Scream Catcher Read online

  Is that why Lennox hasn’t killed them yet?

  Maybe the beast is willing to forego their deaths for the sake of their participation in the big kill game ending.

  The van-bomb, once detonated, will pack a devastating punch to be sure. Judging by its size, it’s capable of killing more than just a few people. This well-fueled bomb has to be capable of taking out dozens, perhaps hundreds of people. Clearly, Lennox intends to commit mass murder.

  But where exactly is the big terrible going to happen? And when?

  This is the one time you have to think, Parish; the one time you can’t just do …

  When Jack shrieks, Jude loses all train of thought.

  85

  Tongue Mountain

  Friday, 4:30 A.M.

  Lennox stands massive behind Jack and Rosie.

  While he poses no immediate physical threat to Rosie, he has the barrel to a silenced automatic pressed up against Jack’s head.

  Staring out at his family on the dirt access road, Jude wants to shout out to his wife, tell her to make a run for it. But he’s well aware that he and Rosie both know exactly what would happen if she were to attempt a break. Clearly, from where they all stand, it’s obvious who maintains the upper hand.

  When Lennox shouts, “The Player drops the Maglite to the road and crawls into the back of the van,” Jude does so without an ounce of hesitation; without argument.

  He does it in the interest of preserving the lives of his loved ones.

  * * *

  In the rear spaces of the Ford cargo van, Lennox quickly goes to work. He starts by binding Jude’s knees with a half-dozen revolutions—or layers—of gray duct tape, then gagging him by sticking a second, smaller piece of duct tape over his mouth.

  At the time, this course of action seems like nothing special—just the prudent securing of hostages. But then Lennox proceeds to do something very unusual. Rather than bind Jude’s wrists together behind his back and to the ankles (in the standard method of hogtying), the beast forces Jude to hold his arms straight down at his sides so that each of his wrists are pressed tightly against its accompanying hip. He then secures the ex-cop’s hands to his hips by wrapping another six layers of tape tightly around his belted waist. Jude wonders, just what exactly is Lennox trying to prove by tying me down in this manner? What is it he has planned that requires hands and wrists to be attached to the hips?

  In the end, Lennox sits back in the van’s cargo bay, smiles a now broken-toothed smile. He seems genuinely pleased with his work. But then, what the hell does he have to complain about? Throughout the entire restraining operation, Jude has put up no resistance. After all, his child is bound in a similar manner to the front passenger seat (although the boy’s wrists are simply bound together in his lap and not at his hips). In the same vein, the ailing Rosie is once more bound, gagged and laid out on her side only inches away from Jude on the ribbed metal floor. While it pains him to see his family treated this way—tied up like wild animals—he knows it’s foolish to put up even an ounce of resistance. Why give Lennox a reason to further hurt the people he loves the most in the world?

  Seated on that cold hard van bed what Jude has to keep in mind is this: the fate of his wife and child rests not in the hands of the beast, but in his hands alone.

  * * *

  The binding completed, Lennox maneuvers Jude into a seated position against the cargo bay’s back metal-paneled door. While on his knees, the beast then pulls wires not from the detonator, but wires that have been connected directly to the laptop with what Jude recognizes as a portable network connector. Lennox sets the cotton probe-covered wires onto Jude’s lap, pulls up his T-shirt, attaches three of the probes to his bare chest, securing all three over his heart with a single six-inch strip of duct tape. He then pulls the fourth probe from the laptop, attaches it to Jude’s neck above the carotid artery.

  So there it is, the reason for binding my wrists to my hips: Lennox has thought this through. He doesn’t want my hands to get in the way of his wires.

  The wires now in position, the beast then turns himself around, begins speed-typing a series of instructions into the computer, causing the screen to ignite into a fire engine red background superimposed with white letters that read: Activation Secured.

  Having himself a giggle, he whispers, “Game fans, listen up! The motion sensitive detonator has been calibrated and primed. Level three begins now.”

