Black Lightning

CHAPTER 13

Richard Kraven is dead, but in the minds of the families of his victims, questions still linger, wounds still fester.

Richard Kraven’s final challenge hangs like a dark cloud above us all. For if Kraven was telling the truth — which this reporter does not believe — then a killer may still be living among us.

This reporter therefore intends to take up Richard Kraven’s final challenge, but not, as he hoped, with the intention of exonerating him.

This reporter intends to take one more look at the entire sequence of murders that have come to be known as the Kraven Killings.

This reporter intends to answer some of the questions that still remain:

Do we even know exactly how many died? Is it not possible that hidden away in the mountains and valleys that surround us, more victims are waiting to be discovered?

And might not one of those hidden victims provide the direct link to Richard Kraven that has always eluded the police, thus finally laying to rest all our doubts? Is it too much to ask that the police keep working on this grisly chapter in our civic history until the full truth is finally known?

This reporter thinks not. This reporter thinks the specter of Richard Kraven will hang over the city until …

“Talk to her. I gotta talk to her.”

Though Sheila Harrar spoke the words out loud, there was no one to hear them. Not that anyone would have known what she meant anyway, for in the worn-out, wood-framed firetrap of a hotel into which Sheila had moved two months ago, no one knew his neighbors, and nobody wanted to know them. Most of the people in the building were just like Sheila — living from hand to mouth, telling themselves every morning when they got up that today they were going to get it together and find a job. But then the day just sort of closed in on them. Most days, Sheila didn’t get much farther than the park in Pioneer Square, where someone would offer her a drink out of a bottle wrapped in a stained brown paper bag. And Sheila, just like all the rest of them, would tell herself it was only going to be one swallow, and then she’d get on with the day.

Somewhere there had to be someone who would hire her.

But after the first mouthful of whatever kind of fortified wine happened to be in whatever bottle was offered, Sheila would realize it was already too late. Anywhere she went, they’d smell the alcohol on her breath, then give her that look they always gave Indians.

“Not Indians, Ma. We’re Native Americans. We’ve been here a lot longer than the whites, and they owe us! They murdered us, and stole our land, and they owe us!”

As she heard the voice of her son echo in her mind, Sheila Harrar’s eyes flooded with tears. This morning, though, instead of giving in to them she wiped them away with the dirty sleeve of her best blouse and choked back the sob that rose in her throat. Taking a deep breath that rattled in her croupy lungs, she looked up from the paper she’d snitched from the lobby when she’d come home a few hours ago, and stared out the grimy window into the street outside. No point looking at the room itself; Sheila already knew every crack in the plaster, every curl in the peeling paint.

What would Danny think of her if he could see her now?

But he wasn’t going to see her, because he wasn’t ever going to come home.

So what did it matter where she lived? What did it matter if she didn’t still live in the little apartment they used to share in Yesler Terrace, back when they still thought things were going to get better for them? Danny didn’t know where she lived, because Danny was dead.

And Sheila knew who killed him.

Richard Kraven had killed her eighteen-year-old son, just like he’d killed all those others. Sheila knew it deep inside her guts, where the knowledge burned away at her, consuming her spirit just the way the wine she drank to try to quench the fire was consuming her body.

But without Danny, who cared?

Nobody.

Nobody had cared when she’d tried to get the police to do something about Danny. She’d done all the right things. Every day, she’d gone to the Public Safety Building, and filled out all the right forms, and talked to all the right people. But she could see that nobody cared, and she knew why.

Because she was an Indian.

Not a Native American. Not one of those proud people Danny had always talked about.

No, Sheila Harrar was just an Indian from the projects, and even though they didn’t tell her right to her face, she knew what they were thinking. Her son was just like her — just another Indian. Probably got drunk and walked out, and didn’t even bother to say good-bye to his own mother. When she shouted that it wasn’t true, that Danny went to school, and worked, they hadn’t believed her. If Danny had been white — if she had been white — it would have been different. Then they would have cared, they would have tried to find him. But she and Danny were Indians, and nobody gave a damn what happened to them.

After Danny didn’t come home that day, Sheila stopped caring what happened, too. The ache of not having him anymore hurt so much that she started drinking just to dull the pain, and after a while she was drinking so much she couldn’t make it to work sometimes. Then she’d gotten a job that only started in the afternoon, and that was okay for a while, until she started sitting up drinking all night, and sleeping all day. After that there’d been other jobs, but they didn’t last very long, because Sheila’s drinking was getting worse and worse. Finally she’d had to move out of the project, down here into the hotel in the International District. Since then, one day was just like another. She slept in her tiny room, promised herself that the next day she’d get it together, but every day turned out just like the one before.

Now, as she reread the article about the man who’d killed her son, she knew that today would be different. Today she really would get it together, and not drink, and maybe even find a job.

But most important, she would talk to Anne Jeffers, and Anne Jeffers would listen to her, and believe her, and even though it wouldn’t bring Danny back, at least it might help.

If she knew someone else at least cared what had happened to Danny, maybe some of the pain would go away.

Leaving the paper lying on her unmade bed, Sheila went out into the hall and shuffled down to the pay phone at the far end. She fumbled with the tattered telephone book that hung from a chain beneath the phone, praying that the page she needed wouldn’t be torn out. Then, when she found the number she was looking for, she reached into the pocket of her jeans and pulled out one of the quarters she’d cadged from someone the night before. As she held the quarter up to the slot, she hesitated, and for a moment thought of the wine it could buy her. Danny was more important.

She dropped the coin into the slot, waited for the dial tone, then punched in the number of the Seattle Herald. Minutes later, after being moved from one extension to another, she came to the end of her search.

“To leave a message for Anne Jeffers, push ‘one’ now.”

Sheila Harrar pushed the button on the phone and began to speak: “My name is Sheila Harrar, and Richard Kraven killed my son. If you care, you can come and see me.”

Mumbling her address and the number of the pay phone, Sheila Harrar hung up the receiver and trudged back to her room. She would wait for a while, just to see what would happen.

Maybe Anne Jeffers would care.

Or maybe she was just like all the others.