The same composite, but this time the first view was of Rory Kraven’s entire body. Then the enlargements began, culminating in the same chilling close-up of Richard Kraven’s terrifying lightning monogram.
Except that it was impossible.
“But we saw him die,” Anne whispered, her words strangling in her constricting throat. “For God’s sake, Mark, we were there! We watched him die!”
“We watched Richard Kraven die,” Mark Blakemoor agreed, his voice dull. “But we didn’t watch whoever committed these murders die.”
Anne sank back against the banquette, trying to grasp what it meant.
But of course the meaning was obvious: she’d been wrong. All of them had been wrong. “What about the notes?” she asked, desperately grasping at the only straw available. “They have to be forgeries. If this guy could forge Richard Kraven’s handwriting, surely he could—” She went silent, recognizing the flaw in her own logic.
“The only person who knew about the monogram was the person who did the killings,” Mark Blakemoor said, uttering the very thought that had just silenced Anne.
Her mind raced. There had to be an answer — there had to be! “An accomplice,” she blurted. “If Richard Kraven had an accomplice—”
“It won’t wash,” Mark interrupted. “I already thought about it. Serial killers just don’t have accomplices. It’s like masturbation — it’s a solitary practice.”
“Bonnie and Clyde—” Anne began. “The Manson Family—”
“Not the same thing. Bonnie and Clyde were bank robbers, pure and simple. Violent, but still bank robbers. The Manson outfit was a cult. With cults, nothing ever stays a secret. Sooner or later, someone talks. And with this one, we’ve never heard a peep out of anyone. No rumors, no anything. Just Richard Kraven’s insistence that he never committed a crime.”
Anne’s gaze fixed on him. “And now it looks like he was telling the truth?” But it was impossible! He’d been convicted! “What about his trial?”
“I talked to the prosecutor. They found the same marks on the bodies in his jurisdiction, and they kept them just as quiet as we did, for exactly the same reason. You have to have something the crazies don’t know, or you spend all your time sorting out phony confessions.”
Anne felt as if she’d been struck in the stomach with a heavy object. What had she done? How could she have been so completely wrong? She tried to tell herself it hadn’t been just her — the whole task force had been certain that Richard Kraven was the man they were after.
But it was she who had latched onto Richard Kraven when he’d first come under suspicion, she who had convicted him in the press long before he’d even been put to trial. She who had insisted over and over again that only the death penalty could protect the public from him.
“What does it mean?” she asked, but even as she uttered the question, she knew the answer: Karma. Divine retribution. Ever since the day of Richard Kraven’s execution, her world had begun to come apart. First Glen’s heart attack, then the changes in him that had made him a stranger to her.
Now this.
She had no one to blame but herself. She had destroyed an innocent man, and now she had to pay for what she’d done.
“It means that whoever Richard Kraven took the fall for is still out there,” Blakemoor replied, sensing Anne’s pain and finally reaching out to cover her hand with his own. “And given that he chose to sign Rory’s body, I’d say he’s planning to resume his career right where he left it while he took a sabbatical to watch Richard Kraven take the rap for him.”
Anne heard the words, knew they had to be true, but something inside her still refused to accept them. Something was wrong with the whole thing. Or was she simply incapable of admitting she’d been wrong? Was she so consumed with hubris that she couldn’t even accept facts?
“Look, let’s get out of here, okay?” she heard Mark saying.
Wordlessly, she let him lead her out of the restaurant, and when he slipped his arm protectively around her, she made no move to pull away from him. Unconsciously she moved closer, grateful for any shelter she could find in her suddenly collapsing world.
CHAPTER 52
Glen picked up the phone in the front hall, instantly recognizing Gordy Farber’s voice.
“How’s it going, Glen?” the heart specialist asked, keeping his voice casual despite the worry he was feeling. Obviously, the fear he’d seen in his patient when Glen had come in the day before yesterday had not been alleviated, since now it had infected Anne Jeffers as well, though he suspected that Anne’s fears stemmed much more from the events next door than from what might be happening inside her own home. Still, he’d intended to check on Glen today anyway. “What’s happening? Any more of those blackouts?”
Glen suddenly remembered his intention of calling Gordy this morning. Why hadn’t he? He glanced at his watch. Almost an hour had passed since he’d finished cleaning up the kitchen and …
And what? He couldn’t remember! Another hour gone out of his life! Shit!
“Actually, I was going to call you this morning, Gordy,” he said. “I’m starting to feel like I have Alzheimer’s instead of a heart problem. Yesterday—” Before he could finish the sentence, the doorbell rang. “Hang on, Gord — someone’s at the door.”
Laying the receiver on the table, Glen crossed to the front door and opened it to a heavyset woman clad in a shapeless dress, who smiled uncertainly at him. In her early sixties, he thought, and wearing too much makeup. Her dyed-black hair was piled up on her head in an attempt at a French twist. Though he was certain he’d never met her, she still looked somehow familiar.
“Mr. Jeffers?” the woman asked. “I’m Edna Kraven.”
Even as he stared at her, the same dizziness that had struck him earlier washed over him again. He took a step backward, fighting the blackness that was already closing around him.
He could do nothing, though, to battle the ever-strengthening presence that rose inside him.
The furious presence …
“Don’t let them, Mama! Please don’t let them!”
“Now, you be Mama’s brave little boy. They’re not going to hurt you. They’re going to help you.”
But Richard Kraven knew they weren’t going to help him. They were going to hurt him, just like they had last time, just like his father had hurt him. Now their hands were reaching out to him, and even though he was trying to hang on to his mother, she was prying his fingers loose, working herself free from his clinging arms.
One of the white-clad figures bent down to pick him up, but Richard shrank away, struggling against the tears that threatened to overwhelm him. He knew all too well what happened if he cried. His father had taught him that long ago.
Despite his attempts to escape, the tall man in the white coat picked him up, pinning his arms to his sides. “Now you just take it easy,” he heard the man say. “You don’t want us to have to put you in the jacket again, do you?” Richard shook his head, terror filling his heart. Last time his mother had brought him here, when he’d tried to tell her what his father had been doing to him and she hadn’t believed him, he’d gotten really angry, and finally they’d put him in a coat with sleeves that tied at the back so he couldn’t move his arms at all. He’d been scared then — more scared than he’d ever been before, even when his father took him down to the basement — but the jacket hadn’t been the worst part.
Even the ice-cold baths they’d made him lie in hadn’t been the worst part.
The worst part was he knew what they were going to do today, because his mother had told him about it. “It’s for your own good,” she’d explained. “And it doesn’t really hurt at all.”