Scream Catcher Page 3

  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 L.G.P.D. 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 to his forearm. Certainly he isn’t the only person in the world with a black dragon tattooed to his arm. Just take a peek 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 that isn’t enough proof, he will provide all the ID 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 an index finger on a pale right hand. With an iPhone pressed up against his egg head, he’s singing like 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 cop 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 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.

  6

  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.

  Mack’s cell phone rings. Pressing it up against his ear, he listens.

  Then, “You’re absolutely sure about this, Thoroughbred. There’s a man fits the A.P.B. playing a video game inside a village arcade … A fucking video game … You’re sure it’s him; that he matches the description … You’re not pulling snitch shit over my eyes for the sake of a quick buck … Okay, okay, T-Bred. I believe you. I think we just might have our man. Find a way to make sure he stays there and I’ll double your fee. You hear what I’m saying? Do whatever it takes.”

  Jude knows someone is in the process of tipping Mack off.

  Maybe somebody who keeps a scanner close at hand; someone who must have picked up on the A.P.B. issued out of Sweeney’s back lot; someone who goes by the handle Thoroughbred, or T-Bred for short.

  Yanking the cell from his ear, Mack nods as if confirming some silent hunch he’s been mulling to himself ever since he and his son exited the kill scene.

  “What’s happening, Mack?”

  “Give me a minute, kid,” the old Captain grouses while punching another series of numbers into the cell.

  Sitting back, Jude breathes in slowly, exhales even slower. The cigarette-tinged air inside the Jeep has gone from good smelling to stale and acrid. It settles like a cancer in his lungs, right beside the demon.

  “Lino please,” Mack says. After a brief holding period he continues: “I think Lennox is back … Yeah, alive, I’d bet the mortgage … The stiff laid out behind Sweeney’s makes three confirmed kills … CSI is on site now trying to lift a print while we got a crystal golden window … Yes, yes, if they get something they’ll fax it to you before I get there so you can make an L.D.I. reference. In the meantime call in the Staties. Tell them not to look for a man, but for a car—a silver or platinum sedan, make and model unidentified. Tell them that if they find it, to leave it untouched. I want Glens Falls forensics to comb for trace evidence. You hear what I’m saying? This time, we leave nothing up to chance.”

  Jude gazes out the window onto the lake, its calm morning surface speckled with a handful of commercial fishing and pleasure craft. He knows now that his father has to be on the line with a member of his support staff inside the L.G.P.D. A person named Lino. A real name. Not a handle meant to conceal a real identity. Maybe someone sharing in the responsibility of apprehending the man Mack just seconds ago referred to as “Lennox.”

  The one-sided conversation continues: “Yes, bring him in now … If Longhair just happens to be the newest incarnation of our boy Hector Lennox, then we won’t have another chance like this one to snag his ass.” Another pause. Longer than the others. “That’s correct, my son made the kill scene ID …”

  Jude’s stomach makes like a vice grip as Mack pockets his cell phone.

  He turns to the driver, eyes wide, glaring.

  “Step on it Long Legs. We’re the cops. We own the fucking road.”

  7

  Wild Bill’s All Day/All Night Video Game Parlor

  Tuesday, 8:32 A.M.

  How does Hector Lennox morph into the Black Dragon?

  By becoming the product of his own invention.

  Inside the neon lighting of the video arcade, his new surgically-constructed cheekbones, silicon injected lips and resculptured chin give his face a chiseled-like intensity. Veiling the face are shoulder-length dreadlocks that took the entire nineteen months he spent in Paris to grow out. With an iron-pumped, Human Growth Hormone-fed body, he presents an awesome self-invented physical prize—a scream catching athlete.

  On the outside.

 
On the inside, Hector “the Black Dragon” Lennox is a complicated blend of fearlessness and fantasy. His long dead father would have attested to the fact that manipulation, domination and will-of-force were key components of the little video gamer’s obsessive personality. The Christian Minister feared them like the devil himself. Feared them like the mark of the beast. Feared them, resisted them, fought them.

