Black Lightning Part 11

Why hadn't they awakened him for dinner? This was a hospital-a couple of times they'd even awakened him to give him a sleeping pill! He was about to ask about it when he realized he wasn't hungry. Now he began to feel totally disoriented. Had he forgotten the whole day? But maybe he was wrong-maybe they really had let him sleep. "I was just thinking, maybe if I could get something to eat-"

Annette Brady's eyes widened. "After what you had for dinner, you're hungry again?" She shook her head in resignation. "Okay, let me see what I can do. But if I can find something this late, I expect you to be polite about it, at least. Okay?"

As the nurse left the room, Glen tried to make sense of it. Obviously he'd eaten, and equally obviously he'd complained about the food. But he had no memory of the meal, any more than he could remember the rest of the day.

He glanced around the room as if hoping to find some clue, and the first thing his eyes fell on was a thick file folder lying on the table next to the bed. Picking it up, he opened it, and frowned. Anne's file on Richard Kraven? What was it doing here?

She must have been here while he was asleep, and left it. Picking up the phone, he dialed the number, but even as Anne answered, he suddenly had a thought.

He was supposed to go home in a few days-if he'd had a memory loss, would they still discharge him?

Not a chance. They'd keep him here until they were certain they knew exactly what had caused it. So when Anne answered the phone, he hesitated. And while he hesitated, she spoke.

"So you decided to call and apologize, huh?" she asked, her voice only half bantering. "Where would you like to start? With me, or Kevin?"

Glen searched his mind. He couldn't remember having talked to Anne at all that day, but he did recall talking to Kevin on the phone that morning, and asking him to bring some magazines to the hospital. His eyes flicked back to the bed table; the magazines lay under the file.

So at least Kevin had been there, and probably Anne, too.

"I guess it was just a bad day for me," he said, uttering the total truth, but still not admitting his memory loss. "I'm really sorry, okay?" A minute later, after he'd repeated the apology to Kevin, Anne came back on the line.

"How long do you want my file?" she asked, her voice sounding almost amused now.

His eyes went back to the thick file. So he'd asked for it. Why?

"I don't know," he replied, still not lying, but still not admitting that he seemed to have lost most of the day. But why had he even wanted it? He'd always thought Anne's fascination with the Kraven case bordered on the morbid, which she well knew. "I guess I just thought as long as I was lying here, I might as well try to figure out what you found so interesting about him," he improvised. "Maybe I'll stay up all night reading it."

A few minutes later, after he'd said good night to Anne, he picked up the file, not really intending to read it but half thinking that the motion would jar his memory. He paused, the thick folder in his lap, then, instead of putting the file aside, opened it.

He began paging through it, and as he scanned the articles, he experienced an odd sense of deja vu.

All the material seemed very familiar, though he had no memory of having read it before. Then, as he turned one of the pages, he froze. He was staring at a photocopy of an article that he knew Anne must have written, though it had no byline: Richard Kraven: Animal Abuser?Former neighbors of Richard Kraven report that the suspected serial killer was a habitual torturer of small animals, even when he was as young as twelve years old.Martha Demming, 76, who lived for nearly two decades in the house next door to the South Seattle residence still occupied by Edna Kraven, reports that on at least two occasions she witnessed Richard Kraven-then in his very early adolescence-stalking his mother's pet cat."I don't want to say he was torturing it," Miss Demming stated in a telephone interview, "but [the cat] always seemed to be afraid of him."Later in the same interview, Miss Demming reported that there were rumors the body of the cat had been found by another neighbor who "thought it had been electrocuted, or something." The neighbor who reputedly found the cat, Wilbur Fankenburg, died three years ago at the age of 56, and could not confirm Miss Demming's report.

Glen Jeffers read the article through twice, small bits and pieces of the nightmare that had awakened him at last coming back. Closing the file and setting it on the bed table, he leaned back into the pillows.

The origin of the nightmare, at least, was now apparent. Obviously he'd read at least part of Anne's file during the day.

Why, then, didn't he remember it?

He was still pondering that question as he sank into a deep sleep a few minutes later.

CHAPTER 22.

While the night brought a deep and peaceful sleep to Glen Jeffers, to Anne it brought only tortured wakefulness. Glen's call had come just as she'd finally convinced herself that his peculiar behavior when she'd visited him at the hospital that afternoon hadn't meant anything at all.

