Black Lightning Part 3

All of it illuminated by the harsh white light of four powerful incandescent lamps suspended from the ceiling.

Anne stared at it wordlessly, her mouth going dry. Abruptly, the lights in the gallery dimmed, almost as if they were in a theater, and then a door to the left of the chair opened. A moment later Richard Kraven appeared in the doorway. He paused, his eyes fixing on the chair.

As Kraven stared at the instrument of death, Anne thought that a flicker of a smile crossed his lips, but if so, it was gone so quickly she couldn't be certain she'd seen it at all.

With two guards escorting him, Richard Kraven moved into the chamber and took his seat. He was barefoot, and wearing only a loose-fitting pair of pants and a short-sleeved s.h.i.+rt. Though she loathed this cold-blooded killer, the clothing struck Anne as unseemly, as if someone had decided it wasn't enough simply to execute him, but that he must be stripped of his last vestiges of dignity before being sent to his death.

The guards began strapping Richard Kraven to the heavy wooden chair.

His ankles were bound to the legs of the chair, his wrists to its arms, his torso to its back.

A priest came into the room and spoke to Kraven, but Anne could hear nothing through the heavy gla.s.s that separated the killing chamber from the viewing gallery. Whatever the clergyman said seemed not to affect Kraven in the slightest, and he made no reply.

After lingering for only a few more seconds, the priest left.

The guards dampened one of the electrodes with salt.w.a.ter, and taped it securely to Richard Kraven's shaved scalp.

They attached the second electrode to the calf of his right leg.

After checking their work one last time, the two guards left the chamber, closing the door behind them.

It was only after the guards had left that Anne realized an eerie silence had fallen over the gallery.

She glanced up at the clock.

Thirty seconds before noon.

Now she found herself glancing around for a telephone, and realized she was half expecting that the event she was witnessing would suddenly be ended by a loud ringing, just as it used to happen in the movies.

But there was no phone; if it existed at all, it was somewhere beyond her field of vision.

Beyond Richard Kraven's, too?

Was he, too, waiting for the last minute reprieve that would release him from the chair?

She made herself look once more at Kraven, and though she had been told that the gla.s.s was a one-way mirror and he wouldn't be able to see the execution's witnesses, she nonetheless had the sensation that his eyes were focused on her, and that he knew exactly at whom he was staring.

Those cold, expressionless eyes had lost their deathly flatness. In the last moments of Richard Kraven's life, his eyes had at last come alive and were projecting an emotion.

A strong, powerful emotion.

Hatred.

Anne could feel it burning out from him, searing through the thick gla.s.s of the window, snaking toward her- She recoiled from Kraven's hate-filled gaze as from a striking cobra, and had to fight against a powerful impulse to abandon her chair and escape from the scene that was unfolding in front of her eyes. But before she could move at all, Richard Kraven jerked spasmodically as every muscle and nerve in his body reacted to the two thousand volts of electricity that shot through him.

Anne gasped, and then her whole body responded to the horror she beheld.

She stopped breathing as every fiber in her went momentarily rigid. Then an anguished moan escaped her throat as Kraven's body jerked again and again.

Next to Anne, Mark Blakemoor's eyes narrowed and his jaw clenched as he watched Richard Kraven die. Every muscle tensed, the detective silently counted the seconds, only relaxing when two full minutes had finally gone by and he was certain that Richard Kraven was dead. Then he spoke quietly to Anne Jeffers.

"That's it," he said. "Let's go home."

Anne s.h.i.+fted slightly in her seat, but made no move to get up. As the room slowly emptied, she stayed where she was, watching silently as the guards returned to the execution chamber, this time pus.h.i.+ng a gurney and accompanied by a doctor. After the doctor confirmed that Richard Kraven was dead, the guards removed the electrodes from his leg and scalp, unfastened the straps that bound him, and lifted him onto the gurney.

But even after Richard Kraven's body had been taken away, Anne Jeffers remained where she was.

She knew that what she had just witnessed had changed her, but she didn't yet know quite how.

She knew she would never forget watching Richard Kraven die, nor ever get over the terrible feeling she had experienced as his final glare of pure hatred had burned through her.

Then she thought of Glen, and was instantly consumed by a desire to be held by him, to feel his arms around her, his lips on hers, his strength pulling her close to him.

She would be all right. In a few hours she would be with Glen again; in a few days, a few weeks, she would begin to forget the clinical precision of what she'd just seen.

But would she ever be able to forget the terrible hatred that had poured forth from Richard Kraven even as he'd died?

CHAPTER 6.

The wailing siren built to a deafening crescendo that was abruptly silenced as the ambulance braked to a stop in front of the construction site. Both doors flew open and two white-clad men leapt from the cab, one of them racing around to the back of the vehicle to pull out a stretcher, the other, carrying a small tank of oxygen and a face mask, breaking into a run toward the area where Glen Jeffers lay.

"Let me through," the paramedic commanded as he pushed his way through the crowd gathered around the fallen man. "Who's in charge here?" Without waiting for a reply, he knelt beside Glen's body, quickly felt for a pulse, then put the mask on Glen's face and turned the oxygen to high flow.

"We think he had a heart attack," Jim Dover said. "We were all up on top. All of a sudden Glen started looking weird. We thought it was just fear of heights, but-"

His words were cut off as the second paramedic pushed through the crowd, unrolled the portable stretcher and lay it next to the unconscious body. "Myocardial infarction?"

