Black Lightning

by John Saul

  Even the ice-cold baths they’d made him lie in hadn’t been the worst part.

  The worst part was he knew what they were going to do today, because his mother had told him about it. “It’s for your own good,” she’d explained. “And it doesn’t really hurt at all.”

  But that wasn’t true. It hurt more than anything he could ever remember, even more than the shocks his father gave him.

  Once again he looked up at his mother, but instead of helping him, she only smiled blandly, as if nothing was wrong at all. “Now you be a good boy, Richard. You be Mama’s perfect little boy, just like you always are.”

  She turned around and walked through the doors, leaving him with the big men in white clothes, never even looking back at him.

  That day he didn’t cry at all. He didn’t cry when they took him into the room where they kept the hard bed with the thick straps they held him down with.

  He didn’t cry when they attached the wires to his head.

  He didn’t even cry when he felt the jolts of electricity shoot through him and thought he was going to die.

  In fact, he never cried again.

  And he always did his best to be his Mama’s perfect little boy.

  But the anger—the dark, cold fury he always took care to hide—began to build.

  Every day, every week, every month it built.

  Every year the rage grew larger, more monstrous.

  And his mother never knew it was there.

  Always, no matter what happened, she kept believing that he was her perfect little boy, who loved her as much as she said she loved him.

  But he knew better. No matter what she said, he knew she didn’t love him—knew she’d never loved him. If she’d loved him, she would have protected him from his father, and from the men in the white clothes with the terrible machine that was even worse than his father’s electric cords.

  No, she didn’t love him. She hated him, as much as he hated her.

  “Won’t you come in?” The words issued from Glen Jeffers’s mouth, but it was Richard Kraven who asked the question, holding the door wider to let his mother step into the foyer. “I was on the telephone, but if you’ll just give me half a second?”

  Courtly, Edna Kraven thought as she nodded her agreement to Mr. Jeffers’s question. Courtly, just like Richard was. “I do hope I’m not bothering you?”

  He held up a gently dismissive hand. “Of course not,” he said. Picking up the phone, he spoke briefly into the receiver. “Gordy? I’m afraid something’s come up. I’ll call you later.” Without waiting for a reply from the doctor, he placed the receiver back on the hook, then gently took his mother’s elbow and steered her into the living room. “How nice of you to come,” he said.

  Edna lowered herself nervously onto the edge of the sofa, surreptitiously eyeing the furniture in the room. Some of it, she decided, was almost as nice as the things Richard had had. Probably those were things Mr. Jeffers had chosen. Surely that terrible woman he was married to couldn’t have such good taste. Now, as her eyes returned to her host, she felt her heart flutter. Though he didn’t look anything like Richard, there was so much about him that reminded her of her son. His voice, of course. The wonderful, gentle way he spoke. And his eyes, too. They weren’t really the same color as Richard’s had been, but they had the same depth—that quality of looking right inside someone—that Richard’s had.

  “I just got to thinking,” she said, her fingers twisting at one of the large buttons on her dress. “You were so nice to me on the phone this morning, I just thought maybe I should talk to you instead of your wife. If I could just make you understand about Richard. You just don’t know how it hurts me when your wife writes those terrible things about him.”

  He smiled. “But I do understand,” he said gently. “Believe me, I understand exactly how you feel.”

  Edna Kraven brightened. “Oh, I just knew I was right about you. I just knew it! Do you know, you remind me of Richard. It happened the minute I heard your voice this morning. And I just had to come and meet you.”

  “I’m so glad you did,” he said softly.

  He studied his mother carefully. She was four years older than she’d been the last time he’d seen her, but she hadn’t changed much. The same cheap polyester clothes she’d always worn, her hair still done in that silly style she wrongly thought was so sophisticated. In combination with her heavily made-up face, it gave her the look of those over-the-hill entertainers who scraped out livings in the seedier bars in downtown Las Vegas. With the perfect analytical detachment to which he’d long ago disciplined his mind, Richard Kraven tried to analyze what it could have been about this numbingly boring woman that had inspired such love—even adoration—in his brother.

  Perhaps, he thought, it was because they were so much alike.

  Or perhaps it was something else entirely—perhaps there was some emotion that people of the inferior intellectual status of Rory and Edna felt that was simply foreign to someone at his own level.

  “You have no idea how much it means to me that you’ve come,” he said now. “The pain you must be feeling …”

  Edna reached out with doughy fingers to take the hand of this wonderful man. “You have no idea,” she breathed, her voice breaking. “You just have no idea at all. I miss my Richard so much. We used to do things together, just the two of us.” Her eyes went briefly to the front window. “That wouldn’t be your motor home out there, would it?” she asked on a wistful note. “My Richard had one, you know. He used to take me up to the mountains sometimes. Just the two of us.”

  A tiny smile played around the corner of his lips. “Did he?” he asked. “Well, as it happens, that is my motor home out there. And just before you arrived, I was just thinking it might be fun to go up to the mountains and do a little fishing. Perhaps you’d like to go along?”