After all, Dr. Farber had warned her the day after Glen's heart attack that nothing would be the same. For some people, he'd said, a heart attack such as Glen's brought on a complete personality change. One of his patients who had been a Type-A personality his entire life suddenly became a Type-B practically overnight. Impatient people often found themselves no longer bothered by things that had driven them crazy before the attack, and easygoing people could just as easily turn cranky. It was the latter that Anne discovered late that afternoon when she'd gone to visit Glen before coming home to fix the kids' dinner. Her normally sunny husband had been propped up in bed, a file-one of her her files, it turned out-spread out around him, and when she leaned over to kiss him, he barely responded at all. When she asked him why he had suddenly become interested in Richard Kraven, he replied that he'd just become curious about her own fascination with the case. "And you know what?" he asked, finally looking up from the file. "He was an interesting guy. You always made him out to be some kind of monster, but-" files, it turned out-spread out around him, and when she leaned over to kiss him, he barely responded at all. When she asked him why he had suddenly become interested in Richard Kraven, he replied that he'd just become curious about her own fascination with the case. "And you know what?" he asked, finally looking up from the file. "He was an interesting guy. You always made him out to be some kind of monster, but-"

Anne had stared at Glen in shock, barely able to believe her ears. Only last week he'd said the only legitimate reason for her to go to the execution was to "make sure the b.a.s.t.a.r.d's really dead." Now he was an "interesting guy"?

"He was a monster," she'd interjected. "G.o.d only knows how many people he killed. And he didn't just kill them, Glen. He dissected them!" When Glen had glanced up from the story he was reading-one she herself had written, though the way he was talking it was as if she knew nothing about Richard Kraven!-he almost looked angry. She'd dropped the subject right then and there, knowing the last thing Glen needed was to get upset. But for the rest of the visit, she'd felt as though he was barely putting up with her. Finally, she cut the visit short, since Glen hadn't even acknowledged her presence for almost ten minutes.

On the way out she'd stopped and spoken to the nurse, who a.s.sured her that patients often preferred not to have visitors at all, that so much of their energy was taken up with getting better that they simply had none left to entertain anyone. Anne had tried to let it go at that, but still found herself worrying all evening, especially after hearing what had happened when Kevin visited his father that morning. And when Glen finally called, though he'd sounded more like himself, she'd been able to tell that something was wrong. Despite his apology for the way he'd treated both her and Kevin, she had the strange sense that he hadn't really known why she was upset with him. And ever since the call, the sense of nervousness she'd only just managed to a.s.suage had come flooding back.

Now, setting aside the stack of notes she'd been working on-notes gleaned from hours of work in the storerooms of the Public Safety Building-she abandoned her desk, knowing there was no chance of getting any more work done that evening. Leaving the small study that Glen had carved out of one end of the cavernous living room, she glanced at Kevin, who was sprawled out on the sofa, reading a book while the TV droned unheeded in the background. "If you're not watching the TV, you might turn it off," she commented.

"I am am watching it," Kevin replied, not even looking up from his book. watching it," Kevin replied, not even looking up from his book.

Anne decided not to bother arguing with Kevin. If pressed, he would be perfectly capable of telling her all the details of a plot he had seemed to be ignoring. It was a talent he'd inherited from her own father, whom she knew for a fact had been able to read a book, follow a conversation going on in the same room, and still catch any errors she made while practicing the piano in another room. It was a trait that had both impressed and annoyed her in her father. In Kevin she often found it totally confounding, since she knew the ability undermined all her reasons for him not to watch TV while he did his homework. "I'm going over to the hospital to see your father."

Kevin finally glanced up from his book, and Anne knew her voice had betrayed her worry.

"Is something wrong?"

Anne shook her head. "I just feel like taking a walk, so I thought I'd look in on him."

"Okay."

"Tell Heather not to go out."

Kevin rolled his eyes. "Jeez, Mom, I'm not a baby. I'm here by myself all the time."

But not at night, Anne thought silently. Rather than voice the thought and expose herself to another of her son's scornful looks, she leaned over and kissed him on the forehead. "Be back in an hour. Stay out of trouble, okay?"