  Crawling between the stacks of fertilizer, Lennox moves back up into the driver’s seat. Adjusting the rearview mirror in order to stare into Jude’s eyes without having to strain, he fires up the van’s engine. Careful driver that he is, he looks both ways before pulling safely away from the Tongue Mountain access roadside, begins the drive down the snake-infested mountain in the direction of the still blacked-out Lake George Village.

  86

  Tongue Mountain en route to Lake George Village

  Friday, 4:45 A.M.

  Paralyzed and helpless, Jude eyes the back of the bald, black-painted head of Hector Lennox. His hogtied wife is laid out beside him on the metal pan floor, his boy duct-taped to the front shotgun seat. But his eyes never veer far from the beast as he steers the van downhill off the mountain, through the unchained gate just outside the unmanned guard shack, then a mile further down the now paved portion of the access road.

  When they come to Main Street, Lennox hooks a left, drives towards the village center.

  A hard rain continues to pellet the van’s metal roof. Outside the windshield Jude can see that the pronounced Adirondack darkness is broken only by the distant and not too distant bolts of lightning that split off from one another before striking the lake and the wild mountain county beyond it. Other than the hum of the all-terrain tires traversing the road and the steady purr of the cargo van’s meaty engine, all is strangely quiet.

  The atmosphere surrounding the wood and brick-faced three- and four-story structures is unusually sedate, unusually peaceful. Only the occasional Lake George Jeep Cruiser speeding unknowingly past, its whistles and flashers going full bore, breaks the calm silence of the blacked-out night.

  Coming upon the inoperable yellow flashing traffic signal that marks the center of the village, Jude can’t help but notice that Lennox is slowing the van down. He’s hooking a right into the narrow one-way drive that accesses the new Warren County Courthouse and its lakeside parking garage.

  That’s when it all begins to make some sense.

  It all becomes so crystal, Jude swears he must be smiling again. He must be smiling or be out of his fucking head, because now he knows what Lennox has had planned all along. The van IED is to be detonated via motion sensitive device, the trigger wires of which have been attached to Jude’s chest and neck. It’s not enough for the video game designer to simply blow the Courthouse to oblivion. The thrill killer must make a more theatrical gesture, a more complicated feat of violence and daring. Instead of simply pulling the trigger on the detonator and running like hell, the beast must rely on Jude’s heartbeat to set the thing off.

  That’s why he didn’t allow us to die up on that mountain …

  * * *

  The van comes to a full stop.

  Without hesitation Lennox reaches into the back cargo bay with a black-gloved right hand, sets an extended index finger onto the computer keypad, depresses ENTER.

  With eyes now set on the computer, Jude immediately catches sight of the big number “30” that flashes up on the screen. Set directly beside the 30 is a second series of numbers beginning with 60 and counting down from there, one number per second.

  Thirty is how many minutes my family and I have left to live. Because now I can feel it in my bones: this time we die …

  Opening the van door, Lennox climbs out, makes his way around to the back. He throws open the bay door to Jude’s immediate right. Reaching inside, he yanks off the duct-tape gag sending a world of sting flashing through ex-cop’s lips and mouth.

  “Home again, home again,
” sings the beast. “Jiggidy jig.”

  87

  Glens Falls Medical Center

  Friday, 4:58 A.M.

  Having arrived back at the Glens Falls Medical Center only moments ago, L.G.P.D. Lieutenant Daniel Lino swallows a deep breath and enters into the private room.

  “How are you feeling now, Captain?”

  “Like I’ve been shot,” Mack groans. “What about my son?”

  The old Captain has an intravenous line needling a jagged vein on his right arm, a clothespin-like monitoring device attached to the thumb on his right hand, a clear tube shoved into his left nostril. Patches of dry white mucous are caked in the corners of his mouth. Other than a large white bandage that surrounds the upper right-hand shoulder wound, he is bare-chested.

