy, huh?”

  “Want to go back down?” Dover offered. “Alan and I can finish the inspection.”

  “I’ll be okay,” Glen insisted. He moved toward one of the planks that would carry him out into the open network of girders, but as he neared the edge of the small platform around the elevator shaft, panic rose up in him again. He reached out to clamp his fingers onto one of the building’s main supports. A terrible urge to stare down into the gaping void below gripped him, but he put it down, forcing himself to gaze straight outward, over the top of the building across the street and across Elliott Bay past West Seattle, toward Bainbridge Island and the Olympic Peninsula.

  “Wait’ll you see it from the top,” Dover said, following Glen’s gaze with his own eyes. “Gonna be the best view in the city. Not so high that it flattens everything out like Columbia Center does, but high enough so you can see damn near the whole town. Well, come on—if we’re gonna do this, let’s get it over with.”

  As Glen watched in growing terror, Jim Dover, followed by George Simmons and Alan Cline, set off along the planks. Dover moved swiftly, only steadying himself now and then by reaching out to one of the struts with one hand while he pointed out various features of the construction with the other. Glen, his stomach churning, his groin tingling, managed to follow only a few steps before he realized the acrophobia was going to win. Too terrified even to risk turning around, he gingerly crept backward until he regained the platform by the elevator. His knees trembling, both hands clutching the heavy mesh cage of the elevator, he struggled to control the paralyzing fear that was on the verge of overwhelming him. Slowly, taking one deep breath at a time, he got his breathing back to normal and felt a little strength come back into his muscles.

  A few minutes later, when the rest of the group had completed the inspection of the twentieth level and returned to the elevator, Alan Cline gazed worriedly at his partner. “This is nuts, Glen,” he said, reading the terror in the other man’s face. “It’s only a building. It’s not worth scaring yourself to death over.”

  “And my problem is only a stupid phobia.” Glen uttered the words through clenched teeth, then felt himself relax as the others surrounded him. “I’m not giving in to it, and the only way to get over it is to face it head on. Let’s go up to the top.” Standing to one side, he let the rest of the men precede him into the small cage, then stepped inside himself. Closing the mesh gate, he hit the up button, and instantly the metal contraption rattled to life.

  As the cage ground upward, Glen felt the familiar terror surging inside him again.

  He began to sweat once more, and then the worst part of the panic began: suddenly it felt as if metal bands were wrapped around his chest, and every second someone was screwing them tighter and tighter.

  So tight, he could barely breathe.

  Glen’s heart began to pound, harder than it ever had before.

  CHAPTER 3

  The building in which Richard Kraven had spent the last two years was a simple rectangle of reinforced concrete, thirty feet wide and sixty feet long, its foot-thick walls jutting out into the prison’s enormous central yard from the otherwise blank facade of a much larger structure at the annex’s western end. Its roof was sheathed in metal, and the only features that broke its drab monotony were the two high rows of glass blocks whose function was to allow a certain amount of natural light to come into the cells during the daytime hours, while at the same time preventing the inmates from obtaining any view at all beyond the confines of the building.

  Inside, the cell block seemed to have been specifically designed to reflect the bleak connotations of the phrase “Death Row,” for its interior was nearly as featureless as its exterior. There were two rows of cells, six on each side, each cell ten feet square, the two rows facing an eight-foot-wide corridor that ran the full length of the structure. Though the one-man cells were barred in front and on top, they were separated from each other by walls of solid steel plate, so although the prisoners could talk among themselves, they couldn’t see one another. Each cell was equipped with a bed, a chair, a tabl
e, a toilet, and a sink. All the cells were harshly lit by long fluorescent fixtures hung from the high ceiling in three rows: one above each of the rows of cells, and one above the passageway. Completely overwhelming the few glimmers of daylight that made it through the glass blocks of the windows, the fluorescent fixtures threw a harsh glare into every corner of every cell, creating a shadowless world that totally confined without providing the slightest sense of shelter.

  The cell in which Richard Kraven had lived for the last two years differed from the others in the block in only one way.

  It was occupied.

