Black Lightning Part 31

CHAPTER 57.

Rolph Gustafson and Lars Gunderson had been fishing buddies for more than seven decades, ever since they'd grown up next door to each other in Ballard, where they'd thrown their first lines into the ship ca.n.a.l that separated their neighborhood from the main part of Seattle just to the south. Back then they'd dreamed about all the places they would go to when they grew up, but it turned out that they both still lived in Ballard-a block apart now, but not more than two blocks from the houses in which they'd grown up. They were both widowers, both still talked about going to Norway to look up cousins they'd never met, and both still loved to fish. The main thing that had changed over the seven decades was that they now preferred to cast their lines in the mountain streams to the east of the city rather than in the ca.n.a.l that bisected it. This morning-as on practically every Sat.u.r.day morning since Lars's wife had died three years earlier-they set out before dawn, their fishing gear stowed in the backseat of Rolph's old Dodge, coffee and doughnuts balanced on Lars's knees. By the time they had crossed the I-90 bridge and began the climb up toward Snoqualmie Pa.s.s, they were already arguing about where to try their luck today.

As on every other Sat.u.r.day morning, Rolph turned off at the Snoqualmie exit while Lars grumbled that they really ought to go farther on, and then as they made their way through the town, past the power plant and falls, and started down the road that wound along the river, they launched into their discussion of the merits of trying out a few of the holes they'd heard of over the years but never quite gotten around to fishing. The debate was still going strong as Rolf pulled into the same campground they'd been fishing out of for years, parked the car, and got out. He began extracting fishing equipment from the tangle of possessions that had been filling the backseat since his own wife had died, only two months before Lars's Greta had gone to her reward. "Hildie'd kill me if she saw this," Rolf sighed, eying the acc.u.mulation of junk that now completely filled the floor of the backseat.

"Yeah, sure," Lars replied. "But that don't mean you wouldn't want her back, huh?"

Grunting under the weight of their equipment, the two old men started along the trail that wound down from the picnic area where they'd parked Rolf's Dodge to the edge of the river. There was a wide bend at the foot of the trail, and even at the peak of the spring floods there was still a narrow rocky beach. The snow-pack had been light this year, though, and the thaw early, so today the beach would be wide.

They were halfway down when Lars stopped short, his eyes fixing on something that lay half concealed in the thick underbrush. "Oh, boy," he said, whistling softly. "Would you look at that. Don't think there's going to be much fishing today."

He moved off to the right as Rolf edged up next to him. For a long moment the two old men stared at the nude body that lay sprawled in the bushes, arms akimbo, empty eye sockets gaping grotesquely.

The body was still recognizable as that of a woman, but already it appeared to have provided meals for several kinds of wildlife. The chest had been torn open, and it looked as though something had been gnawing at one of the arms and the legs. Insects were swarming over the corpse, and even as they watched, something skittered out from under the body and disappeared into the underbrush. As Lars took a step toward the body, Rolf's gnarled hand closed on his friend's elbow. "Don't think we ought to be touchin' nothin'," he said. "Seems to me like we ought to just be calling the police."

Lars, who had enough experience with dead bodies back in World War II to last him whatever years he had left, nodded his agreement. The two men returned to the campground, found a phone, and dialed 911. Then they sat in the front seat of the Dodge to wait for the sheriff to arrive. Lars uncapped the thermos and split the last of the coffee between them.

Sipping their coffee, the two old men quietly reflected on the impermanence of life and the myriad ways there were to die. It was Rolf who finally broke the silence. "When my time comes," he said, "I think I'd just as soon drown in the river with a big fish on my line."

"Yeah, sure," Lars agreed. "You bet'cha!"

By the time the first police car pulled into the parking lot ten minutes later, neither Lars nor Rolf had been able to think of much else to say.

For the next few hours cars continued to stream into the campground, first from the local sheriff's office in Snoqualmie, then from the State Patrol, finally from the Homicide Department of the Seattle Police Department. Neither Mark Blakemoor nor Lois Ackerly were in the best of moods. Blakemoor had been up most of the night-and the night before-combing through the police records in exactly the same kind of search Anne Jeffers was conducting through her files at the Herald Herald. Lois Ackerly, on the other hand, had been getting ready for her son's soccer game when she'd gotten the message that a body had been found in one of the campgrounds along the Snoqualmie River.

"Well, we've been here before," Blakemoor observed darkly as they started down the trail toward the site Lars Gunderson and Rolf Gustafson had stumbled upon as the sun was rising that morning.

"And the locals are doing their usual terrific job of securing the site," Ackerly agreed. "Do you suppose anyone thought of looking for footprints before they started tramping up and down the path?"

