Black Lightning

CHAPTER 49

The story would run on the front page. Anne knew that, even knew she should have been pleased. Instead she was terrified.

It was four-thirty, and she’d finished her account of Rory Kraven’s death. She’d talked to Mark Blakemoor one last time, half hoping he’d be able to tell her there had been a mistake, that Rory Kraven’s fingerprints hadn’t matched the ones lifted from the knife with which Joyce Cottrell had been killed.

He not only confirmed Rory Kraven as Joyce Cottrell’s killer, he told her that the lab had now matched parts of Rory’s right palm print to one of the smeared prints found in Shawnelle Davis’s kitchen.

Finally, Anne had dropped a note in Vivian Andrews’s E-mail suggesting they run only the bare bones of the story until they could penetrate at least part of the thick fog of questions that still cloaked the morning’s events in the drab apartment on Sixteenth Avenue.

Who?

And why?

Who could have known that Richard Kraven’s brother had killed Shawnelle Davis and Joyce Cottrell when the police hadn’t yet been willing to state unequivocally even that the same person had committed both those murders?

The questions were still tumbling through her mind as Anne walked out of the Herald Building into the gray afternoon and headed up Denny toward Capitol Hill and home. The worst of it — the part that threatened to drive her crazy — was the appearance of the notes. She’d finally told Mark Blakemoor about the message that had appeared when she’d booted her computer up the previous afternoon. Though he’d listened intently as she described every detail, in the end he’d had some questions she wasn’t prepared to answer: He’d still been in her backyard when it had occurred yesterday afternoon. Why hadn’t she told him about it then?

She hadn’t mentioned the fishing fly to Blakemoor, either.

Why not?

Her fingers tightened on the steering wheel. Because it didn’t mean anything, that’s why. And it didn’t have anything to do with the note on her computer screen, or Kumquat being killed, or anything else! Glen had explained to her where it had come from, hadn’t he? He’d bought it! It was nothing but a coincidence that it happened to be made out of feathers and fur that could have come from her children’s pets. For God’s sake, what was she thinking? That someone — some stranger who was pretending to be Richard Kraven — had come sneaking into her house, made a fishing fly, killed her cat, and then left a note on her computer?

Anne decided the whole idea was insane; she was starting to sound paranoid even to herself. Two blocks from home she cut over to Sixteenth and cursed out loud as she crept past the big motor home somebody had parked on her block, taking up the parking spot she normally used, and another one as well. Finally finding an empty spot in the next block, she walked back to the house, glaring at the motor home one more time before going inside.

“Hello?” she called out. “Anybody home?”

“Back here,” Glen called from the den.

Anne dropped her gritchel under the table by the stairs and went into the den. Glen was sitting at the drafting table, and he looked up almost guiltily as she came in. “I’m not working,” he assured her. “I’m just doodling.” Moving around the table, she kissed him. “Is that what you’ve been doing all day? Doodling?” She felt him stiffen, but then he nodded.

“Pretty much,” he said. “What about you?”

Dropping into her desk chair, Anne told Glen about Rory Kraven’s murder.

And as he listened to his wife, an image came into Glen’s mind.

An image from the dream he’d had this afternoon.

An image that was, in every detail, a perfect portrayal of Anne’s description of Rory Kraven’s body when it had been found in his bathtub that afternoon.

But he had only dreamed it, Glen thought. Surely, he had only dreamed it.