one way.
It was occupied.
The others, all eleven of them, sat empty and silent, for Richard Kraven was the only man Connecticut had deemed worthy of execution in nearly forty years. Indeed, until Richard Kraven’s sentencing, the building had been scheduled for demolition, but when the warden, Wendell Rustin, was informed that Kraven would be delivered into his hands for safekeeping until such time as the legal processes finally and irrevocably approved the killer’s sentence, Rustin stayed the cell block’s own execution. Before the prisoner’s arrival, Rustin himself spent a night in one of the cells, to emerge the next morning convinced that the harsh reality of living in the building would be nearly as terrible as the specter of death, for the warden had found that the cell block itself induced a feeling of abandonment and loneliness that nearly overwhelmed him during the eight silent, empty hours he had forced himself to endure.
Yet, if Richard Kraven had experienced any terror in his two years in the otherwise empty cell block, he had never given any sign or uttered any complaint. He had endured the waiting the way he had endured his trial, maintaining a silence that his guards found arrogant but which his supporters thought of as dignified, and granting interviews only in attempts to convert people to his cause.
“They may execute me,” he would repeat over and over again, “but they cannot punish me, for it is impossible to punish an innocent man.”
Now, on the day of his execution, Richard Kraven was — as always — sitting impassively in the chair in his cell. Today a book of Victorian poetry lay open in his lap, and to a casual observer it would have appeared as if this morning were no different from any other. When the heavy clang of the bar on the door at the far end of the corridor echoed through the cells, Kraven finished the poem he was reading, closed the book and looked up, his handsome face expressionless. His line of sight restricted by the cell’s heavy steel side walls, he waited, motionless, staring straight ahead until he saw Anne Jeffers appear within his field of vision. Then, deliberately, he placed the book on the table and rose, moving toward the front of the cell and extending his hand through the bars.
Anne glanced at Kraven’s hand for a moment, her eyes fixing on the long, strong fingers, the heavy tendons, and the thick veins starkly etched against Kraven’s pale skin. An image rose in her mind of those hands sunk deep into the organs and entrails of his victims. Involuntarily, she took a step back.
Pulling her eyes away from Richard Kraven’s hands, Anne forced herself to look directly into his face.
Though he was past forty, Kraven looked to be no more than thirty. The coal-black, wavy hair that had given his features a vaguely Byronic look had been shaved off the night before, but his face was exactly as Anne remembered it from his trial.
The softly curved, almost voluptuous lips; the straight, aquiline nose and wide-set eyes — movie star eyes, Anne had always called them — were the same as they had always been. No lines showed in his pale skin, no creases had formed around his eyes or mouth. When he spoke, it was as if he’d read her mind.
“If I were guilty, don’t you think it would show in my face by now? Don’t you think just the knowledge of what I’d done would have started to change me?”
Even his voice was the same, soft and reasonable.
“Did you ever hear of Dorian Gray?” Anne countered.
Kraven’s lips tightened slightly, but the flatness in his eyes didn’t change at all. It was that look that Anne remembered most, the cold flatness that had been the first thing she noticed about Kraven when she met him four years ago, after he’d been arrested in Bridgeport and it seemed as if every reporter in Seattle had gone to Connecticut on the same plane. It was those eyes that made his face a terrifying mask of almost alluring cruelty back then, and now, as he trained them fully on her, their effect hadn’t changed.
“Shouldn’t you be a bit more gracious?” he asked. “After all, you’ve finally convinced them to kill me.”
Anne shook her head. “I wasn’t on the jury, and I wasn’t the judge. I wasn’t even a witness. Neither at the trial nor to any of the things you did.”
Richard Kraven offered Anne Jeffers the smile that had convinced so many people he was innocent. Had it not been for the flatness in his eyes, his expression would have looked almost wry. “Then how can you be so sure I did anything?”
