John Saul - Black Lightning

When he looked around, sure enough, someone was staring at him out of one of the windows of the hospital.

Maybe he ought to just go up there and pull the guy’s plug. Wouldn’t that be something? Just to walk into the room, tell the guy off, then jerk the plugs out of the wall and watch him die?

Yes, just watch him die!

In the cool damp of the evening the man felt a shiver go through him, a chill that wasn’t brought on by the weather at all.

It was brought on by the fantasy that had been growing in his mind until he finally knew he was going to act on it.

But not with the guy in the hospital room. Not where there would be lights, and people, and he would be caught so soon he wouldn’t even get to enjoy what he’d done.

The man walked on up the sidewalk, finally cutting over a block, then zigzagged north and west until he finally came to Broadway. A lot of lights there, and a lot of people, but it didn’t matter because he fit right in with the rest of the crowd. Broadway was humming with people tonight, but that was good, for it meant he would be only one more anonymous face in the crowd. He threaded his way along the sidewalk, ignoring the teenage panhandlers with their green hair, black lipstick, and pierced lips, brows, and ears.

When he saw the person he was looking for, he would know.

Two men holding hands came toward him. The man’s eyes fixed angrily on them, but at the last second he stepped aside to let them pass, only to turn and glower at them once again when he heard them laughing as they walked away.

Laughing at him?

His fingers clenched with sudden fury, but when they didn’t turn around to look back at him, he forced his anger down and continued on his way.

Covertly, his eyes searched the crowd.

He was almost up to the QFC supermarket when he saw her.

About thirty, with blond hair cut short, and a skirt that was even shorter than her hair.

She was on the other side of the street, going the same way he was, and it didn’t look like anyone was with her. In fact, it looked like maybe she was doing the same thing he was doing.

Looking for someone.

The man crossed the street, increasing his pace until he was only a few yards behind her, then slowed, keeping the distance between himself and the girl steady.

She kept heading north, finally turning in at the DeLuxe Bar & Grill.

The man slowed, then loitered outside until he saw her all but disappear into the darkness at the back of the café. Only when he was certain she hadn’t met anyone did he go inside himself.

She was sitting alone at one of the small tables for two.

The man, his heart suddenly pounding with anticipation, lowered himself into one of the chairs at the next table, choosing the one that would let him make eye contact with her.

His skin began to tingle and he felt a glowing ember of excitement ignite in his belly as he thought about what he was going to do.

His excitement growing, the man searched his memory, dredging up the minutiae of what the other victims had suffered, struggling to recapture all the details of what Richard Kraven had been accused of doing.…

An hour and a half later, when the woman finally got up to leave the DeLuxe, the man still hadn’t spoken to her.

He had contented himself with watching her, with imagining what would happen later, when they were together, when he’d finally made himself known to her.

Now, as she passed through the front door, he dropped some money on the table to cover the cost of the single beer he’d nursed through the ninety minutes, and followed her out into the night. For a moment it seemed as if the woman had vanished into the darkness, but then the man caught sight of her walking west toward the Harvard Exit theater. Following her as he had earlier, keeping several yards between her and himself, the man tracked her two blocks west, then turned south to follow her down Boylston. When she finally turned to go into one of the anonymous two-story buildings that lined the block, she paused, looked back, then cocked her head and smiled at him.

She’d known.

Known he was watching her, known he was following her.

But she didn’t know what he wanted, what he intended to do.

And when she spoke, the glowing ember of excitement in the man’s belly flared into burning anticipation. “It’s okay, fella. I’m kind of lonely, too.” The man said nothing, but moved slowly toward the girl, whose smile widened as she nodded toward the building. “Want to come up for a while?”

Inside the woman’s apartment, the man looked around to see a space not much different from the one he himself lived in a few blocks away. The once-white paint was dirty and starting to peel, and a few pieces of tired furniture stood on a worn carpet. The coffee table was piled with tabloid newspapers, and in the corner was a dying ficus tree, most of its leaves scattered on the floor around its pot.

“How come you didn’t say hi at the DeLuxe?” the woman asked, going into the kitchen, pulling open the refrigerator and holding up a beer. “Want one? No extra charge!”

For a brief moment the man wasn’t quite certain what she meant, but a second later she cleared up the confusion. “How’s fifty for two hours?” she asked. “I usually get a lot more, but it’s kinda slow tonight, and you seem like a nice guy.”

The man glanced quickly at the windows. The curtains were drawn; not even a crack of light showed through from the streetlamp outside.

Perfect.

He rose to his feet and moved around into the kitchen. “That’ll be fine, I guess,” he said. He was standing right behind her now, looking over her shoulder as she pulled open a drawer to get a bottle opener.

The tool she was looking for sat in the midst of a jumble of other utensils, but the one that caught the man’s eye was a knife.

A large butcher knife whose blade glinted hypnotically.

The man’s fingers began to tingle once again, and the fire moved from his belly to his groin as he made the final decision. “But I don’t think I’ll really need two whole hours,” he said softly.

Then, in a movement executed so swiftly that she had no time even to scream, let alone struggle away from his grip, the man’s right arm slid around the woman’s neck, catching her head in the crook of his elbow. As he jerked hard and twisted to one side, he felt the crunching of bones in the woman’s neck as her spine was twisted beyond its limits. Then she went limp and the man lowered her to the floor.

He stared down at her.

Had he killed her?

He could hardly believe it — it had happened so fast he could barely remember what it felt like. Then, as he watched, the woman’s lips suddenly began to work and a tiny sound bubbled up from her throat. Her eyes, wide open, stared up at him, and now he could see that she wasn’t dead at all. He had broken her neck.

He had paralyzed her.

But he hadn’t killed her.

He stared at her for a moment, anticipating what would come next, the fire now raging within him. He reached for the knife.

At last, savoring the moment he’d been anticipating for what seemed an eternity, the man set to work.

The woman, utterly paralyzed from the moment the bones in her neck snapped, felt nothing.

And, blessedly, she died quickly, unaware of the carnage the man was inflicting on her body.

The Saturday morning that arrived two days later was one of the dull gray Seattle dawns that carried a chill far greater than the temperature warranted. It was on mornings like this that Anne Jeffers’s dedication to retaining the body she’d graduated from college with was sorely tested, for getting up to join the parade of joggers in Volunteer Park was hard enough even when the weather was perfect. Actually, it wasn’t even this hard in the depths of winter, when you knew each consecutive morning was going to be as clammy as the last. But Friday had produced one of those deceptively warm afternoons that promised — generally falsely — a long and sunny summer. Even the evening had stayed clear and warm, and when they’d walked home from visiting Glen in the hospital, she and the kids had cut over to Broadway to get ice cream cones and watch the passing parade. Now, as she lay in bed gazing glumly out the window, she realized she’d been suckered again. It wasn’t summer yet; in fact even spring appeared to have decided the whole thing had been a mistake and invited the gloomy winter skies to take over again. Offered the opportunity, the clouds had quickly gathered, and were now occupied with drizzling their contents onto the city with, Anne suspected, the deliberate intention of drowning the good mood that had spread along Broadway last night.