Blakemoor shrugged. "If it's what we both think it is, there aren't going to be any footprints anyway. Or anything else."

As the two detectives drew closer, they could see that the area had been marked off with yellow plastic crime scene tape. One of the State Patrol officers glanced over, recognized them, and nodded a terse greeting. "I thought we were done with this stuff," he said, tilting his head toward the body. Blakemoor followed his gaze and noted with relief that it did not appear to have been moved yet.

"We all did," Blakemoor replied. He moved closer to the body, squatting down to get a clear look at it. "Anyone have any idea how long it's been here?" he asked of no one in particular.

"Offhand, it looks like a day or two. Maybe since yesterday morning, or the day before. It's not too badly decomposed yet, but it's been getting chewed on. Fulla bugs, too."

Mark Blakemoor's gaze was instantly drawn to the mutilation done to the corpse's chest. There were the familiar cuts, the skin having been laid neatly back after being incised by a scalpel or something equally as sharp.

The sternum cut with a saw.

The rib cage spread wide to expose the lungs and heart.

The heart torn away, as always, and, in this case, missing entirely. Kept by the killer as a souvenir? Or taken by some foraging animal? More likely the latter-if this fit what had been called the Kraven pattern up until now, the killer wasn't interested in souvenirs.

He was, however, interested in leaving signatures.

"Photo guys through?" he asked.

"They burned enough film to make a movie," someone said.

Carefully, Blakemoor moved one of the lungs enough to get a look at the interior of the dorsal surface of the thoracic cavity.

The moment he saw the familiar form of the lightning bolts that had been etched into the pleura, he glanced up at Lois Ackerly and nodded almost imperceptibly. Easing the lung back into the position in which he'd found it, he forced himself to look at the victim's face.

A woman; at least in her sixties, maybe older. In death her skin, already sagging, had gone slack, and the thick layer of makeup she'd worn when she died had been reduced by the elements to dark streaks of mascara under her empty eye sockets; a stain of rouge still clung to one of her cheeks.

Her hair, the too-dark black of someone desperately pretending that the date on her birth certificate was a grotesque error, had broken out of its prison of hairpins and holding spray and was spread around her face in a mud-and-blood-spattered halo. But despite the depredations of the elements, the animals, and time, Mark Blakemoor recognized her almost immediately.

Getting to his feet, he turned to Lois Ackerly. "This is getting weirder and weirder. First he kills Richard Kraven's brother, now he kills his mother. What the h.e.l.l is going on?"

Lois Ackerly gazed expressionlessly at the body. "I don't get it-first he sets up Richard Kraven, then waits until he's executed, and goes after the brother and the mother. How come?"

Mark Blakemoor's lips curved into a dark smile. "I don't know, either, but at least he's giving us a pattern this time," he said. "And with a pattern, we can find him. Let's get to work." He began issuing orders, organizing a systematic search of the entire area, although he was pretty sure that, as ever, the killer had cleaned up after himself, leaving nothing in the area that would lead anyone back to him. Still, the search had to be made. Sooner or later even this killer would make a mistake.

And when he did, Mark Blakemoor intended to be the one to find it.

CHAPTER 58.

"Dad? Hey, Dad, is something wrong?"

The words hovered on the fringes of Glen Jeffers's mind, not quite penetrating. From his place in the Saab's pa.s.senger seat, Kevin looked worriedly at his father. Then, just as Kevin was about to speak again, the words sank in, and Glen glanced over at his son.

"No, everything's fine. We're almost there." He sounded confident enough, he knew, but Glen wondered how much truth there was to what he'd said. The fact was, he wasn't really fine; hadn't been since he'd gotten up this morning. Almost as soon as he awakened he had a feeling that something was wrong, that maybe he shouldn't take Kevin fishing after all. But when he'd suggested postponing the trip until the following weekend, the look of devastation on his son's face had quickly changed his mind. Besides, when Anne had asked him what was bothering him, he hadn't been able to tell her-indeed, he hadn't even been quite able to figure it out himself. All day yesterday he'd been feeling fine. There were no repeats of the blackout he'd experienced on Thursday, and finally he'd decided the vague sense of unease he was feeling wasn't worth disappointing Kevin over. By the time the two of them had actually gotten into the car and headed east across the Evergreen Point bridge, he'd felt much better. But as they'd moved farther east, pa.s.sing through Redmond, then continuing on out toward Carnation and Fall City, he'd started to experience a strange sense of deja vu-strange because it wasn't exactly that eerie feeling that what was happening right at the moment was a perfect repeat of something that had occurred before. Rather, the experience Glen was having this morning was something else, not a flash of familiarity, as though something was being repeated, but a stroke of antic.i.p.ation, a feeling that he was about about to repeat something. to repeat something.

