The Scream Catcher Read online

  As a husband, he’s not ready to reveal the fact that he nearly took a bullet to the brain. But as a former cop he does not spill even a single detail about the morning’s events, other than letting her know that a man was killed outside Sweeney’s Gym and he just happened to be on hand to see the whole thing unfold.

  He swallows.

  He pictures his newly wed wife. Her long brown hair, deep brown eyes. He sees her standing in the kitchen by the big picture window that looks out over the lake. In his mind, she’s still dressed her white nightgown, a protruding belly four months pregnant, open hand gently pressed against it. He sees the ten-year-old Jack seated at the kitchen table downing a plate of buttermilk pancakes drenched in maple syrup. Through the open screen door, the bushy-haired, round-faced boy will be able to see the down-sloping back lawn, the calm lake lapping against the docks at the end of it.

  His family; his life. It’s what he lives for now. It’s what he fights the demon to protect.

  “Has Mack asked you to be an eyewitness?” Rosie asks, voice trembling over the cellular connection.

  “Question is,” Jude answers before hanging up, “does Mack have a choice?”

  Issuing a heavy sigh, Jude hands the phone back to his father.

  “Let’s have it,” the old Captain says. “The whole story from shit to roof shingles.”

  Just as he was quick with a physical I.D. of the perp, Jude recounts everything he saw and heard go down outside Sweeney’s—from the moment he spotted the two men running out of the gravel pit down through the wooded no-man’s land, to a pistol aimed at his own face, to total unconsciousness (and the killer’s getaway!).

  Mack bites down on his lower lip like he always does when he’s nervous or buried in deep thought.

  “You’re sure the victim was being hunted?”

  “It was a search and destroy. I’m sure of it.”

  “Either one of them say anything? They argue?”

  Jude recalls eyeing the two men through the darkness and the rain. One man far thinner than the other, dressed in nothing but a T-shirt and boxer shorts, going down on his knees on the pavement, the longhaired killer standing over him, massive body clothed all in black, blue eyes glowing in the dim spotlight. In his right hand, he gripped a silenced automatic. In the other, an iPhone.

  “The longhaired man . . . the shooter . . . just before squeezing the trigger on that little man, he shouted out, ‘Scream for me.’”

  “Scream for me?”

  “He made the little man scream for him, and he recording the sound of it in his phone, and then he shot him in the head.”

  Mack bobs his head, chews his lower lip. But Jude is taken aback. Because it’s apparent to him now that the phrase “scream for me” carries with it more than its share of familiarity for his father.

  Exhaling, Mack says, “Victim never put up a struggle? No defense at all?”

  “I’m guessing the poor guy had to be spent. He just threw himself to his knees, screamed on command with every bit of whatever strength he had left, and then took two bullets to the back of the head like it was supposed to happen that way.”

  Pulling a pack of Marlboro Lights from his blazer pocket, the old captain fires one up with his Zippo. For Jude, a former smoker, the blue smoke that suddenly fills the cruiser smells good.

  “What do you make of the whole thing?”

  Pulse pounding, brow slick with sweat, Jude is now officially on the spot. Meaning his old man isn’t just picking his brain so much as confirming whatever theory or theories might be spinning inside his own.

  After a beat he says, “A not so random act of violence played out over time in the gravel pit. And for whatever reason, finally ending in the parking lot.” Pausing, thinking. “The killer took nothing from the victim before or after he shot him. If he robbed anything at all, it was the sound of his screams.”

  “Maybe an all too deliberate act of scripted violence,” Mack adds. “Because if our long-haired perp is who I think he is, you just might be balls on right.”

  Jude stares into his father’s eyes. Marbles of slate gray partially obscured by cigarette smoke and worry. A sinking, organ slide feeling begins to reek havoc on his insides. It’s the demon shifting, much like a baby will shift inside its mother’s womb. It tells him that by fate, or by chance, he’s entered into something larger and more complicated than the relative simplicity of one man killing another.

  “But you are positive you did not freeze up or lose consciousness until after the perp took a shot at you?” Mack presses. “It’ll be important that we establish precisely when that happened. It can mean the difference between a reliable and an unreliable witness.”