The night air had grown chilly, and as she headed down Sixteenth East, Anne shoved her hands deep in her pockets. When she came to Mercer Street, where the neighborhood started to deteriorate, she turned right, cut over to Fifteenth, then went south again to Thomas Street, entering the Group Health complex through the emergency entrance, then threading her way through the corridors until she finally came to the elevators that would take her up to the Critical Care Unit on the third floor. Using the red phone in the family room, she identified herself, and a moment later Annette Brady appeared.

"Your husband's asleep, but I don't see how it could be a problem if you want to look in on him for a minute."

"How's he doing?" Anne asked as the nurse escorted her into the CCU.

"Actually, a lot better tonight. I think he fell asleep after dinner, and when he woke up, he was a human being again. But frankly, if I were you, I don't think I'd wake him up right now. The best thing for him is just to let him sleep."

The nurse quietly pulled Glen's door open, and Anne peered inside. A soft glow of light from the street beyond the window bathed his face. Though he was still attached to the heart monitors, he was starting to look once more like the man she'd married. The last vestiges of the anger she'd felt toward him that afternoon and evening evaporated, as did the worry his uncharacteristic behavior had caused. Feeling much better, she stepped back from the door and let Annette Brady close it again. "Suddenly I feel kind of silly," Anne confessed as the two of them walked back toward the unit's main doors. "I suppose I should have just called, but suddenly I feel about Glen the way I used to feel about my kids when they were babies. Being told they're okay is one thing, but you don't really believe it until you see it for yourself."

"Not a problem," the nurse a.s.sured her. "Believe me, we have wives coming in here every night, at all hours. On the other hand, husbands," she continued, "hardly ever show up at odd hours. Amazing how weak the maternal instinct is in the American heteros.e.xual male." Anne started toward the elevators, waving a final good-bye as the nurse warned her to be careful if she was going to walk home. "That woman who got killed the other night was only a few blocks from here, you know."

And she was a hooker who picked up the wrong john, Anne thought as she rode the elevator back to the ground floor, instantly reminding herself that all Shawnelle Davis had been trying to do was earn a living, something for which she certainly hadn't deserved to die. In almost conscious defiance of Annette Brady's warning, Anne left the hospital through the main doors and started up Sixteenth East. As she strode up the sidewalk, moving from pools of light into dark shadows, then emerging into the light again a few seconds later as she neared the next streetlamp, she suddenly had a feeling that she was being watched. Pausing, she scanned the street ahead of her, then turned around.

She was alone.

Gazing up and down the street once more, finally satisfied there was no one lurking in the shadows ahead, Anne walked on until, reaching the corner of Thomas Street, her nerve deserted her and she turned left, quickening her step as the brighter lights and heavy traffic of Fifteenth beckoned. By the time she reached the corner, the p.r.i.c.kly sensation on the back of her neck had eased, and as she started northward, she began to feel as if she'd just played the fool.

The Experimenter stepped back from the window as Anne Jeffers turned the corner and disappeared from his view. She'd felt him watching her, of that he was absolutely certain. She'd sensed a presence, though she had no idea it was his presence. He'd seen her scan the streets, hesitate, then scan them again, the way he himself always did, watching warily to be certain no one was paying too much attention when he began focusing on a new subject for his experiments.

Soon it would be time to begin again, time to take up the work once more. His fingers twitched with eagerness in the dimness of the room as he antic.i.p.ated the feel of plunging his hands once more into the very center of life, experiencing again the thrill of holding a living, throbbing organ in his palms, exhilarating once more to the towering sensation of holding the power of life and death within his very grasp.

He'd already decided that Anne Jeffers would be the subject of one of his experiments this time. He would toy with her first, of course, just as he'd been toying with her for years. But when her time finally came, and it was finally her body he opened up, her life force he experienced, he might even keep her awake, so that she could share the exhilaration with him.

There were ways to do that, ways he'd learned about in the years during which he suspended his work. He would have to experiment with the needles, but he was looking forward to that, as he looked forward to all his experiments.

Not so long now. Soon it would all happen. Soon he would hold Anne Jeffers in the palms of his hands. Soon...soon...

CHAPTER 23.

"All right, here are the rules." Gordy Farber leaned forward in his chair and pointed a pencil at Glen as if he were a recalcitrant ten-year-old rather than a forty-three-year-old architect. "You can go home today, but that doesn't mean you can go back to the kind of life you were living before, understand?"