  Edna Kraven flushed scarlet. “Oh, no, I didn’t mean—Well, I couldn’t possibly impose on you that way. I just—”

  “But of course you’ll come with me. I wouldn’t have it any other way.” He stood up. “I only have a few more things to put in, and we’ll be off. We can make a picnic of it.”

  While Edna Kraven waited nervously in the living room, the man who had become Richard Kraven went down to the basement. He picked up the last of the boxes he’d been transferring to the motor home.

  The motor home he’d rented yesterday afternoon, using Glen Jeffers’s driver’s license and credit card.

  The box already contained a gas can and a box of matches, and now he added a few more objects to it.

  The Makita saw.

  The electrical cord with the stripped ends, with which he’d attempted to defibrillate Heather Jeffers’s cat.

  The roll of plastic he’d bought yesterday morning, just before he’d visited Rory.

  With the box now packed full with everything he would need, he started back up the basement stairs. How many years had he thought about using his mother as the subject for one of his experiments? But of course it had been out of the question.

  After all, he only experimented on strangers.

  Circumstances, though, had changed.

  Now he could see no reason not to make her his subject.

  “Ready?” he asked as he paused in the foyer.

  Edna Kraven, thrilled at the prospect of spending the day with this charming man who was so very much like her eldest son, heaved herself off the sofa. “One of these days, I’ve just got to lose some weight,” she trilled as she moved toward the front door.

  “Not at all,” he said. “I think you’re perfect the way you are. Just perfect.”

  As she walked ahead of him down the steps to the motor home waiting on the street, Richard Kraven was already planning the first cut he would make.

  CHAPTER 53

  It was mid-afternoon when Anne finally returned to her office. She felt utterly worn out, as if she’d had no sleep for at least a week, but she knew that sleeplessness had nothing to do with the
exhaustion consuming her. Flopping down into her chair, she sat, head in hands, for almost a full minute, before reaching out to switch her monitor on and erase the sidebar she’d been writing when Mark Blakemoor called. The empty screen seemed to mock her after the story disappeared.

  It was not just a single story that had disappeared; it was years out of her life.

  She tapped at the keyboard for a few seconds and a directory scrolled down the screen, listing all the articles she had written about Richard Kraven over the years.

  Richard Kraven, who was now dead and buried.

  Richard Kraven, who, if Mark Blakemoor was right, had not been the man they should have been looking for.

  Not been the man they tried.

  Not been the man they executed.

  She called up one piece after another, reading snatches of what she’d written, starting from the very beginning, when the first mutilated body had been found down in Seward Park.

  The next body had turned up below Snoqualmie Falls a month later, and another one had been found near Lake Sammamish within a week. Even then there had been no particular “type” that had seemed to attract the killer, no common trait that might have triggered his urge to kill.

  The path that had led to Richard Kraven was tortuous. At the time—even now—there was no direct evidence to link him to any of the murders.

  No witnesses.

  No bloodstains.

  No murder weapon.

  Slowly, though, a fuzzy image had emerged.

  People reported having seen some of the victims talking to someone.

  A man.

  And as more and more bodies were discovered, a faint pattern did finally start to appear: most of the victims had spent considerable time in the University District. Some lived there. Some worked there. Some actually went to the university.

  Then a sharper picture began to emerge, a picture of a man who had been seen talking with some of the victims.

  A man whose Identikit sketch, when it was finally put together, looked a great deal like Richard Kraven.

  A few people had mentioned having seen a motor home near some of the places where bodies were found.

  Richard Kraven had owned a motor home, which he’d used—

  Anne felt her stomach tighten as she remembered, even without reading it, what Richard Kraven had used his motor home for.

  Fishing trips!

  Sheila Harrar had mentioned it just a few days ago. When her son had left their apartment in Yesler Terrace the day he disappeared, he’d told his mother he was going fishing. Fishing with Richard Kraven!

  Was that why she’d had such an angry reaction yesterday when she’d seen that motor home parked on their block?

  Because she associated motor homes with Richard Kraven?

  And was that why she’d been so negative when Glen had said he was going to take up fishing? Just because it had been Richard Kraven’s hobby?

  But that was ridiculous. Thousands of people—hundreds of thousands of people—loved to go fishing. There was even a guy over at the Times—was it the book editor?—who had suddenly taken up fly fishing. If that guy could do it, why shouldn’t Glen?

  Her thoughts tumbled over each other, and suddenly she remembered that day while he was still in the hospital when Glen had asked Kevin to bring him her file on Richard Kraven.

  Why?

  Glen had always thought her own fascination with the serial killer was morbid; why had he suddenly become interested in Kraven?

  So interested in him that he’d even taken up his hobby?

  Easy, Anne, she told herself. This is the way people go crazy. No matter what Mark Blakemoor might think, Glen’s only taking up a new hobby, just like the doctor ordered.

  But then a new thought popped into her mind, a thought so ludicrous it made her laugh out loud.

