Black Lightning (22 page)

CHAPTER 32

T
he Experimenter’s eyes bored into the darkness.

The night was silent, yet something had awakened him. Even during the times when most men wouldn’t have been able to sleep at all, the Experimenter had always been able to close his eyes to the world beyond his own mind, to retreat within himself to rest undisturbed.

But tonight some outside force—a force over which he had no control—had roused him. With the silence of a phantom, he explored the upper floor, but all he could hear was the slow, steady breathing of the family who lay in their beds, sleeping in peace, blissfully unaware of his presence. At the top of the stairs he paused, not out of any sense of indecision, but to collect data with his acutely honed senses.

Whatever had awakened him was not in the house, for other than the normal creaks and groans of an ancient structure shifting uncomfortably in the night, all was quiet. Satisfied that whatever had roused him from his rest was beyond the protecting walls, he moved down the stairs and through the rooms of the lower floor, gazing out the windows into the comparative light of the urban night, searching for.… something. If he saw it—even sensed it—he would recognize it at once. But all was quiet beyond the windows; nothing moved; he felt no hidden presence lurking in the shadows.

Yet something had awakened him. He would not rest until he had identified that which had intruded into his sleep.

He moved into the kitchen, then out onto the back porch. The night air was cool against his skin, and unbidden memories of other times when he’d stood naked in the cool of the night flooded into his mind.

Nights when, his experiment finished but the ruined remains of his subject still to be disposed of, he’d stepped out of his laboratory into the refreshing cool of the night, sometimes to vent his frustration at failure in a howl of rage; sometimes simply to wash himself in the river even before beginning the tedious—but very necessary—clean-up process.

Sometimes, though, he’d simply stood naked beneath the eternity of stars sparkling above him, feeling like a newborn child of the universe, his skin glittering darkly with a glowing sheen of blood released only moments earlier from the heart of his latest subject. On those nights he would suck hungrily at the cold night air as if by inhaling deeply enough he might somehow take in enough of the life-sustaining oxygen to support not only himself, but also the ruined body that still lay inside the motor home. But even as he filled his lungs, he’d always known that oxygen was not enough. Without the spark, without the black, invisible lightning that emanated from somewhere deep within the body itself, no amount of air put back into his subject’s lungs could restore its body to life. That was when despair always overcame him, when the cool of the night air that had felt like the caress of a lover only a moment earlier became a dark cloak concealing an unseen enemy.

Tonight, though, the darkness was neither lover nor enemy. Tonight it was an enigma, bearing within its folds something that he needed to discover.

He stood still, waiting.

He felt the night, all his senses reaching out, searching for some clue as to exactly what had awakened him. Then, out of the steady drone of insects, frogs and traffic, a new sound emerged.

A latch clicking.

Hinges creaking.

Another latch opening.

A spring stretching, then the soft clack of a screen door striking wood siding.

Next door.

Though no light showed, someone was coming out of the house next door.

The Experimenter stood motionless, the patience of a scientist serving him now. No need to turn, no need to move at all. All he need do was wait, concealed in the dark shadows of the porch.

Soon, the source of his disturbance would reveal itself.

He had not long to wait, for within less than half a minute he heard the heavy tread of thick-soled shoes on wooden steps feeling their way tentatively through the darkness. The mind of the Experimenter automatically began applying the laws of logic. Whoever was descending the steps next door was not familiar with them, had not become accustomed to their width or their height.

Ergo, whoever it was did not belong there.

Perhaps that had been what awakened him; the unexpected sound of someone forcing entry to the house next door. From long experience he knew that it was possible to sleep through any noise, as long as it was an expected norm, while an unexpected sound could banish sleep instantly from an attentive mind. As long as he had existed he had been in possession of an attentive mind. Yet still he did not move, for now his interest was piqued. He hung in the shadows of the night like a phantom, waiting for the intruder to show himself.

A dark figure appeared, carrying a burden which for a moment was nothing more than a gray and shapeless mass barely visible in the blackness that surrounded it. But as the figure moved farther from the house, it came closer to the dim light that glowed above a narrow alley. In this no-man’s-land between two rows of opposing backyards, the intruder became more visible.

It was a man. The burden he bore was instantly recognizable to the watcher from the darkness.

A body.

A human body, held clumsily, with no wrappings to prevent blood from dripping to the ground.

As the figure carried the body closer to the alley, closer to the light, every muscle in the Experimenter’s body tensed.

The body had been stripped naked, just as he himself had always denuded the bodies of his subjects.

The chest had been laid open, but the surgery had not been neatly done. Rather, the thoracic cavity seemed to have been clumsily hacked open. Even from where he stood, the Experimenter could see that one of the woman’s large breasts had been all but cut away.

But the man who bore the naked body was fully clothed, and even in the badly lit alley, the Experimenter could make out the crimson stains of blood spread across the bearer’s shirt and oozing down his pants.

The Experimenter watched, and felt contempt, but still his mind worked, and slowly a logic began to form, though it was a logic with so many missing pieces that it could barely be called logic at all.