  Lino fingers the now dry piece of scrap paper that’s been shoved into his trouser pocket. He thinks, the front door to 23 Assembly Point Road wide open … a little boy’s bedroom a partially burned out shell … inside the master bedroom, cut-away ropes tied to the four corners of the bed … on the floor before the bed, a pair of discarded panties and a baseball bat … in the far corner of the room, an empty shotgun case …

  “State Troopers have set up roadblocks inside the fifty mile radius. Choppers are scouting the lake region. If Lennox is running with your family in tow, we’ll find him.”

  The old Captain grunts, thinks, Nice try.

  Mack has been a cop for going on forever. Six years in New York City, almost thirty-four years in upstate. In that time he’s witnessed more homicides than he’s cared to count, more torture and rape victims than he’s cared to remember. But never before have the lives of his own loved ones been at stake.

  Never before has he felt so entirely ineffectual.

  Pulling the tube from his nose, he yanks out the intravenous, yanks off the heart monitoring clip. Sitting up, he throws off the blanket, swings his legs around.

  “What the hell are you doing, Captain?” barks Lino. “You can’t …”

  “Get me my goddamned clothes, Daniel. You’re gonna escort me out of here.”

  Lino throws out his arms, leans himself down onto the bed, positions himself directly beside Mack—so close to the old Captain’s pale face he can smell the sour breath.

  “You walk out of here, you’ll bleed to death.”

  Mack peers into the Lieutenant’s eyes.

  “When there is any doubt,” he says. “There is no doubt.”

  Lino scrunches his brow, cocks his eyebrows.

  “What’s that mean?”

  “It means that despite the bullshit you just fed me about Trooper roadblocks and helicopters, I doubt that any cop organization is going throw everything they have into finding Lennox or my son. Not in this blackout. So I have no doubt that you’re a liar.”

  Lino exhales, bobs his head.

  “Cops always help their own,” he says. “No matter what.”

  “By the time something gets organized, it’ll be too late. The Staties will leave the whole show up to the FBI.”

  Lino thinks about it. The Captain has a valid point.

  With an overtaxed State Police force trying to deal with the blackout chaos, the FBI would be the natural choice for hunting down Lennox. The FBI and the U.S. Marshals. But then Lino hasn’t heard word one from the Feds.

  “Say I help you out of here, Captain? What makes you think you’re not just going to slow things down?”

  “What fucking good can I do from a hospital bed?”

  Lino purses his lips, pulls himself back up, throws his hands in the pockets of his suit trousers, turns and looks out the window onto the black night.

  “All I need is a location, Captain, and I will personally nail Lennox myself.”

  Mack slides off the bed, stands unsteady and lightheaded. But determined still.

  “Lennox is here, in Lake George, right under our noses. I can smell him. If it’s a matter of uncovering a specific location—of finding out where he’s playing the kill game, you’re going to need my help.”

  Lino about-faces from the window.

  “So what is it you’re suggesting?”

  “That we stop leaving things up to fate and go find the son of a bitch ourselves.”

  88

  Warren County Courthouse

  Friday, 5:10 A.M.

  Lennox’s tone is surprisingly matter of fact.

  “The healthy human heart averages one-hundred-fifteen beats per minute,” he states from outside the open cargo bay door. “In the final kill game level, the faster the Player’s heart beats, the faster Lake George goes boom.”

  “Save my son,” Jude whispers, eyes volleying from his boy to his wife, back to his boy again.

  The black-faced beast attempts neither smile nor frown. Not with bruised lips and broken front tooth. In a deadpan, high-pitched voice, he takes his own sweet time to inform Jude that less than thirty minutes of computer-programmed fuse is available to work with.

  “But here’s your challenge: if the Player remains calm—if it maintains a calm pulse of one-hundred-fifteen beats per minute—it might manage to turn thirty minutes into forty-five. That should afford the Player plenty of time to free itself and diffuse the IED.”

  “Spare my boy.”

