Black Lightning Part 2

Though he was past forty, Kraven looked to be no more than thirty. The coal-black, wavy hair that had given his features a vaguely Byronic look had been shaved off the night before, but his face was exactly as Anne remembered it from his trial.

The softly curved, almost voluptuous lips; the straight, aquiline nose and wide-set eyes-movie star eyes, Anne had always called them-were the same as they had always been. No lines showed in his pale skin, no creases had formed around his eyes or mouth. When he spoke, it was as if he'd read her mind.

"If I were guilty, don't you think it would show in my face by now? Don't you think just the knowledge of what I'd done would have started to change me?"

Even his voice was the same, soft and reasonable.

"Did you ever hear of Dorian Gray?" Anne countered.

Kraven's lips tightened slightly, but the flatness in his eyes didn't change at all. It was that look that Anne remembered most, the cold flatness that had been the first thing she noticed about Kraven when she met him four years ago, after he'd been arrested in Bridgeport and it seemed as if every reporter in Seattle had gone to Connecticut on the same plane. It was those eyes that made his face a terrifying mask of almost alluring cruelty back then, and now, as he trained them fully on her, their effect hadn't changed.

"Shouldn't you be a bit more gracious?" he asked. "After all, you've finally convinced them to kill me."

Anne shook her head. "I wasn't on the jury, and I wasn't the judge. I wasn't even a witness. Neither at the trial nor to any of the things you did."

Richard Kraven offered Anne Jeffers the smile that had convinced so many people he was innocent. Had it not been for the flatness in his eyes, his expression would have looked almost wry. "Then how can you be so sure I did anything?"

"The evidence," Anne replied. Her eyes flicked toward the closed door at the end of the hall, and the guard, who was watching through a gla.s.s panel. How quickly could he open that door? Again it was as if Kraven could read her mind.

"Surely you don't think I'm any danger to you?" he asked, his voice taking on a warm concern that would have soothed Anne if it had come from anyone else.

How does he do it? Anne wondered. How does he make himself sound so normal? Except for the shaved head and the prison clothes, Richard Kraven still looked exactly like the popular young electronics professor he had once been, back when his star was still rising at the University of Washington. "I think if you had the chance, you would kill me right now," she said, keeping her voice level by sheer force of will. "I think if you weren't behind those bars, you would strangle me without so much as a second thought, and then take my body apart the way you did with all the others." As she stared into his expressionless eyes, Anne felt fury rising up in her. Why wouldn't he admit what he was, what he'd done? Her voice rose a notch. "How many were there, Kraven? Besides the three you were convicted of, how many? How many just in Seattle? Five? Seven?" There was still no reaction at all in Kraven's eyes, and Anne felt her rage building. There had to be some way to get through to this-this what? Man? But Richard Kraven wasn't a man. He was a monster. A cold, unfeeling monster who had never acknowledged what he'd done, let alone shown any remorse. "Have we even found all the bodies yet?" she demanded. "For G.o.d's sake, Kraven, at least tell me that it's all finally going to be over!"

His flat gaze fixed steadily on her, but when Richard Kraven finally spoke, his voice again belied that strange dead look his eyes projected. "How can I tell you what I don't know?" he asked in a tone that reminded Anne of an earnest child.

Her jaw set as the heat of her anger suddenly turned ice cold. "Why did you want to see me?" she demanded. "What could you possibly have to say?"

Richard Kraven smiled again, but this time there was no warmth to his smile at all; the cold, unblinking eyes fixed on her, the jaw tightened, and in that hard, grim look Anne Jeffers was certain she was at last seeing the true face of the evil that dwelt within Richard Kraven. "Today won't end it. Killing me won't end it," he said, each word a chip of ice. "That's what I wanted to tell you, Anne. How will you feel, Anne? When I'm dead, and it all starts again, how will you feel?" Suddenly he laughed, a mirthless cackle that reverberated through the cell block, coming back to batter at her eardrums again and again. "You've always wanted me to express remorse, haven't you? Well, here's some remorse for you-I am am sorry about something. I'm sorry I won't be here to see you suffer when you finally realize you were wrong about me." His eyes bored into her and his voice began to rise. "It's going to start again, Anne. Whoever really killed those people is just waiting until I'm dead. Then he'll start again." sorry about something. I'm sorry I won't be here to see you suffer when you finally realize you were wrong about me." His eyes bored into her and his voice began to rise. "It's going to start again, Anne. Whoever really killed those people is just waiting until I'm dead. Then he'll start again."

As Richard Kraven's voice grew louder, Anne took a step backward, then turned and strode quickly down the corridor toward the exit. But even as the guard opened the door to let her out, the killer's words echoed in her ears: "What will you do, Anne?" he bellowed after her. "Who will you apologize to when you finally find out you were wrong? Will you have the guts to kill yourself the way you've killed me?" His shout bounced off the concrete and metal walls of the cell block, echoing harshly, and his bitter laughter reached a crescendo. "That's my regret, Anne," he howled after her. "That I won't get to watch you die the way you're going to watch me!"