The body was naked.

The chest torn open.

Very roughly, if viewed through the eye of the ignorant, parallel to the end result of his own experiments.

Today there had been an article in the paper about the dead prostitute—what was her name? Shawnelle Something-or-other—the article written by the woman who lived in this very house, who was even at this moment asleep upstairs.

In her article, Anne Jeffers had suggested the Shawnelle killing might be a copy-cat of his own work.

The police had denied it.

If they were wrong, if the man who was now bearing his handiwork away wanted to draw full attention to what he was doing, how better than to strike next door to the reporter who was recording his deeds? But why was he literally leaving behind a trail of blood? It made no sense, unless the man unconsciously wanted to be caught.

Then, a moment later, the dim light suspended above the alley fell full on the bearer’s face, and the Experimenter instantly recognized him.

The pieces of the puzzle fell into place. The Experimenter, fury raging within him, retreated back into the house.

CHAPTER 33

A
nne Jeffers’s body had a leaden feel to it, as if, despite all evidence to the contrary, she hadn’t slept at all. Yet she knew she had, for she clearly remembered that the last time she looked at the clock it had been ten-thirty. She’d been upset, and while not exactly angry at Glen, she’d certainly been worried about him. But in the gray light of the morning, as she gazed down at his sleeping face, nothing seemed amiss. In sleep he looked exactly as he always had, his face clear and unlined, his lips curved into a slight smile at the corners, as if he were enjoying some happy dream. When
he
stirred a moment later and the faint smile faded away, all Anne’s apprehensions from the previous night came flooding back. Instinctively she froze, as if by remaining motionless she could forestall his awakening.

What kind of thought was that?

Always—or at least until his heart attack—early mornings had been among Anne and Glen’s favorite times. Even when the kids had been too young to leave alone in the house and they had to jog separately, they still always found a few minutes just to enjoy being alone together, the rest of the world not yet intruding on them. While Glen was in the hospital, it had been the mornings with him she’d missed most. But now, though he was finally home, everything had changed.

Last night she hadn’t even wanted him to touch her.

This morning, sensing him awakening, she actually tried to put the moment off. Feeling ashamed, and guilty, Anne leaned over and gently kissed her husband’s lips.

Immediately, Glen’s arm circled around her, pulling her close, and his lips responded to hers. For just the tiniest instant Anne felt a pang of something that was almost indistinguishable from fear, but she knew that was ridiculous. This was Glen, for God’s sake! Still, she had to force herself not to pull away from him, not to withdraw from his touch. She made herself relax, and then, as she felt his tongue gently prodding her lips, she found herself responding to him, and when her body melted against his a moment later, she no longer had to make herself let it happen. This morning, as his fingers slipped under the thin material of her nightgown, his caress felt as it always had—exciting, but at the same time warm and familiar. Now her own arms slipped around him and her lips pressed his, their bodies joining with tiny noises that mixed equal parts of passion and contentment.

Glen made love to Anne with an easy familiarity that both excited and reassured her. The Glen she had loved, the Glen that she had only a few hours ago feared might be gone from her forever, was here again. When it was over, Anne curled up in the crook of his arm, sighing with contentment. “Nice to have you back,” she whispered.

Glen’s arm tightened around her. “What do you mean? It’s not like I just came home this morning.”

Anne rolled out of his embrace, then propped herself up on one elbow to look at his face. “But it’s the first time I’ve actually felt as though you were really back,” she said.

Glen’s eyes clouded, but then he smiled. “I guess maybe I have been acting kind of strange, huh?”

“Kind of?” Anne echoed. “How about off the wall?” Glen’s smile disappeared, and Anne wished she could recall her words. But it was already too late—the brief moment of closeness, of feeling as if everything was back the way it should be, was over. “All right, maybe ‘off the wall’ is a little strong,” she offered in an attempt to put things right. “But you have to admit, all that stuff you bought—”

“I don’t have to admit anything,” Glen cut in, sitting up and swinging his legs off the bed. “All I’m trying to do is what the doctor ordered. Everyone says fishing’s a great hobby, so I thought I’d try it. Okay?”

“Okay,”
Anne agreed, more than willing to drop the whole subject if only she could recapture the closeness she’d felt only a few moments before. But the moment had vanished, replaced with a resurgence of that amorphous anxiety she’d felt when she came home last night—the terrible sensation that something unidentifiable was wrong. She slid off her side of the bed, grabbed her robe from the chair in the corner, and disappeared into the dressing room as Glen went into the bathroom.

By the time he was finished washing his face, she’d pulled on her jogging clothes. As she sat in the chair tying her shoelaces, she felt him watching her. When she looked up, though, his expression was unreadable, and when he offered to go jogging with her, she shook her head. “Gordy said you should be walking. He didn’t say anything about running.” But what she really meant was,
I’d rather go by myself
, and she could see in his eyes that he’d read her meaning as clearly as if she’d simply spoken those words instead of the excuse she’d come up with. “You’re not supposed to rush this, remember?” she added, then tried to take the sting out of her rejection with a kiss. His lack of response told her she’d failed, and for a moment she wondered if she ought to ask him to come along after all.