  Raising his right hand, Jude touches the tender, now bandaged side of his head.

  Blood runs fast through the veins.

  He allowed a killer to get away. Or, at the very least, made no attempt to stop him from killing the T-shirted man. As Mack so gently put it, he froze up, hid himself behind the dumpster. Maybe there’s no changing that now. But then, it’s not the first time the demon has gotten the better of the former cop.

  Perking up, Jude makes a futile attempt at a fake smile.

  “I got an excellent look at him. Just before he took a shot at me.”

  Maybe he’s reaching sky high for a vote of confidence, but Jude can’t help but sense the hesitation in Mack’s tight-lipped expression. Can’t help but sense the distrust.

  Mack returns the smile with a smile of his own. But the gesture is almost too shiny-happy-polite. Too forced.

  “If you’re okay with that, kid,” Mack whispers. “Then I’m okay.”

  Sweeney’s Boxing Gym

  Tuesday, 7:40 A.M.

  Pregnant silence and stale cigarette smoke compete for space inside the Jeep.

  Mack stares at Jude with eyes like x-rays, able to see through the skin and flesh, all the way into the demon. Jude locks onto those eyes and at the same time, feels the breath leave his lungs.

  Fathers and sons . . .

  Without either man having to acknowledge it, both are thinking the same thoughts.

  The murder/suicide of Oscar Burns—the single defining moment in Jude’s adult life. The day the demon invaded his body and kicked out his soul.

  The not-so-distant memories flash-fire through Jude’s brain.

  He and Mack entering into Elizabeth Bay by patrol boat, slipping into an empty dock slip; Mack begging his son to sit the hostage crisis out; that it’s still too soon since Jude’s transfer from Missing Persons to Violent Crimes.

  But Jude having none of that.

  He’s going in and nothing can stop him. Burns has asked for him by name and Jude is the only member of the LGPD who can enter into the cabin in the hopes of talking the crazy man into laying down his weapon or, at the very least, releasing his wife and thirteen year old daughter. This is what Jude has trained for. This is why he fought so hard for the transfer to VC in the first place.

  Handing over his service weapon to his father, Jude makes his way up the slope until he stands atop a concrete doorstop covered with a doormat that says “Go Away!” Jude knows how much Burns must mean it. You don’t set up inside a cabin off Elizabeth bay because you need a break from civilization. You do it because you want out.

  Slowly approaching the door, Jude is surprised to hear his voice tremble when he barks, “It’s me, Mr. Burns! Jude Parish, LGPD! I’ve come to help you!”

  What happens next seems to occur in a sort of timeless haze so that Jude doesn’t know if events are occurring swiftly or slowly. All he knows is that the door is opened, and a shotgun barrel stares him in the face. He enters into the cabin only to hear the big wood door slammed behind him. It’s then a bearded, sweating, panting, Oscar Burns screams, “They promised! They promised!”

  Jude feels his legs turning to rubber, his lungs constricting, mouth going beach-sand dry, eyes focused beyond the shotgun barrel to a mother and daughter huddled in the far corner of the empty
cabin. They are dressed only in pajama bottoms and tops, faces painted with terror.

  Adrenalin begins to fill Jude’s veins and capillaries. All warmth leaves his body, and a sickening coldness replaces it. Bright white lights flash behind his eyeballs, and his body freezes up.

  Then comes a team of Glens Falls SWAT crashing through the back doors and kitchen windows. Screams and the stomp of jackboots fill the small cabin.

  Burns raises the shotgun barrel, presses the stock into his right shoulder, aims pointblank for mother and daughter. Jude is only a couple of feet away from Burns, but there is nothing he can do. He is paralyzed by the frigid demon.

  What follows are explosions and blood and spattered brains.

  What follows is violent death.

  And what follows for Jude Parish is nothing but darkness and regret, as he collapses to the cabin floor and loses consciousness . . .

  Mack reaches over the seat back, practically places his hand up against his stepson’s face. With a quick snap of his fingers, he breaks Jude out of his memory trance.