Anne went through the doorway and slumped against the wall outside as the guard slammed the heavy metal door shut. She only wished she could close her mind to Kraven's words as easily as the guard had closed the door against his voice.

Straightening up, she started back toward Wendell Rustin's office, her eyes automatically going to the clock on the wall.

Eleven-thirty.

Another half hour and it would finally be over.

In her mind she began composing the first words of the piece she would write about Richard Kraven's execution. But even as she put the lead together, Kraven's words kept coming back, mingling with her own, worrying at her, creeping back into her consciousness no matter how hard she tried to shut them out.

Suddenly she wished this day were over, so she could go away from the prison, away from Connecticut, away from Richard Kraven.

Yes, that was what she needed.

She needed to go back home, go back to Seattle.

Go back to Glen.

Holding firmly to the comforting thought of her husband, Anne focused her mind on the story she would write after the execution, after Richard Kraven was finally dead.

After the horror was ended.

CHAPTER 4.

The elevator jerked to a stop at the very summit of the iron skeleton of the Jeffers Building. For a single numbing second Glen was certain that the cage in which he felt claustrophobically confined was about to plunge downward, killing all of them as it smashed into the concrete bed forty-five stories below. For just that moment, the strange tingling in his left arm was gone and the queasiness in his belly and tightness in his groin forgotten. In the next second, though, as Jim Dover slid the elevator's gate open and stepped out onto the wooden platform that seemed to Glen to hover precariously in midair, all the terrors of his acrophobia came flooding back.

He steeled himself against the unreasoning fear that gripped him now, and tried once more to convince himself that his panic was irrational: this building was going to be the best engineered and best constructed in the city, and barring some unforeseen calamity, there was no chance at all that either the platform surrounding the elevator shaft, the shaft itself, or the girders that formed the skeleton of the building would collapse. He and George Simmons had gone over it countless times, the engineer arguing that the building was overdesigned while Glen insisted on erring on the side of safety. Yet now, as he reviewed the specifications in his mind one more time, all the equations, all the coefficients of stress, all the statistics on tensile strength and rigidity suddenly became meaningless in the face of the terror that clasped him more tightly every second. A wave of dizziness swept over him, and he instinctively reached out to grip the mesh of the elevator cage with his right hand.

"You okay, Glen?"

Alan Cline's voice seemed to be coming from far away and had the hollow sound of someone speaking from the depths of a cave. But Glen could see Alan standing right there, only a few feet from him. His fingers tightened on the metal mesh and he forced the burgeoning panic back down. Determined, he looked up at the sky, and for a moment everything seemed normal again. The last traces of this morning's fog and drizzle were burning off, and nothing was left to mar the clear cerulean expanse overhead except for a few fluffy white wisps that seemed to evaporate even as he watched. He took a deep breath, and once more felt in control of himself. Finally easing his grip on the elevator cage, he shifted his gaze to his partner and managed a weak grin. "Great view from up here, huh?"

"For those of us who can look at it, yes," Alan Cline observed. By now only Glen was still in the elevator, and Jim Dover was already uncorking one of the bottles of champagne that had been waiting in the ice chest he'd brought up first thing this morning. "Are you going to join us, or shall we pa.s.s your gla.s.s into the elevator?"

Gingerly, Glen stepped out onto the platform, which was constructed of several lengths of four-by-twelve planking, secured to the I beams with heavy bolts, resulting in an open ten-by-twelve-foot deck.

Plenty of room, Glen silently a.s.sured himself, for four men to stand on perfectly safely.

But even as he tried to rea.s.sure himself, the dizziness crept over him and he reached back to grip the elevator door. He concentrated on breathing deeply and evenly until the dizziness subsided. As Jim Dover pa.s.sed him a gla.s.s of champagne, he finally risked taking a good look around. It was, indeed, a great view. High enough now to see over the crests of First Hill and Capitol Hill to the east, he could see a narrow slice of Lake Washington and the skyline of Bellevue rising in the distance. To the south, the Kingdome squatted like a huge orange squeezer at the near end of the industrial expanse that stretched all the way down to Boeing Field, and the entire Olympic range was now clearly visible. In the far distance he could see Mount Baker to the north, and Mount Rainier to the south. Nearly overwhelmed by the beauty of the panorama, Glen unconsciously released his grip on the elevator and stepped forward, raising his gla.s.s. "To the most fabulous place for a park in the history of Seattle," he said. Raising his gla.s.s to his lips, he drained it, then tossed the plastic gla.s.s over the edge of the platform.

And moved closer to the edge to watch it drop through the skeleton of the building.

