Black Lightning

CHAPTER 12

… Richard Kraven still insisted that he was innocent of all charges that have ever been brought against him. Even on his last morning, he still protested his innocence, and as I listened to him, I had to wonder what motive he could possibly have for lying, knowing that in only a few more hours he would surely be dead.

Did he expect a last-minute reprieve?

Surely not, for despite the hopes of the anti-capital-punishment forces gathered in front of the prison, both the courts and the governor of Connecticut had made it clear there would be no further intervention in the case.

What, then, would Richard Kraven have to gain by lying to me?

Perhaps it was simply his way of attempting to make me his last victim, by leaving me with questions in my mind, questions that remain unanswered …

“How dare she write such filth?” Edna Kraven’s voice quavered with anger and the newspaper rattled in her shaking hand. Finally, she had to set it down on the kitchen table. Really, it was simply too much to be borne! Richard — her wonderful, perfect Richard — dead not even twenty-four hours, and that awful Jeffers woman was already writing about him again, repeating yet again all the terrible things she’d written for the last five years.

It was bitterness, of course. Edna had long ago come to understand that Anne Jeffers had fallen in love with Richard, and that when Richard had spurned her, her love had turned to hatred. Why else would she have pursued Richard the way she had, making up all those terrible lies about him? For years Edna had written letter after angry letter to the editor and the publisher of the Seattle Herald, protesting that Anne Jeffers was slandering her son, but they had never even responded to her. Once, though, they’d printed one of her letters, but then they’d let Anne Jeffers write an article with the disgusting insinuation that somehow the relationship between Edna and her son might have led to the awful things she’d claimed Richard had done. When Edna read that particular article, she’d actually felt faint — the very idea of what Anne Jeffers had implied fairly set her skin to crawling. To sully the perfect love between a mother and son that way …

Even now, just remembering that article made Edna Kraven’s blood boil, and she glared across the table at her other son, Rory.

Rory!

She’d named him after Rory Calhoun, who had been one of her favorite movie stars. So handsome, so strong.

And so different from her own Rory.

Her Rory had taken after his father, that shiftless no-good with his beady eyes and that weak chin, who had walked out on her right after Rory had been born, leaving her with no one to care for her except Richard. And Richard had cared for her, too. He’d helped her with the baby, and done all the housework, and still managed to have time to get perfect grades in school.

A genius, that’s what Richard had been.

But Rory …

Her lips tightened with annoyance as she watched him eat the cereal — her cereal, to which he’d simply helped himself — just as if nothing had happened, just as if his brother hadn’t been murdered yesterday. Yes, murdered, she repeated to herself. That’s what they did to Richard, no matter what they called it in the newspapers or in those terrible Star Chamber affairs they’d claimed were legal hearings. They’d lynched Richard, and deep in her heart of hearts Edna Kraven had a terrible feeling that Rory — his own brother — didn’t care.

Why else would he have brought the paper with that disgusting article into the house this morning? “Well?” she demanded, her lips pursing, her eyes glittering with fury.

Rory Kraven looked up from the sports pages he’d been perusing as he ate his cereal. Goddamn bitch was gonna start carping at him yet again. Nothing ever satisfied the bitch. Even after thirty goddamn years, nothing he ever did pleased her. Yesterday afternoon and last night had been the worst. He’d arranged to take the day off work to be with her, certain she would want his support when the time finally came for Richard to die, but by the time he’d gone to sleep on the Hide-A-Bed in the guest room that had once been his, he wondered why he’d come at all. All day long he’d had to listen to his mother rant on about Richard — how smart he was, how perfect he was, what a good son he’d always been. Rory had listened to it all, just the way he always listened to it, and he’d known what it really meant, because half the time she said it right out loud. Even now her words echoed in his ears:

Richard was smart — not like you!

Richard was perfect — not like you!

Richard was a good son — not like you!

