Black Lightning

by John Saul

It hadn’t been his room anymore. His bed was gone, and so was everything else that had been his. Now there was a Hide-A-Bed against one wall, a TV set against the other, and a big leather chair in the corner where his bureau had been. The words she’d uttered as he stood in the doorway, his stomach hollow as he stared at the room that had once been his, were burned into his mind forever: “Isn’t it nicer now? Richard and I did it. His house is so small, you know, and we just thought it would be nice for him to have a special room here, all to himself. Someplace where he can come when he just needs to think.”

  Rory had wanted to hit her that day, wanted to put his face into hers and scream at her.

  But he hadn’t.

  Instead he’d done as he’d always done.

  He’d agreed that the room was nice and that Richard certainly did need it.

  He’d kept his peace, hoping that if he didn’t ask for anything, didn’t demand any attention from her, didn’t do anything she could criticize, maybe she would love him the way she loved Richard.

  The years had gone by, and the pain had festered in Rory, but he stoically held it all in, certain that sooner or later his mother would love him, too. Then, when the murders started, and people started thinking Richard had committed them, he’d been sure his mother would start appreciating him.

  Instead, she’d just given more and more of her attention to Richard, telling anyone who would listen that Richard couldn’t have done what they said he did.

  Richard was a good boy.

  Richard was perfect. Richard! Richard! Richard!

  And now, even the day after Richard had finally been executed, it was going to be the same! Richard was perfect, and Rory was an idiot, and even with Richard dead, nothing was going to change at all.

  Why?

  Why couldn’t she love him?

  Why couldn’t she defend him the way she defended Richard?

  What had he done that was so terrible?

  Instead of asking her the questions that were boiling in his brain, Rory only looked up from his paper, his eyes wary. “What, Mother? I was reading.”

  “The sports section?” Edna demanded. Her scathing voice made Rory wince, but she barely noticed it. “How can you care about sports after what’s happened to your brother? Don’t you even care what they did to him?” Now she picked up the newspaper and flung Anne Jeffers’s column at him. “Don’t you care what that woman is doing to your brother’s memory?”

  Rory picked up the paper, glanced at it, then stood up. “They didn’t do anything to Richard, Mother,” he said. “He did it himself. He killed those people, and they proved it, and they made him pay for it. That’s what really happened, Mother.” He started out of the kitchen.

  Edna rose to her feet, clutching the collar of her favorite chenille bathrobe tight around her neck. Her black hair—hair he was pretty sure she dyed, since it didn’t show even a trace of gray—hung lankly over her shoulders, and there were still traces in the wrinkles around her eyes of the makeup she’d fallen asleep in last night. Grabbing Rory’s arm, she pulled him around so he couldn’t avoid her glaring eyes. “Don’t say that,” she hissed, pushing her face close to his. “Don’t ever talk about your brother that way! Never!”

  Rory’s mouth went dry and his stomach started to hurt the way it always did when she got really angry with him. Mutely, he nodded his head, and tried to pull away from her, but she wouldn’t let him go.

  “Say you’re sorry,” Edna demanded. “Say it!”

  And Rory did.

  After his apology, his mother released him and he left the house to go to the job he’d worked at ever since he finished high school, on the assembly line at Boeing.

  And, as always, he wondered how he was ever going to get his mother to love him the way she’d loved Richard. He knew that was never going to happen, though, because no matter how hard he tried, he couldn’t be Richard.

  But maybe he could at least be like Richard.

  CHAPTER 13

  Richard Kraven is dead, but in the minds of the families of his victims, questions still linger, wounds still fester.

  Richard Kraven’s final challenge hangs like a dark cloud above us all. For if Kraven was telling the truth—which this reporter does not believe—then a killer may still be living among us.

  This reporter therefore intends to take up Richard Kraven’s final challenge, but not, as he hoped, with the intention of exonerating him.

  This reporter intends to take one more look at the entire sequence of murders that have come to be known as the Kraven Killings.

  This reporter intends to answer some of the questions that still remain:

  Do we even know exactly how many died? Is it not possible that hidden away in the mountains and valleys that surround us, more victims are waiting to be discovered?

  And might not one of those hidden victims provide the direct link to Richard Kraven that has always eluded the police, thus finally laying to rest all our doubts? Is it too much to ask that the police keep working on this grisly chapter in our civic history until the full truth is finally known?

  This reporter thinks not. This reporter thinks the specter of Richard Kraven will hang over the city until …

  “Talk to her. I gotta talk to her.”

  Though Sheila Harrar spoke the words out loud, there was no one to hear them. Not that anyone would have known what she meant anyway, for in the worn-out, wood-framed firetrap of a hotel into which Sheila had moved two months ago, no one knew his neighbors, and nobody wanted to know them. Most of the people in the building were just like Sheila—living from hand to mouth, telling themselves every morning when they got up that today they were going to get it together and find a job. But then the day just sort of closed in on them. Most days, Sheila didn’t get much farther than the park in Pioneer Square, where someone would offer her a drink out of a bottle wrapped in a stained brown paper bag. And Sheila, just like all the rest of them, would tell herself it was only going to be one swallow, and then she’d get on with the day.

