John Saul - Black Lightning

Not until he’d killed at least two more people.

Maybe even three.

The newscaster’s words still echoing in his head, the man thought feverishly. How soon should he strike again?

A month?

A week?

Once again he felt the rush he experienced as he’d ravaged Joyce Cottrell’s body, and now he shivered in anticipation. Perhaps he wouldn’t wait even a week. Perhaps, now that he understood the pure joy and power of the act of killing, he’d strike again within a few days.

If he could find the right victim.

The man was still savoring the feeling, still reveling in the exaltation of what he’d done, when the phone rang. His hand trembling, he picked it up.

“Is that you?” he heard his mother’s voice demand. “Why aren’t you at work?”

The man felt his exhilaration begin to fade. “I called in sick, Mama.”

“Well, I know that,” his mother told him.

Why couldn’t she use his name? Why couldn’t she ever use his name, unless she was criticizing him to someone else?

“They told me that at Boeing,” she went on. “Did you hear the radio this morning? That reporter found a body in Volunteer Park.”

As the man listened numbly, his mother talked on and on. She was talking about his body, the woman he’d killed, but she wasn’t talking about him!

Well, maybe one of these days he’d just stop her from talking about anything at all.

Glen hadn’t intended to waste two hours of the morning gossiping with his neighbors about Joyce Cottrell’s death, but that was the way it turned out. When the first police car arrived to set up the yellow tape around Joyce’s property, only a couple of people crossed the street to watch. Within ten minutes, though — and not merely coincidentally with the arrival of two more blue-and-whites and one unmarked sedan whose very plainness proclaimed it a police vehicle — a dozen people were clustered on the sidewalk. One of them finally came up and knocked on the Jefferses’ front door. It was Marge Hurley, whose family had moved in across the street and three doors down four years ago. Marge had been unsuccessfully attempting to organize block parties ever since, as though operating under the illusion that Capitol Hill was the same kind of cozy cul-de-sac which she claimed to be fleeing when she left the great suburban morass of Lake Washington’s Eastside.

Refusing to accept a simple statement that Anne had found Joyce Cottrell’s body in Volunteer Park that morning, Marge drew Glen first out onto the porch, then into the midst of the crowd on the sidewalk. There, he found himself repeating the tale while his neighbors, having received no information from the police inside the house, proceeded to speculate about what might have happened. That Joyce Cottrell had been the neighborhood’s best-known eccentric for years did not stand her in good stead now that she had been murdered. Her neighbors disassembled her character bit by bit, until soon someone suggested that she’d been dealing in drugs (perhaps stolen from the pharmacy at Group Health?) or perhaps even in pornography — now, that would certainly explain why she kept people out of her house! Once all the permutations of Joyce’s possible venality had been thoroughly explored, speculation turned to the matter of who might have killed her. Immediate neighbors were instantly dismissed: “We all know each other in this neighborhood,” Marge Hurley insisted after introducing herself to the dozen people she’d never met before.

At last, tired of the gossip and guesswork, Glen retreated to the quiet of his house, only to hear the doorbell ring a few minutes later. He ignored it at first, assuming it was Marge Hurley wanting him to repeat his tale of the body’s discovery one more time, but the ringing was insistent. Finally he opened the door. A man with a police badge stood on the porch.

The man smiled. “So we meet at last.” When Glen only looked at him blankly, the smile faltered and the man reddened slightly. “You are Glen Jeffers?” Glen nodded, but still said nothing. “I’m Detective Blakemoor. Mark Blakemoor?”

Finally, Glen got it. Pulling the door open, he gestured the detective into the foyer. “Anne’s friend,” he said. His eyes flicked toward the house next door and the crowd of onlookers, smaller now, whose attention had momentarily shifted from Joyce Cottrell’s house to the Jefferses’. “But I assume this isn’t a social call.”

“I wish it were.” Mark Blakemoor sighed. “I’m afraid I have to ask you a few questions about last night.”

Glen nodded, and led the detective to the kitchen, where he poured them each a cup of coffee. “I’m not supposed to be drinking this, and I’m counting on you not to tell Anne. Deal?”

Mark Blakemoor felt himself blush, but Glen seemed not to notice. “Deal,” he agreed, accepting the coffee. “Basically, I just need to know if you heard anything last night.”

Glen hesitated. Instead of answering the question directly, he asked one of his own. “What time?”

Blakemoor shrugged. “No particular time,” he said. “But we know the Cottrell woman left work at eleven, and walked home. Even if she stopped for coffee, she would have gotten home by midnight, probably a half hour earlier. So let’s say any time after eleven-fifteen.”

Still Glen hesitated, remembering the image of Joyce Cottrell that had come into his mind as soon as he’d heard a woman’s body had been found in the park. Then he shook his head. “I wish I could help you, but I don’t think I can. Was she killed in the house?”

“Upstairs, in her bedroom,” Blakemoor told him. “There aren’t any signs of a forced entry, but that doesn’t mean much. A lot of people hide keys around their houses, and a whole lot of creeps know exactly where to look for them. What about friends? Did she have many?”

“None at all, that I know of,” Glen replied. “If you talked to any of the people out on the sidewalk, you must already know that Joyce was an odd bird.”

Mark Blakemoor’s expression gave no clue to his thoughts. “Odd?” he asked blandly. “How do you mean?”

“Just — well, odd.” Glen floundered, wishing he hadn’t used the word. “She was the kind of woman you assumed was living in a house full of trash. You know — saving everything, letting stuff pile up. She never seemed to go anywhere except work, and she sure never invited anyone into the house.” He shrugged helplessly. “I guess we just assumed …” he began again, but his voice trailed off.

“Well, you assumed wrong,” Blakemoor said, remembering the pristine condition of the interior of the house.

Pristine, anyway, except for the bloodstains. He had found them not only in the bedroom, where it was obvious that Joyce Cottrell had been killed and partially disemboweled, but through most of the rest of the house as well. The killer had made no attempt to keep her body from dripping blood as he carried her from the bedroom down the stairs, through the dining room and kitchen to the utility room, then out the back door. From there on, the rain had washed the trail away. “If anything, she was a neat freak.”

“So much for Anne’s and my judgment of character, huh?”

“A lot of people aren’t what they seem to be,” Mark Blakemoor observed. “But you still haven’t told me if you heard or saw anything last night.” Still Glen hesitated. This time Blakemoor picked up on it. “Did you hear something last night?” he pressed.

Glen started to shake his head, then changed his mind. Why not just tell the detective exactly what had happened? “I’m not sure,” he said. “I don’t think so, but on the other hand, something weird happened when I went up to the park to look for Anne this morning.” As clearly as he could, he told Blakemoor exactly why he’d gone to the park, and about the strange image of Joyce Cottrell that had come into his mind the moment he heard that a woman’s body had been found in the bushes.