Scream Catcher Read online

  “You questioned its security yourself.”

  “Yeah, I did. But at the time, P.J. seemed to have no doubt about its effectiveness as a monitoring device.”

  “Now what are you trying to get at? That this kid gave P.J. the key to the bracelet?”

  Mack shakes his head.

  “‘Course not,” he says. “If he did something like that he’d certainly tell me about it.”

  Almost on cue, both men peer back into the dark alley.

  But inside Jude’s head a flash of something: a bare-chested Lennox removing the monitoring device from his ankle, hanging it on a bare wall. He closes his eyes tight, shakes his head as though to shake the image loose from his brain.

  “So far no alarm has sounded,” he points out. “He’s still in there with the thing on his ankle.”

  “So far,” Mack says.

  The two are quiet for another minute.

  But inside the walls of Jude’s skull he’s seeing that same ankle bracelet hanging on a wall. The image is accompanied by an orchestra of strings and pounding tympanis. Strings pluck, snare drums crack, symbols crash, horns blare. Jude senses that as the day wears on and nightfall descends, the orchestra will gradually work its way towards major crescendo, and the demon inside him will be the conductor.

  A rumbling thunder emerges from out beyond the village in the direction of the lake. Black storm clouds are moving down from the north and up from the south. Later this afternoon they will converge to make one hell of a storm.

  “So what are we going to do about Blanchfield?” Jude swallows.

  The old Captain smokes, tosses the still smoldering butt out the window.

  “It’s early in the game,” he exhales. “This is just the start. But I will tell you this. Come tomorrow morning, if Judge Mann does not allow an indictment, I’m going to find a reason and a way to bust Lennox even if I have to tie him down, put a gun in his hand, point it at my own head.”

  Jude senses that his father is not finished.

  “Then what are you gonna do?”

  “Then I’m going to look into Blanchfield, see exactly what it is she’s hiding, and why it’s worth risking the safety of my son and his family.”

  * * *

  Mack drives Jude home in near complete silence.

  Jude has never seen his father so worried. Instead of looking at the old Captain, Jude concentrates on the thick black clouds that now block out the late day sun as it sets over Lake George. Moments later, as he gets out of the Jeep in front of his log home, Mack waves his son back to the open driver’s side window.

  “Promise me something,” he says.

  “Anything.”

  “Tonight, no matter what happens, you don’t leave this house. You have Ray and the lake patrol to monitor the grounds. You’re three-sided by water and one-sided by forest. The access road is protected by Fuentes. No one can get to you. Not without great effort. I’ll be spending the night at the Village Precinct, just in case.”

  “Just in case what, Mack?”

  Overhead, lightning flashes. Thunder follows.

  The hairs on the back of Jude’s neck stand at attention when the thunder blasts.

  “You wanna know how Ernest Hemingway was able to overcome his fear?” Mack poses.

  Jude shakes his head.

  “By suspending his imagination,” he adds. “So let’s just say that for now, I’m suspending my imagination.”

  Part III

  The Dark Monster

  28

  Lake George Village

  Thursday, 6:00 P.M.

  Lennox stares out a basement window covered in iron bars. Not to keep him in, but to keep intruders out. Ice-blue eyes focus on black and blue clouds settling over the lake’s north end. The clouds carry an electrical storm from out of the east. A powerful lightening-and thunder-filled event.

  He’s spent the day in the mountain wilderness; digging, planting, hauling. He and T-Bred, a full day on a forested and snake-infested mountain. Now a deep hunger has set in.

  In his hands, a little plastic bowl.

  Colorful characters from the cartoon Scooby Doo Where Are You? are printed on the bowl. There is Shaggy, Daphne and the rest of the intrepid gang, including the loveable detective hound, Scooby Doo. The characters are running away from a ghost who in cartoon reality is a bad guy with a white bed sheet draped over him.