  Somewhere there had to be someone who would hire her.

  But after the first mouthful of whatever kind of fortified wine happened to be in whatever bottle was offered, Sheila would realize it was already too late. Anywhere she went, they’d smell the alcohol on her breath, then give her that look they always gave Indians.

  “Not Indians, Ma. We’re Native Americans. We’ve been here a lot longer than the whites, and they owe us! They murdered us, and stole our land, and they owe us!”

  As she heard the voice of her son echo in her mind, Sheila Harrar’s eyes flooded with tears. This morning, though, instead of giving in to them she wiped them away with the dirty sleeve of her best blouse and choked back the sob that rose in her throat. Taking a deep breath that rattled in her croupy lungs, she looked up from the paper she’d snitched from the lobby when she’d come home a few hours ago, and stared out the grimy window into the street outside. No point looking at the room itself; Sheila already knew every crack in the plaster, every curl in the peeling paint.

  What would Danny think of her if he could see her now?

  But he wasn’t going to see her, because he wasn’t ever going to come home.

  So what did it matter where she lived? What did it matter if she didn’t still live in the little apartment they used to share in Yesler Terrace, back when they still thought things were going to get better for them? Danny didn’t know where she lived, because Danny was dead.

  And Sheila knew who killed him.

  Richard Kraven had killed her eighteen-year-old son, just like he’d killed all those others. Sheila knew it deep inside her guts, where the knowledge burned away at her, consuming her spirit just the way the wine she drank to try to quench the fire was consuming her body.

  But without Danny, who cared?

  Nobody.

  Nobody had cared when she’d tried to get the police to do something about Danny. She’d done all the right things. Every day, she’d gone to the Public
Safety Building, and filled out all the right forms, and talked to all the right people. But she could see that nobody cared, and she knew why.

  Because she was an Indian.

  Not a Native American. Not one of those proud people Danny had always talked about.

  No, Sheila Harrar was just an Indian from the projects, and even though they didn’t tell her right to her face, she knew what they were thinking. Her son was just like her—just another Indian. Probably got drunk and walked out, and didn’t even bother to say good-bye to his own mother. When she shouted that it wasn’t true, that Danny went to school, and worked, they hadn’t believed her. If Danny had been white—if she had been white—it would have been different. Then they would have cared, they would have tried to find him. But she and Danny were Indians, and nobody gave a damn what happened to them.

  After Danny didn’t come home that day, Sheila stopped caring what happened, too. The ache of not having him anymore hurt so much that she started drinking just to dull the pain, and after a while she was drinking so much she couldn’t make it to work sometimes. Then she’d gotten a job that only started in the afternoon, and that was okay for a while, until she started sitting up drinking all night, and sleeping all day. After that there’d been other jobs, but they didn’t last very long, because Sheila’s drinking was getting worse and worse. Finally she’d had to move out of the project, down here into the hotel in the International District. Since then, one day was just like another. She slept in her tiny room, promised herself that the next day she’d get it together, but every day turned out just like the one before.

  Now, as she reread the article about the man who’d killed her son, she knew that today would be different. Today she really would get it together, and not drink, and maybe even find a job.

  But most important, she would talk to Anne Jeffers, and Anne Jeffers would listen to her, and believe her, and even though it wouldn’t bring Danny back, at least it might help.

  If she knew someone else at least cared what had happened to Danny, maybe some of the pain would go away.

  Leaving the paper lying on her unmade bed, Sheila went out into the hall and shuffled down to the pay phone at the far end. She fumbled with the tattered telephone book that hung from a chain beneath the phone, praying that the page she needed wouldn’t be torn out. Then, when she found the number she was looking for, she reached into the pocket of her jeans and pulled out one of the quarters she’d cadged from someone the night before. As she held the quarter up to the slot, she hesitated, and for a moment thought of the wine it could buy her. Danny was more important.

  She dropped the coin into the slot, waited for the dial tone, then punched in the number of the Seattle Herald. Minutes later, after being moved from one extension to another, she came to the end of her search.

  “To leave a message for Anne Jeffers, push ‘one’ now.”

  Sheila Harrar pushed the button on the phone and began to speak: “My name is Sheila Harrar, and Richard Kraven killed my son. If you care, you can come and see me.”

  Mumbling her address and the number of the pay phone, Sheila Harrar hung up the receiver and trudged back to her room. She would wait for a while, just to see what would happen.

  Maybe Anne Jeffers would care.

  Or maybe she was just like all the others.

  CHAPTER 14

  He was hiding in the darkness, hoping nobody would find him, but from somewhere outside, out where it was light, he could hear the sound of footsteps. Heavy footsteps moving around not far away.

  He held his breath, terrified that if he so much as let out the tiniest gasp of air, his father would hear it and know where he was. Not that it made any difference, really, because his father already knew where he was. He always knew, no matter where the little boy tried to hide. Always, sooner or later, he heard the sound of the approaching footsteps, and the closer they came, the more frightened he was.

  Sometimes he was so frightened he felt like he was going to die, but he never did. And now, as he huddled in the darkness, making himself as small as he could, he was pretty sure he would never die, that it would just go on and on, and never end.

