Black Lightning

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.

First there had been resistance, manifested by a faintly sick feeling in the pit of his belly. But the Experimenter had known that wouldn’t last long — perhaps if he’d tried to work with the dog, or even the bird, it would have been more difficult But the Experimenter had known that Glen didn’t really like the cat.

Didn’t like her any more than the Experimenter himself did. And that made things even simpler, for with their mutual antipathy toward the animal, their two minds were already working in a primitive synchronicity.

All the Experimenter had to do was reinforce that synchronicity, strengthen that tenuous bond that the cat herself had established between them. He’d worked slowly, letting Glen watch, letting him get used to what they were going to be doing. “It’s all right,” he’d whispered. “We’re not going to kill her. We’re only going to see what makes her live.”

He’d felt Glen relax slightly, felt him begin to shed that peculiar sense of guilt that kept so many people from accomplishing all that they were able.

The Experimenter had thought about guilt as he waited for the cat to fall into unconsciousness. It was a concept he understood in the abstract, but could not remember ever having experienced. For him, guilt was not something to be overcome, or cast off.

It simply had never existed.

Occasionally he’d wondered if his lack of guilt could be construed as a character flaw, and — again in the abstract — he’d supposed it could be, at least by people of far less intelligence than he. For himself, it was nothing of the sort; indeed, it offered him freedom. His studies — his experiments — were never hindered by any feelings that perhaps he shouldn’t be doing what interested him the most.

And what interested him most — the only thing that had ever interested him at all — was the study of life.

Not the meaning of life — he’d lost interest in that when he was still a boy and had come to the conclusion that life had no meaning.

Life simply was.

Ergo, since there was no “why,” the only important thing was “how.”

Logic had long ago made it clear to him that his freedom from the restrictions that guilt imposed on other men allowed him to investigate the phenomenon of life with the use of methods that were unavailable to those selfsame others.

Unfettered, he had pursued his studies.

Yesterday he had begun to teach Glen Jeffers to find the same joy in knowledge that he himself had.

By the time the cat had fallen unconscious, he’d explained to Glen that its death was not their intention. Thus, when he began running the X-Acto knife from the cat’s belly up to its neck and Glen had not tried to stop him, the Experimenter knew that Glen had experienced the same thrill as a medical student witnessing his first surgery.

Throughout the procedure, the Experimenter felt Glen’s interest grow. Even better, he had been able to experience for himself Glen’s own wonder when at last the living creature’s beating heart was exposed.

“Touch it,” he’d whispered.

Together, they’d touched the animal’s throbbing organ, and a surge of joy had gone through the Experimenter, transporting him with an exhilaration he hadn’t known in years, for this time he wasn’t merely savoring the experience himself, but reveling in Glen’s experience of it as well.

The heat of life had poured into him.

The power of the constantly working muscle infused his spirit.

The tingling sensation on his skin thrilled him as he touched the innermost sanctum of life itself.

Together, they had continued the experiment, finally squeezing the creature’s heart to the point where it stopped. The Experimenter had prepared a primitive defibrillator, stripping the insulation from the cut end of an extension cord he found hanging from a nail in the wall, but it hadn’t worked.

Once again his experiment had ended in failure, as the cat’s body refused to respond to his efforts to bring it back to life. He’d worked frantically, inflating the cat’s lungs with his own breath. Twice, the heart had begun to flutter, but the uncontrolled energy of the makeshift defibrillator had done no good. Instead of shocking the organ into a steady rhythm, it had only put the animal into convulsions.

Glen had begun to pull away as the Experimenter’s fury mounted. When at last the cat died, too abused, too mutilated to survive any longer, the Experimenter had felt Glen’s revulsion.

The Experimenter had sent Glen back to sleep, wiping his memory almost clean of what he’d seen, but then his own rage had erupted. He’d dug his fingers deep into the cat, ripping its lifeless heart and lungs loose from their bloodied nest, lifting them out to expose the empty cavity.

