Black Lightning Part 23

She arrived at the medical examiner's office, only to be told there was no more chance of her attending the autopsy of her cat than there would be of her attending that of a human being.

"But it's a cat!" Anne protested. "And it's my cat! Doesn't that make any difference at all?"

The young man behind the desk, whose name was David Smith according to a chipped plastic plaque propped up against a pen holder, shook his head. "Not around here. The rules are the rules. Only our staff and other authorized personnel can attend an autopsy."

"Come on," Anne began, using her best wheedling and subservient tones. "Surely just this once you could let me-"

"No exceptions," David Smith told her in a voice filled with the kind of smug self-satisfaction that only career bureaucrats seem capable of producing.

Frustrated, but certain that there would be no changing David Smith's mind, Anne dropped onto a hard bench, prepared to wait for the rest of the morning if that's what it took. It turned out to be only forty-five minutes before Mark Blakemoor and Lois Ackerly emerged from the double doors that led to the labs from which Anne had been denied admittance.

There was an uncomfortable moment as the reporter and the two detectives regarded each other uncertainly, their long-standing professional relations.h.i.+p having suddenly taken on a new aspect.

"Why don't I meet you back at the shop," Mark Blakemoor told his partner, breaking the silence. "I'll have a cup of coffee with Anne and fill her in." Lois Ackerly gave him a strange look, started to say something, then seemed to change her mind.

"See you when you get there," she said. Nodding a greeting to Anne, she disappeared out the main door.

Mark led Anne to a small room equipped with two Formica-topped tables, a half-dozen chairs, and a counter on which sat a grease-splattered microwave oven and a crusted coffeepot. Fis.h.i.+ng two mugs out of a badly stained sink, the detective rinsed them out, filled them with coffee, and handed one to Anne. "Not exactly a latte, but so far no one's been able to convince Starbucks to take over this s.p.a.ce. Sit?"

Anne settled onto a flimsy vinyl chair; Blakemoor leaned against the counter.

"So what's the deal?" Anne asked. "What did you find out?"

"Nothing conclusive," the detective replied. "In fact, no one's even willing to say the same person who did the women did the cat, too."

Anne's brows arched as she recognized what she suspected was only the first of a series of noncommittal statements. Before she could begin questioning him, Mark Blakemoor went on.

"Here's how it lays out," he told her. "We're pretty sure the same guy did both women. We're pretty sure Shawnelle Davis let him into her apartment voluntarily-probably she picked him up thinking he was going to be a score. As for Cottrell, we found a key with a thumbprint on it, and the print isn't Cottrell's. So either she gave him the key or, more likely, he found it hidden in one of the usual places-the doormat, a planter. Everyone knows where to look, right?" Without waiting for Anne to reply, he went on. "Anyway, the only thing we really have to go on are the cuts, and they're pretty much alike on both women. He used knives he found in their own kitchens, so the wounds aren't exactly alike. But they're close enough that Cosmo-that's the M.E. who's working this for us-is willing to say it's the same perp in both homicides."

"And my cat?" Anne asked as Blakemoor finished.

"That's another story." The detective's expression tightened. "There are similarities to both the women. But the cut is-" He hesitated, then used the same word that had come into his mind the previous day, when he'd first examined the cat. "It's a neater cut. Cosmo says it was done with a sharper instrument-a razor blade, possibly a scalpel. And he says the incision is straighter." He paused again, his eyes avoiding Anne's when he finally went on. "He says it could be the same guy, and that by the time he got to the cat he'd had more practice."

"I see." Anne felt numb.

"Or someone else could have done the cat," Blakemoor finished. There was something in his voice that made Anne look up.

"Someone else, like my husband?" she asked, still remembering the silence that had fallen over Blakemoor and Ackerly as Glen had returned from the house with the plastic bag. When Blakemoor made no reply, Anne decided it was time to tell him about the note on her computer. "Whoever killed poor k.u.mquat put the note there," she finished. "And whoever put the note on my computer knew a lot more about programming than Glen does. He can operate a couple of programs, but he doesn't know the difference between an autoexec.bat and a config sys. At our house, I even install the programs."

"But you thought of him," Blakemoor pointed out.

Anne almost wished she hadn't told the detective about the note at all. But it was too important to keep from him. "How could I not have?" she countered. "He was there by himself all day." A dark and hollow sound that wasn't quite a chuckle emerged from her throat. "I even searched the house, looking for signs that someone else had been there."

"And you didn't find anything," Blakemoor surmised.

Anne shook her head. "So what's next?" she asked.

"The same thing that's always next in a case like this," Blakemoor told her. Though she'd heard the words before-practically knew them by heart-this time they made Anne's blood run cold. "We keep looking, even though we don't have much of anything to go on." He stopped speaking, and it was Anne herself who finished the recitation.

"And we wait for him to kill someone else, and hope that next time he makes a mistake."

Blakemoor nodded, but said nothing. The silence between them stretched on until finally Anne could take it no longer.

