Black Lightning (42 page)

CHAPTER 62

B
y the time she arrived home, Anne’s rage had begun to subside a bit, not because she’d been able to find any merit in Mark Blakemoor’s ridiculous theory, but because her anger itself had finally run its course, leaving her drained and as tired emotionally as she was physically. As she turned the corner off Highland onto Sixteenth, she was surprised to see that Glen’s Saab was back. But Glen had said they wouldn’t be back until late in the afternoon—maybe even tomorrow morning. Sliding her car into a space that was miraculously open right in front of the house, she hurried up the flight of steps to the porch and went inside. “Glen? Kevin? Hello?”

“In the basement!” Glen called, his voice barely audible.

Coming down the stairs a moment later, Anne found her husband standing at the workbench, his back toward her, the bright fluorescent lights casting a harsh glare over everything. “How come you’re back so soon?” she asked, moving closer. Glen didn’t answer. As Anne approached the workbench she saw what he was doing: in his right hand he held a filleting knife, its thin, razor-sharp blade glimmering in the white light from above. On the wooden workbench, held in place by Glen’s left hand, was a large trout. As she watched, Glen jabbed the sharp point of the knife through the skin at the base of the fish’s head, then ran it quickly down its spine, laying the flesh open along the dorsal ridge and exposing the innards. Then, the knife flashing so quickly Anne was afraid he might cut himself, Glen cut the meat away from the bones, finally laying the bright pink fillet skin side down on the bench. With a single deft stroke, he peeled the meat from the skin, speared the skin with the tip of the knife, and dropped it into the wastebasket next to his feet. Only then did he turn to her.

“Where’d you learn how to do that?” Anne asked.

Glen shrugged. “I didn’t. Turns out it’s easy. Want to try?” He offered her the knife, but Anne shook her head.

“Where’s Kev?”

“Over at Justin Reynolds’s. Where’ve you been? I thought you said you were going to be glued to your computer all day.”

“There was another killing,” Anne said. “This time it was Edna Kraven—Richard and Rory’s mother. They found her up in a campground on the Snoqualmie.” For a split second—a moment so brief she wasn’t sure it had happened at all—she thought she saw something in Glen’s eyes.

Fear?

Anger?

But it was gone so quickly, she dismissed it a second later.

“So that was it,” Glen said. “We passed a campground on the way up that was crawling with cops.” He grinned. “Needless to say, Kevin wanted us to stop and find out what was going on.”

“Thank God you didn’t,” Anne replied, shuddering. “It was horrible.” She hesitated, wondering if she shouldn’t tell him about the note that had arrived, while they were alone in the house. But even as she thought about it, Mark Blakemoor’s suggestion that Glen himself might have written it popped back into her mind, and she knew if she got started right now, she’d wind up blurting out the whole bizarre scenario the detective had come up with.

That—justifiably—would send Glen into a fury, which was the last thing he needed right now. Better to wait until later, when she was completely calm. Maybe tonight, before they went to bed.

“So how was the fishing?” she asked, deciding to change the subject. “You still haven’t told me why you came back so early.”

Glen hesitated. An odd look came into his eyes, but then, as before, it cleared almost before Anne was certain she’d seen it. “It was okay,” he said at last. He seemed to think it over for a moment, then nodded. “Yeah, it was okay. But I don’t think Kevin liked it very much. Next time, I think I’d better go by myself.”

A few minutes later Anne headed upstairs. There was something he wasn’t telling her. Something had happened—and obviously it had something to do with Kevin—but for some reason he didn’t want to talk about it.

She went up to their room, only to find a pile of clothes dumped in the middle of the floor.

Soggy clothes.

Picking them up, she turned and started down the stairs to put them into the washing machine, automatically checking the pockets as she went. In the right front pocket of the sodden khakis she found something.

A knife.

A pocketknife, with a tarnished silver handle that had been inlaid with turquoise.

The flat edge of the folded blade was stained as if it had been lying out in the elements for months, even years.

A knife, with a silver handle inlaid with turquoise. And then it came to her:

Danny Harrar had had a knife like that—his mother had listed it as something he always carried with him when she’d reported him missing, even told Anne about it.

But that was ridiculous. It couldn’t be the same knife.

Could it?

“Glen?” she called as she came back down to the basement to put the wet clothes into the washing machine. He paused in the midst of cleaning up the workbench and looked inquiringly at her. “Where’d this come from?”

He looked at the knife, and once more she thought she saw a flicker of something in his eyes. He shrugged. “I found it by the river,” he said. “I was going to give it to Kevin, but I guess I forgot.”

As he went back to clearing away the mess from the fish he’d just cleaned, Anne looked at the knife once again.

Then, instead of giving it back to Glen, she slipped it into her own pocket.

Anne had been sitting at the computer for almost two hours, though when she’d first come up from the basement, it was her intention to do no more than reconfirm her memory of Sheila Harrar’s description of her son’s pocketknife. When it checked out, she considered going down to Pioneer Square to find Sheila Harrar, but the memory of those strange, fleeting looks she’d seen in Glen’s eyes stopped her. She hadn’t been able to forget those brief glimpses she’d had of—what? Fear? Or something else?

Something, obviously, had happened while Glen and Kevin were fishing. Something that led Glen to cut the trip short.

Or had it been Kevin?

Could something have frightened Kevin and made him demand to be taken home?

As questions—unwelcome, unwanted questions—popped into her mind, all of them springing from the incredible tale Mark Blakemoor had woven over her uneaten lunch, Anne tried to think about other things. But the questions lingered, keeping her from going downtown in search of Danny Harrar’s mother. If something
had
happened between Kevin and Glen, she wanted to be there when her son came home. So she forced herself to stay at the computer and concentrate on the transcripts of the interviews she’d conducted years earlier.