  The bowl is filled to the brim with Captain Crunch cereal and one-percent milk. He carefully dips the aluminum spoon into the bowl, brings the cereal to his mouth. He chews the cold milk-soaked cereal while peering through the window bars at the black clouds and the lightning flashes they generate. It’s been storming off and on all late afternoon and evening. But now as the dusk approaches, Lennox feels that the worst is yet to come. It makes him feel good to know that the worst is yet to come.

  The violent weather: he cannot control it.

  But on the eve of his Preliminary Hearing its presence is a like a gift from God. It will aid him in the work which will begin as soon as the sun goes down.

  Laid out on the concrete floor behind the computer table are the items lifted from his extensive personal cache that he will require for playing a new kill game: one dozen one-hundred pound bags of untagged ammonium-nitrate fertilizer, a one gallon jug of stable nitroglycerin main charge, an electronic motion-sensitive timer/fuse, and a remote detonator.

  There are spools of color-coded electrical wire and rolls upon rolls of duct tape. There’s an SA-200 high-powered pepper-ball launcher, a case of multi-colored pepper-balls, a brand new .22 cal. Berretta and screw-on sound suppressor, a USNV-14B military specified intensifier tube night vision scope and attached digital night viewing camera device with portable modem capability. There are two sat phones, one digital picture cell phone, a computer-generated topo map, a compass and several yellow pin markers lifted from the Municipal Golf Course.

  The collection also includes foot-long Maglite flashlights, batteries of all sizes, water bottles, Slim Jim beef snacks, anti-bacterial ointments, field dressings, two-dozen five gallon capacity fire extinguishers, one slightly used Ford E-250 commercial cargo extend-van parked inside a secured garage just outside the apartment’s alleyway entrance, and of course, his precious iPhone.

  Lennox and his student, T-Bred, will wait for the cover of deep night to load the van. He does not want to risk being spotted. Other than the weather, he believes himself in control of all situations.

  He makes a check on his student now sleeping the sleep of the forcibly sedated on the couch set at the far side of the room.

  Just as expected. The student is still out for the count.

  But Lennox won’t wake him just yet. T-Bred worked hard up on that mountain all morning and afternoon preparing the field of play. In a matter of one hour the student will be participating in his first kill game. It will require every ounce of his strength, every inch of his resolve in order to perform the one task assigned him. So rather than wake the young turk, Lennox chooses to let the boy sleep. Bending at the waist, the beast brings his face to the student’s face. He inhales, breathes in the boy’s scent. Before raising himself back up, he kisses the boy gently on the cheek.

  It is a simple act of love that his own father would have found impossible.

  29

  Assembly Point Peninsula

  Thursday, 6:30 P.M.

  A storm-filtered dusk is approaching fast when Rosie makes her way around the north corner of the log home, and sneaks up on Jude just a little too quietly from behind. When she taps him on the left shoulder, he turns fast, thrusting the two-pronged grill fork out at her like a dagger.

  “Jesus H., Rosie.”

  His wife of little more than one year stands wide-eyed and startled in her own right, long brown hair blowing in what up until twenty minutes ago was a storm-driven wind that blew up the sloped property from the lake.

  Tan-faced and brown-eyed, Rosie is feeling far better now that she’s been allowed the mild musc
le relaxant on top of spending quality time in bed. While taking good care of herself, Jude also knows she is trying her best to keep him from jumping over sanity’s edge.

  “Breathe,” she insists while setting a bottle of Bud onto the Sunbeam gas grill’s attached utility tray. “We have Ray Fuentes to protector us, remember? And don’t forget the local Coast Guard.” Rosie nods in the direction of the lake and the Boston Whaler anchored off the dock in the far distance, the large letters L.G.P.D. printed on its starboard and port sides.

