Black Lightning Part 19

Body Found In Volunteer Park Latest in New Series of Killings?The nude and mutilated body of a woman was found in Volunteer Park early this morning. According to police, the victim, Joyce Cottrell, was slain in her Capitol Hill home sometime between 11:00 P.M P.M. and 4:00 A.M. A.M. Though police are so far denying it, there appears to be a connection between last night's slaying and that of Shawnelle Davis... Though police are so far denying it, there appears to be a connection between last night's slaying and that of Shawnelle Davis...

"Oh, for G.o.d's sake," Vivian Andrews groaned, flopping back in her chair. She looked up from the monitor on her desk to glare impatiently through the window at the gray afternoon outside. Taking the kind of deep breath her mother used to tell her would help keep her temper under control, she grabbed the phone and stabbed the digits of Anne Jeffers's extension. Her fingers were already drumming impatiently on her desktop when Anne picked it up on the second ring. "My office," Vivian snapped. "Now." Dropping the phone back on the cradle, she shifted her attention to the monitor and the offending article she had pulled up from the file server only a few seconds before summoning Anne. By the time Anne appeared in her office, the editor had read through the entire article three An equal number of deep breaths had done nothing for her temper, despite what her mother had taught her.

"What the h.e.l.l is this?" Vivian demanded as Anne came into the small office and shut the door behind her.

Anne edged just far enough around the desk to catch a glimpse of the headline glowing on the editor's computer screen. "My story on-"

"I know what it is!" Vivian Andrews interrupted sharply. "What I want to know is what you think think it is!" it is!"

Anne felt her temper rising at Vivian's tone, but she bit back the first reply that came to mind. For the moment, Vivian would tolerate no sarcasm but her own. "I intended it to be a simple report of the body I found this morning-" she began, but once again the editor cut her off. This time, though, Vivian softened her interruption of Anne's words by gesturing to a chair.

"Sit down, Anne."

Warily, knowing that Vivian often invited people to sit down only so that they would have a slight cushioning against the blast they were about to receive, Anne dropped onto the edge of the single uncomfortable chair the editor provided for visitors to her office.

Placing the tips of her fingers together in an unconscious gesture that invariably signaled trouble to whomever sat opposite her, Vivian glanced briefly at the offending article hovering on the screen, then sighed and dropped her hands onto the desktop. Though Anne gave no outward sign of it, she relaxed slightly; the change in her boss's body language was a sure sign that Vivian had decided on a softer approach than she'd originally planned. Vivian's next words, though, made Anne wish her editor had stuck with Plan A.

"You look terrible," she said. "Maybe you should take some time off."

"It hasn't been the easiest day," Anne replied. "Most of us don't really look forward to finding a body on their morning run, let alone having to write a story about it." As Vivian's eyes flicked toward the computer screen, Anne decided that while her editor might have chosen to avoid a direct approach, she wouldn't. And she would also risk a touch of sarcasm of her own. "I gather from your typically loquacious phone call that there's a problem?"

Vivian shrugged. "Maybe I ought to a.s.sign the story to someone else-"

This time it was Anne who interrupted. "On the same theory that a lawyer who represents himself has a fool for a client?"

"You don't agree?" Vivian countered.

"I don't see the parallel."

Vivian leaned forward and her fingertips came ominously together again. "Then let me elucidate for you," she said, putting just enough emphasis on the word "elucidate" to make it sting like the tip of a flicking whip. "It seems to me that your proper function in this particular story is interviewee rather than interviewer. As for the story itself, it reads far more like an editorial than even your usual stuff does, and unless you have a lot more backup material than I suspect you do, the whole thing reeks of supposition. You're supposed to be a reporter, Anne. When I want opinion pieces from you, I'll let you know."

Anne felt a vein in her forehead throbbing, and hoped it didn't show. "Would you like to tell me exactly where the problems are?"

"The whole tenor bothers me. To begin with, I don't think you should be suggesting this is a serial killing. Until the police see some parallels between this Cottrell woman and-"

"This 'Cottrell woman' was my next-door neighbor," Anne interjected, her voice rising in anger.