  Which of Richard Kraven’s hobbies is Glen taking up? Fly fishing, or killing? There was a brief lull in the constant racket of the newsroom as everyone within earshot of Anne glanced over at her. The brittle burst of laughter dying on her lips, Anne stared at her computer screen as if she were deeply involved in writing a story.

  A moment later the normal hubbub of the room resumed as Anne, oblivious, sat at her desk thinking. Somewhere at the edge of her mind an idea was taking form, but it was so nebulous she couldn’t yet bring it into focus.

  There was something she was forgetting—something she’d once known, or heard about.

  A rumor?

  A theory?

  Some piece of information that had to be buried somewhere in her computer files, or in the depths of her own mind.

  She knew of only one way to retrieve it—to search through the files of everything she’d ever written about Richard Kraven. And not just the story files, either. All her note files were there as well, from verbatim transcripts of every interview she’d ever conducted about him, right down to the complete transcript of his trial and the appeals that had followed. Thousands of pages neatly organized into directories and subdirectories.

  Fighting off the terrible exhaustion that threatened to overwhelm her, she tried to face up to the task of rereading it all. It would take days, possibly weeks, but somewhere in those files she knew she would find something—some tiny fact—that would provide her with the key to who had killed Rory Kraven. For despite everything Mark Blakemoor had shown her, despite everything he had told her, Anne Jeffers was still sure of one thing.

  She had not been wrong about Richard Kraven.

  He had been a killer. He’d been convicted of being a killer, and he’d been executed for being a killer.

  He was dead, and Anne did not believe in ghosts. Therefore, someone was playing some kind of terrible game.

  Coldly, analytically, Anne began to think.

  An accomplice.

  There had to be an accomplice, no matter what Mark Blakemoor had said about serial killers working alone. After all, Richard Kraven had never been typical.

  So there was someone who was still alive. Someone to whom Richard Kraven had confided his secrets.

  Someone whom he had taught to mimic his handwriting perfectly.

  That much, she knew, was possible.

  But who would have been willing to wait until Richard Kraven was executed, and then take up his own grisly work, simply to make the world think Richard Kraven had been innocent?

  Could anyone be that devoted to a monster like Richard Kraven?

  She couldn’t even imagine it. Yet, there was no other possible answer. And if that person existed, she would find him.

  Unless he found her first.

  Richard Kraven’s last words rushed back to her. “That’s my regret, Anne. That I won’t get to watch you die the way you’re going to watch me!”

  Was it possible he’d meant something more by those words than she’d thought on the day he was executed? Was it possible he’d already made arrangements for her to die, too?

  Abruptly, she realized there was only one way Rory Kraven’s killer could have known it was Rory who killed Joyce Cottrell. He must have been there that night. There, not because he’d been watching Joyce’s house.

  He would have been watching hers.

  The icy touch of fear stroked her skin as she imagined someone lurking in the darkness outside her house that night.

  Had he been waiting to kill her? Or her family? Had he been preparing to enter their house while they slept?

  And where was he now? Right now?

  Was he watching her house?

  Watching her children?

  Her eyes flicked to the clock—it was already a quarter after three! If Heather hadn’t left school yet, she could tell her to find Kevin and stay with him. If both kids were together, they might be safe, but if Kevin was wandering around by himself …

  Panic seizing her, she snatched up the telephone to call Heather’s school. Five minutes later, after what seemed an eternity of waiting, the assistant principal came back on the line.

  “I
’m sorry, Mrs. Jeffers,” Sheila Jones said in a tone she reserved for parents whom she thought were needlessly overwrought. “I’ve paged your daughter, but she hasn’t responded. I think she must already have left the school. Is it something I can help you with? Or one of her teachers?”

  Anne hesitated. Should she tell Ms. Jones she was afraid someone might be stalking her or her children? But what if she was wrong? What if she was completely wrong about everything? She didn’t know. She didn’t know anything! “I—I’m not sure,” she stammered. “I guess not. I’m sure there’s not really a problem.”

  Hanging up, she dialed her own number, cursing softly when the answering machine picked up. She waited it out, then said, “Glen? If you’re there, pick up. It’s me, and I’m worried about the kids. If you’re not there and you get home in the next few minutes, could you take your car and drive over to Kevin’s school? Something else has happened, and I’m—oh, hell, I don’t have time to explain right now. Just do it for me, okay? Thanks, hon. See you later.”

  Putting the receiver back on the hook, she sat still for a moment, willing her rising panic away. Where was Glen? Why wasn’t he at home? Had something happened to him?

  Stop it! she told herself. Just get hold of yourself. You can either do something constructive, or fall apart. Take your choice.

  She had to find the man who had killed Rory Kraven.

  The man who might be stalking her.

  Somewhere in her files some clue to him would exist. It had to. To be that close to Richard Kraven, to be that devoted to him, the person who was now perfectly imitating him would surely have been mentioned somewhere, by someone.

  Indeed, she herself might very possibly have interviewed him back in the days when she’d systematically sought out practically everyone Richard Kraven ever met.

  It struck her, then, that not only was it possible she’d spoken to the nameless, faceless man she was now consumed with finding. It was almost impossible that she hadn’t talked to him!