John Saul - Black Lightning

It is, however, believed that his assailant was familiar to Rory Kraven, as no signs of a struggle or of forcible entry were found at the murder scene. Three neighbors, whose names are being withheld at their own request, denied hearing anything unusual yesterday morning. Police are requesting that anyone having any information regarding this murder contact the Homicide Division at…

As the phone rang, Glen Jeffers looked up from the copy of the Herald that lay unfolded on the kitchen table. He waited to see if either Heather or Kevin would answer on the extension in the upstairs hall, then finally reached for the wall phone mounted over the end of the counter.

“Hello?”

“I want to speak to Anne Jeffers.” The voice spiking through the phone — a woman’s voice — made the hair on the back of Glen’s neck stand on end. “Is she there?”

He felt his flesh crawl as goose bumps broke out on his arms. “I — No, she isn’t,” Glen said. “She went out—” He cut his words short. He had no idea to whom he was speaking, but something about the woman’s voice made him feel … what?

Frightened? Not quite.

Nervous? Closer, but still not quite right.

Filled with a sense of unease, he decided that until he knew exactly who the caller was and what she wanted with Anne, he wasn’t about to tell her that his wife, heedless of recent events, had gone jogging in Volunteer Park. “May I take a message?” he asked.

There was a moment of hesitation, then: “This is Edna Kraven.”

A clammy sweat broke out over Glen’s body, and he felt a wave of dizziness. He reached out to the counter to steady himself, but as his fingers closed on the hard surface, the dizziness worsened. Blackness began to close around him, as if he were about to faint.

The voice that replied to Edna Kraven’s self-identification had changed.

“Oh, Mrs. Kraven,” the voice said smoothly into the telephone. “My wife was talking about you only a few minutes ago. I’m sure she’ll want to talk to you. Perhaps we can arrange something?”

A buzzing … There was a buzzing in Glen’s ear, and he felt utterly confused. Then his mind cleared, the last of the dizziness left him, and he began to remember. He’d been drinking a cup of coffee and reading the paper when the phone had rung. He’d answered it, and someone — a woman — had asked for Anne. He frowned, trying to remember. He’d gotten dizzy then, and now couldn’t remember if the woman on the phone had identified herself or not.

“Hello?” he said now, holding the receiver against his ear. But all he heard was the repeated buzz of a phone that’s been off the hook too long. He frowned and hung up the receiver.

This morning, he decided, he would definitely call Gordy Farber and tell him what was happening.

The latest blackouts, the steadily worsening nightmares, the memories he was having of things he couldn’t possibly have seen … If Gordy said he had to go back into the hospital, so be it. Too many strange things were happening to him, and yesterday, when he’d blacked out at the top of the Jeffers Building, he could have killed himself.

But when Anne came back from her morning jog a few minutes later and, seeing the worried look on his face and the sheen of sweat on his skin, asked him how he was, he only shrugged and insisted nothing was wrong. And though he could see the hurt in her eyes when she left for work an hour later after seeing Heather and Kevin off to school, he found himself unable to do or to say anything to soothe her pain.

Nor did he call Gordy Farber.

Anne stared at the terminal screen in front of her. She knew the story she was working on was good — a sidebar piece on the opposite personalities of Rory and Richard Kraven in which she intended to suggest that the brothers might have shared some kind of “killing gene” that had led both of them to become serial murderers. Yet, she was finding it almost impossible to concentrate. It wasn’t just her utter confusion about what had happened to Rory Kraven, but everything else in her life, too.

Glen was on her mind, his odd behavior gnawing at her, first Joyce Cottrell’s bizarre account of seeing him naked, then the cat. Even something as trivial as the fishing fly bothered her. What’s more, the Glen Jeffers she’d fallen in love with wouldn’t have sent her off to work this morning without so much as a kiss, let alone a conversation. A gulf was forming between them; every day she could feel it growing wider.

Abandoning her computer, Anne picked up the phone and dialed Gordy Farber’s number. Catching him just before his first appointment of the day, she quickly related her fears. “I know you warned me that he’d be different, but I never expected this,” she said. A pause, then: “Sometimes I feel like I’m living with a stranger. And it’s not just his attitude, Dr. Farber. He’s doing some things that—”

“I’ll call him,” Gordy Farber cut in. In his office, the doctor glanced at the clock; he was already behind schedule, and Anne sounded ready to go on talking for another half hour. “I’ll call him right away. Maybe I can squeeze him in this morning.”

Anne felt her tension ease a bit. “Thanks, Dr. Farber. I’d appreciate that. And call me back after you talk to him, okay?” Saying good-bye, she was just hanging up the phone to go back to her story when the second line rang. She punched the flashing red button. “Anne Jeffers.”

“It’s Mark.” There was a slight hesitation, then: “Mark Blakemoor.”

Anne smiled at the hesitation. Was he really afraid she wouldn’t recognize his voice after all the years she’d been covering the Kraven case? Then her smile faded as she realized that a warm glow had spread through her the moment she’d heard him. The same warm glow she’d always felt when Glen used to call her. Used to? What was she thinking? Flustered, she covered her nervousness with a businesslike tone. “I recognize your voice, Mark. What’s up?”

“What’s your morning look like?”

Anne frowned. It wasn’t like the detective to beat around the bush, and now there was a note in his voice that she’d never heard before. More than simply uncertain, he sounded downright nervous. “I’m not sure,” she said carefully. “I have a lot to—”

“Cancel it,” Blakemoor told her, and now Anne felt a twinge of annoyance. Who did he think he was? Then he went on and her irritation evaporated. “Look, I can’t talk about this over the phone — in fact, I probably shouldn’t talk to you about it at all. But I figure with this one, you have a right to know, at least off-the-record. Get it?”

Anne got it. Whatever he wanted to talk about had to do with Rory Kraven’s murder, and it was definitely not going to be for public consumption. Then why call her at all? He knew how much she hated it when sources went off-the-record, encumbering her with information she couldn’t use.

“Anne, this is important,” Blakemoor said, knowing exactly what her hesitation meant, and letting her know it. “Believe me, if I didn’t think this was something you need to know right now, I wouldn’t be calling you.”

“Where and what time?” Anne asked, making up her mind.

“Red Robin in half an hour?”

“See you there.”

When she walked into the restaurant on Fourth Avenue twenty minutes later, Mark Blakemoor was already waiting for her, his face expressionless, a manila envelope clutched in his hand. Taking her elbow, he steered her along as the hostess led them to a booth at the back of the room bordered by empty tables on both sides. “Thanks, Millie,” he said. “I really need the privacy today.”

The hostess smiled. “It’s okay, but I can’t hold both the tables into lunch.”