John Saul - Black Lightning

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.

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.