Vivian Andrews blinked. "Your neighbor?" she echoed. "Good G.o.d, Anne, what are you doing? You found your neighbor neighbor dead in Volunteer Park this morning, and you not only came to work, but you wrote about it, too?" dead in Volunteer Park this morning, and you not only came to work, but you wrote about it, too?"

"Writing about things like this is my job," Anne replied. "And as for parallels between this and Shawnelle Davis, I think there are plenty. For one thing, neither place seemed to be broken into-"

"Which proves nothing," Vivian cut in. "You know as well as I do that half the people in the city still leave keys hidden all over the place."

Anne dipped her head in acknowledgment of the criticism. "So they do. But it goes a lot further than that. Both women were butchered in the same way. Their chests were cut open and their hearts were cut out. Furthermore, they both lived on Capitol Hill, only a few blocks apart."

"And one of them was a hooker and the other worked at Group Health. One was in her thirties, the other in her fifties. You know as well as I do that serial killers stick to a type-"

"Richard Kraven didn't."

"And nothing was ever proven against him in this state," Vivian reminded her.

"Whether Richard Kraven was proven guilty in Washington State or not, he was a killer, and you know it as well as I do," Anne flared. "And I'm just as sure that whoever killed Shawnelle Davis also killed Joyce Cottrell."

"You were also sure that Shawnelle Davis's death was somehow connected to Richard Kraven," Vivian Andrews retorted. "I don't get it, Anne. What are you trying to prove here? It seems as though you want to have it every way possible. If the Davis and Cottrell murders are connected to the ones you claim Richard Kraven committed, where does that leave Kraven? You claim he was guilty, but now it sounds as if you think someone else did it."

"If he had an accomplice-"

"If he had an accomplice, don't you think he'd have cut a deal? Call me cynical if you want to, but I've been around long enough to know that the first thing most of these creeps do who get hit with a murder charge, is blow the whistle on their friends! And if that doesn't work, you pull a Menendez and blame the victims."

Anne sank back into the chair as if the air had just been let out of her. "I know." She sighed. "That's what makes me so crazy. I don't really believe Kraven had an accomplice. But I still think there's some kind of connection." Her eyes fixed on Vivian. "You haven't seen the bodies, Viv. And I'll admit I didn't see Shawnelle Davis's, but I saw pictures. It's weird-they're not like what Kraven did. They don't have that surgical quality about them, as if they'd been dissected, but the mutilation is basically the same. It's as if whoever killed Shawnelle and Joyce is trying to pick up where Kraven left off."

Vivian Andrews's lips pursed sourly. "That's not reporting, Anne. That's editorializing. And I don't think I can let it go on any longer." She rummaged around on the cluttered surface of her desk, found what she was looking for and handed it to Anne. "I'll clean up your story and run it," she said, "but that's it. We run this paper on facts, not on speculation. So until something real real happens that turns these two deaths into genuine serial killings, I want you to go to work on that." happens that turns these two deaths into genuine serial killings, I want you to go to work on that."

Anne looked down at the piece of paper in her hand. It was a notice of a planning meeting for a proposed regional light-rail system that would stretch from Everett to Tacoma, a proposal that had been endlessly kicked around among various governmental agencies for most of a decade. Anne looked at Vivian with utter disbelief. "This?" she asked. "You're asking me to cover this?" this?"

"I'm not asking at all," Vivian calmly replied. "I'm ordering you to."

CHAPTER 38.

The house was quiet.

Glen was asleep.

The Experimenter was not.

He explored the house in a more leisurely fashion than he had before; yesterday, and in the days before that, he had felt a sense of urgency, a need to make preparations. But yesterday, much of what he required had been procured, purchased, and brought into the house while Glen slept, stored carefully away in the bas.e.m.e.nt, ready for his use when the time was ripe.

But not yet.

He was out of practice, and until he could once again perform his experiments perfectly, he wouldn't perform them at all.

He had, after all, certain standards to maintain. Standards that had certainly not been maintained by the man he'd watched last night, the man who had carried a clumsily butchered victim through the darkness as if the simple absence of light would be enough to protect him from the consequences of what he had done.

