Scream Catcher Page 6

  “Keep your big brown eyes peeled to the screen,” Mack whispers.

  That the video game has been set inside a kind of dark tunnel is obvious to Jude. The game’s object however, is not. But the walls, ceiling and floor appear to be a computer animated rendering of concrete, like Hitler’s bunker or the basement of a maximum security prison. Caged wall-mounted light fixtures give off an eerie glow. But when a small circle of bright white light appears, Jude knows that the game is about to begin.

  We see a man.

  He’s been designed to look like a grotesquely skinny, raggedy kind of man, dressed only in white briefs. Tighty Whitey. Long, pale, almost glowing face is waxed with fear and pain. Eyes wide and enormous; cheeks not sunken but caved in; wild straw hair; protruding chin; skin pockmarked or blanched with big black and blue welts. Tighty Whitey is breathing harder than hard as he runs away from what Jude now sees as a second more mysterious man. This one dressed entirely in black. By the looks of it, the dark man’s purpose in video game life is to chase the skinny man through the dark corridor.

  Assuming the role of the first person player, the little boy controls the dark man by making him shoot Tighty Whitey in the back with a pump action shotgun.

  Kid shoots and shoots.

  But instead of falling dead, Tighty Whitey issues forth a series of shattering screams while he is miraculously able to take shotgun blast after shotgun blast to the back. Meanwhile, an electronic scoreboard located at the bottom right hand of the screen rapidly accumulates hit points.

  Those screams. Are they the real thing?

  Jude gets it. That is, he gets why Mack brought him out here in the first place. It’s all about Hector Lennox’s backstory; about his scream catching. It’s about who Lennox really is and what he’s done. Lennox, acting as his alter ego, the Black Dragon, is the major suspect in two previous kill game-style murders. One that took place somewhere in and around the Hudson River and before that, inside an abandoned tanning factory.

  The dark concrete bunker setting of this video game…could it be an abandoned tanning factory? What the ex-cop must ask himself is this: is this video game a computerized reproduction of an actual thrill kill that took place four years prior, curdling screams and all? By making Jude witness this game, is Mack not only revealing a murder site, but the actual murder itself?

  Times are changing.

  It’s no longer good enough for a killer to steal off with some small memento of his victims—a wallet-sized photograph; a small scrap of clothing; a lock of hair; a pair of underwear … No, that stuff’s just not gonna cut it anymore. Not when killers like Lennox are able to bring the real life murder to the vid screen as real time kill game plots.

  And how’s this for insult?

  Lennox has made his memento available via the mass market for the youth of the world to enjoy over and over again. This little boy—this innocent kid—he’s stepping into the role of the dark man, the torturer, the Black Dragon, the fucking dark monster …

  The kid is committing murder. Whether he knows it or not. He is committing murder to the true cries and screams of the chased victim.

  Jude pulls his eyes away from the screen, away from the graphic murder.

  “What do you call this game?”

  Reaching out, the old Captain points to the color graphic imprinted on the stand alone game’s side panel. The words Project Night Fright appear above an animated rendering of the dark man, the stalker’s face masked with a green-lighted night-vision scope.

  “Project Night Fright,” Jude recites. “A Hector Lennox creation?”

  But it’s a question for which he already knows the answer.

  “Uncanny resemblance to the tanning factory murder,” Mack adds. “The setting; the victim’s physical characteristics; the hunt and destroy M.O… . the whole ball of wax.”

  “So why hasn’t somebody busted Lennox ages ago based upon this game alone?”

  “If you take a look at the research there’s one problem. This game is officially authored by a Japanese company based out of Tokyo.”

  “And that means?”

  “It means that although authorship cannot be traced directly to him, it’s more likely he ghosted the game under a pseudonym.”

  Running an open hand though his short hair, Jude nods. He knows he could inquire about tracing the pseudonym. But then he also knows that Lennox will have carefully covered his tracks, making it impossible for anyone or anything to link him with the game other than coincidence. In this manner, Lennox gets to show off his kill game handiwork without getting caught.

  How fucking brilliant.

  The sudden presence of another man startles Jude.

  Turning quickly, Jude and Mack face a large black-bearded man.

  Wild Bill Stark, teeth clenched, hands balled up into tight fists.

  “Don’t you think you fucked up my business enough for one day?” he sneers, making a direct reference to Lennox’s morning arrest inside the video gaming establishment.

  Wild Bill is seething, big blue eyes wide and wet. He’s dressed in blue jeans, motorcycle boots, leather vest, no shirt to hide the purple artery popping out of his neck. Gripped in his fisted right hand, the folded Prosecutor’s summons for the big man to appear in county court in the matter of Lennox’s arraignment. Or so Jude deduces.

  The three-way stare-down continues. Until Project Night Fright’s Tighty Whitey belts out a scream. The scream seems to have no effect on the adolescent first person player. But it stands the hair up on the back of Jude’s neck.

