John Saul - Black Lightning

“How long do you want my file?” she asked, her voice sounding almost amused now.

His eyes went back to the thick file. So he’d asked for it. Why?

“I don’t know,” he replied, still not lying, but still not admitting that he seemed to have lost most of the day. But why had he even wanted it? He’d always thought Anne’s fascination with the Kraven case bordered on the morbid, which she well knew. “I guess I just thought as long as I was lying here, I might as well try to figure out what you found so interesting about him,” he improvised. “Maybe I’ll stay up all night reading it.”

A few minutes later, after he’d said good night to Anne, he picked up the file, not really intending to read it but half thinking that the motion would jar his memory. He paused, the thick folder in his lap, then, instead of putting the file aside, opened it.

He began paging through it, and as he scanned the articles, he experienced an odd sense of déjà vu.

All the material seemed very familiar, though he had no memory of having read it before. Then, as he turned one of the pages, he froze. He was staring at a photocopy of an article that he knew Anne must have written, though it had no byline:

Richard Kraven: Animal Abuser?

Former neighbors of Richard Kraven report that the suspected serial killer was a habitual torturer of small animals, even when he was as young as twelve years old.

Martha Demming, 76, who lived for nearly two decades in the house next door to the South Seattle residence still occupied by Edna Kraven, reports that on at least two occasions she witnessed Richard Kraven — then in his very early adolescence — stalking his mother’s pet cat.

“I don’t want to say he was torturing it,” Miss Demming stated in a telephone interview, “but [the cat] always seemed to be afraid of him.”

Later in the same interview, Miss Demming reported that there were rumors the body of the cat had been found by another neighbor who “thought it had been electrocuted, or something.” The neighbor who reputedly found the cat, Wilbur Fankenburg, died three years ago at the age of 56, and could not confirm Miss Demming’s report.

Glen Jeffers read the article through twice, small bits and pieces of the nightmare that had awakened him at last coming back. Closing the file and setting it on the bed table, he leaned back into the pillows.

The origin of the nightmare, at least, was now apparent. Obviously he’d read at least part of Anne’s file during the day.

Why, then, didn’t he remember it?

He was still pondering that question as he sank into a deep sleep a few minutes later.

While the night brought a deep and peaceful sleep to Glen Jeffers, to Anne it brought only tortured wakefulness. Glen’s call had come just as she’d finally convinced herself that his peculiar behavior when she’d visited him at the hospital that afternoon hadn’t meant anything at all.

After all, Dr. Farber had warned her the day after Glen’s heart attack that nothing would be the same. For some people, he’d said, a heart attack such as Glen’s brought on a complete personality change. One of his patients who had been a Type-A personality his entire life suddenly became a Type-B practically overnight. Impatient people often found themselves no longer bothered by things that had driven them crazy before the attack, and easygoing people could just as easily turn cranky. It was the latter that Anne discovered late that afternoon when she’d gone to visit Glen before coming home to fix the kids’ dinner. Her normally sunny husband had been propped up in bed, a file — one of her files, it turned out — spread out around him, and when she leaned over to kiss him, he barely responded at all. When she asked him why he had suddenly become interested in Richard Kraven, he replied that he’d just become curious about her own fascination with the case. “And you know what?” he asked, finally looking up from the file. “He was an interesting guy. You always made him out to be some kind of monster, but—”

Anne had stared at Glen in shock, barely able to believe her ears. Only last week he’d said the only legitimate reason for her to go to the execution was to “make sure the bastard’s really dead.” Now he was an “interesting guy”?

“He was a monster,” she’d interjected. “God only knows how many people he killed. And he didn’t just kill them, Glen. He dissected them!” When Glen had glanced up from the story he was reading — one she herself had written, though the way he was talking it was as if she knew nothing about Richard Kraven! — he almost looked angry. She’d dropped the subject right then and there, knowing the last thing Glen needed was to get upset. But for the rest of the visit, she’d felt as though he was barely putting up with her. Finally, she cut the visit short, since Glen hadn’t even acknowledged her presence for almost ten minutes.

On the way out she’d stopped and spoken to the nurse, who assured her that patients often preferred not to have visitors at all, that so much of their energy was taken up with getting better that they simply had none left to entertain anyone. Anne had tried to let it go at that, but still found herself worrying all evening, especially after hearing what had happened when Kevin visited his father that morning. And when Glen finally called, though he’d sounded more like himself, she’d been able to tell that something was wrong. Despite his apology for the way he’d treated both her and Kevin, she had the strange sense that he hadn’t really known why she was upset with him. And ever since the call, the sense of nervousness she’d only just managed to assuage had come flooding back.

Now, setting aside the stack of notes she’d been working on — notes gleaned from hours of work in the storerooms of the Public Safety Building — she abandoned her desk, knowing there was no chance of getting any more work done that evening. Leaving the small study that Glen had carved out of one end of the cavernous living room, she glanced at Kevin, who was sprawled out on the sofa, reading a book while the TV droned unheeded in the background. “If you’re not watching the TV, you might turn it off,” she commented.

“I am watching it,” Kevin replied, not even looking up from his book.

Anne decided not to bother arguing with Kevin. If pressed, he would be perfectly capable of telling her all the details of a plot he had seemed to be ignoring. It was a talent he’d inherited from her own father, whom she knew for a fact had been able to read a book, follow a conversation going on in the same room, and still catch any errors she made while practicing the piano in another room. It was a trait that had both impressed and annoyed her in her father. In Kevin she often found it totally confounding, since she knew the ability undermined all her reasons for him not to watch TV while he did his homework. “I’m going over to the hospital to see your father.”

Kevin finally glanced up from his book, and Anne knew her voice had betrayed her worry.

“Is something wrong?”

Anne shook her head. “I just feel like taking a walk, so I thought I’d look in on him.”

“Okay.”

“Tell Heather not to go out.”

Kevin rolled his eyes. “Jeez, Mom, I’m not a baby. I’m here by myself all the time.”

But not at night, Anne thought silently. Rather than voice the thought and expose herself to another of her son’s scornful looks, she leaned over and kissed him on the forehead. “Be back in an hour. Stay out of trouble, okay?”

The night air had grown chilly, and as she headed down Sixteenth East, Anne shoved her hands deep in her pockets. When she came to Mercer Street, where the neighborhood started to deteriorate, she turned right, cut over to Fifteenth, then went south again to Thomas Street, entering the Group Health complex through the emergency entrance, then threading her way through the corridors until she finally came to the elevators that would take her up to the Critical Care Unit on the third floor. Using the red phone in the family room, she identified herself, and a moment later Annette Brady appeared.