John Saul - Black Lightning

Kevin’s expression cleared instantly. “Can we go to the kite store?”

“We’ll see,” Anne temporized. “Get your jacket while I tell your dad where we’re going.”

The afternoon light was beginning to fade, giving the broad brick expanse of Pioneer Square a dismal aspect that was only intensified by the chill drizzle falling from the slate clouds gathered overhead. “When can we go home, Mom?” Kevin complained, clutching his newly purchased kite in one hand while trying to pull his other one free from his mother’s grasp.

“In a little while,” Anne promised. But it was the third time she’d said that, and she could tell Kevin didn’t believe her. And why should he? They’d just kept moving around while she asked one person after another where she might find Sheila Harrar. She finally interrupted her search for a stop at the kite shop, but that had only served to shift Kevin’s interest from the woman for whom they were searching to the kite he was now impatiently waiting to try out.

The conversation about the fishing trip had gone no better than the search for Sheila Harrar; all Kevin had admitted was that Glen had been “acting funny,” but she hadn’t been able to find out much more. “I don’t know,” Kevin kept saying, no matter how she’d phrased her questions. “He kept looking at me funny, that’s all. And then he made me go down the river and fish by myself.”

“By yourself?” Anne echoed. “He actually sent you off alone?”

Kevin nodded. “Then he went across the river and started messing around in some rocks, but when I wanted to come over and see what he was doing, he wouldn’t let me. That’s when we came home.”

That was all, but it had been enough to make her start worrying all over again.

Now, as the rain fell harder and a bolt of lightning shot across the sky, instantly followed by a crash of thunder, she wondered if maybe she shouldn’t give up the search for Sheila Harrar. If she came back tomorrow morning, she might even catch the woman in her room. She was about to head for the parking lot where she’d left the Volvo when a familiar figure rose up off one of the benches and shuffled toward the Grand Central Arcade. Her hand tightening on Kevin’s, Anne hurried after the figure.

“Mrs. Harrar?” she called. “Sheila?” The figure paused, turning slowly to gaze at Anne, and for a moment Anne thought she’d made a mistake. Then the woman’s lips curved in a smile and she shambled toward them.

It took no more than a second for Anne to realize that Sheila was drunk. Very drunk.

“I know you,” Sheila said as she neared Anne and Kevin. Her words were slurred and her eyes were bloodshot. “You came to see me, didn’t you? You want to buy me a bottle of wine?”

“How about if I buy you some coffee, Sheila?” Anne countered. “And maybe a cinnamon bun?”

Sheila seemed to consider the possibility of arguing, then shrugged. “Sure. Shouldn’t drink anyway. Danny wouldn’t like it.” Her eyes cleared slightly. “You come to tell me about Danny?” she asked.

“I — Why don’t we just get some coffee first?” Anne said. Taking Sheila’s elbow, she guided her into the Grand Central Arcade and found a table, ignoring the glares of the people around her. “Wait here,” she told Sheila and Kevin. “I’ll go get some coffee and buns.”

Ten minutes later Sheila had consumed most of the cup of coffee and half of a cinnamon bun. The doughy bun seemed to have soaked up some of the alcohol in her stomach, and her eyes had cleared a bit. At last Anne pulled the knife Glen had found out of her pocket and laid it on the table. “Do you recognize this, Sheila?”

Sheila Harrar stared at the turquoise-inlaid knife for a long time, then reached out with trembling fingers and picked it up. She turned it over and over, gazing at it. “Danny’s,” she finally breathed. “It’s Danny’s.” She looked up at Anne. “Where? Where’d you get it?”

“Are you absolutely sure it’s Danny’s?” Anne asked, ignoring Sheila’s questions.

Sheila nodded, then tried to pry the blade open. “It’s his,” she insisted. “I can show you—” Her trembling fingers lost their grip on the knife and it clattered to the floor. Kevin slid off his seat, retrieved the knife and opened it.

“There,” Sheila said, touching the blade with her finger. “His initials. See?”

Anne leaned forward, peering at the knife. At first she saw nothing, but then she was able to make out two barely visible letters etched into the metal of the blade: DH.

“See?” Sheila asked. “It’s his!” Now she looked at Anne once more, her eyes pleading. “Please — where did you get it? How did you find it?”

“I didn’t,” Anne said. “My husband did. He went fishing up on the Snoqualmie and found it.” A pile of rocks, Kevin had said. Glen was digging in a pile of rocks on the other side of the river. “I–I’m not sure exactly where,” she said.

Then Kevin spoke. “I can tell you,” he said. “I know exactly where it was.”

For the first time in almost two decades, the workbench area in the basement was completely clean. The bench, along with the rows of narrow shelves that had been built into the wall above it, had been there when he and Anne had bought the house. The previous owner, moving to a nursing home, had left everything in place, and there it had remained. Even during the total restoration of the main floors, the basement had never been touched. A tool had occasionally been located and used, an area had now and then been cleared to make way for a new project. But the clutter had always remained.

Until today, when, for some reason he didn’t comprehend, Glen hadn’t stopped with cleaning up the mess left from the filleting of the trout, but had kept on working, methodically going through the myriad plastic containers filled with nuts, bolts, nails, tacks, rivets, washers, and other assorted hardware, labeling each one of them, then sorting them first by contents, then by size, until, when he was done, the ranks of shelves offered an almost artistically elegant orderliness to the eye. The shelves finished, he’d gone on to clean out the area under the workbench, sweeping and vacuuming the floor until even the most recalcitrant speck of dust had succumbed. Then he’d set about rendering the same kind of order to the tools that had lain scattered on the table and bench, and when he was finally finished, the whole area had taken on a new look. Clean and bright under the fluorescent lights, with a place for everything and everything in its place.

As perfectly kept as any laboratory. Glen stood gazing at it for a few minutes, reveling in the satisfaction the cleanup had given him, then started up the steep flight of stairs to the kitchen. He was halfway up when the headache struck.

A stab of pain shot through his head, so intense it made him stagger against the wall, then drop to his knees. At the same time the pain struck, an explosion of light burst inside his head, blinding him.

A stroke! He was having a stroke. Out of nowhere, Franklin Roosevelt’s last words flashed into his mind: “I have a terrific pain in the back of my head.” Almost immediately, the president had fallen into a coma and died.

Now it was happening — he felt as though he was sinking into a great dark chasm, falling endlessly into a black, bottomless hole.

He tried to scream, but nothing came out. Then, almost from beyond the edges of his consciousness, he heard laughter.

Dark, scornful laughter.

The laughter of a maniac.

As he sank yet deeper into the lightless abyss, he heard the laughter again, and now he recognized it.

The voice — the voice inside his head, the voice that had whispered to him of evil.