  The scream catcher.

  “My son and I are conducting a little prep before we’re due in court,” Mack says. “Didn’t think you’d have any objections, Bill.”

  The still alive Tighty Whitey lets loose with another scream before collapsing like a house of cards in a windstorm. He falls to the floor, a flood of computer-animated blood spilling out from underneath the torso.

  YOU WIN! flashes triumphantly across the vid screen.

  Big blood red letters.

  “Damn right,” exclaims the excitable boy as he digs into his jeans pocket for another four quarters, sliding them into the machine’s narrow mouth.

  Cold, hard U.S. currency: the fuel that feeds the beast.

  Jude approaches the kid, sets a hand on his narrow shoulder.

  “Tell me,” he says. “What exactly did you win?”

  Kid, with hands still gripping the controls, fingers positioned above the colorful buttons, shrugs the hand off, throws Jude a cockeyed glance like, You must be out of your mind to ask such a stupid question.

  In video land, a new game pops up, locked and loaded.

  A clean slate. A new opportunity for another murder.

  And wonder of wonders, Tighty Whitey is alive and not-so-well again. But then the badass dark man is right on his tail, firing round after round from his shotgun.

  Soon Tighty Whitey will scream again, and he will die again.

  And for what?

  Jude feels suddenly queasy, lightheaded. How much murder can one man be expected to witness in the course of a single morning?

  “Let’s get out of here, Mack,” he says, pushing himself past the boy player, past Wild Bill.

  “I’m right behind you,” Mack confirms.

  Heading for the exit, the old Captain tosses a glance over his shoulder in the direction of the four-square Wild Bill Stark.

  “Don’t be late for court, Billy,” he says.

  * * *

  Together, Jude and Mack cross a busy Main Street, past diagonally parked cars and motorcycles, past electronic parking meters, through heavy two-way traffic, through waves of summer tourists to the lake side of the street and the new eight-story courthouse. When they make the stairs up to its front portico, Jude about-faces, gazes up at the summit of Tongue Mountain. On this clear day the summit looms large and foreboding above the village rooftops. While people in suits come and go through the front revolving glass door, Jude looks into his fa
ther’s gray eyes.

  “A serial killer loose in beautiful Lake George,” he says. “I seem to have missed all this murder and mayhem on the local news.”

  “How many times you make it up from New York in the past four years?” Mack points out. “And did I mention the fact that prior to the dismissal of Lennox’s last indictment proceedings, our gorgeous county prosecutor petitioned the court for a gag order and got one. We could not give the media the chance to create a panic over Lake George’s first serial killer.” Turning towards the village, its waves of tourists. “Take a look at all those people lined up on Main Street, Jude. This town—my paycheck; Blanchfield’s paycheck; your pension—survives and depends upon the tourism industry. On another level you can’t allow the media to encourage a man like Lennox with all kinds of print and electronic publicity, give him a reason or reasons for killing again. Silence and secrecy are the golden rules.”

  “Go back four years,” Jude says. “If you were convinced Lennox was your killer, why allow him to roam free even after an indictment was dropped?”

  Mack, exhaling, frustrated. Hard face turning a distinct shade of red. It’s obvious Jude has struck a raw nerve or pulled back the scab on an old wound anyway.

  “You had to ask it, didn’t you?” the old Captain smirks.

  The ex-cop feels caught off guard. Maybe he has no right to pry into Mack’s business. Even if Mack is his adoptive father.

  The old Captain breathes in, breathes out. “Lennox left town immediately upon his release. Left town; left the county, disappeared. Interpol tracked him for a time until they lost him for good. When the second murder was discovered along the Hudson a couple years later, we couldn’t even be sure that Lennox was responsible. Like I said, the crime scene was a riverbank. The only thing linking him to the murder was method.”

  “Pepper-ball welts and two .22 caliber slugs,” Jude intuits, his mind shifting back to Project Night Fright.

  “Doesn’t mean he did it.”

  “But you knew it had to be him, didn’t you?”

  “I knew in my heart it had to be him. It smelled too much like him—his M.O.”

  “But he got away again, got away with abduction and murder in the first degree.”

  “Yes he got away. He’s the fucking magician; the master of disguise, the plastic surgeon’s cream dream. A masked Lennox could have been right under our noses and we wouldn’t have known it was him.” Hand outstretched, pointing to the busy Main Street and the mobs of colorful people that occupy it. “Just look at that crowd. You don’t even have to try and lose yourself inside it.”

  “But if Lennox was cleared prior to a Grand Jury hearing, you might have kept tabs on him regardless. You could have gotten the FBI or Interpol to monitor his phone calls.”

  Uncomfortable silence ensues while a sweet breeze blows off the lake, through Jude’s now dry sweats. The prodigal son can’t help but feel like he’s stomping on his father’s Achilles heel. The silence; the old Captain’s obvious frustration … It tells Jude there’s something else to the backstory of Hector Lennox.