The same themes kept coming up over and over again. Biology. Electricity. Metaphysics.

The more she read, the stronger the themes became, until it struck her what Richard Kraven’s true fascination had been.

Life!

He had been utterly consumed with analyzing every aspect of life itself! But if he’d been enthralled with life, why had he killed?

Then, her neck aching and her eyes stinging, Anne came across an interview she’d conducted with a former neighbor of the Kravens, a woman named Maybelle Swinney:

A.J
.: What about when he was a boy, Mrs. Swinney? Do you have any memories that might have new significance, given what he’s been accused of?

M.S
.: Well, now, I don’t like to speak ill of anyone, and Edna Kraven and I were always good friends. But I always thought his fascination with taking things apart was real strange. Always wanted to find out how things worked, that boy did. Couldn’t ever just enjoy them for what they were—oh, no, not him. He always had to take them apart.

A.J.:
What about putting them back together again?

M.S
.: Oh, sure, he was always real good at that, too. Why, he could put almost anything back together. Except the things he … (Pause) Now what do they call it when they cut animals up in a lab?

A.J
.: Dissecting?

M.S
.: Dissecting! That’s it. Anyway, I don’t suppose he ever managed to put the things he dissected back together. (Laughing) Though I daresay he tried. Oh, I bet he tried!

The passage remained on Anne’s screen. Staring at it, she thought, What if Maybelle Swinney hadn’t laughed years ago before suggesting that Richard Kraven might have tried to put the animals he’d dissected back together again? Would I have thought more about the words then?

Maybe. Maybe not.

But what if that was exactly what he’d been trying to do? Now a new idea began to take shape in her head, an idea so vile she found herself wanting to back away from it even as it was forming. What if—

“Mom?”

Anne jumped, startled by the unexpected interruption, and looked up from the monitor, rubbing at her stinging eyes until she was able to focus on Kevin, who was standing just inside the den door. “Kev! You startled me!”

“What’re you doing?” the boy asked, moving closer.

Anne reached out, closed the file with a couple of quick clicks of the mouse. “Nothing much,” she said. Then, trying to keep her voice totally neutral: “How was the fishing expedition? Did you have a good time?”

Kevin’s open features tightened into a guarded expression. “I guess,” he said.

“You guess? What does that mean?” Kevin glanced around, and it took Anne a second to realize what he was doing: looking for his father. So she’d been right—something
had
happened. “Tell you what,” she said. “I’ve got an errand to run in Pioneer Square. How about if you go with me, and you can tell me all about the fishing trip on the way?”

Kevin’s expression cleared instantly. “Can we go to the kite store?”

“We’ll see,” Anne temporized. “Get your jacket while I tell your dad where we’re going.”

The afternoon light was beginning to fade, giving the broad brick expanse of Pioneer Square a dismal aspect that was only intensified by the chill drizzle falling from the slate clouds gathered overhead. “When can we go home, Mom?” Kevin complained, clutching his newly purchased kite in one hand while trying to pull his other one free from his mother’s grasp.

“In a little while,” Anne promised. But it was the third time she’d said that, and she could tell Kevin didn’t believe her. And why should he? They’d just kept moving around while she asked one person after another where she might find Sheila Harrar. She finally interrupted her search for a stop at the kite shop, but that had only served to shift Kevin’s interest from the woman for whom they were searching to the kite he was now impatiently waiting to try out.

The conversation about the fishing trip had gone no better than the search for Sheila Harrar; all Kevin had admitted was that Glen had been “acting funny,” but she hadn’t been able to find out much more. “I don’t know,” Kevin kept saying, no matter how she’d phrased her questions. “He kept looking at me funny, that’s all. And then he made me go down the river and fish by myself.”

“By yourself?” Anne echoed. “He actually sent you off alone?”

Kevin nodded. “Then he went across the river and started messing around in some rocks, but when I wanted to come over and see what he was doing, he wouldn’t let me. That’s when we came home.”

That was all, but it had been enough to make her start worrying all over again.

Now, as the rain fell harder and a bolt of lightning shot across the sky, instantly followed by a crash of thunder, she wondered if maybe she shouldn’t give up the search for Sheila Harrar. If she came back tomorrow morning, she might even catch the woman in her room. She was about to head for the parking lot where she’d left the Volvo when a familiar figure rose up off one of the benches and shuffled toward the Grand Central Arcade. Her hand tightening on Kevin’s, Anne hurried after the figure.

“Mrs. Harrar?” she called. “Sheila?” The figure paused, turning slowly to gaze at Anne, and for a moment Anne thought she’d made a mistake. Then the woman’s lips curved in a smile and she shambled toward them.

It took no more than a second for Anne to realize that Sheila was drunk. Very drunk.

“I know you,” Sheila said as she neared Anne and Kevin. Her words were slurred and her eyes were bloodshot. “You came to see me, didn’t you? You want to buy me a bottle of wine?”

“How about if I buy you some coffee, Sheila?” Anne countered. “And maybe a cinnamon bun?”

Sheila seemed to consider the possibility of arguing, then shrugged. “Sure. Shouldn’t drink anyway. Danny wouldn’t like it.” Her eyes cleared slightly. “You come to tell me about Danny?” she asked.

“I—Why don’t we just get some coffee first?” Anne said. Taking Sheila’s elbow, she guided her into the Grand Central Arcade and found a table, ignoring the glares of the people around her. “Wait here,” she told Sheila and Kevin. “I’ll go get some coffee and buns.”

Ten minutes later Sheila had consumed most of the cup of coffee and half of a cinnamon bun. The doughy bun seemed to have soaked up some of the alcohol in her stomach, and her eyes had cleared a bit. At last Anne pulled the knife Glen had found out of her pocket and laid it on the table. “Do you recognize this, Sheila?”