Black Lightning

by John Saul

  “There was another killing,” Anne said. “This time it was Edna Kraven—Richard and Rory’s mother. They found her up in a campground on the Snoqualmie.” For a split second—a moment so brief she wasn’t sure it had happened at all—she thought she saw something in Glen’s eyes.

  Fear?

  Anger?

  But it was gone so quickly, she dismissed it a second later.

  “So that was it,” Glen said. “We passed a campground on the way up that was crawling with cops.” He grinned. “Needless to say, Kevin wanted us to stop and find out what was going on.”

  “Thank God you didn’t,” Anne replied, shuddering. “It was horrible.” She hesitated, wondering if she shouldn’t tell him about the note that had arrived, while they were alone in the house. But even as she thought about it, Mark Blakemoor’s suggestion that Glen himself might have written it popped back into her mind, and she knew if she got started right now, she’d wind up blurting out the whole bizarre scenario the detective had come up with.

  That—justifiably—would send Glen into a fury, which was the last thing he needed right now. Better to wait until later, when she was completely calm. Maybe tonight, before they went to bed.

  “So how was the fishing?” she asked, deciding to change the subject. “You still haven’t told me why you came back so early.”

  Glen hesitated. An odd look came into his eyes, but then, as before, it cleared almost before Anne was certain she’d seen it. “It was okay,” he said at last. He seemed to think it over for a moment, then nodded. “Yeah, it was okay. But I don’t think Kevin liked it very much. Next time, I think I’d better go by myself.”

  A few minutes later Anne headed upstairs. There was something he wasn’t telling her. Something had happened—and obviously it had something to do with Kevin—but for some reason he didn’t want to talk about it.

  She went up to their room, only to find a pile of clothes dumped in the middle of the floor.

  Soggy clothes.

  Picking them up, she turned and started down the stairs to put them into the washing machine, automatically checking the pockets as she went. In the right front pocket of the sodden khakis she found something.

  A knife.

  A pocketknife, with a tarnished silver handle that had been inlaid with turquoise.

  The flat edge of the folded blade was stained as if it had been lying out in the elements for months, even years.

  A knife, with a silver handle inlaid with turquoise. And then it came to her:

  Danny Harrar had had a knife like that—his mother had listed it as something he always carried with him when she’d reported him missing, even told Anne about it.

  But that was ridiculous. It couldn’t be the same knife.

  Could it?

  “Glen?” she called as she came back down to the basement to put the wet clothes into the washing machine. He paused in the midst of cleaning up the workbench and looked inquiringly at her. “Where’d this come from?”

  He looked at the knife, and once more she thought she saw a flicker of something in his eyes. He shrugged. “I found it by the river,” he said. “I was going to give it to Kevin, but I guess I forgot.”

  As he went back to clearing away the mess from the fish he’d just cleaned, Anne looked at the knife once again.

  Then, instead of giving it back to Glen, she slipped it into her own pocket.

  Anne had been sitting at the computer for almost two hours, though when she’d first come up from the basement, it was her intention to do no more than reconfirm her memory of Sheila Harrar’s description of her son’s pocketknife. When it checked out, she considered going down to Pioneer Square to find Sheila Harrar, but the memory of those strange, fleeting looks she’d seen in Glen’s eyes stopped her. She hadn’t been able to forget those brief glimpses she’d had of—what? Fear? Or something else?

  Something, obviously, had happened while Glen and Kevin were fishing. Something that led Glen to cut the trip short.

  Or had it been Kevin?

  Could something have frightened Kevin and made him demand to be taken home?

  As questions—unwelcome, unwanted questions—popped into her mind, all of them springing from the incredible tale Mark Blakemoor had woven over her uneaten lunch, Anne tried to think about other things. But the questions lingered, keeping her from going downtown in search of Danny Harrar’s mother. If something had happened between Kevin and Glen, she wanted to be there when her son came home. So she forced herself to stay at the computer and concentrate on the transcripts of the interviews she’d conducted years earlier.

