Black Lightning by John Saul

Black Lightning by John Saul

Author:John Saul [Saul, John]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
ISBN: 978-0-307-77506-1
Publisher: Random House Publishing Group
Published: 2010-09-28T16:00:00+00:00


CHAPTER 35

The man called in sick for the second day in a row. He’d intended to go to work this morning, for even though they didn’t appreciate him at Boeing, he still took his job seriously.

Just as he took everything seriously.

But when he got home last night, he’d been far too excited to go to sleep right away. Instead of going to bed, he’d stayed up, reliving the event in his memory over and over again.

Relishing the memory of being in Joyce Cottrell’s house.

Of waiting for her.

Of watching her undress.

Of killing her, and possessing her.

And finally, he’d relished the memory of the feeling he’d had as he carried her through the night. Bearing her out of her house and up to the park, the man had felt a freedom and exhilaration he’d never experienced before. He’d known no one was going to see him as he carried her body through the darkness to the park, known it as surely as he knew he was going to kill Joyce Cottrell from the first moment he saw her. It was in those last moments when he’d held her in his arms in the darkness that the man finally felt complete. For the first time—much more than with Shawnelle Davis—he’d experienced the sheer sense of power and ecstasy that came with extinguishing another life. Joyce Cottrell had truly belonged to him, taken like a trophy, dying at his hands like the prey of a hunter.

He hadn’t even tried to hide her body.

Indeed, that was why he’d taken it to the park, to make certain it was discovered early in the morning, when the joggers came out to run the path around the reservoir.

He’d left the park from the south side, walking down Twelfth Avenue to Aloha, then cutting over to Fourteenth. He’d stayed away from the bright lights of Fifteenth Avenue. After he’d deposited the body in the shrubs, he lost the feeling of power, of invincibility, and from then on ducked from one deeply shadowed area to another, feeling as if the light of the streetlamps were trying to expose him. The thick red stains on his clothes had gleamed brightly, and when it started to rain while he was still two blocks from home, he slowed his pace, letting the water wash the blood from his face and hands. Coming at last to the corner of Sixteenth and Thomas, he had to resist the temptation to step into the emergency room and see who had replaced Joyce Cottrell at the reception desk. But resist it he had, knowing that if the person even looked up, the sight of his soaked hair and bloodstained clothing would not be forgotten within a minute or two. In the morning, when the body was discovered, the first place the police would come would be here, to question whoever had relieved Joyce Cottrell, and the person would remember him.

So he passed the emergency room by, slipping instead into the musty, deserted lobby of the building in which he lived, making his way silently to his studio on the second floor.



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