The Scream Catcher Read online

  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 here 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 . . . C.S.I. 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 I.D . . .”

  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.”

  Wild Bills 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 cheek bones, silicon injected lips and re-sculptured 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 and 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 E.M.T.’s 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 explode
s 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 came bursting through the front and rear entrances, service weapons drawn, screaming “Down on the floor! Down on the fucking floor!”

  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 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 then 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 through 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 in. The unfamiliar man quickly sits 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 smoothes 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.

  In return, the old Captain shoots him a furrowed brow gaze like told you so.

  Fuentes may be a good kidder, not to mention years past retirement age. But Jude suspects that Mack keeps the big man on as much for his knowledge of the cop job as he does his ability to act like a father to younger officers.

  “You have my photos, Serpico?” Mack poses while deep-sixing his latest cig.

  Reaching into his wrinkled brown blazer, Fuentes pulls out a yellow and black photograph envelope, tosses it onto the interview table.

  Taking hold of the package, Mack opens it, pulls out the pictures, spreads them across the tabletop in no discernable order.

  “Look these over, kid. Try to concentrate on the face you saw right before that bullet bounced off your skull. Tell me positively, absolutely if he’s your man.”

  Jude peers down onto the table, glances at twenty different versions of the same image: a tall, powerfully built, pale-faced male with bleach-blond chin beard and mustache, a head full of matching blond dreads.

  The photos appear to have been shot with a digital camera through a telephoto lens directly across the road from a neon lit arcade that, as a former Townie-slash-cop, he recognizes as Wild Bill’s All Day/All Night Arcade located on Main in the North Village.

  Question: what kind of assassin decides to hide out in plain view inside a video arcade only an hour after putting two bullets into the head of an innocent human being; an hour after trying to put a third bullet into me?

  Answer: a man who isn’t afraid of anybody or anything. A man who will claim to have a rock solid alibi. Probably both.

  Duty calls, buries its legal claws through the skin that covers Jude’s stomach.

  With Lt. Lino standing on his left-hand side, Mack on his right and Fuentes’ considerable bread basket bearing dead ahead, Jude shuffles the pictures around on the table until he locates the one that best matches his memory of the killer—a full frontal.

  But instead of black trousers and a matching long-sleeved shirt, the photo reveals that the killer is wearing Carhardt carpenter’s pants and a sleeveless T-shirt. A T that bears a black stenciled rendering of Christ, the words, JESUS IS MY SUPERHERO! superimposed over His haloed head.

  “Remember,” Mack presses, “you gotta be sure it’s the same guy or this thing will be shot.”

  Jude dry swallows.

  Reaching up with his right hand, he presses fingertips against the butterfly bandage. A dull, tender pain shoots through his head, all the way down to his teeth. Picking up the photo by its border, he holds it high above the table.

  “Gentlemen and Fuentes,” he announces, locking eyes with his father, “you have your winner.�
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  Bolton Landing

  Northern Tip of Lake George

  Tuesday, 9:10 A.M.

  The ringing phone wakes her from a restless, hung-over sleep.

  Warren County Prosecutor, P.J. Blanchfield, reaches out from under the blankets, fumbles for the bedside phone.

  “Yes . . . What is it?” Her brain is a big brass bell, her mouth a dry chamber filled with cotton.

  “Boss, we’ve got a homicide,” comes the voice on the connection’s opposite end. “Captain Mack’s people hand delivered an initial Police Complaint that details the whole thing.”

  Lifting her heavy head up from the pillow, the prosecutor brushes back disheveled shoulder-length hair, exposes pale naked breasts.

  “What time is it, Lois?”

  “Going on nine-fifteen.”

  “Shit. Why didn’t you call me earlier?”

  The prosecutor throws off the blanket. Her heart is pumping like the paddlewheel on the Minnehaha.

  But this is no laughing matter.

  Murders don’t occur all that often in Lake George. Almost never. Mostly just bar fights, snatched purses, fender benders, or the occasional vandalism to boat, jet ski, or lakefront dock. There’ve been two homicides since her election to the county seat. While the first case never made it past the Grand Jury, the second case didn’t get tried at all.

  But since then, peace.

  Until now.

  “And Chief,” Lois goes on. “One more thing.”

  “What is it, Lois? I have to jump in the shower.”

  “A suspect has already been taken into custody. He’s about to enter a line-up.”

  “So that’s a good thing.”

  “So get this: Captain Mack has reason to believe the murderer’s true identity is that of Hector Lennox.”

  Blanchfield’s heart is no longer beating so much as it’s expanding, causing her sternum to split down the center.

  “I’ll be there as soon as I can,” she says setting the phone back down onto the cradle.