“The evidence,” Anne replied. Her eyes flicked toward the closed door at the end of the hall, and the guard, who was watching through a glass panel. How quickly could he open that door? Again it was as if Kraven could read her mind.
“Surely you don’t think I’m any danger to you?” he asked, his voice taking on a warm concern that would have soothed Anne if it had come from anyone else.
How does he do it? Anne wondered. How does he make himself sound so normal? Except for the shaved head and the prison clothes, Richard Kraven still looked exactly like the popular young electronics professor he had once been, back when his star was still rising at the University of Washington. “I think if you had the chance, you would kill me right now,” she said, keeping her voice level by sheer force of will. “I think if you weren’t behind those bars, you would strangle me without so much as a second thought, and then take my body apart the way you did with all the others.” As she stared into his expressionless eyes, Anne felt fury rising up in her. Why wouldn’t he admit what he was, what he’d done? Her voice rose a notch. “How many were there, Kraven? Besides the three you were convicted of, how many? How many just in Seattle? Five? Seven?” There was still no reaction at all in Kraven’s eyes, and Anne felt her rage building. There had to be some way to get through to this — this what? Man? But Richard Kraven wasn’t a man. He was a monster. A cold, unfeeling monster who had never acknowledged what he’d done, let alone shown any remorse. “Have we even found all the bodies yet?” she demanded. “For God’s sake, Kraven, at least tell me that it’s all finally going to be over!”
His flat gaze fixed steadily on her, but when Richard Kraven finally spoke, his voice again belied that strange dead look his eyes projected. “How can I tell you what I don’t know?” he asked in a tone that reminded Anne of an earnest child.
Her jaw set as the heat of her anger suddenly turned ice cold. “Why did you want to see me?” she demanded. “What could you possibly have to say?”
Richard Kraven smiled again, but this time there was no warmth to his smile at all; the cold, unblinking eyes fixed on her, the jaw tightened, and in that hard, grim look Anne Jeffers was certain she was at last seeing the true face of the evil that dwelt within Richard Kraven. “Today won’t end it. Killing me won’t end it,” he said, each word a chip of ice. “That’s what I wanted to tell you, Anne. How will you feel, Anne? When I’m dead, and it all starts again, how will you feel?” Suddenly he laughed, a mirthless cackle that reverberated through the cell block, coming back to batter at her eardrums again and again. “You’ve always wanted me to express remorse, haven’t you? Well, here’s some remorse for you — I am sorry about something. I’m sorry I won’t be here to see you suffer when you finally realize you were wrong about me.” His eyes bored into her and his voice began to rise. “It’s going to start again, Anne. Whoever really killed those people is just waiting until I’m dead. Then he’ll start again.”
As Richard Kraven’s voice grew louder, Anne took a step backward, then turned and strode quickly down the corridor toward the exit. But even as the guard opened the door to let her out, the killer’s words echoed in her ears: “What will you do, Anne?” he bellowed after her. “Who will you apologize to when you finally find out you were wrong? Will you have the guts to kill yourself the way you’ve killed me?” His shout bounced off the concrete and metal walls of the cell block, echoing harshly, and his bitter laughter reached a crescendo. “That’s my regret, Anne,” he howled after her. “That I won’t get to watch you die the way you’re going to watch me!”
Anne went through the doorway and slumped against the wall outside as the guard slammed the heavy metal door shut. She only wished she could close her mind to Kraven’s words as easily as the guard had closed the door against his voice.
Straightening up, she started back toward Wendell Rustin’s office, her eyes automatically going to the clock on the wall.
Eleven-thirty.
Another half hour and it would finally be over.
In her mind she began composing the first words of the piece she would write about Richard Kraven’s execution. But even as she put the lead together, Kraven’s words kept coming back, mingling with her own, worrying at her, creeping back into her consciousness no matter how hard she tried to shut them out.
Suddenly she wished this day were over, so she could go away from the prison, away from Connecticut, away from Richard Kraven.
Yes, that was what she needed.
