John Saul - Black Lightning

“Got it.” He ordered coffee for both of them, then waited until the hostess had left before fixing his eyes on Anne. “How’s your stomach?” he asked.

Anne’s eyes automatically shifted to the envelope that lay on the table between them. She felt a slight queasiness in anticipation of what might be in it. “All right, I guess,” she countered. “How strong does it have to be?”

The detective tilted his head noncommittally. “I’m going to show you some pictures nobody outside the department has seen,” he told her. “They’re pictures of some of the people whose deaths have been attributed to Richard Kraven.”

“ ‘Attributed’?” Anne repeated, her antenna instantly rising. “Mark, what’s going on?”

The big homicide detective met her gaze. “I need your word that none of what goes on here leaves this table. I didn’t show you anything, you didn’t see anything, you didn’t hear anything, you didn’t even infer anything.”

“Then why are you talking to me at all?”

Even in the subdued light of the restaurant, Anne could see Mark’s face redden. “Because I’m worried about you, and I guess I think you have a right to know what I know.”

Anne felt her eyes moisten, and had to restrain herself from reaching out and putting her hand on his. “All right,” she agreed. “Let’s talk. You have my promise that nothing leaves this table.”

The detective opened the envelope and pulled out a photograph, which he slid across to Anne. It was an eight-by-ten glossy, and it was in color.

It was a photograph of a crime scene; a man’s body, its nakedness only partially hidden in a clump of rhododendrons, was sprawled on the ground, the arms akimbo, one leg bent underneath the other.

The chest was laid open, the heart and lungs torn out.

“Eugene MacIntyre,” Anne said quietly as her stomach threatened to rebel at the carnage committed on the body. “Victim Number Six, wasn’t he?”

Mark sighed heavily. “Correct. And this,” he said, “is what the medical examiner found when he did the autopsy.” He shoved another picture across the table, reflexively glancing around as if to make sure no one was watching them.

Anne reached out and turned the photograph so it was right side up. It was a composite of four shots, showing the thoracic cavity of Eugene MacIntyre — with all the internal organs removed — in successive degrees of enlargement. It was the fourth picture that instantly caught Anne’s attention. It showed no more than a few square inches of the inner surface of the dorsal area of MacIntyre’s chest.

Etched into the tissue were two perfectly formed marks:

Black lightning. They looked exactly like two tiny bolts of black lightning.

As Anne gazed silently at the grotesque monogram, Mark passed her another picture, then another and another. All of them were the same: composite shots, each frame an enlargement of the one before, zooming in on the dorsal area of the thoracic cavity, the last of each series finally focusing on the mark of the man who had presumably killed the person the pictures portrayed. A grotesque signature carved in blood.

“All of them?” Anne asked dully. “He did this to all of them?”

The detective nodded. “It was the one thing we didn’t let get outside the task force. It was our ace in the hole, and we kept it that way.” His eyes fixed on her. “Tell me the truth, Anne. Did you ever know anything about this? Even hear any rumors of it?”

Anne didn’t have to think about her answer. “Never.” She could barely breathe.

“Then you’d better look at this,” Blakemoor said, taking the last picture out of the envelope. “These were taken last night during the autopsy on Rory Kraven.” As he slid the photograph across the table, Anne found herself wishing there were some way she could avoid looking at it, though she knew there wasn’t. She turned the picture toward her.

The same composite, but this time the first view was of Rory Kraven’s entire body. Then the enlargements began, culminating in the same chilling close-up of Richard Kraven’s terrifying lightning monogram.

Except that it was impossible.

“But we saw him die,” Anne whispered, her words strangling in her constricting throat. “For God’s sake, Mark, we were there! We watched him die!”

“We watched Richard Kraven die,” Mark Blakemoor agreed, his voice dull. “But we didn’t watch whoever committed these murders die.”

Anne sank back against the banquette, trying to grasp what it meant.

But of course the meaning was obvious: she’d been wrong. All of them had been wrong. “What about the notes?” she asked, desperately grasping at the only straw available. “They have to be forgeries. If this guy could forge Richard Kraven’s handwriting, surely he could—” She went silent, recognizing the flaw in her own logic.

“The only person who knew about the monogram was the person who did the killings,” Mark Blakemoor said, uttering the very thought that had just silenced Anne.

Her mind raced. There had to be an answer — there had to be! “An accomplice,” she blurted. “If Richard Kraven had an accomplice—”

“It won’t wash,” Mark interrupted. “I already thought about it. Serial killers just don’t have accomplices. It’s like masturbation — it’s a solitary practice.”

“Bonnie and Clyde—” Anne began. “The Manson Family—”

“Not the same thing. Bonnie and Clyde were bank robbers, pure and simple. Violent, but still bank robbers. The Manson outfit was a cult. With cults, nothing ever stays a secret. Sooner or later, someone talks. And with this one, we’ve never heard a peep out of anyone. No rumors, no anything. Just Richard Kraven’s insistence that he never committed a crime.”

Anne’s gaze fixed on him. “And now it looks like he was telling the truth?” But it was impossible! He’d been convicted! “What about his trial?”

“I talked to the prosecutor. They found the same marks on the bodies in his jurisdiction, and they kept them just as quiet as we did, for exactly the same reason. You have to have something the crazies don’t know, or you spend all your time sorting out phony confessions.”

Anne felt as if she’d been struck in the stomach with a heavy object. What had she done? How could she have been so completely wrong? She tried to tell herself it hadn’t been just her — the whole task force had been certain that Richard Kraven was the man they were after.

But it was she who had latched onto Richard Kraven when he’d first come under suspicion, she who had convicted him in the press long before he’d even been put to trial. She who had insisted over and over again that only the death penalty could protect the public from him.

“What does it mean?” she asked, but even as she uttered the question, she knew the answer: Karma. Divine retribution. Ever since the day of Richard Kraven’s execution, her world had begun to come apart. First Glen’s heart attack, then the changes in him that had made him a stranger to her.

Now this.

She had no one to blame but herself. She had destroyed an innocent man, and now she had to pay for what she’d done.

“It means that whoever Richard Kraven took the fall for is still out there,” Blakemoor replied, sensing Anne’s pain and finally reaching out to cover her hand with his own. “And given that he chose to sign Rory’s body, I’d say he’s planning to resume his career right where he left it while he took a sabbatical to watch Richard Kraven take the rap for him.”

Anne heard the words, knew they had to be true, but something inside her still refused to accept them. Something was wrong with the whole thing. Or was she simply incapable of admitting she’d been wrong? Was she so consumed with hubris that she couldn’t even accept facts?