  The same themes kept coming up over and over again. Biology. Electricity. Metaphysics.

  The more she read, the stronger the themes became, until it struck her what Richard Kraven’s true fascination had been.

  Life!

  He had been utterly consumed with analyzing every aspect of life itself! But if he’d been enthralled with life, why had he killed?

  Then, her neck aching and her eyes stinging, Anne came across an interview she’d conducted with a former neighbor of the Kravens, a woman named Maybelle Swinney:

  A.J.: What about when he was a boy, Mrs. Swinney? Do you have any memories that might have new significance, given what he’s been accused of?

  M.S.: Well, now, I don’t like to speak ill of anyone, and Edna Kraven and I were always good friends. But I always thought his fascination with taking things apart was real strange. Always wanted to find out how things worked, that boy did. Couldn’t ever just enjoy them for what they were—oh, no, not him. He always had to take them apart.

  A.J.: What about putting them back together again?

  M.S.: Oh, sure, he was always real good at that, too. Why, he could put almost anything back together. Except the things he … (Pause) Now what do they call it when they cut animals up in a lab?

  A.J.: Dissecting?

  M.S.: Dissecting! That’s it. Anyway, I don’t suppose he ever managed to put the things he dissected back together. (Laughing) Though I daresay he tried. Oh, I bet he tried!

  The passage remained on Anne’s screen. Staring at it, she thought, What if Maybelle Swinney hadn’t laughed years ago before suggesting that Richard Kraven might have tried to put the animals he’d dissected back together again? Would I have thought more about the words then?

  Maybe. Maybe not.

  But what if that was exactly what he’d been trying to do? Now a new idea began to take shape in her head, an idea so vile she found herself wanting to back away from it even as it was forming. What if—

  “Mom?”

  Anne jumped, startled by the unexpected interruption, and looked up from the monitor, rubbing at her stinging eyes until she was able to focus on Kevin, who was standing just inside the den door. “Kev! You startled me!”

  “What’re you doing?” the boy asked, moving closer.

  Anne reached out, closed the file with a couple of quick clicks of the mouse. “Nothing much,” she said. Then, trying to keep her voice totally neutral: “How was the fishing expedition? Did you have a good time?”

  Kevin’s open features tightened into a guarded expression. “I guess,” he said.

  “You guess? What does that mean?” Kevin glanced around, and it took Anne a second to realize what he was doing: looking for his father. So she’d been right—something had happened. “Tell you what,” she said. “I’ve got an errand to run in Pioneer Square. How about if you go with me, and you can tell me all about the fishing trip on the way?”

  Kevin’s expression cleared instantly. “Can we go to the kite store?”

  “We’ll see,” Anne temporized. “Get your jacket while I tell your dad where we’re going.”

  The afternoon light was beginning to fade, giving the broad brick expanse of Pioneer Square a dismal aspect that was only intensified by the chill drizzle falling from the slate clouds gathered overhead. “When can we go home, Mom?” Kevin complained, clutching his newly purchased kite in one ha
nd while trying to pull his other one free from his mother’s grasp.

  “In a little while,” Anne promised. But it was the third time she’d said that, and she could tell Kevin didn’t believe her. And why should he? They’d just kept moving around while she asked one person after another where she might find Sheila Harrar. She finally interrupted her search for a stop at the kite shop, but that had only served to shift Kevin’s interest from the woman for whom they were searching to the kite he was now impatiently waiting to try out.

  The conversation about the fishing trip had gone no better than the search for Sheila Harrar; all Kevin had admitted was that Glen had been “acting funny,” but she hadn’t been able to find out much more. “I don’t know,” Kevin kept saying, no matter how she’d phrased her questions. “He kept looking at me funny, that’s all. And then he made me go down the river and fish by myself.”

  “By yourself?” Anne echoed. “He actually sent you off alone?”

  Kevin nodded. “Then he went across the river and started messing around in some rocks, but when I wanted to come over and see what he was doing, he wouldn’t let me. That’s when we came home.”

