Scream Catcher Page 10

  The young officer brings Jude outside onto the snowy city sidewalk. He bends at the knees, wipes away falling tears with the tips of his black leather gloves, stares into the Jude’s face, assures him everything is going to be all right, that his dad did a heroic thing by testifying against the bad New York police.

  They did the right thing.

  Now Officer David Parish and his wife have paid the ultimate price. The young officer is only sad that their son had to witness the murders on Christmas Eve of all days. But now the young officer is going to take Jude away from there. He’s going to drive the boy upstate where it will be safe; where no one will come after him. Upstate to Lake George.

  Like all NYPD cops, the young officer’s name is embossed onto a plastic nameplate that’s been pinned to a barrel chest. The name is James Mack …

  A slap on the Jeep door snaps Jude out of his spell.

  “It’s rainin’ cats and dogs, Shakespeare. Better get back inside the house before you catch your death.”

  … catch your death.

  Jude considers Ray’s choice of words all the way down the drive to his home.

  21

  Assembly Point Peninsula

  Wednesday, 6:15 A.M.

  Three uninspired treadmill miles later, Jude stands inside the kitchen still dripping sweat. The good smell of brewing coffee fills his senses. Outside the picture window, rain pours steadily down onto the white-capped lake. With Rosie and Jack still nestled in their beds, he heads out the front door, retrieves the Glens Falls Eagle morning edition, carries it with him back into the kitchen.

  The headline hits home.

  “Murder Comes to Summer Paradise!”

  Below the bold print is an entire half page devoted to the hunt-and-destroy killing of Andrew Manion, the Glens Falls convenience store owner executed in cold blood outside Sweeney’s Gym. The victim’s name has been released in defiance of the gag order. Or so Jude deduces. Consistent with the gag order however, there’s no mention of the suspected perp, the reporter preferring to use the term “Unknown Suspect” in place of a name.

  Clever.

  The article goes on to speculate a possible connection to the first two, as of now unsolved, “pursuit style” murders that took place in Lake George over the past four years. At the same time, there is no specific mention of the name Lennox or, for that matter, Christian Jordan. No mention of conditional bail, no mention of the surveillance ankle bracelet; no mention of a former L.G.P.D. cop as the county’s number one witness. So much for news written around the constitutionally-binding rules of a gag order.

  Jude pours his first cup of coffee.

  The phone rings, causing him a start.

  The ex-cop picks it up to Mack’s voice, the old Captain informing his son that he will be at the house to pick him up in a half hour. They are scheduled to meet Blanchfield first thing in back of Sweeney’s Gym.

  Jude’s mind is a whirlwind of activity. He wants to ask his father if he read the paper or caught the televised news. But the old Captain seems in too much of a rush. No time for talk.

  Jude tells him he’ll be “ready and waiting in thirty.”

  Mack hangs up. No goodbye.

  Jude swallows a breath, tries to calm his beating heart. Thirty minutes. Just enough time to down a cup of coffee, maybe check his e-mail, get cleaned up.

  Coffee cup in hand, he enters his writing study, sits down in front of the laptop, logs onto his online AOL account. Although he isn’t expecting anything in particular, he’s been anticipating a message from his literary agent detailing his royalty statement for January through July. He’s been expecting a check since the first of August. That check will determine the Parish household budget for the upcoming fall season.

  The e-mail isn’t there. Just the usual junk or spam. All of it useless, except for one legitimate message that catches Jude’s attention. The address listed is one he’s never received before. And if it were not for the subject heading of, “LENNOX,” he might decide to delete it along with the spam.

  Opening the e-mail he reads:

  Dear Mr. Parish,

  Do not believe that you are well protected.

  Nothing could be further from the truth.

  Watch out for your family.

  Watch your back.

  —Fox

  Pulse pumping, Jude rereads the message three times, rapid succession. Each time he reads it, it says the same thing. Each time he reads it he finds himself growing more anxious. Should he reply to the e-mail? Or should he let it go ignored? He has no idea who the sender might be. Who the hell calls himself or herself “Fox?” Not even tracing the e-mail’s source reveals much of anything other than the time of transmission.