"Looks like it," the first medic said. "Let's get him on the stretcher and into the truck." Working together like a well-oiled machine, the two paramedics moved Glen onto the stretcher, then started back toward the ambulance. The construction crew fanned out ahead of the stretcher, clearing the way, while Alan Cline, together with George Simmons and Jim Dover, kept pace next to Glen.

"He's a member of Group Health," Alan Cline said, his voice trembling as he saw the bluish cast his partner's face had taken on. "If you can take him up there-"

The paramedics slid the stretcher into the back of the ambulance, one of them climbing in to attach Glen to the waiting IV and heart monitor. "You can go with him," the driver told Alan Cline. "There's plenty of room, and if he wakes up-"

Alan Cline didn't wait to hear the medic finish what he was saying, but scrambled into the back of the ambulance. The driver slammed the door shut, then dashed around to the driver's seat. The ambulance started up the street, turned right up the steep slope of the hill, and then the siren came on.

m.u.f.fled by the walls of the ambulance, its wail took on a mournful, keening note, and as Alan Cline gazed at his partner, he wondered if it would be possible for Glen to survive at all.

It was like slowly coming awake in a pitch-dark room. Except the first thing that met him as he came into consciousness was pain.

Pain such as he'd never experienced before.

Pain that consumed him.

Pain that threatened to tear his mind apart.

Away!

He had to get away from the pain before it destroyed him.

Where?

Where was he?

His mind struggled against the blackness, and slowly it began to recede.

Now he could hear sound.

It seemed to be coming from somewhere far in the distance, but in a moment Glen was able to identify it.

A siren, like a police car, or an ambulance.

The dark receded further, and he was able to see. But it was odd-he seemed to be floating in some dimension he didn't quite understand. Far below him, he could see two men crouching near a figure on a stretcher. They were confined by walls, as if perhaps they were in- An ambulance!

But why?

Even as the question came into his mind, he knew the answer, and looked down once more at the figure on the stretcher.

He was looking at himself.

His s.h.i.+rt was open, his chest bare, and his face looked as pale as death.

Death.

The word hung in his mind.

Was that what was happening to him? Was he dying?

But if he was dying, why didn't he feel anything?

Then he knew.

He was no longer in his body. Somehow, during that last terrible flash of blinding pain, he'd managed to escape, slipping away from the agony before it could break his mind.

Now, gazing back down at his body, he could see that the pain was still there, for his face was contorted into an anguished grimace.

He heard Alan Cline's voice drifting up: "Jesus, what's happening? Can't you do something for him?"

Another voice, this one shouting, but somehow no louder than Alan's had been: "We're losing him! I'm gonna need some help back here!"

As Glen floated far above, the scene continued to unfold. Though he felt nothing, he knew the ambulance had stopped, for now the driver had joined the man who crouched over him. As the first medic began pressing rhythmically on his chest, the second one removed a plastic object from a cabinet fastened to the ambulance's wall.

Almost disinterestedly, Glen Jeffers watched as his own mouth was opened and a plastic airway was thrust down his throat.

"Let's get some lidocaine into him," he heard the other medic order. As if no time at all had pa.s.sed, he saw the other medic slide a needle into the IV tube and press the plunger. But even as the drug was going into Glen's system he heard the paramedic who was crouched over his body speak again.

"We're getting PVCs! Get the defibrillator ready!"

"What's happening?" he heard Alan Cline ask. "What's PVC mean?"

"Premature ventricular contractions," the paramedic snapped. But when he spoke again, his tone had changed, now sounding almost pleading. "Come on," he crooned. "Come back to me!"

The words hovered in the s.p.a.ce around Glen, but held little meaning for him. Darkness began closing around him until he seemed to be in the depths of a tunnel, with only a single speck of light visible in the distance. As the voice of the medic spoke again, Glen began moving toward the light, and now the light itself seemed to be beckoning to him.

He moved faster and faster through the landscape of his own life, watching himself as a baby in his crib, at home, and now his mother was picking him up, holding him, cuddling him. Then he was at school, and everyone he had ever known-everyone he thought he had long ago forgotten-was there.

On and on it went, his life spread out before him, and as he experienced it all, he grew ever closer to the welcoming beacon of brilliant white light at the end of the tunnel.

Now he could see figures in the lights.

His grandparents were there, and someone else, someone he recognized in an instant.

The baby.

The baby they'd lost twelve years ago, when Anne had gone into premature labor with their second child.

Alex, his name would have been.

And now here the baby was, waiting for him, his arms held out eagerly.

Glen moved faster now, racing toward the light, leaving even the memory of the pain far behind.

Then, from behind him, he heard a voice, pleading with him not to leave.

Not a single voice, but a plaintive chorus, a blend of tones in which he could hear not just Anne, but Heather and Kevin, too.

Calling out to him, pleading with him.

He paused, slowing his rush toward the light, and looked back.

All was darkness, a vast and forbidding expanse of black, which he knew was filled with pain.

Ahead, bathed in the sweet light, his grandparents and the child he'd never met awaited, reaching out to welcome him.

The voices from the darkness cried out again, though, and with a great wrenching pang of anguish, Glen knew that he had to turn away from the light, had to make his way back into the darkness.

Those who awaited in the light were eternal, and would be there to welcome him when the time was right.

But behind him there was still unfinished business, still things yet unaccomplished, still deeds left undone.

Turning finally away from the light, Glen Jeffers started back into the darkness.