  That was all, but it had been enough to make her start worrying all over again.

  Now, as the rain fell harder and a bolt of lightning shot across the sky, instantly followed by a crash of thunder, she wondered if maybe she shouldn’t give up the search for Sheila Harrar. If she came back tomorrow morning, she might even catch the woman in her room. She was about to head for the parking lot where she’d left the Volvo when a familiar figure rose up off one of the benches and shuffled toward the Grand Central Arcade. Her hand tightening on Kevin’s, Anne hurried after the figure.

  “Mrs. Harrar?” she called. “Sheila?” The figure paused, turning slowly to gaze at Anne, and for a moment Anne thought she’d made a mistake. Then the woman’s lips curved in a smile and she shambled toward them.

  It took no more than a second for Anne to realize that Sheila was drunk. Very drunk.

  “I know you,” Sheila said as she neared Anne and Kevin. Her words were slurred and her eyes were bloodshot. “You came to see me, didn’t you? You want to buy me a bottle of wine?”

  “How about if I buy you some coffee, Sheila?” Anne countered. “And maybe a cinnamon bun?”

  Sheila seemed to consider the possibility of arguing, then shrugged. “Sure. Shouldn’t drink anyway. Danny wouldn’t like it.” Her eyes cleared slightly. “You come to tell me about Danny?” she asked.

  “I—Why don’t we just get some coffee first?” Anne said. Taking Sheila’s elbow, she guided her into the Grand Central Arcade and found a table, ignoring the glares of the people around her. “Wait here,” she told Sheila and Kevin. “I’ll go get some coffee and buns.”

  Ten minutes later Sheila had consumed most of the cup of coffee and half of a cinnamon bun. The doughy bun seemed to have soaked up some of the alcohol in her stomach, and her eyes had cleared a bit. At last Anne pulled the knife Glen had found out of her pocket and laid it on the table. “Do you recognize this, Sheila?”

  Sheila Harrar stared at the turquoise-inlaid knife for a long time, then reached out with trembling fingers and picked it up. She turned it over and over, gazing at it. “Danny’s,” she finally breathed. “It’s Danny’s.” She looked up at Anne. “Where? Where’d you get it?”

  “Are you absolutely sure it’s Danny’s?” Anne asked, ignoring Sheila’s questions.

  Sheila nodded, then tried to pry the blade open. “It’s his,” she insisted. “I can show you—” Her trembling fingers lost their grip on the knife and it clattered to the floor. Kevin slid off his seat, retrieved the knife and opened it.

  “There,” Sheila said, touching the blade with her finger. “His initials. See?”

  Anne leaned forward, peering at the knife. At first she saw nothing, but then she was able to make out two barely visible letters etched into the metal of the blade: DH.

  “See?” Sheila asked. “It’s his!” Now she looked at Anne once more, her eyes pleading. “Please—where did you get it? How did you find it?”

  “I didn’t,” Anne said. “My husband did. He went fishing up on the Snoqualmie and found it.” A pile of rocks, Kevin had said. Glen was digging in a pile of rocks on the other side of the river. “I—I’m not sure exactly where,” she said.

  Then Kevin spoke. “I can tell you,” he said. “I know exactly where it was.”

  CHAPTER 63

  For the first time in almost two decades, the workbench area in the basement was completely clean. The bench, along with the rows of narrow shelves that had been built into the wall above it, had been there when he and Anne had bought the house. The previous owner, moving to a nursing home, had left everything in place, and there it had remained. Even during the total restoration of the main floors, the basement had never been touched. A tool had occasionally been located and used, an area had now and then been cleared to make way for a new project. But the clutter had always remained.