First he felt the instant tingling in his groin as his s.c.r.o.t.u.m contracted to draw his t.e.s.t.i.c.l.es protectively upward. At the same time a black roiling pit seemed to open in his belly. Worst, though, was the terrible feeling of being drawn forward, pulled as if by some physical force over the edge to plunge into the abyss.

He struggled against the urge; took a step backward.

Then the bands tightened around his chest, his left arm began to tingle once again, and he felt that clammy sheen of sweat coat his body.

"Glen?" he heard someone ask, but now the voice sounded too far away even to be readily identifiable. "Jesus, Glen, what is it?"

Glen staggered backward, groping for something to steady himself with.

Found nothing.

His right hand moved wildly now, reached for the elevator.

Missed.

He staggered, his balance failing him, his knees buckling.

It was his heart.

Something had gone very wrong with his heart.

He could hear it pounding in his ears, feel it beating crazily in his chest.

Now the bands constricting his lungs tightened. He struggled for breath.

"He's having a heart attack," he heard someone say as he felt strong hands grip his shoulders, steadying him as he crumbled onto the thick planks of the platform. "You got your phone, Jim?"

Jim Dover was already punching 911 into the pad of his cellular phone, and as George Simmons and Alan Cline knelt next to Glen Jeffers's supine figure, Dover ordered an ambulance, then began barking orders into the walkie-talkie that allowed him to communicate with the crew below. A moment later, all his instructions issued, he slapped the phone shut, dropped it into his pocket, and took charge of the situation on the tiny platform. Suddenly, even to Jim Dover, the st.u.r.dy planking seemed to be no more than an insignificant speck suspended in the middle of nothing. "We have to get him into the elevator. George, you and I should lift him up. Alan, hold his head. Not real high-just enough to slide him into the cage."

As the three men raised Glen Jeffers a few inches off the planking and eased him through the open gate of the elevator, the semiconscious man's lips worked, and an incomprehensible sound came faintly from his lips.

"What did he say?" Alan Cline demanded. When no one replied, Alan bent over his partner. "It's okay, Glen," he said, trying to keep his voice steady and rea.s.suring. "Soon as we get you down, you're going to be just fine."

The metal gate clanged shut and Jim Dover jabbed impatiently at the elevator's controls. After a second's hesitation, the cage jerked once, eliciting a barely audible grunt of pain from Glen Jeffers, then began inching its way downward at what seemed to be an impossibly slow pace.

"For Christ's sake," Alan Cline demanded of no one in particular, "can't you make this d.a.m.ned thing go any faster?" No one answered him, and he bent over his partner once more. "Take it easy, Glen. Just take it easy, okay?"

Above his head, Jim Dover and George Simmons glanced uneasily at each other. Glen's breathing was coming only in the shallowest of gasps, and his complexion had lost all its color, taking on a ghastly faint bluish pallor. "Either of you know CPR?" Dover asked. "I don't think he's going to make it."

Alan Cline glared up from his crouched position next to Glen. "Shut up, Jim, okay? n.o.body's going to die." But as if to belie his partner's words, a terrible rattling sound issued from Glen Jeffers's lips, and now the blood drained from Alan Cline's face. Racking his brain to remember what he'd been taught in the cardiopulmonary resuscitation course he'd taken almost a year ago, he pulled Glen's mouth open, checked to make sure his tongue wasn't blocking his throat, then began pressing rhythmically on his chest. As the elevator continued its agonizingly slow descent, he bent over, closed Glen's nostrils with the fingers of his right hand, and began breathing directly into the unconscious man's lungs.

After three deep breaths he went back to work on Glen's chest.

They were only twenty feet above the building's floor when finally another small groan escaped Glen Jeffers's lips and his lungs began to work once again, though the most they appeared able to produce were spasmodic, gasping breaths that seemed incapable of sustaining life.

"Come on, d.a.m.n it," Alan Cline whispered. "Breathe! For G.o.d's sake, breathe!"

As if in response to his partner's voice, Glen seemed to gain a little strength, and his chest heaved.

The elevator banged to a stop and Jim Dover threw the door open. "Where's the ambulance?" he demanded of the a.s.sistant foreman, who was waiting at the elevator's base.

The man's eyes fixed on Dover for a moment, then shifted to Glen Jeffers, whose ragged breathing had abruptly stopped again. "Not here yet," he said as Alan Cline went back to work on Glen. Then his gaze came back to the contractor and he shrugged helplessly. By the time the ambulance arrived, would it already be too late?

CHAPTER 5.

The crowd of demonstrators had begun gathering the day before, and every hour since the first arrivals had set up their makeshift camps, more of them had poured into the field across from the prison, until now the entire s.p.a.ce was filled with tents, trailers, cars, and people. All night long a bonfire had burned, the demonstrators cl.u.s.tering around it as they sang songs of protest and chanted their conviction that the condemned man must not die, that somewhere some nameless lawyer was feverishly working in an ill-lit office, finding new grounds upon which to challenge Richard Kraven's sentence of death.