  “That tragedy . . . that horrible shit. It’s five years gone now; five full years behind you. Let it go, kid.”

  Jude feels the all too familiar lump in his stomach, a dull pain in the space between his eyes. He might be glancing out the open window onto a murdered man, the rubber sheet that covers the corpse now stained with blood. But somehow he’s also looking inward at a beautiful mother and daughter, their faces blown away by the actions of a madman.

  “I had a window, Mack. I had a fucking window of opportunity to disarm Burns and I froze up. I saw that little girl’s brains paint the walls.”

  Mack smokes, exhales a thin blue stream.

  “Under the circumstances—with SWAT crashing the party like that—you did all that could be done.”

  Looking up into his father’s face, Jude works up a smile. But there’s nothing shiny happy about it.

  “Blame SWAT, Mack,” he says. “Go ahead. It’s easier that way.” Then, shifting his gaze downward, he stares at hands folded tightly in his lap. “But you can’t blame them for what happened this morning. Because what happened under this morning’s circumstances was my fault. I should have stopped that murder from happening.”

  Mack bites his lip, tosses the now spent cig out the open window, exhales the last of the blue smoke.

  “Look on the bright side, kid,” he says. “At least you got a good look at our perp.”

  “But did I do enough?”

  Nodding, the old Captain reaches into his jacket pocket, pulls out a breath mint, pops it into his mouth.

  “You’re here. You’re alive. And you’re going to be my eyewitness. I’d say that’s enough.”

  Wild Bills All Day/All Night Video Arcade

  Lake George Village

  Tuesday, 8:15 A.M.

  Main Street cuts like a fault-line through Lake George Village.

  The narrow two-way is situated one-hundred yards west of the Warren County Courthouse and the village green that surrounds it. During the summer, the crowded “strip” has the feel of a never ending carnival. Its tourist congested, six-mile north/south runway is flanked on both sides with single and multi-storied brick or wood-sided bodegas, specialty clothing shops, pizza parlors, Chinese take-out joints, Indian eateries, falafel stands, doughnut shops, gift shops, a Gap outlet, an Abercrombie and Fitch, a Frankenstein Wax Museum of Horrors and Tortures. And bars. Bikers bars. Lots of them.

  Nestled within the smorgasbord of commercial establishments is Wild Bill’s All Day/All Night video arcade. Having discarded both the sedan and the silenced .22 Caliber automatic into the Hudson River not far from the lake’s heavily forested south end, Hector “The Black Dragon” Lennox now stands glued to a stand-alone video game called Hurl. At base, the kill game’s object is to manipulate a first-person shooter through a maze of under and aboveground tunnels, passageways, and hallways while killing off the mutated monsters (some of them invisible!) that leap out from every corner of the dark setting.

  For Lennox, Hurl represents participatory video entertainment in its purist form. It enlists the classic components of a topnotch kill game: shadowy atmosphere, claustrophobic setting, disturbing pursuit, and kills.

  Lennox should know.

  The video game software designer could not be more aware of the specific components that go into making a great kill game. First you consult your map design. Then you add your polygons, your virtual imagery, your dynamic lighting, your dramatic shadowing, and your mesh optimizations. And, of course, you add the screams. All those beautiful screams. From there, you blend the cyber stew all into a realistic, almost Hollywood cinematic display of repeat kills and slaughter.

  Inside Wild Bill’s ceiling-mounted neon lamps provide indirect illumination.

  Nearly every square inch of wall space is occupied with stand-alone, first-person point-of-view kill games like Night Fighter, Frog Man, Fatality, Sniper Kill, Zombie Slayer, Hurl, and even Project Night Fright—a local favorite. The cacophony of electronic explosions, gunfire, laser fire, screams, and colliding fists make the place seem more like a battleground than a video game parlor. For most of the kids who occupy the place, only empty pockets can keep them away from the video death—from their High Scores, their H.P. (Hit Points).

  He is no longer a kid.