  The others, all eleven of them, sat empty and silent, for Richard Kraven was the only man Connecticut had deemed worthy of execution in nearly forty years. Indeed, until Richard Kraven’s sentencing, the building had been scheduled for demolition, but when the warden, Wendell Rustin, was informed that Kraven would be delivered into his hands for safekeeping until such time as the legal processes finally and irrevocably approved the killer’s sentence, Rustin stayed the cell block’s own execution. Before the prisoner’s arrival, Rustin himself spent a night in one of the cells, to emerge the next morning convinced that the harsh reality of living in the building would be nearly as terrible as the specter of death, for the warden had found that the cell block itself induced a feeling of abandonment and loneliness that nearly overwhelmed him during the eight silent, empty hours he had forced himself to endure.

  Yet, if Richard Kraven had experienced any terror in his two years in the otherwise empty cell block, he had never given any sign or uttered any complaint. He had endured the waiting the way he had endured his trial, maintaining a silence that his guards found arrogant but which his supporters thought of as dignified, and granting interviews only in attempts to convert people to his cause.

  “They may execute me,” he would repeat over and over again, “but they cannot punish me, for it is impossible to punish an innocent man.”

  Now, on the day of his execution, Richard Kraven was—as always—sitting impassively in the chair in his cell. Today a book of Victorian poetry lay open in his lap, and to a casual observer it would have appeared as if this morning were no different from any other. When the heavy clang of the bar on the door at the far end of the corridor echoed through the cells, Kraven finished the poem he was reading, closed the book and looked up, his handsome face expressionless. His line of sight restricted by the cell’s heavy steel side walls, he waited, motionless, staring straight ahead until he saw Anne Jeffers appear within his field of vision. Then, deliberately, he placed the book on the table and rose, moving toward the front of the cell and extending his hand through the bars.

  Anne glanced at Kraven’s hand for a moment, her eyes fixing on the long, strong fingers, the heavy tendons, and the thick veins starkly etched against Kraven’s pale skin. An image rose in her mind of those hands sunk deep into the organs and entrails of his victims. Involuntarily, she took a step back.

  Pulling her eyes away from Richard Kraven’s hands, Anne forced herself to look directly into his face.

  Though he was past forty, Kraven looked to be no more than thirty. The coal-black, wavy hair that had given his features a vaguely Byronic look had been shaved off the night before, but his face was exactly as Anne remembered it from his trial.

  The softly curved, almost voluptuous lips; the straight, aquiline nose and wide-set eyes—movie star eyes, Anne had always called them—were the same as they had always been. No lines showed in his pale skin, no creases had formed around his eyes or mouth. When he spoke, it was as if he’d read her mind.

  “If I were guilty, don’t you think it would show in my face by now? Don’t you think just the knowledge of what I’d done would have started to change me?”

  Even his voice was the same, soft and reasonable.

  “Did you ever hear of Dorian Gray?” Anne countered.

  Kraven’s lips tightened slightly, but the flatness in his eyes didn’t change at all. It was that look that Anne remembered most, the cold flatness that had been the first thing she noticed about Kraven when she met him four years ago, after he’d been arrested in Bridgeport and it seemed as if every reporter in Seattle had gone to Connecticut on the same plane. It was those eyes that made his face a terrifying mask of almost alluring cruelty back then, and now, as he trained them fully on her, their effect hadn’t changed.

  “Shouldn’t you be a bit more gracious?” he asked. “After all, you’ve finally convinced them to kill me.”

  Anne shook her head. “I wasn’t on the jury, and I wasn’t the judge. I wasn’t even a witness. Neither at the trial nor to any of the things you did.”

  Richard Kraven offered Anne Jeffers the smile that had convinced so many people he was innocent. Had it not been for the flatness in his eyes, his expression would have looked almost wry. “Then how can you be so sure I did anything?”

  “The evidence,” Anne replied. Her eyes flicked toward the closed door at the end of the hall, and the guard, who was watching through a glass panel. How quickly could he open that door? Again it was as if Kraven could read her mind.

  “Surely you don’t think I’m any danger to you?” he asked, his voice taking on a warm concern that would have soothed Anne if it had come from anyone else.