Something that had given him great pleasure, and that even now, even when he couldn't quite grasp what it was, still sent a shiver of excitement through him.

He glanced over at Kevin, and an image flashed through his mind, disappearing so quickly he was almost unaware that it had happened at all.

Yet the memory of it held.

A heart.

A human heart, which he was holding in his hand. Where had it come from?

Then he remembered the experience he'd had two days before, when he imagined himself staring down at the naked torso of a woman, then watching helplessly as he cut her chest open.

Her heart? Had he taken her heart out? His stomach twisted with revulsion merely at the thought, and he felt a burning sensation as bile rose in his throat.

But it hadn't happened! None of it had happened! It had only been a horrible nightmare, or a trick of his imagination. Hadn't the psychiatrist told him it couldn't possibly have been real?

He shut his mind to the terrible image, and when his eyes threatened to turn toward Kevin once more, he forced them to stay on the road ahead. Now they were starting up into the mountains. To their right the river cascaded down its rocky channel, frothing white as it roared over broad rapids.

"Where are we going, Dad?" Kevin asked, gazing anxiously at the tumbling waters. What would happen if he slipped while they were fishing? He could swim, but not really very well. "We're not going down there, are we?"

"Another couple of miles," Glen said. "There's a campground. We can park there." A campground? he thought. What campground? He didn't know of any campground. But a few minutes later, as he came around a bend in the road, he saw a sign with the familiar graphics of a tent, a picnic table, and a hiker, with the phrase 1 MILE MILE emblazoned below them. Glen felt his hands turn clammy. How had he known it was there? Was it possible that somehow, in some way he couldn't fathom, the dream had been real? No! It had to be some old memory from one of the drives he, Anne, and the kids had taken over the years. That must be it-although he had no conscious memory of it, the campground must have registered on his mind long ago. He slowed the car, ready to turn in when the side road became visible, but as he rounded the next turn in the road, he saw a police car blocking the entrance, and a State Patrolman waving him on by. As they pa.s.sed, he was barely able to catch a glimpse of several other police cars parked in the lot at the end of the narrow lane. emblazoned below them. Glen felt his hands turn clammy. How had he known it was there? Was it possible that somehow, in some way he couldn't fathom, the dream had been real? No! It had to be some old memory from one of the drives he, Anne, and the kids had taken over the years. That must be it-although he had no conscious memory of it, the campground must have registered on his mind long ago. He slowed the car, ready to turn in when the side road became visible, but as he rounded the next turn in the road, he saw a police car blocking the entrance, and a State Patrolman waving him on by. As they pa.s.sed, he was barely able to catch a glimpse of several other police cars parked in the lot at the end of the narrow lane.

"What's happening, Dad?" Kevin asked, twisting around to stare out of the back window. "Can we stop and find out? Maybe a bear got someone!"

"We're not stopping," Glen told Kevin as the boy faced forward again in his seat. "And fasten your seat belt, okay?" He glanced over at Kevin, and as his eyes fixed on his son, he heard a voice in his head: Remember the cat?

Glen tensed, his fingers tightening on the wheel.

We could do it, the voice whispered. We could do it, and no one would ever know We could do it, and no one would ever know.

Suddenly Glen's eyelids felt heavy and the road ahead blurred. A fogginess began to settle over his mind, and he felt sleepy. If he could just close his eyes for a- No!

He jerked his eyes open, sitting straight up in the seat. No blackouts! Not today! Not with Kevin here with him. He pictured the car careening off the road, hurtling through the guardrail to plunge into the river a hundred feet below, and just the image was enough to send a shot of adrenaline into his bloodstream. As the heat of the hormone spread through his system, his heart began to pound and the strange la.s.situde that had settled over him while the voice whispered inside his head evaporated.

A new sign appeared ahead. Even before Glen saw it clearly, he knew what it was-a sign indicating a side road a quarter mile farther up.

He would turn there.

A few moments later, as he came closer to the narrow track leading off to the right, he once again experienced a strong sense of deja vu; this looked exactly like the place where he'd dreamed he was fishing.

Fishing nude, with a vague memory of having killed a woman, of having opened her chest, of having- No! It had only been a dream, and Dr. Jacobson had found rational sources for every image in it! It wasn't real-none of it! Braking harder than he'd intended, Glen turned the car onto a steep road that wound so closely through the trees that branches sc.r.a.ped against both its sides.

"What if we can't turn around?" Kevin asked, instinctively ducking as a branch slapped against the windshield in front of his face.

"Don't worry about it," he heard his father reply. "I've been here before. Lots of times."

Something in his father's voice caught the boy's attention. Kevin's gaze shifted away from the trees.