  Six A.M. that very morning.

  Jude fingers Reply, writes:

  Dear Fox,

  Who are you?

  —Jude.

  He sits. Waits for an answer. The rain picks up. Coffee goes ignored, turns cold. When nothing comes through, Jude is startled to hear a horn honking outside the house. When Jack comes running into the studio, hair sticking up from sleep, he shouts, “Grandpa Mack’s outside, dad.”

  “Shit,” Jude slips. “Is it that late?”

  When Jack smiles, Jude knows what’s coming.

  “Shit yeah,” the boy laughs.

  “Jack Parish.”

  “Oops I goofed.”

  “You go tell Grandpa I’m just getting out of the shower,” Jude insists, barreling out of the study. “Tell him I’m getting dressed.”

  “You want me to lie?”

  “Exactly.”

  “Awesome,” says the boy.

  22

  Lake George Village

  Wednesday, 6:50 A.M.

  The single window inside Lennox’s studio apartment is covered over with a thick, black shade. The window blocks out all natural light; all hope for anyone on the outside to see in. It allows the house-arrested beast to sit naked at his computer table. Clothing feels binding and obtrusive when one is trying to think.

  Placed before him is a keyboard and an LCD monitor. Plugged into the back of the monitor is a PC outfitted with a backup port, surge protector and wireless modem. Placed beside the monitor is a Kindle E-Reader which contains an E-Book edition of Jude Parish’s memoir, Cop Job. Beside that, a small pile of blood-red capsules to keep the video game designer energized throughout the day, into the early evening.

  Although he’s positioned long fingers steadily over the wireless keyboard, he does not type. Not yet. But in his head he transports himself to creative mode. Popping a capsule into his mouth, he dry swallows. In imagination he begins to finger off a series of commands that will initiate the beginning of a viral sequence.

  By definition, Lennox is a militarily trained computer technician or “hacker.”

  The beast knows how to build a virus from scratch—from incubation stage to infection. Not too long ago, a great American President paid him to become an expert hacker in the name of national security. In the years following 9/11 and the second Iraq War, he’s taken full advantage of his computer training to become the pseudonymous developer/designer of two highly successful first-person kill games. But since his arrest (as house painter “Christian Jordan”), he is about to make a return trip back to his military roots by creating an exceptional new virus.

  Well perhaps not an exceptional virus.

  He can certainly do better, given more time than the allotted seventy-two hours between arraignment and Preliminary Hearing. But in consideration of the time constraint, he is about to create a virus strong enough to attack the Adirondack Power Company at its computer controlled core generator … put the lights out on Lake George proper for a while.

  Would you like to know what it takes to build a simple virus, Mr. Parish?

  First things first: a computer virus requires portability.

  The viral “grub” must be architecturally independent, able to operate on any and all systems known to God or artificial i
ntelligence including, but not limited to Windows, X98, Linux-II and, as in the case of Adirondack Power, Solaris.

  Second: in order to sustain and replicate life, a virus requires invisibility.

  The grub has got to implement stealth and masquerading techniques when it invades the generator’s computer at its binary core. Like a caterpillar protected inside a cocoon it must have the talent for hiding out inside its own code, remaining undetected and impenetrable for any required length of time. The sneaky little bugger has got to be impossible to track down once its discovered by a power company employee that the e-mail he or she just inadvertently opened has unleashed all hell upon the entire physical plant.

  Third: autonomy.

  Like any living, breathing, hunting organism, strength and resiliency will be the hallmarks of its function. Because a grub operates on an invaded network, it will bait and lure other fat grubs in order to munch on their rich and nutritious compiled binaries. In the end, this cyber feasting will mean a stronger, longer lasting, more impenetrable “crypted” virus. A monster virus.