  “On the other hand, if the Player panics—if it struggles with a heart at full gallop—then fuse time will be cut in half.” Squinting his eyes to further stress the point. “Fifteen minutes will not be enough time to save itself, its child and its wife. The Player will have to make a choice … Sophie’s choice.”

  Bound with duct tape and to the lives of his family, Jude has no other option than to sit as still as possible on the ribbed metal pan floor and listen to this crazy killer ramble on about motion sensitive detonation devices and the trickery he’s invented for setting them off. If such a thing is even possible.

  “Lake George goes boom” … Is it likely that Lennox has rigged not one but a series of I.E.D.s? Set them throughout the village? Is a series of explosions set to go off the moment the van bomb explodes? Is Lennox about to wipe Lake George off the map?

  From where he sits Jude can’t help but spot Jack’s Converse-sneakered feet dangling from the front passenger-side seat. The feet scream, Save me! It’s precisely because of those feet that his pulse rate has no chance in hell of slowing down. The pulse rate has only one direction to go.

  The now silent Lennox reaches into his pocket, pulls out his iPhone, aims the speaker in the direction of Jude.

  He releases a giggle. “Do. Not. Scream. For. Me … Get it?”

  Laughing, he takes a step back away from the van, enters into an emerging dawn over Lake George. At last the rains have abated, the morning sun already burning away the storm clouds.

  “For God’s sakes!” Jude shouts. “Spare my family!”

  But Lennox makes no further comment. He pockets his phone, cocks his head over his left shoulder, issues his Player a curious glance. He scrunches his black-painted brow and for the first time since they arrived at the Warren County Courthouse, reveals just a hint of a broken tooth smile.

  Stepping away from the van the Black Dragon slams the cargo bay door shut.

  89

  Glens Falls Medical Center en Route to Glens Falls

  Friday, 5:56 A.M.

  It’s not difficult making it past the nurse’s station.

  In the blackout, the facility operates on emergency generated power. The place is cavernous and half-lit with wall-mounted, battery-operated fixtures. Because of the sudden overload of patients (accident victims mostly), every available nurse occupies him or herself by attending to the sick and injured. Which means that once past the nurse’s station it’s a simple matter of descending the rear stairwell, then down into the two-level parking garage where Lino has parked his personal ride.

  Not long after, the black Chevy suburban pulls up outside the second of Wild Bill Stark’s commercial establishments—what should be a bright, neon lit Wild Bill’s All Day/All Night
-II video game arcade, but that now appears to be just another darkened storefront inside the downtown Glens Falls business district.

  As the dawn looms east of the lake, a bleeding Mack stares out the passenger-side window onto a dozen or more kids drinking beers, tossing empties into the road, battery operated boom-boxes blaring bass pounding hip-hop.

  “You think he’s here, Captain?” asks Lt. Lino, heart still beating from having revealed everything about his inspection of the Parish 23 Assembly Point home earlier that night.

  Mack groggily looks through the crowd until he spots a tall, slim young man with a blaze orange skull cap pulled far down over his head. The kid is dressed in silver Nike sweats, running shoes with bright yellow shock absorbers for heels.

  Mack is thinking, Yup, kid is exactly where I thought he’d be.

  But then he is also wondering if he made the right decision in sneaking out of the hospital. His right shoulder is leaking blood while his arm feels like it’s been sawed off at the rotator cuff.

  But then, no point in rehashing what I should or should not have done … The lives of my family are at stake here.

  Mack asks Lino to get out, snag the kid, drag him into the Suburban. Without a word the Lieutenant exits the vehicle, snatches T-Bred from off the sidewalk, pulls him into the back seat.

  “I gave you what you wanted three days ago,” he snaps, voice a strange mixture of whisper and scream. “I think Wild Bill is getting suspicious. You know what he’d do to me he knows I work for you?”

  “Fuck Wild Bill,” Mack shouts, painfully shifting in the seat to get a better view of Thoroughbred. “This isn’t about him now.”

  “Then what is it you want from me, Captain?”