  Papa Lennox punishes little Hector for playing too many video games. Papa locks the little boy inside a windowless basement room with nothing to eat but vitamins and chicken broth; nothing to do but stare at four concrete walls; nothing to do but scream; nothing to do but invent his own kill games; play them in his neuron-sharpened mind.

  Papa Lennox insists on perfect devotion not to the video game but to Jesus Christ. Or else face the wrath of “the fist and the belt.”

  Papa Lennox screams at little Hector to love Him more than the first person kill game.

  Papa Lennox smashes little Hector’s game systems with a claw hammer, burns the boy’s games to repeated Our Fathers on the back lawn; destroys the televisions and computers.

  Papa Lennox likes to hear his little boy scream bloody murder. It makes Papa laugh.

  But Little Hector would not take “the wrath” lying down.

  One day little Hector is able to free himself from his basement cell.

  Calmly he makes his way up the stairs.

  He calls out to the solitary figure—a crippled shadow of a man who drinks alone in the darkened living room.

  The drunken Minister turns to the skinny boy with caught-in-the-headlight eyes. He can’t believe the little beast still possesses the will, the physical strength to escape his “time out” room. It must be the devil inside him. And what is that in the devil’s hand?

  Without a word, young Hector proceeds to bash his Papa’s skull in with the claw hammer. But not without ordering the man to scream.

  “Scream, Papa!” shouts little Hector. “Scream! For! Me!”

  Perhaps the fully grown Hector’s attraction to a game like Hurl has something to do with the sentimental memories of that first kill. The kill and the scream. Case in point: now on the video game screen, a gruesome looking old man, who appears not altogether different from the late Papa Lennox, is rising up from a concrete tomb. He’s screaming into the first person player’s face. The business-suited, pale-faced mutant is approaching the player. He’s growing larger, more menacing, more monstrous, more ear-piercingly loud the closer he comes …

  … Until just the right moment when WHAM! off goes the mutant’s head with one quick, well-placed swipe of a computer-animated battleaxe.

  It’s an easy kill. But not very satisfying. It was the same story for little Hector’s first kill. The act of killing his father proved too easy.

  It made him sick. Not the sloppy murder itself; not the rage that instigated it. But the method by which he spontaneously chose to make it happen. There seemed to be no challenge to the whole business. No fun; no fairness. From the moment the EMTs lifted the bloody mess of a father off the West Los Angeles living room floor, little Hector vowed never to kill easily again. If he ever did kill again, he would do so as part of a grand design in which he was the controller, the master manipulator, the scream catcher.

  Killing, if it was to be done right, would have to become fair.

  Over the years, Lennox has developed a talent for controlling the events that lead up to the kill. In adulthood, happiness has not been derived from the direct act of triggering a pistol, plunging a blade or igniting an explosive.

  Satisfaction has come from the hunt, the chase; from the power he wields over the petrified victim. Gratification is derived in the choosing of the kill game site, the selection of the victim(s), the careful preparation of the contest, its implementation and in the end, the recording of the scream which will be added to the collection of recorded screams. As for the last act of killing, it is merely the necessary end-all to a game well played.

  His talents are not lost in the video game arena.

  The video game arena is his training ground. A place to hone his athletic kill skills.

  Fearlessness and control have made him a more aggressive, more determined kill gamer. His accuracy with the joystick and its red thumb trigger is unsurpassed. So much so that Townies of all shapes, sizes and persuasions gather round the white-dreadlocked muscleman while the arcade explodes with rapid gunfire, swinging battleaxes and multiple mutant kills.

  Even the geeky Thoroughbred watches in amazement at the steady, calm, precise manner of killing—at the computerized blood spatter; at the piercing screams of mortally wounded mutants; at the rapid accumulation of H.P.

  T-Bred is so drawn into the hypnotic style of his mentor’s first-person kill game ability that he barely takes notice of the half-dozen L.G.P.D. who come bursting through the front and rear entrances, service weapons drawn, screaming “Down on the floor! Down on the fucking floor!”

  8

  Lake George Village Precinct

  Tuesday, 8:44 A.M.

  Earth’s gravity feels like it’s bearing down on Jude with twice its normal force.

