John Saul - Black Lightning

Lois shook her head in a combination of sympathy and disbelief. “That woman lent new meaning to the phrase ‘Get a life,’ ” she said. “Not only can’t I find anyone who will admit to being her friend, I can hardly find anyone who even knew her. All I’ve found out is that she went to work and she went home. At work, she did her job and kept to herself. She didn’t have any friends — even took her breaks by herself. It’s like she was a complete cipher.”

“Same with her personnel jacket,” Blakemoor agreed. “Ever seen a record with no pluses and no minuses?” He tossed it across, and Lois Ackerly flipped it open, scanning through the evaluation forms that Blakemoor had already found abnormally dull.

“No friends and no enemies.” Ackerly sighed, dropping the file back onto her partner’s desk. “No gossip, either. It’s like she existed in a void.”

“So who killed her?” Blakemoor asked. As he asked the question, another image came into his mind. Glen Jeffers. He had been thinking about Jeffers all afternoon. Though he was sure there was something Anne’s husband hadn’t told him, he’d finally come to the conclusion that even if he wanted Glen out of the way — and he kept insisting to himself that he didn’t, not really — it still didn’t add up. Whoever did the Cottrell woman would have been drenched with blood, and if she’d screamed even once, she damned near would have had to awaken someone in the house next door. If your whole family was asleep in that house, would you risk that? Mark Blakemoor didn’t think so. In fact, he was damned well sure of it. Still, he might just ask Glen Jeffers for a set of prints, if for no other reason than to eliminate him as the person who’d left a few smudged but matchable traces in Cottrell’s bathroom, where he’d apparently washed his hands. “Who killed her?” he repeated, sighing in frustration.

“Same creep who did Shawnelle Davis?” Lois Ackerly suggested. “You know Anne Jeffers is going to tie them together, and you know we’re going to have to deal with it.”

Blakemoor leaned back in his chair, propped his feet up on the desk and clasped his hands behind his head. “So what are you suggesting?” he asked, and it was clear to Ackerly that he was settling in for a long discussion of the case. “Is Anne right? Are you starting to buy her nutty idea that maybe Richard Kraven really didn’t do all the others by himself, and that all that shit’s starting up again? Or is it just a copycat? Except if it’s a copycat, how come he dipped his wick in Cottrell but not in Davis?”

Before Lois Ackerly could answer, the phone on her partner’s desk rang. Grateful for the opportunity to stall on Blakemoor’s questions, she snatched up the receiver before Mark’s feet had dropped back to the floor. As she listened, a frown creased her forehead, and for a moment Blakemoor had a sinking feeling that another corpse had turned up. But then the frown cleared, replaced by a broad smile.

“A cat?” the detective asked. “Come on, Phil — what are you calling us for? We don’t do cats. We’re homicide, remember? Not — what would it be? Felicide?” Clamping her hand over the mouthpiece, she spoke to Blakemoor. “Would you believe they’re calling us about a dead—” But even before she finished the sentence her smile faded and she swore softly. “Oh, Jesus,” she said. “Okay, we’ll catch it. We’re on our way.”

Mark Blakemoor stared at her in disbelief as she dropped the receiver back onto the cradle. “A cat?” he demanded. “Did I just hear you tell them we’d go out on a dead cat?”

Lois Ackerly nodded unhappily. “It’s not just any dead cat,” she replied. “It’s Anne Jeffers’s cat.”

“Anne’s?” Blakemoor echoed. “And she asked for us?”

Lois Ackerly nodded. “From what Phil said, it sounds like it’s cut up the same way Cottrell and Davis were.”

Mark Blakemoor swore silently. If it were true — and he hoped it wasn’t — he was pretty sure he knew exactly what it meant: they didn’t simply have a serial killer loose; they had a serial killer who was going to start playing grisly games.

But playing with whom?

The police, or his next victim?

There was another possibility, of course: it could be someone’s idea of a sick joke. After all, Anne’s name had been on the radio all day long, with every newscaster in town talking about the oddity of a reporter discovering a body. If someone didn’t like Anne, what better way to throw a scare into her than to kill her cat the same way her neighbor had been killed? What else could she think but that she was being warned that she might be the next victim? Christ, she must be falling apart! A wave of fury at whoever had done this to Anne rose within him, and for the briefest of moments Mark wondered if he should take himself off this whole case. But he knew he wouldn’t — if anything, he would work even harder to find this particular creep.

It wasn’t until they were in the car, headed for Capitol Hill, that Ackerly glanced over at him, her lips curving in an ironic smile. “Well, at least you don’t have to go home.”

Blakemoor felt himself reddening. “I don’t mind going home,” he muttered gruffly.

“Which is why you always manage to start a conversation at just a minute or two before five, right?” Lois Ackerly observed, then relented. “Hey, it’s okay. Loneliness is a bummer. If I didn’t have Jake—”

“Look, can we talk about something else?” Blakemoor broke in.

But they finished the drive in silence. They had pulled up in front of the Jefferses’ house when Lois spoke again. “If you want, I can take this one alone,” she offered.

Shit! Blakemoor thought. Is it that obvious? “I don’t know what you’re talking about,” he said out loud, getting out of the car and slamming the door harder than necessary. Taking the steep flight of steps up to the porch two at a time, he was about to ring the bell when the door opened and Anne Jeffers let him in, her ashen face making clear just how frightened she was.

“I suppose you think I’ve really gone around the bend this time,” she said with a not very successful attempt to make the words sound bantering.

“I don’t even know what happened yet,” Mark replied, hoping nothing in his own voice betrayed his urge to put his arms around her. “What happened?” he asked as Lois Ackerly stepped into the foyer. In the living room he could see a teenage girl who he assumed was Anne’s daughter huddled on the sofa, crying, while a black girl of about the same age tried to comfort her.

“In back,” Anne said quietly, leading the two detectives through the dining room and kitchen, then outside into the backyard. As they crossed the lawn, Mark Blakemoor caught himself glancing over at the house next door and wondering if it were really possible that there was a connection between the brutal murder that had occurred there the previous night and the cat that now lay dead behind Anne Jeffers’s house.

Both Glen and Kevin were sitting on the wooden decking that supported the garbage cans. As Anne and the two detectives approached, the little boy jumped to his feet.

“She’s right there!” he exclaimed, pointing to the portion of the cat that protruded from beneath the deck. “Boots found her, just like he found Mrs. Cot—”

“That’s enough.” Anne pulled her son to her and put her arms protectively around his shoulders.

“Has anyone touched it?” Mark asked, squatting down to take a closer look at the cat’s corpse.

Kevin shook his head. “I didn’t,” he reported. “And I wouldn’t let Heather or Rayette, either. I told them—”

“Maybe you should go back into the house, honey,” Anne suggested.