  How does he do it? Anne wondered. How does he make himself sound so normal? Except for the shaved head and the prison clothes, Richard Kraven still looked exactly like the popular young electronics professor he had once been, back when his star was still rising at the University of Washington. “I think if you had the chance, you would kill me right now,” she said, keeping her voice level by sheer force of will. “I think if you weren’t behind those bars, you would strangle me without so much as a second thought, and then take my body apart the way you did with all the others.” As she stared into his expressionless eyes, Anne felt fury rising up in her. Why wouldn’t he admit what he was, what he’d done? Her voice rose a notch. “How many were there, Kraven? Besides the three you were convicted of, how many? How many just in Seattle? Five? Seven?” There was still no reaction at all in Kraven’s eyes, and Anne felt her rage building. There had to be some way to get through to this—this what? Man? But Richard Kraven wasn’t a man. He was a monster. A cold, unfeeling monster who had never acknowledged what he’d done, let alone shown any remorse. “Have we even found all the bodies yet?” she demanded. “For God’s sake, Kraven, at least tell me that it’s all finally going to be over!”

  His flat gaze fixed steadily on her, but when Richard Kraven finally spoke, his voice again belied that strange dead look his eyes projected. “How can I tell you what I don’t know?” he asked in a tone that reminded Anne of an earnest child.

  Her jaw set as the heat of her anger suddenly turned ice cold. “Why did you want to see me?” she demanded. “What could you possibly have to say?”

  Richard Kraven smiled again, but this time there was no warmth to his smile at all; the cold, unblinking eyes fixed on her, the jaw tightened, and in that hard, grim look Anne Jeffers was certain she was at last seeing the true face of the evil that dwelt within Richard Kraven. “Today won’t end it. Killing me won’t end it,” he said, each word a chip of ice. “That’s what I wanted to tell you, Anne. How will you feel, Anne? When I’m dead, and it all starts again, how will you feel?” Suddenly he laughed, a mirthless cackle that reverberated through the cell block, coming back to batter at her eardrums again and again. “You’ve always wanted me to express remorse, haven’t you? Well, here’s some remorse for you—I am sorry about something. I’m sorry I won’t be here to see you suffer when you finally realize you were wrong about me.” His eyes bored into her and his voice began to rise. “It’s going to start again, Anne. Whoever really killed those people is just waiting until I’m dead. Then he’ll start again.”

  As Richard Kraven’s voice grew louder, Anne took a step backward, then turned and strode quickly down the corridor toward the exit. But even as the guard opened the door to let her out, the kill
er’s words echoed in her ears: “What will you do, Anne?” he bellowed after her. “Who will you apologize to when you finally find out you were wrong? Will you have the guts to kill yourself the way you’ve killed me?” His shout bounced off the concrete and metal walls of the cell block, echoing harshly, and his bitter laughter reached a crescendo. “That’s my regret, Anne,” he howled after her. “That I won’t get to watch you die the way you’re going to watch me!”

  Anne went through the doorway and slumped against the wall outside as the guard slammed the heavy metal door shut. She only wished she could close her mind to Kraven’s words as easily as the guard had closed the door against his voice.

  Straightening up, she started back toward Wendell Rustin’s office, her eyes automatically going to the clock on the wall.

  Eleven-thirty.

  Another half hour and it would finally be over.

  In her mind she began composing the first words of the piece she would write about Richard Kraven’s execution. But even as she put the lead together, Kraven’s words kept coming back, mingling with her own, worrying at her, creeping back into her consciousness no matter how hard she tried to shut them out.

  Suddenly she wished this day were over, so she could go away from the prison, away from Connecticut, away from Richard Kraven.

  Yes, that was what she needed.

  She needed to go back home, go back to Seattle.

  Go back to Glen.

  Holding firmly to the comforting thought of her husband, Anne focused her mind on the story she would write after the execution, after Richard Kraven was finally dead.

  After the horror was ended.

  CHAPTER 4

  The elevator jerked to a stop at the very summit of the iron skeleton of the Jeffers Building. For a single numbing second Glen was certain that the cage in which he felt claustrophobically confined was about to plunge downward, killing all of them as it smashed into the concrete bed forty-five stories below. For just that moment, the strange tingling in his left arm was gone and the queasiness in his belly and tightness in his groin forgotten. In the next second, though, as Jim Dover slid the elevator’s gate open and stepped out onto the wooden platform that seemed to Glen to hover precariously in midair, all the terrors of his acrophobia came flooding back.