Black Lightning Part 17

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 b.r.e.a.s.t.s 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 prost.i.tute-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.

Anne 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 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. 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 G.o.d'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 pa.s.sion and contentment.

Glen made love to Anne with an easy familiarity that both excited and rea.s.sured 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. 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 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 circ.u.mference 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 ma.s.s 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.

CHAPTER 34.

"Where's Mom?" The question was issued with a darkly accusatory tone, as if Kevin suspected his mother had been abducted, if not out and out murdered.

"She's just jogging in the park," Glen told him as he poured his son a gla.s.s of orange juice, then moved the Grape-Nuts from the cupboard to the kitchen table.

"She's supposed to be back by now," Kevin informed him.

Glen glanced at the blue-green digits on the oven clock. Though he wasn't about to admit it to his son, he realized that Kevin was right. Before his heart attack, their jog had usually lasted no more than half an hour-forty-five minutes at the most. Unless the digital display was wrong, Anne had been gone more than an hour. He was pretty sure he knew why, but he wasn't about to get into that with Kevin. Both he and Anne subscribed to the idea that even if their marriage wasn't perfect-not that it was far short-they had no need to air their dirty laundry in front of the kids. Besides, even if he'd been willing to explain to Kevin what had happened between himself and Anne that morning, he wasn't quite sure he could. The truth was, he wasn't certain himself. When he woke up and found her looking at him, he thought she was still angry at him from the night before. But then they'd made love, and for a few minutes it seemed as though everything was back to normal. Then, when she suggested that he'd been acting "off the wall," he'd flown off the handle. He shook his head. It wasn't as if she was wrong-he knew perfectly well that he hadn't been behaving very much like the man she'd married. Yet instead of confessing to the unaccountable blackouts-and that they were frightening him-he'd barked that he was just obeying his doctor's orders and that there was nothing wrong at all. It wasn't that he hadn't wanted to tell her. Indeed, in those few quiet minutes after they made love, he'd been rehearsing the words he would say.

Only when it came time to speak, something inside had stopped him, some voice inside his head had whispered to him: Do you want to go back to the hospital? Do you want her to think you're crazy? Do you want to go back to the hospital? Do you want her to think you're crazy? The warning stopped him cold, even knowing he was shutting Anne out, lying to her, refusing to trust her. The warning stopped him cold, even knowing he was shutting Anne out, lying to her, refusing to trust her.

Of course she hadn't wanted him to go jogging with her, and of course she had decided to take an extra turn around the reservoir. He could almost hear her telling herself to run her anger out in the park instead of taking it home and dumping it on her family. If she could leave the bad moment in the park, the least he could do was be dressed and have breakfast ready for her by the time she got back, so she'd at least know she wasn't married to an invalid who was planning to lie around in a bathrobe for the rest of his life.

"She'll probably be back by the time you finish your cereal," Glen told Kevin as Heather came into the kitchen. She poured herself a cup of coffee and started working on the crossword puzzle Glen himself had begun only a few minutes earlier. "Do you mind?" he asked his daughter. "I was planning to do that crossword this morning."

Heather shrugged. "So far, you only put in two words, and one of them was wrong. Besides, if you don't do it in ink, it doesn't count."

"Something's happened to Mom," Kevin announced.

Heather looked up, glancing at her brother then turning to her father. "Is she sick?"

Glen sighed exaggeratedly and retrieved the crossword from his daughter. "Nothing's happened to her. She's fine. She just decided to jog a little longer than usual this morning, that's all."

"They had a fight," Heather instantly translated for Kevin.

"We didn't have a fight," Glen told her. "How come n.o.body around here ever believes anything?"

"Because grown-ups always lie to kids," Kevin informed him. "Justin Reynolds told me so. And how come Mom's allowed to go to the park by herself, when I'm not?"

"Because she's a grown-up," Glen replied, leaning toward Kevin and giving him a mock-fierce glare. "You can tell Justin Reynolds that that's another thing grown-ups do."

Kevin began to giggle, but then Heather spoke again.

"Maybe we better go look for her," she said. "She's never gone this long. What if something has has happened to her?" happened to her?"

Glen felt the balance of power in the room tilt. In about five more seconds, unless Anne came walking in the door, Kevin would team up with Heather and he might as well give up. Better to offer an instant compromise rather than wind up having them late for school. "I'll tell you what-I'll go take a look, while you two finish your breakfast. But I suspect that your mom will come breezing in ten seconds after I'm gone, and I'll just be on a wild goose chase."

Before Kevin could plead with him to come along, Glen was out the back door and behind the wheel of the ten-year-old Saab he refused to part with despite Kevin's insistence that it was a "dweebmobile."

