Scream Catcher Read online

  Coming to a stop, Mack opens the door, gets out, draws his old NYPD .38 service revolver. He walks guardedly towards the burning wreck. His heart skips a beat when he spots the license plate lying on the wet shale floor. In the light of the fire, he reads, LGPD-9.

  “Fuentes.”

  Turning quickly, he spots a big smiling man dressed all in black standing by the open door of the Jeep Cruiser.

  39

  Assembly Point Peninsula

  Thursday, 8:50 P.M.

  Locked inside the screened-in patio, Jude sits and waits and feels the demon tapping at his insides with a clawed finger. He fears what might be out there in the black woods. When Rosie walks in, big brown eyes laser-beamed upon the shotgun laid across his lap, he turns quickly to face her.

  “Expecting company?” she says, tan face tight and apprehensive.

  It did not dawn on Jude that Rosie might be upset about seeing a real live shotgun gripped in his hands. He stands, careful to be sure the double barrels are pointed away from his wife.

  “Is Jack alone?”

  “Sitting up in bed with his Game Boy and a flashlight.”

  Something hits the ex-cop then. Sideswipes him is more like it. It’s not that his brain has yet reached panic mode; there’s simply nothing to panic over other than the unknown. But Jude immediately feels that the frivolous use of a flashlight might not be the best way to solve their fragile battery situation.

  “Stay here,” he insists.

  Shifting the shotgun into his left hand, Jude moves across the slate floor, brushes past Rosie abruptly. He scoots through the living room and up the stairs to Jack’s bedroom. Leaning the shotgun against the hall wall, he goes inside, pulls the flashlight from the boy’s hand.

  Jack looks up at his father from his bed, round face painted not with surprise but with a pout.

  “What’s wrong, dad?”

  Jude sets himself down on the edge of the boy’s bed.

  “Listen little man, there’s no telling how long this blackout is going to last.” Holding up the flashlight as if to make a point. “That means we have to conserve all the battery power we can. Get it?”

  Jack nods in understanding. He says, “Rosie said it was okay if I use a candle. But she wasn’t sure what you would say about it. So she thought the flashlight would be better.”

  Jude inhales and exhales, waits for the calmness to enter into his bloodstream. He takes a quick glance around the log-walled room—at the dinosaur and Sponge Bob Squarepants posters, at the television and the attached PlayStation 3 video game system. Eyes back on his boy, he shrugs his shoulders, purses his lips. Although he says not a word about it, he can’t get it out of his mind that the dark monster is out there …

  No choice now but to allow Jack a “nightlight” candle.

  Flicking off the flashlight, he starts back down both sets of stairs, heads into the garage, grabs a white candle from the box. Back upstairs he lights it, sets it far enough away from the boy on the nightstand beside the bed.

  “Now listen up,” he warns. “That’s an open flame. And if you happen to knock it over, it can start a bad fire.” The boy turns his head towards the burning candle, eyes it respectfully. “So the word for tonight is ‘Careful’ with a capital ‘C.’ Okay?”

  Jack’s face beams with a confident Daddy trusts me expression.

  “I’ll be back up to check on you,” Jude says before closing the door behind him.

  Outside in the hall he listens for the tell-tale electronic beeps and squirts that come from the Game Boy. Upon hearing them he’s thankful for the electronic distraction. He knows that video games require batteries too (or chargers anyway), but the last thing he wants to do is take away the boy’s fun … his distraction. For the first time as a father, Jude is grateful for the invention of the video game.

  40

  Assembly Point Peninsula

  Thursday, 9:00 P.M.

  The double-barrel Savage once more clutched in his hands, Jude rejoins his wife on the screened-in patio.

  “And how have we defused the flashlight crisis?” she inquires.

  “Candle,” Jude answers.

  Thunder emerges from out of the east.