  He knew what was going to happen next, although he didn’t know why it was going to happen. He never knew why it was going to happen, because he could never relate it to something he had done. It wasn’t like it was punishment for anything.

  He guessed it was just something his father liked to do.

  The little boy couldn’t remember the first time it had happened, but neither could he remember any time in his short life when it hadn’t happened. It was just always there, hanging over him.

  As the thumping steps drew closer and closer, the little boy tried to make himself even smaller, wishing he could just disappear, so that when his father finally opened the door, he wouldn’t be there at all. But he’d been praying for that to happen, too, and it never worked, even when he held real still, and didn’t breathe for so long his chest felt like it was going to explode.

  The footsteps grew yet louder, and now he knew the darkness was going to be torn away, and the light would flood over him. As if the thought had made it happen, the boy was blinded by a sudden flash of brilliance, and instinctively moved his hands to shield his eyes.

  Was it the movement that betrayed him?

  His father’s hand—a huge hand—hovered over him, and the terrible fear that he was about to be squashed like a bug overwhelmed him. He began crying—tiny, sniffling sobs that he knew he had to control.

  Had to, but couldn’t.

  The huge hand closed around him, picked him up, pulled him out into the terrible light. Then he was in the gloom of the basement, and his father had stretched him out on the cot that stood next to the wall and tied his arms and legs.

  His father opened his shirt and pulled down his pants.

  Then the worst part started, when his father started attaching the metal clips.

  Some of them went on the boy’s fingers and toes, and those didn’t hurt so badly he couldn’t stand it.

  It was when his father put the ones on his nipples that he screamed out, but even as he screamed, he knew no one would hear him.

  Then his father put the last clip on, and as the metal dug into his penis, he moaned in agony.

  A moment later, when the first shock went through him, he screamed and tried to twist away from the pain.

  But his scream was mute, and no matter how he twisted and thrashed, he couldn’t escape the terrible pain.

  * * *

  The silence in Room 306 of the Critical Care Unit was broken by a low moan from Glen Jeffers’s throat that quickly escalated into a terrified howl. Anne Jeffers, who had arrived only five minutes earlier to visit her husband before going on to her office, watched in stunned paralysis as her husband’s body began to thrash in the bed. Before she quite realized what had happened, the wires attached to Glen’s chest were torn loose and the monitors above the bed suddenly went flat. A second later the IV tube was ripped from the needle in his arm and clear liquid began dripping from the dangling hose as crimson blood oozed from the base of the needle. It was the sight of the blood—her husband’s blood—that released Anne from her momentary paralysis. Jerking the door open, she called to the nurse, but at the station a few yards away alarms had already started to sound. One of the nurses was running toward the room even before Anne could call out to her.

  Starting back toward the bed where Glen was still thrashing, Anne felt a sensation of helplessness such as she’d never experienced before in her life. She wanted to do something, to take some action that would help her husband. But she hadn’t the slightest idea of what was happening to him, or how to help him. Instinctively, she reached out to him, but then stopped short, suddenly terrified that anything she did might make his condition worse than it already was. The split second of indecision stretched into an eternity of terror, then the door crashed open and the room filled with people. As the nurse and two orderlies brushed by her, An
ne came back to life.

  “He was sleeping,” she began. “Everything seemed to be fine, and then …” Her voice trailed off as she realized nobody was listening to her. She moved closer to the foot of the bed.

  The orderlies were holding Glen down now, and the nurse was struggling to cap the needle in his arm that was still oozing blood. Glen, though, was struggling harder than ever, and now she could see that he was awake. His jaw was working as grunts of either terror or anger—Anne couldn’t be sure which—formed in his throat. He seemed to be trying to jerk his arms away from the two orderlies.

  Suddenly Anne could stand it no more. “Glen!” she shouted. “For God’s sake, Glen, they’re trying to help you!” As the words exploded from Anne’s lips, Glen froze, then collapsed back onto the bed. His breath came in great ragged gasps. Now that the orderlies no longer had to struggle with him, the nurse began issuing a series of orders. Almost as quickly as it had begun, the crisis was over.

  “What was it?” Anne asked as the nurse reattached the last of the monitoring leads and began checking Glen’s vital signs. The nurse said nothing until she was satisfied that her patient’s pulse, respiration, and blood pressure were within acceptable parameters, then took his temperature. As she at last turned her attention to Anne, Glen himself spoke.

  “Hey,” he said, his voice weak but recognizable. The sound of his voice reassuring her far more than anything the nurse could have said, Anne suddenly felt shaky. Perching on the edge of the bed, she took his hand.

  “Honey? What happened?”

  Glen said nothing for several long seconds. The dream was still vivid in his mind, and even as he summoned up the memory, the terror of the nightmare threatened to close in on him once again. Shuddering slightly, he squeezed Anne’s hand. “Just a dream,” he told her. “And not a very nice one.”

  “A nightmare?” Anne asked. “You never have nightmares—”

  “He never had a heart attack, either,” the nurse interjected. “And from what his records say, he never had anywhere near the medication he has in him now.”