  Jude lowers the fork, takes the cold beer in his left hand, inhales long and slow. His mind focused on the breathing exercise, he takes an even longer time to exhale. Turning back to Rosie, he wraps his arm around her waist, holds her tight, embraces her wide forehead with pursed lips. Upon releasing her, he steals a drink of beer. Out the corner of his eye he spots Jack walking through the vegetable garden planted on the opposite side of the lawn near the northeast tree line. Scruffy, blue-jeaned kid is holding one of those three-dollar, quick-assembly balsa wood gliders between the thumb and index fingers on his right hand. When the boy launches it into the air, it catches the storm-driven wind and flies a wide arcing curve all the way across the expanse of the back lawn, before nose-diving onto the cement patio.

  Without giving it a thought, Jude sets down the grill fork. He bends over, picks up the damaged plane, does his best to straighten out the now bent wing. Like his boy before him, he holds the thin fuselage between index finger and thumb, raises it up over his shoulder, prepares for take-off.

  “Make it fly, dad,” Jack shouts, round cheeks red with excitement.

  Legs shoulder-width apart, chin up, Jude cocks his arm back and lets her fly.

  The feather-light plane shoots immediately into a nosedive until somehow pulling itself out, regaining precious altitude. When the plane comes to a soft landing on the grass, Jack chases after it.

  Setting the beer bottle down onto the grill shelf, Jude looks up at an evening sky that hovers over the lake like Armageddon itself. Another thick patch of storm clouds moving in fast from out of the north. Thick, low-riding, purple and black clouds. Part of the same system no doubt that’s slated to slam the six-million-acre Adirondack Park all night.

  Towards the back outer edge of the clouds, he can see the flashes of intermittent lightning and what appears to be vertical streams of heavy rainfall that strafe the lake, turning its blue-green surface to gray-black. The clouds and the incoming storm not only mean that the Lake George P.D. patrol boat stationed off the tip of the peninsula is about to get hammered, it also means Jude has maybe two minutes at most to finish up the steaks before the picnic will have to be moved indoors.

  In his head he finds himself wishing somehow the cooking could go on for another thirteen or so hours, until the appointed hour of the hearing in county court and just maybe the recall of Lennox’s conditional bail. In the process of cooking, Jude has found a way to occupy himself, keep his ever-thinking mind distracted.

  But now the cooking has come to an end.

  Coming from the direction of Lake George Road and the woods beyond it, a flash of lightning followed seconds later by a blast of thunder. Two storms approaching from different directions. Not a good situation.

  Jude sees a terrible collision of storm crashing against storm. He sees lightning, hail, and a heavy wind blowing off the surface of the lake.

  A cool almost peaceful wind precedes the two storms.

  It sweeps its way around the house like a ghost around a headstone. Jude can’t help but notice how the cold gusts affect Rosie’s long brown hair, causing it to drift back away from the left side of her face, exposing her tanned neck.

  Flame and plumes of gray smoke shoot skywards from the grill, followed by another too-close burst of lightning and thunder. This one coming directly off the lake.

  That’s when Rosie calls out for Jack, tells the boy to “Come inside. Quick.”

  She starts up the concrete patio on her way to the rear kitchen door.

  “At least part of our final day turned out nice,” she comments, outstretched hand opening the screen door for a hungry little boy who charges on into the kitchen.

  Our final day …

  Laid out on the grill, not three steaks, but the three faces of Hector Lennox—long-haired Hector running in pursuit from out of the gravel pit; short-haired, earringed Hector in the ViCAP mug shot; the pouting innocent Christian Jordan/Lennox standing before Judge Mann.

  Jude stabs at the steaks with the grill fork, yanks them off the grill, slaps them down onto the metal platter. Closing the lid, he kills the flame.

  30

  Lake George Village Precinct

  Thursday, 6:35 P.M.

  The county Evidence Room is located between the Department Communications Center and the Archival Storage Room of the L.G.P.D. precinct basement. The single windowless room is brightly lit by a single ceiling-mounted fluorescent fixture. Floor-to-ceiling metal shelves line the walls. The shelves are filled with boxed tagged-and-bagged evidence that, for the most part, is collecting dust and spider webs.