Minutes later he entered Volunteer Park from the Fifteenth Avenue side, just as Anne had a little more than an hour earlier. Until he reached the greenhouse, everything looked normal, but as he started down the gentle grade past the tennis courts, he saw the first of what turned out to be five police cars. A little farther down he spotted the familiar yellow plastic tape marking a police barricade. The tape ran along the left side of the road, blocking entrance to the shrubbery that covered this flank of the reservoir. Glen slowed to a stop as he came abreast of a cop who was impatiently trying to wave him through.

"Keep it moving, Mac," the cop said as Glen rolled his window down. "Nothing to see here."

"I'm looking for my wife," Glen said, ignoring the policeman's words. "She came out jogging a little over an hour ago, and she hasn't come back yet."

The patrolman's expression changed from impatience to uncertainty, and he unclipped a radio from his belt, speaking into it too quietly for Glen to hear what he was saying. When he'd gotten a reply, he turned his attention back to Glen. "What's your wife's name?"

"Anne Jeffers. She's a report-"

The patrolman's expression shifted again. "She's up there," he said, jerking his thumb toward the crest of the hill. "I can't let you go up this way, but if you want to walk around from the other side, I don't suppose anyone's going to stop you."

"What happened?" Glen asked.

The cop shook his head. "Body. Fact is, I heard your wife found it."

"Gay bashing?" Glen asked, aware that more than one man had been beaten in this part of the park over the last few years.

The cop shook his head. "A woman."

For some reason, an image of Joyce Cottrell flashed into Glen's mind, then was gone almost as quickly as it had come. As another police car pulled up behind, briefly flashing its lights, Glen moved on, completing the circuit around the reservoir and the water tower, then pulling the Saab into an empty s.p.a.ce near the huge black granite doughnut that stood across the street from the Art Museum.

Locking the car despite the fact that there were half a dozen more police cruisers within the surrounding fifty yards of roadway, Glen crossed the sidewalk and loped down the short slope. A well-worn path followed the chain-link fence that kept swimmers out of the reservoir. Halfway around, another police tape blocked his way, but before he could decide what to do next, he spotted Anne. Boots was sitting at her feet. As he approached, the little dog caught his scent, barked happily and dashed toward him, only to do a complete back flip as he came to the end of the leash. Unfazed by the mishap, the terrier scrambled back to its feet, straining at the leash, his tail wagging furiously. Anne turned to quiet the dog, caught sight of Glen, and waved him over. Scooping Boots up and cradling him in the crook of one arm, Glen slipped the other protectively around his wife. "What's going on?" he asked.

For a moment Anne said nothing at all. Suddenly Glen realized how pale she was-every drop of blood seemed to have drained from her face. But Anne had seen corpses before-accident victims, even the butchered remains of the brutal Kraven killings; she'd even wondered out loud from time to time if she wasn't becoming insensitive to the violence of the city. Then she spoke, and with a rush of horror, he understood. "It's Joyce, Glen," she said, her voice barely above a whisper. Glen felt a cold knot form in his stomach as he remembered the image that had inexplicably come to him the moment the patrolman at the foot of the hill had told him the body of a woman had been found. But it was crazy-what would Joyce Cottrell have been doing in the park? She rarely even left her house except to go to work!

"Oh, G.o.d, Glen, it's horrible. She was naked, and her chest was all torn open, just like Shawnelle Davis's. But they say it didn't happen here. It looks like whoever killed her dumped her here after she was already dead. So it must have happened in her house, Glen." Anne's voice was shaking now, her body shivering. "Right next door to us, while we were sleeping. Oh, G.o.d..."

Glen's arm tightened around his wife, partly to offer her support, but as much to support himself. For now another image had flashed into his mind.

He saw a figure carrying a body through the dark.

Light was spilling onto the face of the figure so it was clear in his mind, as vivid as if he were staring at a clearly focused black-and-white photograph. But he didn't recognize the face.

It was the face of a stranger, and the stranger was carrying Joyce Cottrell's body.

Though the image was nearly perfect, there was no familiarity to go with it, no sense of recollection. Was it possible he had witnessed a murder but had no memory of it?

Now he remembered the blackouts he'd had, the time that seemed forever lost from his consciousness.

Glen stood mutely listening to Anne as she brokenly described how Boots had led her to their next-door neighbor's corpse, how she hadn't been certain what the object in the bushes was at first, how she'd finally seen the face and recognized it.

Joyce Cottrell.

Someone who had no friends. No enemies.

Someone no one even knew.

Why had Joyce been killed?

Neither of them could answer that question. Still, though neither of them spoke the thought aloud, Anne and Glen each had a terrible feeling: somehow, in a way neither of them had yet begun to understand, this murder had something to do with them them.