It would not, of course. Soon-perhaps very soon-the Experimenter would administer a fitting punishment to the blundering imitator he had seen last night.

Today, though, he had other things to do. Today, while Glen slept and the house was quiet, he would begin brushing up on his skills, begin reacquiring the perfect manual dexterity he had lost in the years since events had required him to suspend his research. Thrilling to a growing sense of antic.i.p.ation, the Experimenter finished his examination of the house, lingering only when he came to Anne Jeffers's dresser. Opening each of the drawers, he ran his fingers over the soft satiny fabric of her lingerie.

In his mind he touched her skin.

A sigh built in the depths of his chest, and was finally expelled in a sound reminiscent of bellows fanning coals into fire. His fingers tightened for an instant, crushing the silk into a shapeless ma.s.s, but he quickly regained control of himself. Closing the drawer, the Experimenter left the room and went to the bas.e.m.e.nt.

The purchases he'd made the day before-with the exception of the fishing rod Kevin had found-were hidden away in a battered footlocker he'd found supporting two boxes of dust-laden books. Moving the two boxes aside, taking care not to disturb the layer of dust that covered their tops, the Experimenter opened the trunk and took out several items: some nylon line, a spool of strong silken thread, some fishhooks, and a book. Carrying the items to the long workbench that stood against one of the bas.e.m.e.nt's walls, he set the items down and pulled the string that hung from the fixture suspended from the joists above. The light flickered for a second or two, then a bright fluorescent glow swept away the cellar's shadowy gloom.

The Experimenter opened the book. It was a manual on fly-fishing, the hobby he had so often used to soothe the frustration that engulfed him when his experiments ended in failure. He began leafing quickly through the book until he found the section on hand-tied flies, then slowly turned the color plates one at a time. Though it would have appeared to an observer that he was only giving the ill.u.s.trations cursory glances, the truth was exactly the opposite. In the second or two it took him to scan a page, his eyes took in every detail of the two dozen flies each plate displayed.

The fly he was looking for was on the twelfth plate, the second photograph from the left in the third row.

On the page opposite the ill.u.s.tration was a brief paragraph describing how each fly had been made. The fly that caught his attention had been constructed from the feathers of a parakeet, augmented with a small tuft of cat fur, giving it the look of a winged caterpillarlike creature.

The Experimenter knew precisely where he could obtain the materials he would need to duplicate the fly.

Leaving the bas.e.m.e.nt, he went upstairs to the second floor. Boots, growling softly as he pa.s.sed through the kitchen, followed after him. In Kevin's room the parrot was in the process of removing the sh.e.l.l from a sunflower seed. k.u.mquat was sitting on Kevin's small desk, her tail wrapped around her feet as she gazed longingly at the parrot.

As the Experimenter came into the room, the bird paused in his eating, bobbing his head menacingly, as if to guard his food from the unexpected visitor.

The Experimenter's eyes fixed on the cat. "What do you think?" he asked. "Are you willing to volunteer a bit of that coat for a fishing fly?" The cat's ears p.r.i.c.ked and her nose twitched. The Experimenter smiled. "Suppose we make a bargain: If the bird gives up a feather, then you ought to be willing to contribute a little fuzz, right?"

Moving closer to the parrot's cage, the Experimenter saw a feather lying on its floor. He opened the door and reached inside, but just as his fingers grasped the feather, Hector's beak closed on his thumb. Wincing at the pain, the Experimenter jerked his hand from the cage, shutting the door just in time to thwart Hector's second attack. "A little slow," the Experimenter observed while the bird ruffled its feathers and glared at him through the bars of the cage. "And after all, you pulled it out yourself, didn't you?" Turning to the cat, the Experimenter held the bright green feather high. "The bird has made his offering," he said. "And so shall you." Picking k.u.mquat up, he started back to the cellar.

Boots, whining nervously, followed.