But she knew what would happen—they’d run in silence, trying to pretend a closeness they weren’t feeling right now, and by the time she got to work, she’d be so consumed with worrying about what was happening to them that she wouldn’t be able to concentrate. Better just to go alone, she thought, and try again tonight. “Have a cup of coffee ready for me when I get back?” Anne asked. He nodded, and she headed downstairs.

Boots was waiting by the front door, holding his leash in his mouth, looking as though his entire life would be ruined if she didn’t take him along. “Oh, all right,” she said, snapping the leash onto the little dog’s collar and opening the door. “But if you can’t keep up, don’t expect me to carry you.” She bounded off the porch and started up to the corner where she would turn left toward Volunteer Park, then turned back and glanced up at the master bedroom, intending to wave to Glen if he were watching her.

He wasn’t.

Tossing her head as if the action might rid her of the dark mood fast enveloping her, she increased her pace to a fast jog. Maybe this morning she’d just take an extra lap or two around the reservoir.

It had rained sometime before dawn. The streets glistened and the early morning air was still heavy with moisture. Anne expanded her lungs exuberantly, sucking in the fresh, cold air, and increased her pace slightly as she crossed Fifteenth Avenue and started into the park, up the gentle incline that led to the greenhouse. From there she could either go straight ahead over the crest, then start down past the tennis courts in the large lower loop that would eventually take her all the way around to the water tower, or she could turn left toward the old Art Museum, jogging easily along the level road that ran south from the greenhouse. Then, when she got close to the reservoir that surmounted the park, she could head off onto the path that led around it, level all the way, where the serious joggers always ran, pacing themselves carefully, monitoring pulse and respiration, some of them spending as much as two hours of every morning in a valiant—if inevitably doomed—effort to keep their bodies in prime condition. Though Anne had only fallen partially prey to the seductive idea that regular exercise could somehow put a stop to the aging process, she knew that after running for half an hour or so she would feel better, if not from the pheromones she only occasionally succeeded in getting high on, then at least from a feeling of virtue, misplaced though it may have been.

How many times had she and Glen observed that the country would be far better off if the population were half as interested in keeping their minds in as good condition as they tried to keep their bodies? And, so far as Anne could see, everyone kept getting older, albeit with ruined knees and ankles which, after years of unnatural abuse, were eventually only marginally capable of propelling them on their morning jogs. The Seattle addiction to coffee, she decided, was a healthy antidote to the overconditioning of the local bodies.

Opting finally for the track around the reservoir because she could do more laps with less effort than if she chose the lower circumference road, Anne started around the north side of the artificial lake, nodding to a few of the regulars she saw out here every morning. Boots, happily matching her pace with his own near-run, made halfhearted leaps at a couple of people he apparently felt had come too close to his mistress, but generally behaved himself until Anne had made the turn around the northwest corner of the reservoir. Instead of turning with her, he went straight ahead, pulling the leash until, after almost twelve feet had paid out, he was jerked to a stop.

Anne, startled by the sudden tug on the leash, broke stride and wheeled around to reprimand the little animal. But the moment he felt the leash slackening, Boots’s stubborn terrier ancestry came to the fore and he pulled the leash taut again, straining, with the stocky body he’d inherited from the bulldog branch of his family tree, toward the thick tangle of vegetation that covered the reservoir’s bank. Now he was barking insanely.

“Heel, Boots,” Anne commanded.

For just a second the little dog glanced back at her, but then he resumed his struggle against the leash. The two of them stayed in place for nearly a minute, Anne commanding the dog to heel, Boots refusing to budge. In the end, knowing she was ruining whatever minimal training Kevin and Glen might have succeeded in inculcating into the little animal’s head, Anne gave in. “Oh, all right. If it’s that important to you, pick whatever spot you want.”

Letting the dog have his head, she followed, already reaching into her pocket for one of the blue plastic bags she used to clean up after her son’s pet. But instead of sniffing madly around until he’d found the perfect place to squat, Boots pulled harder and harder, his body low to the ground as he scrambled toward the brow of the hill. Then he was over the edge of the steep embankment, disappearing from Anne’s view for a moment, but at last falling silent, his mad barking dying away as he apparently reached whatever goal he’d set for himself.

When she came to the edge of the lawn where the level area around the reservoir gave way to the slope and a tangle of brush, the dog was nowhere to be seen. Then she spotted him. He’d pushed into the mass of vegetation and was sniffing eagerly at something she couldn’t quite see.

Reaching out and pushing a branch aside, Anne looked down.

The dead, empty eyes of Joyce Cottrell gazed back up at her.

Anne’s first instinct was to be sick, but she refused to give in to the wave of nausea.

Her next instinct was to try to help the woman whom she’d instantly recognized as her next-door neighbor, but even as the urge rose in her she knew Joyce was far beyond any aid she could give her.

Her third instinct was to scream for help, and that was the instinct she finally acted upon.