"What if it's me?" she asked, rising to her feet. "What if it's me he kills, or one of my family?"

Without even thinking about what he was doing, Mark Blakemoor put his arms around Anne. "It won't be you," he said. "I won't let it be."

Struggling against an almost overpowering urge to cling to the big detective-even if just for a moment-Anne pulled away from him and picked up her coat and her large leather satchel. They left the medical examiner's office in silence.

Neither of them could think of anything else to say.

CHAPTER 43.

Glen Jeffers knew something was wrong the moment he woke up that morning. It was a feeling that flooded not only his brain, but his body as well-a feeling that although he was wide-awake, his mind was only half conscious; that although he'd slept through the night, his body was still exhausted. How could he possibly be so tired when he hadn't done much of anything except rest since coming home from the hospital?

The reality was that he was just plain bored. He'd spent his life being active, rising early for his morning jogs with Anne, putting in long days at the office-days that were often broken only by a fierce lunchtime game of racquetball with Alan Cline-then coming home to work in the evening at the drafting table in the den, or, if it was summer and the evenings long, going up to the park to throw a ball around with Kevin.

What he wasn't used to was inactivity, and this morning, after Anne and the kids had finally left, the house had begun to close in around him. Part of it, he reflected as he set about cleaning up the kitchen, was simply cabin fever. But there was more to it than that. It seemed to him that everything was getting tangled up in his mind. Just before he'd come fully awake this morning, he'd had a dream-one of those half-waking dreams in which you are unpleasantly aware that you're dreaming, but are powerless to stop the unwelcome images parading before you.

This one had been a jumble of scenes: Joyce Cottrell, and k.u.mquat, and Mark Blakemoor staring at him as though the detective thought he'd killed not only his daughter's cat, but his next door neighbor as well. By the time Glen came fully awake, he felt as surrounded by death and violence as he had when Anne was spending so much of her time on the Richard Kraven story.

That was another thing that was starting to get to him. The whole Kraven thing should have ended when the killer was executed, but it seemed to be rising up all over again. Anne was already looking for a connection between Kraven and the two new killings, and if he knew Anne, she'd find one, no matter how implausible it might seem.

Finished in the kitchen, Glen wandered into the den: maybe he'd just spend a few minutes at the drawing board, not working, really, but just sketching and thinking, seeing if any new ideas came to him. Before he even reached his drafting table, however, his eye was caught by the thick file on Anne's desk.

The Richard Kraven file-the one he'd made Kevin bring to him when he was still in the hospital.

Why had he done that? Now, he couldn't even remember having read the stuff. He leafed through a few pages of the file, but none of the articles struck him as something he'd read recently. And he certainly wasn't interested in reading the pieces this morning.

The mood of restless boredom that had been gathering around him since the moment he'd awakened coalesced into an oppressive claustrophobia. Suddenly he had to get out of the house, had to escape the confines of walls that suddenly seemed to be closing in on him. But where should he go?

A walk?

Forget it. Despite his promise to Gordy Farber, he'd always hated walking just for the sake of walking. What he needed was a destination to give the exercise purpose.

The office?

Forget that, too. If he so much as showed up there, Rita Alvarez would not only send him home, but call Anne, too.

But what about the Jeffers Building? He hadn't been to the construction site since his heart attack. A quick look at its progress, he thought now, would be the perfect antidote for his mood, and unless Alan happened to be there, no one on the job would even know about Farber's orders that he stay away from work. His mind made up, Glen pulled on a jacket against the chill of the overcast morning, locked the house, and set out.

A little less than an hour later he was standing on the sidewalk across the street from the soaring skeleton of the Jeffers Building. Even the quickest glance told him that the work was on schedule despite his not being there to supervise it. He felt a twinge of insecurity that they seemed not to need him at all, but then decided the signs of progress were actually something of a tribute-obviously, he and the huge design team working under him had done a good enough job that Jim Dover hadn't needed to call him.

The building-his building-drew him like a magnet. Crossing the street, he let himself through the door in the fence around the site, and headed for the office, a large trailer that would become unnecessary as soon as the ground floor had been enclosed and could be properly lit and heated. The young woman behind the desk, whose name was Janie Berkey, glanced up from the purchase orders she was working on, looked puzzled for a moment, then smiled.

"Mr. Jeffers!"

"Back among the land of the living," Glen said. "Thought I'd have a look around. Jim here?"

"Mr. Dover won't be on site until after lunch today," Janie told him. "If you want to wait for him-"

"Actually, I'd just as soon poke around on my own a little." Glen gave her a conspiratorial wink. "How can I find out what he's doing wrong if I only see what he wants to show me?"

Janie's eyes darkened. "Mr. Dover doesn't have anything to hide," she began, in a voice that made Glen wonder exactly how close a relations.h.i.+p the receptionist had with her boss. "He's the most-"

"Joke!" Glen interrupted. "It was just a joke."

Janie looked uncertain, then uttered a small laugh. Glen seized the opportunity to pick up a hard hat, put it on, and slip out of the office before she could insist on calling someone to escort him.