At the far end of the workbench was a partially completed-and obviously abandoned-model of a three-masted schooner, a picture of which was still pinned to the wall above the hull. Around the hull, covered with dust, were various miniature tools that had been bought for the model ship, only to be forgotten along with the rest of the project. Gathering the tools together, the Experimenter moved them to an open area of the bench in preparation for his task. The book, propped open to display the fly he intended to duplicate, leaned against the wall.

Inserting a bare hook into a small device equipped with infinitely adjustable alligator clamps, the Experimenter set to work, appropriating glue from the model ship supplies to facilitate the attachment of fragments of Hector's feather to the fishhook.

Picking up an X-Acto knife, the Experimenter held it over the bright green feather. How long had it been since he'd tested his skill? But his hand was steady and the knife felt familiar. The fingers of his left hand held the feather flat on the workbench while his right hand expertly manipulated the X-Acto knife. In only a few minutes he had cut out four perfectly shaped pieces of feather, each of them cut into a graceful contour identical to those shown in the book.

Barely pausing to admire what he'd done, the Experimenter continued working, his fingers deftly wrapping thread around the tiny stems of the sc.r.a.ps of feather, binding them to the shank of the hook with perfect dexterity.

Only when the feathers had been flawlessly placed on the hook did the Experimenter finally step back to gaze at the object he'd created. Though he'd applied a tiny bit of glue to the hook before fastening the feathers, none of it showed; not a single drop had oozed through the perfectly wound and knotted thread whose ends had magically disappeared beneath their own turns. Like the wings of a tiny b.u.t.terfly, the fragments of Hector's plumage glittered in the bright fluorescent light, and already the Experimenter could see the finished fly flitting above the surface of a stream, floating on its tiny wings, luring a trout from the water's depths.

All that remained was to tie a tuft of k.u.mquat's fur to the hook, forming a nearly weightless body for the fanciful insect he'd constructed. Reaching down, the Experimenter picked up the cat once more and held it against his chest, turning so the cat's eyes would see the tiny object held in the alligator clamps. "Look at that," he crooned softly. "Isn't that pretty? You don't mind giving up a little fur just to finish it with, do you?"

k.u.mquat, as if sensing that something unpleasant was about to happen, stirred in the Experimenter's arms, and he tightened his grip. The cat, feeling the pressure of his fingers, struggled against the constraining force, and its heart began to beat faster.

The Experimenter's fingers began to tingle. He could feel energy flowing into him, an energy that was almost electric.

Life. He was feeling the energy of life itself, experiencing the force that transformed the animal in his hands from nothing more than a vastly intricate construction of elemental molecules into a living ent.i.ty. And once again the question rose in his mind: He was feeling the energy of life itself, experiencing the force that transformed the animal in his hands from nothing more than a vastly intricate construction of elemental molecules into a living ent.i.ty. And once again the question rose in his mind: How does it work? How does it work?

The Experimenter gazed down at k.u.mquat. The cat struggled in his arms, trying to wriggle free from his grip, but the Experimenter's hands only closed more tightly.

Deep in his soul, the Experimenter knew it was time to begin his research again. It was almost as if the cat had been fated to come into his hands as a harbinger of his renascent career.

Scanning the bas.e.m.e.nt, he spotted a cardboard box, its lid still intact. Placing k.u.mquat into the box, he moved through the bas.e.m.e.nt, finding all the things he needed.

Some carbon tetrachloride. If he soaked a rag in the toxic chemical, and put the rag in the box with the cat, it would be almost as effective as the ether he'd sometimes used in the past.

A plastic drop cloth, apparently left over from some paint job. Spread out on the workbench, it would contain whatever blood the cat might spill.

The Experimenter took off his clothes, packing them carefully away in the footlocker until he was done.

When all the preparations were finally made, and the cat lay unconscious on the workbench, the Experimenter picked up the X-Acto knife. The soul of the Experimenter swelled with joy. Finally, he was taking up his work once more.

He worked slowly at first, relishing every movement, the techniques of dissection coming back to him as if it had been no more than a day since his last experiment, rather than years.

Deftly, he sliced through the skin of the cat's breast, stanching the flow of blood as best he could with the materials he had found.