Glen rolled his eyes toward the ceiling and began parroting the instructions Farber had already laid out in such great detail that Glen felt as if they were branded onto his eyelids. "No going to the office, get plenty of rest, eat healthy meals, and get plenty of exercise." As Farber reddened slightly, Glen grinned. "Shall I also take Geritol every day?"

"It wouldn't hurt," Farber groused as he shifted his attention to Anne, who had taken the day off to get Glen settled back into the house after almost two weeks in the hospital. "I'm counting on you to make sure he doesn't cheat. If he behaves himself, I don't see any reason to worry about a repeat of this little incident." He swung back to Glen and once more a.s.sumed the stern demeanor of a schoolmaster. "On the other hand, if you go back to sitting at a drawing table all day, eating nothing but hamburgers and french fries for lunch, and sucking up twenty-five cups of coffee a day, I can almost guarantee you'll be back here within a year. Or less. a.s.suming they even get you this far next time."

"What about the stairs?" Anne asked. "Should he really be going up and down them all the time?"

"If you didn't have them in the house, I'd make him go buy a stair-climbing machine," Farber replied. "I don't want him out running right off the bat, but there's no problem with stairs, and I want him to start walking at least a mile a day." Glen uttered an exaggerated groan, which Farber ignored, forging ahead with the lecture he'd given heart patients so often he could do it in his sleep. "And as for s.e.x," he finished, finally touching on the subject most of his patients wanted to know about first, "as far as I'm concerned, it's one of the healthier forms of exercise available, so feel free. Any questions?"

Glen hesitated. Should he mention the memory lapse he'd had last Sat.u.r.day? Even as he formulated the question in his mind, he knew he wouldn't. After all, it had only happened the one time, and he was sure it was nothing more than a brief side effect of one of the drugs they'd been stuffing into him. All he really needed was to get out of here, get home, and start living his life again. "How could there be?" he asked, standing up. "Is that it?"

Farber came around from behind his desk, accompanying the Jefferses to the door. "Just keep an eye on yourself. If anything seems strange, or not right, let me know. And if you experience any pains in your chest or arms, don't write it off to heartburn. Get over here right away. And, most important, don't either of you start feeling like Glen's some kind of invalid. He's not. Just go home and get on with your lives."

A few minutes later, when Anne slid her car into the parking s.p.a.ce she was lucky enough to find right in front of their house, Glen got out and automatically opened the back door to begin transferring his suitcase, and the box full of the clutter that had migrated into his hospital room over the last ten days, back into his home.

Just as automatically, Anne started to tell him to let her do it, that he should go inside and take it easy. But even as her lips parted to utter the words, Glen seemed to sense them coming. Their eyes met, they were both silent for a split second, then they began to laugh.

"Tell you what," Glen offered. "You take the suitcase, and I'll take the box. Deal?"

"Deal," Anne agreed.

As he stepped through the front door a minute later and set the box on the table in the foyer, Glen uttered a contented sigh. No more hospital bed, no more monitors, no more nurses waking him up to give him sleeping pills. Then Boots came hurtling down the stairs like a little black and white missile to throw himself at Glen's legs, his high-pitched yap instantly eliciting a jungle scream from Hector, who was at least still confined to his cage in Kevin's room. k.u.mquat, of course, wasn't interested enough in his arrival even to wander through the foyer. As he tried to calm the excited dog, Glen smiled almost ruefully at Anne. "Maybe I should have stayed in the hospital after all. Didn't Farber say something about getting a lot of rest?"

"Want me to take you back?" Anne countered.

By way of an answer, Glen picked up the suitcase Anne had set at the foot of the stairs and started up to the second floor. Halfway up, as the parrot stopped squalling, he turned back, eyeing Anne speculatively. "How often," he asked, "do we have the house to ourselves in the middle of the day?"

Anne's brow knit worriedly as she instantly read his meaning. "Do you really think we ought to?"

"Didn't Gordy say it was the healthiest form of exercise he knows?"

"He said it was one one of the healthiest," Anne corrected. But she was already starting up the stairs. of the healthiest," Anne corrected. But she was already starting up the stairs.