All his life he’d known who she really loved. Even when he was a little boy, she’d always held Richard up to him as the ideal of perfection. Why can’t you get as good grades as Richard gets? Why can’t you behave yourself, the way Richard always does?

Richard could talk before he was eight months old!

Richard could walk when he was less than a year!

Richard is a genius!

Richard, Richard, Richard!

He’d heard it every day as he was growing up, even after Richard went to college, then moved into a house of his own. Rory himself moved out of the house as soon as he could, renting the little apartment on Capitol Hill where he still lived today, twelve years later. But moving out of his mother’s house hadn’t changed a thing. Edna had been glad to be rid of him, and she’d proved it by showing him his old room the first time he came back to visit her.

It hadn’t been his room anymore. His bed was gone, and so was everything else that had been his. Now there was a Hide-A-Bed against one wall, a TV set against the other, and a big leather chair in the corner where his bureau had been. The words she’d uttered as he stood in the doorway, his stomach hollow as he stared at the room that had once been his, were burned into his mind forever: “Isn’t it nicer now? Richard and I did it. His house is so small, you know, and we just thought it would be nice for him to have a special room here, all to himself. Someplace where he can come when he just needs to think.”

Rory had wanted to hit her that day, wanted to put his face into hers and scream at her.

But he hadn’t.

Instead he’d done as he’d always done.

He’d agreed that the room was nice and that Richard certainly did need it.

He’d kept his peace, hoping that if he didn’t ask for anything, didn’t demand any attention from her, didn’t do anything she could criticize, maybe she would love him the way she loved Richard.

The years had gone by, and the pain had festered in Rory, but he stoically held it all in, certain that sooner or later his mother would love him, too. Then, when the murders started, and people started thinking Richard had committed them, he’d been sure his mother would start appreciating him.

Instead, she’d just given more and more of her attention to Richard, telling anyone who would listen that Richard couldn’t have done what they said he did.

Richard was a good boy.

Richard was perfect. Richard! Richard! Richard!

And now, even the day after Richard had finally been executed, it was going to be the same! Richard was perfect, and Rory was an idiot, and even with Richard dead, nothing was going to change at all.

Why?

Why couldn’t she love him?

Why couldn’t she defend him the way she defended Richard?

What had he done that was so terrible?

Instead of asking her the questions that were boiling in his brain, Rory only looked up from his paper, his eyes wary. “What, Mother? I was reading.”

“The sports section?” Edna demanded. Her scathing voice made Rory wince, but she barely noticed it. “How can you care about sports after what’s happened to your brother? Don’t you even care what they did to him?” Now she picked up the newspaper and flung Anne Jeffers’s column at him. “Don’t you care what that woman is doing to your brother’s memory?”

Rory picked up the paper, glanced at it, then stood up. “They didn’t do anything to Richard, Mother,” he said. “He did it himself. He killed those people, and they proved it, and they made him pay for it. That’s what really happened, Mother.” He started out of the kitchen.

Edna rose to her feet, clutching the collar of her favorite chenille bathrobe tight around her neck. Her black hair — hair he was pretty sure she dyed, since it didn’t show even a trace of gray — hung lankly over her shoulders, and there were still traces in the wrinkles around her eyes of the makeup she’d fallen asleep in last night. Grabbing Rory’s arm, she pulled him around so he couldn’t avoid her glaring eyes. “Don’t say that,” she hissed, pushing her face close to his. “Don’t ever talk about your brother that way! Never!”

Rory’s mouth went dry and his stomach started to hurt the way it always did when she got really angry with him. Mutely, he nodded his head, and tried to pull away from her, but she wouldn’t let him go.

“Say you’re sorry,” Edna demanded. “Say it!”

And Rory did.

After his apology, his mother released him and he left the house to go to the job he’d worked at ever since he finished high school, on the assembly line at Boeing.

And, as always, he wondered how he was ever going to get his mother to love him the way she’d loved Richard. He knew that was never going to happen, though, because no matter how hard he tried, he couldn’t be Richard.

But maybe he could at least be like Richard.