John Saul: Black Lightning

For Michael

It was a ballet the man had danced so many times before that the first steps had become familiar enough to be performed automatically, with little if any thought at all. If he’d been asked, he couldn’t have said exactly what it was about this particular subject that first caught his attention, what particularly had piqued his interest in including her in his study. Certainly not age — he’d never been interested in the relative youth of any of his subjects.

Nor did sex matter. There were nearly as many men as women among his subjects; whatever gender imbalances existed in his study group were purely a matter of chance, and, he was certain, statistically insignificant. Not that his critics would ignore whatever imbalances existed when they began analyzing his work — he was all too aware that every possible nuance of his study would be minutely examined, that every possible interpretation, no matter how outlandish, would be applied to his choice of subjects.

But the fact was that he really hadn’t come up with any standard criteria for selecting participants in the experiments. Neither race nor gender, age nor sexual orientation, had counted.

Nor had he ever been particularly concerned about whether he invited the subject to join his study, or whether the subject was the one to make the first contact.

His current subject had made the first contact herself, as it happened, and he had almost rejected her on the basis that she seemed somehow familiar to him, that he knew her from somewhere. Familiarity was the single grounds for automatic ineligibility for the project, for he could never be certain of his own objectivity if he had previously existing feelings for the subject, whether positive or negative.

He’d first become aware of the woman a couple of weeks ago, when he’d happened into a shop near the university for a cup of coffee. He’d briefly noticed her when he’d come in, sitting near the door alone, a copy of the Seattle Herald spread out on the table before her. He’d paid little attention to her until he bought his own coffee and settled into a chair several tables away.

Had he subconsciously known even then that he would include her in the project? He would have to consider that.

It had been she who first smiled at him, then come over and asked if she could join him. As he recalled it now, she said something she seemed to consider witty, about them not taking up any more room on the planet than they absolutely had to, and he produced the expected smile for her. But instead of inviting her to sit down, he pleaded work, and she left.

For the next ten minutes he’d tried to figure out why she looked familiar, but it hadn’t finally come to him until he opened his own paper to the editorial section and his eye had been caught by one of the columns:

How Much Longer?

Police Fiddle While Seattle Dies

Another week has passed, and the Special Task Force set up by the Seattle Police Department in cooperation with the King County Sheriff’s Office and the Washington State Patrol seems no closer than ever to an arrest in connection with the series of bodies that has turned up in the foothills of the Cascades over the past five years. Indeed, thus far all the police seem to have determined is that all the victims appear to have been killed by the same person, a conclusion anyone who has seen the bodies couldn’t easily have missed.

Yet when I talked to several members of the task force this week …

It hadn’t been the story that had caught the man’s eye so much as the accompanying photograph of the column’s author.

Anne Jeffers.

That was why the woman he’d spoken to a few minutes earlier had seemed familiar: she looked very much like the newswoman. He’d sat staring at the photograph for several seconds, considering.

The woman had been in her early forties, of medium height, with the same kind of even features reflected in the photograph. The woman’s hair had appeared to be of a similar dark shade, too, though Anne Jeffers’s was somewhat shorter.

Was it possible it had actually been Anne Jeffers he’d spoken to?

A patient man, he’d finished his coffee, refolded his paper, and gone on about his business. But he kept his eyes open, and a few days later, when he spotted the woman from the coffee shop, he realized that she was not Anne Jeffers, nor was she anyone else he knew.

Discreetly, he’d followed her.

She lived not far from the university, in an old Spanish-Moorish-style apartment building the man had always liked.

Afterward, he made a point of walking by the building every few days. He’d seen the woman several times, and nodded to her.

The dance had begun.

It had gone on for several weeks, the two of them circling around each other in a strange pavane that was almost like a courtship.

They began nodding to each other, then saying hello.

He had begun to absorb the routines of her life, and found her — as he found most people — to be pathetically predictable.

Today, for instance, being a bright and cheerful Sunday, he was almost certain the woman would take lunch in a bag and go to bask in the rare warmth on the lawn of the university, where she would pretend to be reading a book while actually watching for a man — nearly any man, he had discovered — to show interest in her.

Today he would be the man to show interest.

Today the dance would end.

He left his car at home that morning, taking the motor home he’d bought four years ago, when the study had commenced. Perfect for field trips, he often drove it into the mountains even on weekends when he wasn’t working on his research, parking it near any one of hundreds of babbling streams while he indulged himself in his only passion outside of his project: fly-fishing.

Today he drove the motor home up to the university, parked it in the nearly deserted depths of the cavernous garage, and locked it. Taking his own lunch and two bottles of lemon-flavored sparkling water with him, he climbed the stairs to the surface and started across the lawn toward the spot that was the woman’s favorite.

Half an hour later, after she’d consumed half the contents of the bottle of sparkling water he offered her, she frowned, then shook her head.

“Something wrong?” the man asked, his gentle voice freighted with benevolent concern.

“I–I’m not sure,” the woman replied. “Suddenly I feel—” She hesitated, then stood up. “I’d better get home!”

The man scrambled to his feet and began gathering both their things. “Maybe I should drive you,” he suggested.

The woman started to decline his offer, but a second later, changed her mind. He could see that the color had begun to fade from her lips.

“If you could …” she began, but then, feeling lightheaded and dizzy, her voice faded.

Gratefully, she accepted the man’s proffered arm and let him lead her down into the garage, where his motor home waited.

Even before he drove it out into the bright daylight, the woman had drifted into unconsciousness, and was now spread out on the sheet of plastic he’d placed on the floor.

He pulled out of the garage, went west two blocks, turned right up to N.E. 45th Street, and headed west to Interstate 5. Taking the highway south, he exited at Route 520, heading east toward Redmond.

After a while he wound up into the foothills, looking for the right spot.

Somewhere off the road.

Somewhere secluded.

Somewhere near a stream, so he could do a little fishing after his work was done.