  Rosie crosses her arms, holds them tightly against her chest, inches above her pregnant belly. She breathes in the night air, stares out the screen onto the dark night. Jude is reminded of the morning they first met. He was sitting inside a café web on Prince Street, downtown Manhattan, a rough copy of Cop Job set out on his lap. Rosie walked in like a heaven-sent apparition, dressed only in farmer’s overalls, sandals; long dark brown hair pulled back and braided; skin tan and rich. She bought a coffee, sat down at the only seat available which was right beside him on the couch. When she offered up a near silent “Hello,” he was able to get his first real good look into her dark eyes. It was his first look, but then he’s never looked away …

  Now four years later her manner seems, on the surface anyway, just as calm and collected as when he first met her. But as in the beginning as in the present, he has no trouble reading her candle-lit eyes. Only now instead of curiosity the eyes are filled with concern. Not over some imagined danger brought on by the blackout. But real concern over him. It makes him wonder if he is in fact conducting himself in a level-headed manner. Or has the demon reduced him to a few cards short of a full deck?

  What he has to ask himself is this: Am I making the right decisions for my family?

  Jude stares out the screen onto the deep dark woods.

  He wonders what’s out there.

  He can only pray that nothing is out there.

  After a time he says, “I’ll be honest. Before this blackout hit, I had planned for you both to leave the house tonight. Maybe put you up at a hotel.”

  Clearing her throat, Rosie peers down at the tops of her sandaled feet.

  Raising her head back up, she says, “When were you going to let me in on this plan?”

  “After dinner. I was going to get Mack or Ray to look after you.”

  “What were planning on doing with yourself?”

  “Maybe head out to the village precinct. Sleep in Mack’s office on the couch.”

  “And you were going to do this in case Lennox slipped his surveillance bracelet?”

  “Maybe,” Jude says. “Or maybe I was planning on staying at the precinct just to make sure that come morning, I didn’t get icy feet and decide to back out.”

  She nods.

  “Not easy going back on your word in the presence of all those cops.”

  “That was kind of the idea.”

  Rosie stares through the screen at the woods.

  “We could still go to a hotel,” she whispers. “If it’ll make you feel better. We could take the boat across the lake. Jack and I could get a hotel and you could stay at the precinct with Mack.”

  Lightning shoots down from the black sky, maybe one hundred yards from the house. A crash follows. It echoes and bounces off the surface of the lake.

  If it’ll make you feel better …

  Jude feels the demon claw inside his chest. It’s trying to pierce his heart.

  He tries to swallow, but there’s little saliva inside mouth.

  “A man’s house is his castle,” he says not without a grin.

  “Safety first,” Rosie adds, as if the two are entering into a round of dueling clichés.

  “Mack made me promise that no matter what happened tonight, we’d stay put. Anyway, there will be nowhere to go in this blackout. The village will be crazy. Fort Anne and Glens Falls will be even crazier. The only choice after that is Saratoga or Albany and it would be insane to drive all the way down there in this weather under blackout conditions.”

  Rosie runs open hands down her face, as though to wipe away her concern.

  “We’re staying then,” she says like a question. “You’re absolutely sure about that?”

  “No,” Jude says, gazing down at the shotgun. “I’m not sure about a goddamned thing.
But this much I do know: under no circumstances are any of us to leave this house until I hear from Mack.”

  “And if you don’t hear from Mack?”

  Jude turns, eyes Rosie up and down, the same way he did it when she first entered that downtown café web.

  “Bite your pretty little tongue,” he says.

  41

  The Molloy Gravel Pit

  Thursday, 9:02 P.M.

  Mack poses the old .38 revolver on the human target. Light rain seeps into wired eyes making it impossible to focus. The heat that radiates from the Jeep fire stings the left side of his face and head. No other option but for the old Captain to stand his ground. He has other things to be concerned about other than his own pain.

  Hector “the Black Dragon” Lennox is covered from head to toe in black, full body dry suit and black body paint. His silhouette is nearly impossible to make out when standing against a backdrop of the black night. If it wasn’t for the light of the fire, the beast would be invisible.