The eyes of the man and the boy locked for a moment, and then Kevin looked away.

There was something in his father's eyes he'd never seen before.

Something that scared him.

CHAPTER 59.

Anne heard the sound of the mail dropping through the slot in the front door and seized the opportunity to shift her eyes away from the monitor, relax the muscles of her neck, then stand up to stretch her whole body. Could it really be almost three hours since she'd sat down at the computer in the den to review a few of the interview files? Now that her concentration had finally been broken, she realized that it felt like even longer-her legs were stiff, and her right shoulder was sore from manipulating the mouse she'd been using to navigate through the files. So far she'd gotten nothing for her very literal pains. Only a long and tedious review of information that was already so familiar to her that she felt she could have repeated it in her sleep.

Richard Kraven, whether or not he was the serial killer she'd made him out to be, had been a man of many parts. He'd mastered both biology and electrical engineering, and had studied religion and metaphysics as well. He'd loved the arts, especially dance, contributing at least a thousand dollars each year to the ballet.

Dozens-hundreds-of people had known him.

And no one had thought of him as a friend.

Over and over the people she'd interviewed had used the same words. A lot of them had been complimentary: "Charming...Fascinating...Well-read...Genius..."

But other words kept recurring as well: "Cold...Distant...Detached...Remote..."

Sighing, her certainty fading that she would find something in the files she'd overlooked before, Anne moved through the living room into the foyer.

She saw it even before she bent over to pick up the mail strewn across the floor. A plain white envelope-the kind you could buy anywhere-with her name and address written across it in the same spiky script she'd seen only a few days ago when she followed up the police call to Rory Kraven's apartment. Leaving the rest of the mail where it lay, Anne s.n.a.t.c.hed up the envelope and tore it open. She was about to pull the single sheet of paper out when she stopped herself.

Fingerprints! Maybe, just maybe, whoever had written the note had gotten careless. Her hands trembling, she brought the letter to the kitchen, found a pair of tongs, and carefully pulled the neatly folded sheet out of the envelope. Her heart pounding, she spread it open so she could read it.

Dearest Anne, An explanation: As I'm sure you're aware, I had no opportunity to hone my surgical skills during my recent incarceration. Hence, the incident with your daughter's cat; I simply needed something to practice on. Perhaps I should have left my signature on it, but it was only a cat, and not truly representative of my best endeavors. By the way, no one let the cat out. I came in and got it, just as I came in and left the note on your computer. I can come into your house any time, you know. Any time at all.

An icy numbness spreading through her, she read the note a second time, then a third. She felt panic rising in her, felt an insane urge to run through the house locking the doors and windows and pulling the curtains. But it was broad daylight outside-eleven o'clock on Sat.u.r.day morning. What could happen to her? Besides, if Richard Kraven- No! Not Richard Kraven! Richard Kraven was dead!

She took a deep breath. If whoever had written the note really intended to come into her house, why would he warn her?

He was only trying to scare her.

Her panic of a moment before now yielding to anger, Anne carefully reinserted the note into the envelope, then picked up the telephone and dialed the number Mark Blakemoor had given her after their last meeting. "Call me any time," he'd told her. "If anything happens, or you find something, or you even think of something, call me."

She let the phone ring a dozen times-didn't he even have a machine? What kind of cop was he? Finally, she hung up, and dialed his office number from memory. On the fourth ring someone picked it up.

"Homicide. McCarty."

Jack McCarty? What would the chief of Homicide be doing in the office on a Sat.u.r.day? "I'm looking for Mark Blakemoor," Anne said. "This is Anne Jeffers." When there was no immediate reply, she added, "It's important. It's about the Richard Kraven killings." She hesitated, then took a gamble: "The new ones."

"What did Mark tell you about them?" McCarty growled suspiciously.

"He didn't tell me anything," Anne said quickly, remembering Mark's warning not to repeat anything he'd told her. "But I have something to tell him. He gave me his home number, but he's not there."

"He d.a.m.n well better not be," McCarty replied. "He'd better be up on the Snoqualmie, doing his job."

"The Snoqualmie?" Anne echoed, feeling a chill of apprehension creep over her skin. "What's going on up there?"

There was another silence, then McCarty spoke again, his voice dripping with the contempt he held for every member of the press. "You're a reporter, Jeffers. Why don't you go find out?"

The phone went dead in her hand. "I'll do that, Jack," she said out loud. "I'll just do that." Leaving a message for Heather, although her daughter had said she'd be gone until five, Anne shut off the computer, locked the house, and went out to get into her car. But, stepping onto the front porch, she found herself remembering the note she'd stuffed into the depths of her gritchel.

I can come into your house any time, you know. Any time at all.