He made a pair of transverse cuts, then laid the skin back, exposing the thin layer of tissue that covered the sternum and the rib cage. He pressed the trigger of the small Makita saw he'd purchased yesterday, its keening whine sounding to him as sweet as the familiar strains of a favorite symphony. With a steady hand, he lowered the blade, and savored the change in the saw's pitch as it sank into the cartilage and bone of the cat's breast In no more than a few seconds the saw had sundered the rib cage, providing the Experimenter free access to the organ that had fascinated him for years.

Laying the saw aside, he spread the rib cage open and slipped his fingers between the lungs to touch the cat's heart. Gently, he worked the pulsing organ loose, lifting it up just enough to cup it in his palm. He watched its throbbing contractions, thrilling to the energy he could feel flowing through his skin.

At last he was working again.

And it felt good. So good.

Then an image came into his mind, an image of Anne Jeffers. Her face seemed to be suspended before him, and as he gazed into her eyes, the Experimenter's fingers closed around the still-throbbing heart in his hand. Just as when he'd held Anne's lingerie a little while ago, the Experimenter's grip on k.u.mquat's heart tightened.

As with the lingerie, he crushed the heart into a shapeless ma.s.s.

Shapeless, and lifeless.

CHAPTER 39.

Being the center of attention wasn't all it was cracked up to be. When Heather first arrived at school, it had been great. Everybody already knew that a body had been found in the park early that morning, but only Heather had known who had actually found the body, and whose body it was that her mother had stumbled across.

"Except it wasn't really Mom who found her," she explained at least ten times even before the first cla.s.s. "It was our dog."

Though she hadn't actually been there, Heather built a highly detailed image of the scene in her imagination. By the third telling she was able to recite it as vividly as if it had been she herself whom Boots had pulled off the trail and led over to Joyce Cottrell's maimed corpse. "He was tugging at the leash and barking like crazy, and finally Mom gave up and went to see what he'd found." Heather felt a delicious shiver as she repeated the story her father told her when he'd gotten back from the park. "And then, when she saw who it was, she nearly fainted!" fainted!" Though her father hadn't actually said that, Heather was sure it must be true, because every time she tried to imagine what it would have been like to find Mrs. Cottrell's body under one of the bushes in the park, she felt a wave of dizziness. Of course, her mom hadn't actually fainted, since that would have prevented her from calmly finding a phone, calling the police, and then guarding the body until the authorities arrived, all of which Heather was pretty sure her mother had done. Though her father hadn't actually said that, Heather was sure it must be true, because every time she tried to imagine what it would have been like to find Mrs. Cottrell's body under one of the bushes in the park, she felt a wave of dizziness. Of course, her mom hadn't actually fainted, since that would have prevented her from calmly finding a phone, calling the police, and then guarding the body until the authorities arrived, all of which Heather was pretty sure her mother had done.

"But who was was it?" someone would invariably ask as soon as Heather let it be known that her mother had recognized the victim. it?" someone would invariably ask as soon as Heather let it be known that her mother had recognized the victim.

"Our next door neighbor," Heather would reply. Then she would begin doling out the details of Joyce Cottrell's life.

During first period it had been terrific. Everyone wanted to talk to her, and even hunky Josh Whitman pa.s.sed her a note asking if she wanted to have lunch with him. But by third period, when Heather was almost five minutes late because people kept asking her questions even after the bell rang, she was starting to tire of telling the story. By lunchtime, when it became totally clear that the only reason Josh Whitman wanted to eat lunch with her was to hear about the murder, she was thoroughly tired of talking about it.

Now, as she and Rayette Hoover left the school at four, Heather was pleased to see that almost everyone else was already gone; at least she wouldn't have to tell the story all over again. "Want to go over to Broadway and get a latte?" she asked Rayette.

"Okay," Rayette agreed.

As they walked across Capitol Hill toward Broadway, Heather could tell right away that Rayette was struggling not to talk about the one thing that everyone in school had been talking about all day. Heather could also tell that Rayette was losing her battle, and silently made a bet that Rayette wouldn't last out the next block. Within half a block Rayette's curiosity got the better of her, but when she spoke, Heather had to give her friend points for trying to be indirect.