  All invisibility aside, Mack knows precisely the identity of the man standing before him in the dark and in the rain. The fact that Fuentes’s cruiser is consumed in flame only verifies his worst fears: Lennox has already paid a visit to his son’s home.

  For the moment all is stalemate.

  Until Lennox steps away from Mack’s cruiser, lets out with a high-pitched laugh. So loud it drowns out the roar of the fire.

  Right hand wrapped around the worn pistol grip, index finger poised on the trigger, Mack uses his left hand to support the wrist on the shooting hand. Feet planted firmly, shoulder-width apart, full combat position. Just like he learned it at the Police Academy in Yonkers back in the mid-1970s.

  He shouts, “Down on your knees, Lennox. Do it now.”

  But when the beast drops to the gravel pit floor, rolls himself behind the Jeep, he seems to simply disappear into the wet night. As though Mack dreamt up his nightmarish existence in the first place.

  42

  Assembly Point Peninsula

  Thursday, 9:10 P.M.

  Jude and Rosie lock up the screened-in porch, and head up to say their goodnights to Jack. Outside the boy’s bedroom, the ex-cop once more leans the shotgun up against the wall, makes his way inside. But not before working up a smile, almost forcefully planting it on his face (All teeth, as Mack would say back when Jude was a moody teenager). He immediately finds Rosie already sitting on the edge of the bed, Jack’s right hand in hers. He sits himself down beside her while Jack looks up at his father, bright-eyed but at the same time yawning—a tired little guy not long for the night.

  Coming from outside the slightly open double-hung window, Jude can’t help but make out the gentle slap of the lake water against the wood dock and motorboat that’s tied off to it.

  Jack asks, “Do you think the lights will come back on tomorrow?”

  Reaching out with his hand, Jude runs it through his son’s fine brown hair.

  “I’m sure of it,” he says. “Tomorrow when you wake up and the sun is shining, you’ll have all the electricity you need.”

  Forehead scrunched, lips pouting, Jack says, “That’s too bad.”

  “Too bad,” Jude poses while shooting Rosie a quick glance. “How can having your electricity back be such a bad thing?”

  “Life by candlelight,” the boy says. “Me likey.”

  Rosie laughs, says, “Believe me, Jack, you wouldn’t likey for very long.”

  “Huh?”

  Glancing over her right shoulder at the now useless television and game system hooked up to it, she says, “Well how would you expect to play your Nintendo or X-Box?”

  Now Jack laughs.

  The suddenly bright-eyed boy says, “I have a great idea. I’ll go to the PetSmart, buy a hamster and a running wheel. I’ll hook up a motor to the wheel. When the hamster runs inside it, he’ll make the motor work. Then I’ll have all the electricity I need to work my games.”

  Jude says, “I do believe we have a mechanical genius on our hands.”

  “Sesame Street,” Rosie adds. “Never underestimate its power.”

  “I don’t watch Sesame Street any more,” Jack barks like he’s just been insulted. “I don’t watch Blue’s Clues or Barney. That stuff is totally gay.”

  Without another word, Rosie pulls the brown and red comforter over the boy’s chest, tucks it under his chin. Outside, the lightning sparks and bursts from way out on the lake past the bay. Jude gets up, goes to close the window. But Jack asks him to leave it open.

  “Storms don’t scare me,” he says. “Only the dark monster.”

  “No dark monsters ‘round here,” Jude says. “Get a good night’s sleep. Maybe tomorrow afternoon after my court date, we can take the boat out and catch some fish.”

  “Why are you trying to put that man in jail?” the boy says as Rosie leans over to plant a goodnight kiss on his brow.

  “Because it’s the right thing to do,” he says. “That man has hurt a lot of people.”

  “What if he gets mad and hurts you?”

  Jude feels Jack’s question lodge itself like a bullet in the center of his chest. They tried to keep the kill game Prelim Hearing a secret from Jack. But Jack is smart. He’s picked up on the signals, on the whispered conversations of the past couple of days.