Perhaps there would be an error discovered in the court records, or some piece of evidence could be newly challenged.

Or perhaps the governor would have a change of heart and commute Kraven's sentence at the last minute.

But as night faded into morning and the bonfire burned lower, until all that was left of it were glowing coals smoldering angrily beneath a thick layer of ash, a watchful silence had descended on the crowd.

Anne Jeffers gazed down upon the scene from the window of Wendell Rustin's office on the top floor of the prison's administration building. A few curling wisps of smoke still rose from the last embers of the night's bonfires, and the demonstrators still stood facing the prison, waiting in bitter antic.i.p.ation for the last moment of Richard Kraven's life.

How many were there-five hundred? A thousand?

And who was to say that their feelings about what was going to happen here today were any less valid than her own? An image of her daughter came to mind, and she saw once more the earnest expression on Heather's fifteen-year-old face a few nights before, when they had once more debated capital punishment over the dinner table. With the absolute certainty of her youth, Heather had insisted that there was not-could not-be any justification for a government executing anyone.

"Two wrongs don't make a right," she'd insisted. "And besides, aren't we always making a big deal about being a Christian nation? What about the ten commandments? The Bible says 'Thou shalt not kill.' Which means that capital punishment is just plain wrong!"

Now, her daughter's words ringing in her ears, Anne wondered just when it was that she'd lost her own innocence, had lost the ability to see the world in black and white. It had not, she reflected, been that many years since she'd agreed with Heather wholeheartedly.

Except that somewhere along the line she'd begun to believe that in some cases-cases like Richard Kraven's-there was no other real choice. To some extent, she supposed that her work had hardened her, that her many years of observing and reporting on man's cruelty to his own species had changed her.

As she gazed down at the demonstrators in front of the prison, scanning their faces, she saw among the crowd scores of people her own age, and just as many who were twenty years older. Even as she watched, an elderly woman sitting in a wheelchair, swathed in a long peasant skirt and a rainbow-colored shawl, proudly waved a sign that read CAPITAL PUNISHMENT IS MURDER CAPITAL PUNISHMENT IS MURDER.

I should talk to her, Anne thought. Before I go home, I should talk to that woman.

Her thoughts were interrupted by the jangling of a telephone. She turned away from the window just as Wendell Rustin picked up the receiver on the second ring, spoke for a moment, then hung up. "It's time," he said. Pushing himself heavily to his feet, the warden came around the desk, strode to the door, and held it open for Anne. When she made no move to go through it, he hesitated for a moment, then gently reclosed it. "Are you going to be all right?"

Anne frowned as she tried to formulate an answer to the question, and finally shrugged. "I don't know," she admitted. "I-Oh, G.o.d, I don't know what I feel right now. I thought I was absolutely clear on this, but now..." Her voice trailed off.

"You don't have to witness it," Rustin offered. "If you'd like, you can wait here."

For the slightest fraction of a second Anne felt tempted to take the warden up on the offer, but almost immediately shook her head. "This is something I have to do," she said. "What kind of a hypocrite would I be if I refused to watch what I've been arguing for all this time?"

Wendell Rustin's head bobbed slightly. "I know," he said. "But I have to tell you, Anne, believing in capital punishment and watching it are two different things. Take it from someone who knows."

In spite of herself, Anne hesitated. How much easier it would be simply to wait here in the relative comfort of the office until it was all over. Resolutely, she faced him and said, "I'll be all right." But even as she pa.s.sed through the door into the hallway outside, she wondered if she'd spoken the truth. Conflicting emotions were still roiling inside her, but this time she reminded herself that she was here to do her job, and purposefully shifted her mind into work mode, a trick she'd learned years ago when she discovered that there were times when she simply had no choice but to separate herself from the task at hand.

Entering the gallery adjacent to the execution chamber, she was surprised at how many people had already gathered. Some of them she recognized: most of the lawyers who had been involved in Kraven's various appeals were there, as were a number of policemen she recognized from various states.

Mark Blakemoor, who had headed up Seattle's own task force when it became obvious that a serial killer was working in the city, sat in the front row, and as Anne came in, he nodded to her and gestured for her to take the seat next to him. Feeling an oddly incongruous sense of relief at seeing Blakemoor, she moved quickly down the aisle and slipped into the empty seat.

And found herself staring directly into the small chamber that held the electric chair.

Mutely, she stared at the executioner's toy.

It was wooden, constructed in what struck Anne as a cruelly simple design.

No cushioning, not even slightly relaxing angles.

Wide, flat arms equipped with heavy straps to hold the victim's arms in place.

More straps to hold the torso immobile, and still more to bind the legs and ankles.

Two electrodes, attached to thick cables.