  Nor are his pockets empty. But the thirty-six-year-old Lennox can compete with the best of them. He stands like a messiah before his disciples, they being completely unaware of his true identity, nor the fact that he is the developer of two popular kill vids.

  For now, he is no longer the Black Dragon.

  He’s discarded his all-black clothing.

  Now, he sports a different look entirely: white sneakers and wide-legged Carhardt pants, overly muscular arms bursting out of a too-tight T-shirt emblazoned with a Byzantine reproduction of a haloed Christ, the words “JESUS IS MY SUPERHERO!” printed above Him. The sleeveless shirt exposes a long, tail-coiled black dragon tattooed to the interior of his right forearm.

  He’s been occupying the stand-alone game now for nearly an hour, since his gravel pit kill game ended on a surprising note—the appearance of an eyewitness outside the back doors to Sweeney’s Gym.

  An eyewitness who got away with life.

  Soon the LGPD superheroes will come to arrest him. When they do, they will attempt to ID him as Hector Lennox.

  But he will deny the obvious.

  There must be some mistake, he will insist. His name isn’t Hector Lennox.

  Who is Hector Lennox? They must have him confused with someone else, somebody with a black dragon tattooed on his forearm. Certainly he isn’t the only person in the world with a black dragon tattooed on his arm. Just take a peak at all those tourists hanging out on Main Street in the Village, all those bikers. Tattoo heaven!

  He will invite them to check his fingerprints (they’ve been altered with laser surgery). He will invite them to check his footprints (also altered). He will tell them to check his voice (again, surgically altered). If all this isn’t enough proof, he will provide all the I.D. they care to examine, including passport, New York State Driver’s license, Social Security Card, credit cards, even tax returns for the past three years—his occupation clearly stated as “house painter.” He will tell them that he’s been occupying the arcade since late last night. Because what the police don’t know is that backing up his alibi—for a high five-figure price—will be Wild Bill himself.

  But the alibi will be challenged. All because of a gaunt man/boy by the name of Thoroughbred. At present, Thoroughbred is ratting him out to the cops. The wild-haired kid stands on the opposite side of the arcade, picking at a hooked nose with the index finger on a pale right hand. With an iPhone pressed against his egg head, he’s singing like a tweety bird to the bad ass L.G.P.D.

  The coppers have wasted no time.

  Even now, there’s a Jeep-cruiser parked directly across the street from Wild Bill’s, the large jar-headed c
op in the driver’s seat no doubt staking the place out, snapping photographs.

  But Lennox is in control.

  He’s well aware that his kill game student, Thoroughbred, secretly snitches for the cops. He knows the kid does it for the easy money. But to make things interesting, he’s insisted that the kid make the call. Because what the police do not know is that Lennox wants to be arrested. He wants the challenge of manipulating the law. He craves the adventure, the challenge, the drama. Most of all, he requires the real-life experience of arrest, escape, and finally, the hunting down of his prey.

  His imminent arrest will serve as a prologue to his brand new kill game—the most challenging to date.

  . . . You are arrested at gunpoint. You are handcuffed, stuffed into a police cruiser, carted downtown, tossed into a basement cell. You are interrogated, beaten, deprived of sleep. The dimly lit basement is dank, dark, claustrophobic, the walls damp with sweat and blood. The bad police will kill you if you do not give them what they want. Your only choice: escape and go after Jude Parish!

  The challenge will provide not only provide the script to a brand new, first-person, kill game; it will offer up a brand new series of screams. And for an artist like Hector “the Black Dragon” Lennox, catching the real screams that come from real death is what will make his video games more revered than God.

  The Lake George Road

  Tuesday, 8:22 A.M.

  A blue uniform silently slips behind the wheel of the Jeep, shifts the bucket seat backwards a few notches to accommodate long legs. As Mack lights another cigarette, the cop fires up the engine, pulls out of Sweeney’s rear lot, turns off in the direction of the lake road.

  Seated in the back, Jude can’t help but think that had he done even one thing differently, he might never have been in the position to witness the murder. Had he stayed in bed for three minutes more he would have missed it. He would have been too late. He would be home by now in the shower, the smell of bacon already frying on the stove.