  “That’s why I’m trying to put him in jail. So that he never hurts anyone ever again.”

  Picking the burning candle up off the nightstand, Jude goes to blow it out. But not before Jack stops him with a vehement, “No!”

  “Can’t I leave it burning for just a little while longer?” he pleads.

  Rosie and Jude communicate with their eyes. They read one another’s minds.

  The dark monster …

  Against better judgment, Jude sets the burning candle back down on the far edge of the nightstand beside the kid’s Game Boy.

  He says, “Remember, the flame is just as dangerous now as it was before.”

  Another snap-flash of lightning just outside the window. Thunder follows, quicker than before.

  What’s the rule? One second of silence between lightning strike and its thunder for every mile between us and the center of the storm … Three seconds means three miles away, at most.

  Squeezing the edge of the comforter tight under his chin, Jack closes his eyes.

  * * *

  Husband and wife exit the bedroom, quietly closing the door behind them.

  “Do you know what I think?” Rosie poses while Jude snatches up the shotgun. “Half of me thinks, well isn’t this the part of Friday the 13th where the audience is screaming for us to get the hell out of the house? But then the other half of me thinks, this is reality. And reality tells me we’re all being just a little silly. We’re no better than Jack and his dark monster. We’re worrying over nothing.”

  The candlelight that leaks up from the timber-framed living room illuminates only a portion of Rosie’s straight, calm face. The fact that she’s trying to talk some sense into Jude carries with it a slight tinge of shame for the ex-cop. He finds himself glancing down at an eight pound, double-barrel twelve gauge that now seems to be growing heavier and heavier in his hands. Suddenly, his anxiety does seem “a little silly.” Even if he can’t help imagining a clawed demon living inside his ribcage.

  He says, “It’s not like Lennox has actually threatened us in any way.”

  Hector Lennox: just a man … not a real black dragon … not a dark monster.

  “There’s a reason Mack told you to stay put no matter what happens,” Rosie adds. “We live on Lake George. Not Cape Fear. It only makes sense that Ray and the lake patrol have been asked to help out with the blackout crisis. They’ll be back at their posts soon, I’m sure of it. So why get all paranoid now just because the lights go out?”

  Jude can’t resist growing a smile while his wife reaches out with her hand, runs soft fingers though his cropped hair.

  She says, “Tell you what. First I’m going to put the food out for the
babies. Then I’m going to draw a bath.”

  Jude senses the constriction in his facial muscles. Tell-tale constriction. It means he’s really smiling again. Or is it for a change? Smiling and relaxing. But then maybe the Celexa has finally kicked in. Or maybe Rosie’s words of wisdom are all he needs in order to ward off the demon. In any case, Jude’s newlywed wife is making an honest-to-God go of keeping hers and her husband’s composure all together.

  She adds, “I’m picturing some of those white wedding candles laid out along the rim of the tub; maybe a little bubble bath, my man rubbing some body wash on my belly.”

  “I’ll go lockup,” he exhales, “while you go feed the babies.”

  “Hurry,” Rosie grins before gliding back down into the kitchen.

  Breathing easier now, Jude heads back into the master bedroom, fits the shotgun back inside its plastic safety case, leans it upright against the wall beside the bed—easy access.

  Coming from outside, a lightning bolt.

  “One Mississippi, two Mississippi,” he counts aloud before the thunder concussion rattles the log home.

  43

  The Molloy Gravel Pit

  Thursday, 9:16 P.M.

  Mack pivots one way, then the other, pistol held out before him like the cannon on a tank turret. There’s the cruiser fire roaring behind him, the impenetrable darkness overhead, surrounding him on all sides. The rain has intensified. It’s coming down steady and cold. The rain runs down off his brow into his eyes. He’s going on forty years in Violent Crimes. While eyesight is essential, survival has become a matter of feel, intuition, instinct. He knows Lennox is out there, stalking, playing, plotting. Mack does not sense his presence so much as he feels him like a sudden sharp chest pain.