John Saul - Black Lightning

“I’m so glad you did,” he said softly.

He studied his mother carefully. She was four years older than she’d been the last time he’d seen her, but she hadn’t changed much. The same cheap polyester clothes she’d always worn, her hair still done in that silly style she wrongly thought was so sophisticated. In combination with her heavily made-up face, it gave her the look of those over-the-hill entertainers who scraped out livings in the seedier bars in downtown Las Vegas. With the perfect analytical detachment to which he’d long ago disciplined his mind, Richard Kraven tried to analyze what it could have been about this numbingly boring woman that had inspired such love — even adoration — in his brother.

Perhaps, he thought, it was because they were so much alike.

Or perhaps it was something else entirely — perhaps there was some emotion that people of the inferior intellectual status of Rory and Edna felt that was simply foreign to someone at his own level.

“You have no idea how much it means to me that you’ve come,” he said now. “The pain you must be feeling …”

Edna reached out with doughy fingers to take the hand of this wonderful man. “You have no idea,” she breathed, her voice breaking. “You just have no idea at all. I miss my Richard so much. We used to do things together, just the two of us.” Her eyes went briefly to the front window. “That wouldn’t be your motor home out there, would it?” she asked on a wistful note. “My Richard had one, you know. He used to take me up to the mountains sometimes. Just the two of us.”

A tiny smile played around the corner of his lips. “Did he?” he asked. “Well, as it happens, that is my motor home out there. And just before you arrived, I was just thinking it might be fun to go up to the mountains and do a little fishing. Perhaps you’d like to go along?”

Edna Kraven flushed scarlet. “Oh, no, I didn’t mean — Well, I couldn’t possibly impose on you that way. I just—”

“But of course you’ll come with me. I wouldn’t have it any other way.” He stood up. “I only have a few more things to put in, and we’ll be off. We can make a picnic of it.”

While Edna Kraven waited nervously in the living room, the man who had become Richard Kraven went down to the basement. He picked up the last of the boxes he’d been transferring to the motor home.

The motor home he’d rented yesterday afternoon, using Glen Jeffers’s driver’s license and credit card.

The box already contained a gas can and a box of matches, and now he added a few more objects to it.

The Makita saw.

The electrical cord with the stripped ends, with which he’d attempted to defibrillate Heather Jeffers’s cat.

The roll of plastic he’d bought yesterday morning, just before he’d visited Rory.

With the box now packed full with everything he would need, he started back up the basement stairs. How many years had he thought about using his mother as the subject for one of his experiments? But of course it had been out of the question.

After all, he only experimented on strangers.

Circumstances, though, had changed.

Now he could see no reason not to make her his subject.

“Ready?” he asked as he paused in the foyer.

Edna Kraven, thrilled at the prospect of spending the day with this charming man who was so very much like her eldest son, heaved herself off the sofa. “One of these days, I’ve just got to lose some weight,” she trilled as she moved toward the front door.

“Not at all,” he said. “I think you’re perfect the way you are. Just perfect.”

As she walked ahead of him down the steps to the motor home waiting on the street, Richard Kraven was already planning the first cut he would make.

It was mid-afternoon when Anne finally returned to her office. She felt utterly worn out, as if she’d had no sleep for at least a week, but she knew that sleeplessness had nothing to do with the exhaustion consuming her. Flopping down into her chair, she sat, head in hands, for almost a full minute, before reaching out to switch her monitor on and erase the sidebar she’d been writing when Mark Blakemoor called. The empty screen seemed to mock her after the story disappeared.

It was not just a single story that had disappeared; it was years out of her life.

She tapped at the keyboard for a few seconds and a directory scrolled down the screen, listing all the articles she had written about Richard Kraven over the years.

Richard Kraven, who was now dead and buried.

Richard Kraven, who, if Mark Blakemoor was right, had not been the man they should have been looking for.

Not been the man they tried.

Not been the man they executed.

She called up one piece after another, reading snatches of what she’d written, starting from the very beginning, when the first mutilated body had been found down in Seward Park.

The next body had turned up below Snoqualmie Falls a month later, and another one had been found near Lake Sammamish within a week. Even then there had been no particular “type” that had seemed to attract the killer, no common trait that might have triggered his urge to kill.

The path that had led to Richard Kraven was tortuous. At the time — even now — there was no direct evidence to link him to any of the murders.

No witnesses.

No bloodstains.

No murder weapon.

Slowly, though, a fuzzy image had emerged.

People reported having seen some of the victims talking to someone.

A man.

And as more and more bodies were discovered, a faint pattern did finally start to appear: most of the victims had spent considerable time in the University District. Some lived there. Some worked there. Some actually went to the university.

Then a sharper picture began to emerge, a picture of a man who had been seen talking with some of the victims.

A man whose Identikit sketch, when it was finally put together, looked a great deal like Richard Kraven.

A few people had mentioned having seen a motor home near some of the places where bodies were found.

Richard Kraven had owned a motor home, which he’d used—

Anne felt her stomach tighten as she remembered, even without reading it, what Richard Kraven had used his motor home for.

Fishing trips!

Sheila Harrar had mentioned it just a few days ago. When her son had left their apartment in Yesler Terrace the day he disappeared, he’d told his mother he was going fishing. Fishing with Richard Kraven!

Was that why she’d had such an angry reaction yesterday when she’d seen that motor home parked on their block?

Because she associated motor homes with Richard Kraven?

And was that why she’d been so negative when Glen had said he was going to take up fishing? Just because it had been Richard Kraven’s hobby?

But that was ridiculous. Thousands of people — hundreds of thousands of people — loved to go fishing. There was even a guy over at the Times — was it the book editor? — who had suddenly taken up fly fishing. If that guy could do it, why shouldn’t Glen?

Her thoughts tumbled over each other, and suddenly she remembered that day while he was still in the hospital when Glen had asked Kevin to bring him her file on Richard Kraven.

Why?

Glen had always thought her own fascination with the serial killer was morbid; why had he suddenly become interested in Kraven?

So interested in him that he’d even taken up his hobby?

Easy, Anne, she told herself. This is the way people go crazy. No matter what Mark Blakemoor might think, Glen’s only taking up a new hobby, just like the doctor ordered.

But then a new thought popped into her mind, a thought so ludicrous it made her laugh out loud.