He spent a few minutes touring the ground floor, then climbed the temporary stairs to the mezzanine level. But even as he began inspecting the structure, he found himself being drawn toward the elevator.

What would happen if he went up?

Would the acrophobia that had overcome him the day he'd had his heart attack engulf him for a second time, or had his unexpected panic just been some kind of crazy fluke? As he stood in front of the metal cage considering the wisdom of going higher up in the structure, the elevator clanged to a stop and one of the workmen looked at him inquiringly.

"Great to have you back, Mr. Jeffers," he said, with a wide smile. "You going up?"

Glen hesitated, then made up his mind. It was like falling off a horse, he decided. If he didn't get on the elevator right now, and conquer the fear that had nailed him a couple of weeks ago, he might never be able to overcome it at all. "Thanks," Glen said. He stepped into the cage, the man closed the door, and a second later the machine came to life, rattling upward.

Instantly, Glen felt the first stirrings of apprehension in the pit of his belly. But he said nothing, determined that today the acrophobia would not get the better of him. As the machine continued to rise, Glen forced himself to look straight down, through the heavy grating of the elevator's floor, to the steadily receding ma.s.s of concrete upon which the steel skeleton of the skysc.r.a.per stood.

With every floor they pa.s.sed, with every twelve feet added to the distance of the drop, the queasiness in his stomach increased. Suddenly the elevator jerked to a stop, and Glen felt a moment of pure terror.

Stuck! They were stuck! Trapped. A wild desperation seized him, blood pounding in his ears. He heard the workman's voice distantly.

"Utility floor," the man announced. "This is where I get out."

The utility floor. Only thirteen stories up, Glen realized, on the floor he'd set aside to hold part of the ma.s.s of equipment that would run the huge building's systems. Only a second ago he would have sworn they were much higher.

This was ridiculous!

"I think I'll go on up to the top," he said, forcing himself to sound matter-of-fact, hoping his nervousness wasn't reflected in his voice.

The hard hat hesitated, and Glen instinctively knew the man was remembering what had happened the last time the architect had visited the site. "You want me to go up with you?" he asked.

Glen shook his head. "I'll be fine." But as the construction worker got out of the elevator and it began creaking upward, he wondered if he'd told the truth. When the elevator finally rattled to a stop a few minutes later, he knew he hadn't.

Determined to overcome the fear that was congealing in his gut, Glen opened the door and got out. The platform around the open shaft of the elevator had been expanded since the day he'd had his heart attack. A wide path of rough-cut four-by-twelves extended all the way to the edge of the framework. If he stayed in the center of that path, he would be perfectly safe.

Taking a deep breath, Glen moved forward, telling himself it didn't matter that there were no handrails, that there was, indeed, nothing at all to steady himself with. When he was still five feet short of the edge, he stopped.

His stomach felt queasy, and he was finding it a little difficult to breathe.

His heart was beating quickly, but not quite pounding, and there was none of the pain he'd felt in his chest and left arm before the heart attack.

All he had to do was take a few more steps.

Fixing his eyes on one of the steel girders that would soon support the outer skin of the building, knowing that if he could just get to it-touch it-he would be all right, he started forward.

One step, then another, and another.

Reaching out, his fingers touched the cold steel, then closed on one of the thick ridges of the I beam. He edged closer to the girder.

And to the edge.

Now he was starting to feel dizzy, but he struggled against it, determined not to give in to the panic that was threatening to overwhelm him.

All he had to do was look down. Just one look, down to the sidewalk forty stories below, and he would have done it.

He edged closer and looked down.

Instantly, the chasm yawned open, drawing him outward, pulling him down. He felt himself leaning over, and an insane urge to jump blossomed inside him. Now he could feel it, feel the wind rus.h.i.+ng past him as he dropped, feel the weightlessness of the fall. If he just let go...

He felt his fingers loosen on the girder, felt himself begin to lean out over the precipice, felt the dizziness take control of him.

No!

The single barked command came out of nowhere, slas.h.i.+ng through the panic that had fogged his mind. Instinctively spinning around, Glen swept the platform with his eyes, searching for the person whose voice had broken the terrible trance of the acrophobia.

He saw no one.

But the voice spoke again: Down. Now Down. Now.

Obeying the command, Glen started back toward the elevator. But as he crossed the platform this time, there was no trace of uncertainty in his step, no feeling of dizziness in his head, no hard knot of fear in his stomach.

And no consciousness of what he was doing.

CHAPTER 44.

The Experimenter felt good this morning. For the first time, he felt truly strong, strong enough that he would no longer have to put him to sleep.

Even yesterday, when Glen had begun to wake up while the Experimenter was working on the cat, he hadn't really tried to stop the Experimenter's work. He'd merely watched at first, but the Experimenter had been certain that, in a way, Glen had actually enjoyed it. After all, the Experimenter had experienced every emotion Glen had felt as, together, they'd carried out the work on the cat.