Snatching up the X-Acto knife, the Experimenter had slashed at the cat’s interior, the blade glinting in the fluorescent light that flickered above the workbench. At last, the experiment over, he’d cleaned up after himself, first disposing of the cat in the alley, shoving it partway under the deck where the garbage cans stood, leaving it where it would quickly be found. Then he had set about cleaning up the basement, carefully erasing every sign of what had happened there.

Finally, he left the note for Anne, setting up her computer so his message would appear just long enough for her to read, then disappear forever.

Only then had he let himself rest, sinking deep beneath Glen’s consciousness, not stirring until a few moments ago, when the man’s acrophobia had threatened to kill them both.

The Experimenter did not intend to die.

Not ever.

Thus, he had stepped in instantly, seizing control, pulling Glen back from the precipice.

He entered the elevator, studied the controls for a moment, then pressed the button that should take him downward. The machinery came to life and the cage began rattling down the shaft The Experimenter glanced idly through the grating of the floor, wondering what it was about heights that bothered some people.

To him, they meant nothing.

Nodding a greeting to each of the men who spoke to him, the Experimenter left the construction site. As he paused at the corner, his eyes fell on a newspaper box. Fishing in Glen’s pocket for the right change, he bought a copy of the Herald, then looked around for a coffee shop. Spotting a Starbucks less than a block away, he strode down the street, bought a latte, and began paging through the newspaper. He found Anne’s story on page three in the second section.

Except it wasn’t Anne’s story: there was no mention of a copycat, let alone of himself. And no byline. Someone else must have written it.

Why?

What were they afraid of?

A copycat?

But a copycat was nothing but a nuisance.

Particularly this copycat.

The Experimenter dropped the newspaper into a wastebasket.

The police might well spend weeks trying to figure out who had killed the whore over near Broadway, and the woman next door.

The Experimenter knew who had done it

He even knew why the murders had been committed.

And that was all they had been — murders, pure and simple.

Nothing had been accomplished, no new bit of knowledge gained, no basic truth uncovered. It had been killing for the sake of killing.

Worse, it had been killing for no other purpose than to gain attention.

The Experimenter had been thinking about it since the moment he recognized the man who carried Joyce Cottrell’s butchered corpse through her backyard and out into the alley. Reluctantly, he’d come to a decision about what he must do.

Unless he acted, other people would die for no better reason than to gain attention for a fool. That was wasteful.

Any way he looked at it, it was wasteful.

But there was another reason for him to carry out the work of the police, the courts, and the executioner. A reason that appealed to the Experimenter’s sense of irony, his sense of style, even his sense of humor. Justice would be served, and Anne — finally — would understand exactly what game was truly afoot.

Dropping a quarter in the pay phone at the back of the coffee shop, the Experimenter dialed a number from memory. On the third ring, a familiar voice answered.

“Hello?” The voice sounded nervous.

The Experimenter said nothing.

“Hello?” the voice said again, and now the Experimenter could clearly hear the terror in it.

The Experimenter knew why the voice sounded nervous.

And he knew more than that — he knew where the man lived, and he knew he hadn’t gone to work.

The Experimenter would pay him a visit.

First, though, he would need certain supplies.

Leaving the coffee shop, the Experimenter found a cab and took it to the Broadway Market.

He began picking up the things he would need.

A pen, the kind you could buy anywhere.

A box of notepaper, again the kind you could buy anywhere.

Gloves — cheap knitted ones, nondescript, the kind everyone had.

A roll of transparent plastic.

Paying for it all with cash from Glen Jeffers’s wallet, he left the market and started south, walking at a steady pace, neither too fast nor too slow, doing nothing that would attract unwanted attention. Anonymity, he had discovered years ago, was by far the best protection.

He came finally to John Street, turned left, and started toward Fifteenth East Less than ten minutes later he was across the street from the building in which lived the man he had come to kill. Gazing up at the second floor, he saw the man peering out of the window.

The man looked nervous.

The man was staring right at him.

The man did not, of course, recognize him.

The Experimenter smiled to himself, crossed the street, and entered the building.…