Dropping the suitcase to the floor as they entered the master bedroom, Glen put his arms around Anne, drawing her close. Her familiar aroma filled his nostrils as he nuzzled her neck, and he felt her shudder with antic.i.p.ation as his lips began nibbling toward her own. A moment later they were on the bed, his fingers working feverishly at the single row of b.u.t.tons that ran up the back of her dress. Then he was pulling it off her shoulders, and she was helping him slide it down over her hips. As his fingers touched her bare skin, a sensation went through him he'd never felt before. Her skin seemed to tingle under his touch, as if somehow an electrical charge were running through her.

Now she was undressing him, too, and wherever her fingers touched his flesh, the same tingling sensation coursed through him, making his whole body hum in a way he couldn't remember ever experiencing.

He groaned softly as he slipped her bra loose and his palm covered her naked breast. Her flesh seemed almost to vibrate under his touch, and when her hand slid beneath his boxer shorts to close on his already hardened flesh, he had to struggle to control himself in the face of the climax that threatened to overwhelm him.

Had it been that long since they'd made love, that every touch seemed new and different?

Or was it the drugs they'd given him?

Suddenly he remembered years ago, when he and Anne had smoked a joint before making love. Everything felt different that night, and he'd had the unnerving sensation that he was making love to a stranger, to a woman he'd never met before. The feeling had frightened him. After that night he'd given up the drug, and since then he'd always felt a comforting familiarity in their lovemaking, so that beyond the excitement and exhilaration of the act itself, he'd also felt a sense of safety-almost of coming home-as their bodies enveloped one another.

Today, though, there was an electricity running from her body into his own that made not only his flesh tingle, but his very being throb with excitement.

He pulled her closer to him, pressing his flesh against hers, feeling his skin thrill to the touch of her own. It was as if every fiber of his being was suddenly tuned to her, every nerve in his body vibrating under the energy she exuded.

It was as though her very life force were flowing into him, and he felt he was absorbing it through his fingers, his palms, every part of him that touched any part of her.

He began moving, his hands roaming over her, his limbs writhing around her until finally he was inside her, feeling as if he were searching for her very soul. He thrust deep, straining to touch some part of her that still remained just beyond his reach. He pulled her still closer, feeling the life force within her, struggling to clutch to himself the source of that tingling energy that flowed from her body into his. Their bodies moved together then, the rhythm building, the tempo increasing. Glen could feel her arms tightening around his neck, her legs twisting around his thighs, pulling him closer, deeper, as if she wanted to draw him inside of her to the point where their very lives merged into one.

He felt his groin tighten, felt the electricity between them build once more, and this time he made no attempt to postpone the climax that quickly engulfed him. Gasping, he felt himself surging into her, and as the heat in his groin poured into her body, he felt the strange electrical charge on her skin begin to fade. He drew her even closer, trying to prolong the sensation, desperate to keep her energy flowing toward him, but it was too late.

As his climax faded, so also did the tingling of her skin, and at last the urgency of his grip on her began to relax. His breath escaped him in an explosive gasp, and first one of his arms fell away from her, then the other. His breathing, which had come in great heaving pants only moments before, eased slowly into its normal rhythm, and he felt himself begin to sink into the soft gray depths of sleep.

As she heard Glen's breathing drift into the gentle whisper of sleep, Anne lay still, part of her wishing merely not to waken him, but another part of her not wanting to move until she understood what had just happened between them.

Glen's lovemaking today had contained an element she'd never experienced before, and though part of her had been excited by it-even thrilled by it-another part of her had been almost frightened. There was something different about him just now; a desperation. It was almost as if he were trying to reach within her, to grasp something, to draw something from her that she wasn't giving him.

Finally leaving the bed, she moved into the bathroom and stared at herself in the mirror. Faint red marks were beginning to show on her body where Glen's fingers had dug into her flesh.

Involuntarily, she shuddered.

She took a shower, dried herself off, and began dressing.

On the bed, Glen lay naked, his arms spread, his legs akimbo, his eyes closed in sleep.

He was thinner than he'd been before he went into the hospital, and there was an unhealthy pallor to his face.

That would change. Within a week or two he would be back to his normal 180 pounds, and a few hours in the sun would bring the color back to his skin.

But what about inside?

What about that desperation she felt from him when they'd made love? Would that go away, too?

She leaned over and kissed him gently on the forehead, but he didn't stir. Before she left the room, she covered him with a blanket, but even as she started out the door she turned to look back at him.