  Fourth: the grub has got to be a real fast learner, able to absorb new complicated exploits and complex techniques in a matter of milliseconds, not hours or minutes. Because in computer binary time, the present is gone-baby-gone and the future is in your face. By launching one instance of an updated grub into the power company’s system, all other grubs that will follow must have the savvy for updating and revising their own codes by utilizing the grub net. No one grub should be set in stone. It’s got to be able to mutate, polymorph, evolve, and grow stronger and stronger so that no one anti-viral venom can penetrate the infected matrix grid and kill it.

  Finally: once the Adirondack power grid systems are infected and the grub net instructions downloaded, the virus must appear to disappear. Nothing left behind to trace or route. Just a mean clean scene.

  In forty-eight hours, Lennox, acting as his Black Dragon alter ego, will initiate the seven-step computer code which, in turn, will awaken the grub net. He’ll call for it to rise up and enter into its “transfer state” or “state of ready.” Once fully uploaded it will take no more than thirty minutes for it to infect the local power grid so that by nightfall, the entire town of Lake George will not only know absolute darkness, it will know chaos.

  I know the demon that frightens you Mr. Parish … I read your book.

  Removing his hand from the keyboard, Lennox stands, brushes back long blond locks. Blue eyes planted on the bare wall, he catches sight of the electronic GPS Surveillance Bracelet that up until last evening has been attached to his ankle. Like a little child’s crucifix it now hangs on the wall by a sixpenny nail. It is the perfect place for the bracelet. Because later on when T-Bred comes to escort him on a clandestine shopping spree up in Plattsburgh, he will slip on out into the night without the L.G.P.D. being the wiser.

  23

  Sweeney’s Boxing Gym

  Wednesday, 7:55 A.M.

  The kill scene has been cordoned off with plastic yellow crime scene ribbon. The ribbon extends from the back door out beyond the parking lot to the edge of the gravel pit. From there it makes a ninety-degree turn to the south, then follows the perimeter of the lot until it wraps its way back towards the rear block wall of the gym.

  They stand inside this “circle” of yellow tape: Jude, Mack, P.J. Blanchfield and the mustached Lt. Lino who, with digital video camera in hand, has been delegated to record the proceedings.

  The rain has stopped.

  It’s been replaced by a partly cloudy sky. But the blacktop is still damp. The rapidly rising temperature causes a steamy mist to rise up from it.

  There is a chalk outline where Lennox’s victim rested face down immediately after taking two bullets to the back of the head. Even after the rain the blood stains remain. Along with the heat is the welcome clean-smelling breeze that blows off the lake.

  But Jude is not able to enjoy it.

  He stands outside the gym’s back door, beside the blue dumpster. Per Blanchfield’s request, he’s physically pointing out the place where Manion made his way over the gravel pit embankment, down through the small wood. It’s the same spot at the edge of the parking lot in which Lennox caught up to him only seconds before forcing the man down onto his knees and recording his screams. Jude further reveals how Lennox pressed a silenced pistol barrel against the back of his head. Jude speaks of the darkness, the heavy rain, the victim’s shrieks of despair, and the words Lennox shouted out before twice pulling the trigger: “Scream. For. Me.”

  He recounts how two silenced muzzle blasts lit up the rainy darkness. In his ex-cop mind he overlooks no detail, no matter how small. In doing so, he begins to feel the warmth of renewed confidence.

  But that’s when something strange happens.

  Instead of showing her faith in him—her eyewitness—Blanchfield’s face takes on an expression of disbelief. Dressed for “the field” in a gray sweatshirt and blue jeans, her shoulder-length strawberry blond hair pulled back into a tight ponytail, she purses her lips, shakes her head with reluctance.

  Facing Jude she says, “How is it possible that you identified two men from a distance of sixty feet in the pitch dark and the pouring rain?”

  An electric jolt shocks his heart. He feels the edge of a cold blade run down his spine.

  “The exterior spotlight was lit up.”