  As he unlocks the padlock to the Evidence Room’s metal door, Captain Jimmy Mack steps inside, makes his way across the floor not to one of the many metal shelves, but instead to a table set up against a far wall near the fire extinguisher. There sits a single white Banker’s box that, thanks to the overtime teamwork of both Medical Examiner Fleming and the Glens Falls CSI, contains a dozen plastic jars filled with physical evidence. In a show of prosecutorial force, there will be blood matching both the victim’s and the killer’s DNA. There will be hair samples belonging to the killer (several long blond ones), plus one pair of black gloves discovered inside the recovered Lexus Sedan that, despite the dunking in the Hudson River, still contain trace gun powder residue.

  The physical evidence put together with Jude Parish’s eyewitness account and Agent Terry MacSweeny’s video-conferenced “profiling” testimony will provide enough ammunition to revoke the killer’s bail. The evidence, taken along with the supporting testimonies, will be enough to put Lennox behind bars where he will await the convening of a Grand Jury down in Albany and, along with it, mandatory DNA testing.

  Stepping up to the designated box, Mack, as the eyewitness’s father, is convinced he’s done everything in his power to secure an indictment against Lennox. Maybe Blanchfield still has her doubts about the validity of Jude’s testimony, but the old Captain is certain that come this time tomorrow the beast will be locked down, his son no longer vulnerable.

  Exhaling a breath, Mack reaches for the covered box, grabs hold of its handles, raises it up. But something is terribly wrong.

  The box is too light.

  Cold panic fills him.

  Peeling off the lid, he peers inside only to see an empty space.

  “Holy mother of God,” he spits before sprinting for the open door.

  31

  Lake George Village

  Thursday, 7:13 P.M.

  Lennox stands naked before the cracked mirror inside the half-bathroom, stares long and hard into his blue-eyed face. He smiles at himself; takes great pleasure in his body. The white-tiled room is lit by an exposed overhead lightbulb. Bathed in the harsh light, he observes not only the face, but every nook and cranny of his muscle-carved torso.

  He grips a pair of sharpened sheers in his right hand.

  He begins to cut away at the dreadlocks, severing them from their roots just above the scalp. Over the past nineteen months the hair has become so long and thick it falls away from his head not as tiny weightless bundles, but as heavy clumps. The clumps make a kind of thud when they hit the peeling, asbestos floor-covering.

  It’s a long tedious process.

  But with each clip of the sheers Hector “the Black Dragon” Lennox feels that much lighter, that much more energized.

  When the cutting is finished, the beast runs an electric clipper over his scalp. He then takes one last look at himself in the mirror. Raising up his
arms, he strikes a double biceps pose. He gawks at mountainous biceps, at tight forearms with veins popping through fat-deprived skin, at deep triceps, at protruding pectorals, at rippling abs.

  Not an ounce of extra body fat. Nor a single visible hair.

  From this point on, Hector Lennox is dead.

  Long live the Black Dragon.

  Lightning strikes the village street only yards away from the anonymous basement studio apartment. The thunder is immediate. Not a low rolling rumble that echoes off the rocky cliffsides of Tongue Mountain. More like a series of airbursts from incoming cruise missiles. A wonderful, feel-it-deep-inside-your-chest concussion noise he remembers fondly from the war.

  But this is not the time for sentimental recollections.

  It is time for the crucial second item to be tended to.

  * * *

  Black Dragon sits himself down at the portable fold-out table. He stares into the LCD monitor. He breathes as the green-lettered phrase rains endlessly down on the monitor’s face.

  :grub net set to activate …

  :grub net set to activate …

  :grub net set to activate …

  He is tempted to sit at his desk forever, just staring at the hypnotic snowfall of green pixels. But then Black Dragon knows that now is the time for action.

  Extending his index finger, he punches Enter.

  Scream for me …

  Rising up from the table, he unzips his black leather pouch, pulls the CO2-charged injector, loads the syringe with the liquid amphetamine. Standing over the couch, he bends down, pokes the needle of the automatic injector into the forearm of his student, squeezes the trigger.