John Saul - Black Lightning

“Maybe I changed my mind,” he said. Then he chuckled, but even the laugh didn’t sound right to Kevin. “Dr. Farber says I’m going to have to take at least a couple of months off work, and that I’m going to have to take up a hobby. So maybe I’ll just make your mother’s fixation on Richard Kraven my new hobby.” Once again his eyes bored into Kevin. “What do you think? Sound interesting?”

Kevin said nothing. What was going on? His father didn’t have hobbies — he didn’t even like hobbies! And then he remembered the word his father had used whenever his mom started talking about Richard Kraven.

Morbid.

That was the word. His father had always called it morbid.

So why was he suddenly so interested in Richard Kraven?

But then Kevin remembered what his mother had told him the day before yesterday, when she’d come home from talking to Dr. Farber: “It’s going to be rough for a while, kids. Your dad’s going to have to change his whole lifestyle. He’s going to have to work a lot less, and rest a lot more. And that means it’s going to be different for all of us, too. So what do you think? Can you make some adjustments? Get used to some changes around here?”

The day before yesterday, when he and Heather and his mother had all talked about it, it didn’t seem like a big deal at all. But now that he was all alone in the hospital room with his father, Kevin began to wonder. Suddenly his father didn’t seem like his father anymore. His mom had said his dad was going to be different, but if it meant his father would be mad all the time, and sounding weird, Kevin wasn’t sure how easy things were going to be after all.

“Well, how about it?” Glen asked as Kevin’s silence stretched on. “Does my new hobby sound interesting, or not?”

Kevin rose to his feet and edged toward the door. “Yeah, Dad,” he said, his eyes avoiding his father’s. “It sounds fine. And I’ll get the file for you, okay? I’ll be back in a while.”

As he left the hospital he wondered what would happen if he just sort of forgot about the file and didn’t come back at all. A couple of weeks ago he would have known exactly what would happen: his dad — the one he’d known all his life — would get mad at him for a minute, and then it would be all over. But now everything was different — since the heart attack, anything might happen.

He decided he’d better do as he’d been told.

“I mean, like, Jeez, it’s not like she was committing a crime, you know? Like, so she was turning a few tricks — so who doesn’t? This is Capitol Hill, you know? If she got paid, like, good for her, know what I mean?”

Anne Jeffers was on the sidewalk across from the building where Shawnelle Davis had both lived and conducted her business. Though she had been talking to the man of the laissez-faire sexual-economic theories for nearly twenty minutes, she still wasn’t quite certain if he’d even known Shawnelle, let alone held the bosom-buddy status to which he’d laid claim. Still, she’d let the photographer snap some pictures of him. If nothing else, they’d at least wind up decorating the bulletin boards at the Herald, complete with appropriately off-color captions. Certainly he was one of the more flamboyant of the crowd that had gathered on Boylston Street, and he’d managed to pierce parts of his body that made Anne wince simply by thinking about the pain he must have undergone. In fact, as she talked to the young man, she wondered for the first time if perhaps she and Glen might want to think about moving a little farther from the Broadway area, at least until Heather and Kevin were safely past their teen years.

When a small eddy of whispered conversation rippled through the crowd, Anne cut the rambling interview short. Working her way to the front of the crowd, she saw that the door to Shawnelle Davis’s apartment had opened and a gurney was being wheeled out, its attendants taking as much care with it as they would have had its occupant been critically ill, rather than dead for more than two days. Glad for the excuse to cut the interview short, she stepped off the curb and crossed the street, unconsciously taking on the confident manner that often got her into crime scenes long before they’d been opened to the press. This morning, though, her jogging clothes undercut the act, along with the fact that Lois Ackerly was accompanying the gurney as the attendants bore it carefully down the stairs to the street level, then wheeled it toward the waiting panel truck that would convey it to the morgue.

As the wheeled stretcher neared her, Anne was, as always, stricken by the peculiar anonymity of the body bag that hid the corpse from the eyes of the public. Rather than delicately concealing the victim’s wounds from the public, the bag had the effect of instantly making everyone who saw it wonder what it covered. Though Anne knew the modern plastic bags were far more efficient for their purpose, she still couldn’t help thinking the old-fashioned blanket had been far more humane, at least offering a kind of comfort to the victim, rather than advertising the violence of death; even after a decade of seeing them, she had never gotten used to them. Still, she had her job to do.

“Any chance of getting a quick look?” she asked the detective, who was almost as casually dressed as Anne herself.

Lois Ackerly shook her head. “Once they’re in the bag, they stay there until the M.E. takes them out.” As Anne started toward the stairs to the second floor, Ackerly stepped in front to block her way. “And the apartment is still a crime scene,” she added firmly.

“Can’t blame a girl for trying,” Anne observed, grinning, and a flicker of humor glinted in the detective’s eye.

“And you can’t blame a girl for stopping you, either. Come on, Jeffers — you know the rules.”

Anne cast a wistful eye at the second floor, but knew better than to push. In the four years she’d known Lois Ackerly — since the first day Ackerly was assigned to the Kraven killings — Anne had rarely known the detective to bend a rule, let alone break one. And letting her or anyone else not connected directly with the Seattle Police Department enter a crime scene was a rule Ackerly never even dented. “So how about answering a few questions?” Anne ventured.

Ackerly shook her head. “No time.” Turning her back, she started back up the stairs. Anne briefly considered trying to grab a few words with the detective on the stairs, but her attention was diverted as the engine of the vehicle that would take Shawnelle Davis to the morgue roared to life. Maybe she should follow it downtown and see if she could weasel her way into the autopsy. Then, from behind and above, she heard a familiar voice teasing her.

“Don’t even think about it. Reporters still can’t get into medical examinations.”

Feeling herself flush, Anne swung around and looked up to see Mark Blakemoor grinning down at her from the long gallery that provided access to all the apartments on the building’s second floor.

“So they did call out the A team,” Anne deadpanned.

“No rest for the wicked, to coin a cliché,” Blakemoor said. “Did the paper call you, or were you listening to your own trusty scanner?”

“The paper,” Anne confessed. “I gave up on the scanner after they convicted Kraven. So what’s the story? I assume there’s no connection.”

“How about a cup of coffee?” Blakemoor countered. “We’re about done here for now, and Ackerly can baby-sit the lab guys. Want to see what you can pry out of me?”

“You’re on,” Anne said. “Dutch treat, though. The press can’t be bought.”

Blakemoor made an exaggeratedly sour face. “And cops can’t even take doughnuts anymore.”