  But the prosecutor grabs hold of Jude’s hand, leads him back across the lot to the gym’s back door. She raises her head up to face the spotlight, points out that its bulb is no more than a common sixty watt household model.

  The spotlight isn’t a spotlight at all.

  It’s a common interior lightbulb that hardly illuminates the immediate area surrounding the dumpster, much less the far edge of the gym’s property.

  “Here’s what I have to be sure of, Mr. Parish,” Blanchfield presses. “Is it not at least possible that someone other than Hector Lennox might have run out of those woods in pursuit of that convenience store owner? Someone who happens to have long blond hair and blue eyes?”

  Jude swallows something dry and bitter. Blanchfeld is beginning to sound just like Judge Mann.

  “A man killed another man in this very spot,” he says, patting the clean bandage on his head. “I witnessed the event with my own two eyes. He made a getaway in a silver sedan after taking a shot at me. He is the same man who was arraigned yesterday in county court.”

  Now growing dizzy, lightheaded; the demon is snaking its way into Jude’s blood and bones.

  Blanchfield throws him a glare; dark eyes open, unblinking.

  “We based our arraignment on the argument that the man who calls himself Jordan is truly Lennox in disguise. Regardless of physical characteristics that prove otherwise; regardless of a solid alibi; regardless of an obit that records his death.”

  “But I know what I saw.”

  “You know what you saw but you were knocked unconscious by a bullet that grazed your head. You were also hampered by a very black, very stormy environment. Listen, this long-haired man, whoever he is, fully cooperated with us and the court. It’s important that the genuine truth be revealed before we prosecute. We go into court in two days convinced that the man we detained is Hector Lennox and it turns out he’s just some wrongly accused schmuck from nowhere, then this case is closed before it even begins, and a killer will have gotten away.”

  The two turn.

  Lino uses the lull to pull the video camera from his face, give his eyes a break. Mack laser beams a look in his son’s direction. He pulls a smoke from his jacket, lights it.

  “She’s right, kid. We go in there on Friday with a flaky testimony, Mann will see that our suspect walks. At least until we’ve collected all the physical evidence. By then it could be too late.”

  “We’ve got to be one-hundred-ten-percent accurate with our information,” Blanchfield attests. “The testimony must be considered reliable. That’s why we’re here now.”

  The blood rush
es to Jude’s head. It’s a frigid cocktail spiked with fear and adrenalin. He feels trapped between the law and his own memories.

  “I know what I saw,” he repeats like a mantra. “The killer has a black dragon tattooed to the interior of his right forearm. He catches the screams of his victims with an iPhone.”

  “Yes, the young man arrested inside that video arcade has a black dragon tattooed to his right forearm,” Blanchfield responds. “But according to your testimony of yesterday morning, the gunman you witnessed outside the gym was wearing a long sleeved shirt or bodysuit. The black dragon tattoo or any other identifying mark for that matter would have been completely concealed.”

  I know what I saw …

  Or does he?

  “In the end, Mr. Parish, all you can really be sure about is that you froze up, hid yourself behind a dumpster. And you lost consciousness seconds before the perp made his escape. Not because of a misguided bullet, but because of your emotional condition. The defendant knows this. If he is in fact Hector Lennox, he will bring your previous breakdown as a police officer to the forefront of his defense. He will question your sanity. More than likely he will read Cop Job and use it as weapon against you. He will use the botched Burns murder/suicide as proof that you are a man living in constant fear.”

  Jude looks directly at his father for moral support.

  But all the old Captain can manage is a smoky exhale before lowering his head.

  Turning to Lt. Lino, Jude receives much the same reception. Lake George’s newest officer returns the gaze tightlipped, without emotion, video camera now idle in his hand. Standing outside the gym’s back door in the ever-rising summer heat, Jude feels his breathing grow strained. He wants to defend himself. But what can he possibly say that won’t sound like an excuse for his ineffectiveness as a former cop; as an eyewitness to murder; as a fucking man?