  Until today, when, for some reason he didn’t comprehend, Glen hadn’t stopped with cleaning up the mess left from the filleting of the trout, but had kept on working, methodically going through the myriad plastic containers filled with nuts, bolts, nails, tacks, rivets, washers, and other assorted hardware, labeling each one of them, then sorting them first by contents, then by size, until, when he was done, the ranks of shelves offered an almost artistically elegant orderliness to the eye. The shelves finished, he’d gone on to clean out the area under the workbench, sweeping and vacuuming the floor until even the most recalcitrant speck of dust had succumbed. Then he’d set about rendering the same kind of order to the tools that had lain scattered on the table and bench, and when he was finally finished, the whole area had taken on a new look. Clean and bright under the fluorescent lights, with a place for everything and everything in its place.

  As perfectly kept as any laboratory. Glen stood gazing at it for a few minutes, reveling in the satisfaction the cleanup had given him, then started up the steep flight of stairs to the kitchen. He was halfway up when the headache struck.

  A stab of pain shot through his head, so intense it made him stagger against the wall, then drop to his knees. At the same time the pain struck, an explosion of light burst inside his head, blinding him.

  A stroke! He was having a stroke. Out of nowhere, Franklin Roosevelt’s last words flashed into his mind: “I have a terrific pain in the back of my head.” Almost immediately, the president had fallen into a coma and died.

  Now it was happening—he felt as though he was sinking into a great dark chasm, falling endlessly into a black, bottomless hole.

  He tried to scream, but nothing came out. Then, almost from beyond the edges of his consciousness, he heard laughter.

  Dark, scornful laughter.

  The laughter of a maniac.

  As he sank yet deeper into the lightless abyss, he heard the laughter again, and now he recognized it.

  The voice—the voice inside his head, the voice that had whispered to him of evil.

  The voice that only today had wanted him to open Kevin’s chest and hold his son’s heart in his hands.

  No!

  He couldn’t give in to it—he wouldn’t! He struggled against the blackness, forcing it back, willing himself not to disappear into the dark pit that yawned around him. Then he heard something else. A low rumble, slowly building, drowning out the mocking laughter. He concentrated on that sound, shutting out the laughter until the blackness began to recede. His vision cleared and slowly he realized the pain had vanished.

  Not simply eased—it was completely gone.

  But he felt exhausted, as if he’d just run a marathon. His legs felt rubbery, but as he climbed slowly back to his feet, gripping the rail with one hand, resting part of his weight against the wall with the other, they began to feel stronger, and finally he was able to make his way up to the kitchen. As he emerged from the basement door, he saw rain slashing against
the window, and then there was a sudden blinding flash of lightning.

  Once again pain slashed through Glen’s head like a hurled spear, and once again he was dropped to his knees by its blinding force. When the lights in the kitchen dimmed briefly as the lightning died away, Glen didn’t see it, for again the black abyss had opened before him. The clap of thunder that burst over the house a second later with enough force to rattle the windows sent him whimpering to the floor while from deep within him the terrible laughter once again erupted.

  A visage of evil now appeared before Glen in the darkness, a face whose features radiated such heinous inhumanity that Glen recoiled from it. As the terrible pain in his head grew more intense, Glen cowered into the black shroud closing around him, no longer battling the blackness and the pain, but only seeking refuge from the torture being inflicted upon him.

  And as Glen Jeffers’s spirit steadily weakened, the spirit of Richard Kraven—seeming to draw strength directly from the electrical storm that raged beyond the confines of the house—burst forth to take total control of the body that until this moment it had been forced to share. Now, seeming to draw more power with every bolt of lightning that flashed across the sky, Richard Kraven drove Glen Jeffers deeper and deeper into the abyss.

  So deep that soon there would be no trace of Glen Jeffers left.

  Never again would Richard Kraven have to wait for Glen Jeffers to sleep, nor would he have to steal quick moments when rage—the kind of rage only his brother and his mother had been able to inspire—gave him the strength to overcome Glen, at least for a little while.

  Now, finally, Richard Kraven was utterly free to do as he pleased.

  Rising from the floor, exhilarating in his liberation, Richard Kraven moved leisurely through the house.

  Coming to the computer in the den—Anne’s computer—he quickly manipulated the mouse to trace the history of the files she had been studying.

  Obviously she’d had no trouble figuring out to whom the pocketknife must have belonged.