John Saul - Black Lightning

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.

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.