  Maybe the pressure has something to do with water-logged sweats. Maybe it has something to do with the Lake George Village Precinct—being hit with the toxic odor of cheap disinfectant the second he walks through the reinforced glass door; being barraged with its ringing phones, buzzing faxes and chattering voices. Maybe it has to do with being once again trapped within its glossy painted concrete block walls. Or maybe it has something to do with the tentative expressions planted on the faces of his former brothers and sisters in arms.

  It’s not as if they aren’t cordial or respectful.

  Fact is, most of them are quick with a smile or a “Hey.” One officer who mans a computer terminal congratulates Jude on Cop Job, tells him he’s going to read it as soon as his brother-in-law finishes with it. Another uniformed officer—this one a woman—greets him with a hug and a peck to the cheek.

  They are all very nice, which in a way makes Jude especially nervous. Behind their smiles, their back pats and hugs, he senses something else at work. Something deeper than just good vibrations. It’s almost like he can read their minds.

  Because from the moment they plant their sad puppy eyes on him, Jude gets the feeling they’re all thinking the same thing: there goes Jude Parish, the one man in L.G.P.D. department history who had a shot at Violent Crimes and blew it his first day out.

  * * *

  Maybe he isn’t a stranger to the place, but Jude’s father leads him though the vestibule, past the stand-off area, past station security, past the Watch Commander’s desk where he’s required to sign in with the visitor’s log (although Mack quickly takes care of the task for him), past the property storage area, empty detention cells, booking and processing rooms.

  His final destination? The interview room.

  While a large mirror takes up much of one wall, the opposite wall is covered with a curtain that hangs stage-like from a wall-mounted track. As he shuffles his way to a long wood table set in the center of the cramped square-shaped space, Jude catches a glance of his mirrored reflection, smiles nervously for the invisible video camera that will certainly be recording his testimony from the opposite side of the glass.

  Mack plants himself to Jude’s right-hand side while the door opens and another man steps inside. The unfamiliar man quickly seats himself on the former cop’s left flank, sets a blue plastic folder onto the table not far from where a powered down laptop computer resides.

  The old Captain ignores the plastic “Smoke Free Workplace” placards posted just about everywhere one travels inside the seventy-year-old precinct, fires up a Marlboro Light. He finger-taps the newly lit ash end of the butt into his Styrofoam coffee cup, sits back in his chair, exhales a blue cloud, settles himself in for the legal procedure about to take place.

  The chesty, mustached man to his left introduces himself as Lt. Daniel Lino. He’s a newly employed L.G.P
.D. detective, now nine months with the department, having transferred from the Rochester P.D. He will be assisting Mack directly with Lennox’s case file. Jude recalls Mack’s cell phone conversation during the drive to the station, recalls hearing the name “Lino.” He begins to realize that, for better or worse, events are moving rapidly.

  Mack stands, pulls off his gray blazer, sets it neatly on the chair back.

  “I’m gonna tell him now, Daniel.”

  The Lieutenant smooths out his mustache with index finger and thumb. Dark eyes beamed on Mack, he issues a go-ahead nod.

  Mack says, “Here’s the deal, Jude. Acting on a reliable tip, we just picked up your blond-haired suspect inside a village video arcade.”

  Stomach cramping; stomach going way south.

  “Lennox,” Jude poses. But inside his brain he’s back at Sweeney’s back lot. He’s down on his belly beside the dumpster, a black pistol barrel pointed at his face, the demon cramping his insides, paralyzing him.

  Turning away from his son, Mack faces the one-way glass, raises his hand to wave someone in. A fast moment later the soundproof door to the room opens, making way for another cop. This one older than Mack by maybe two or three years. A plainclothes cop whom Jude immediately recognizes.

  “Well if it isn’t Shakespeare come back from the dead,” the chesty, round-faced man barks.

  Standing, Jude holds out his hand. “Ray Fuentes,” he says, as the big man snatches up all five digits, squeezes them hard in place of a shake.

  “Loved your book,” Fuentes smiles. “You were pretty tough on yourself though. Burns was going to shoot his wife and kid whether you tried to wrestle him to death or not.”

  As though on cue, Jude finds himself peering Mack’s way.