  “Lennox beat a murder rap,” Mack speaks up. “Beat the rap and it was something I had to accept as the Chief of Detectives. If I could have, I would have arrested him for jaywalking. But not only was he invisible and probably long gone from Lake George, I was issued strict orders from Prosecutor Blanchfield to avoid harassing him. He’ll fuck up again, I was told. When he does, we’ll pounce on him like a fox on a rabbit.” Nibbling the lower lip. “And then along comes an obit published in a Paris newspaper claiming the death of Hector Lennox, an American, originating from West Hollywood, U.S.A. Iraqi War Vet, computer wiz, video game designer.”

  … Don’t forget scream catcher …

  Jude, shaking his head.

  “That body he left in Sweeney’s parking lot this morning,” he says. “Is that the fuck up the Prosecutor’s been waiting for? Another human life?”

  But of course Mack can’t answer that.

  No way he can answer it.

  In a way Jude can’t blame his father; can’t help but commiserate with his frustration. Because who is Jude to begin questioning his father’s methods?

  As a former cop, Jude knows that if Mack is speaking the truth—that his hands were essentially tied in the matter of Hector “the Black Dragon” Lennox due to what sounded like an overly cautious county prosecutor, then there wasn’t a damn thing Mack could have done about it. Only seventy percent of homicide arrests result in an indictment. Jude supposes that Lennox’s original case and the riverside murder that followed falls in with the unsolved and/or un-prosecuted thirty-percent.

  Until now that is.

  Mack heads for the revolving courthouse door.

  “We gotta go.”

  Jude, an ex-cop turned eyewitness for the prosecution, fights back a surge of acid that shoots up from his stomach, settles in the back of his throat like red hot charcoal. He’s about to put himself on the line by testifying against a suspected serial killer. He can’t imagine that Mack would steer him wrong, put him in danger. Jude can’t imagine that once faced with an indictment for a second time, Lennox would get off again. This time the prosecution will have both an eyewitness and the proper forensics to back up their cause.

  Or so one can only hope.

  The way Jude sees it, Mack wants the creep so badly he can taste it.

  Jude peers back up at the mountain, at the sharp peak that stabs its way through the wispy white clouds.

  “Now, Jude,” Mack presses.

  Like he’s been doing since he was a boy, Jude follows his father’s lead.

  This time into a courthouse.

  14

  Warren County Courthouse

  Tuesday, 1:15 P.M.

  The man Jude Parish knows as Hector “the Black Dragon” Lennox, but who now IDs himself as house painter Christian Jordan, stands before the Judge’s bench. He’s tall, bulky, blond, clad not in the orange jumper of the Warren County lockup, but allowed to sport the clothes already on his back—white basketball sneakers, baggy Carhardt pants hanging low on narrow hips, too-tight T-shirt bearing the likeness of Jesus Christ. Clothing that for some judges might be considered a mockery of their court.

  But not for the Honorable Judge Gerry Mann.

  The old gaunt-faced, bespectacled, north-county adjudicator sits back behind his bench, relaxed in a leather, tall-backed swivel chair, hands interlocked at the fingers. His eyes are peeled not on Lennox or on Jude who, along with Mack and P.J. Blanchfield, occupy the Prosecution table on the opposite side of the recently constructed, marble-floored court. The judge’s eyes remained fixed instead on a beefy, tattooed and leather-vested Wild Bill Stark who also stands directly before the bench.

  “And you’re certain you can verify the presence of the defendant inside your establishment at the hours indicated by the prosecution’s complaint?” begs the Judge.

  “I have him recorded on security video,” Stark announces, big baritone voice rattling the courtroom. “It’s been surrendered as requested.”

  Mack leans towards his son, whispers into his ear.

  “I wanna see that video.”

  “Your honor,” the tall, blond Blanchfield interjects, “I’ve yet to view that video and would like a chance to have it examined prior to the Preliminary Hearing should you grant one.”

  “Naturally, Ms. Blanchfield. But before we proceed any further, might I point out that your eyewitness—the single individual you base your accusation on—was discovered knocked unconscious as the scene of the crime. Now while I have no doubt that a homicide took place, I do have my doubts that anyone got a good look at it in all that rain and all that darkness. Certainly I’m not calling Mr. Parish a liar, but before you proceed with an action you might want to consider that you are working with an unreliable eyewitness. And might I further enlighten you that Mr. Stark has never before appeared before this court for having committed any offense. Not even for a traffic violation. Which leads
me to believe that his security tape is legitimate and/or untampered with.”

  Mack, leaning into Jude again.

  “Money talks,” he says. “Just ask Wild Bill Stark.”

  “We have probable cause, your honor,” Blanchfield says, her voice not seething with authority but more like a timid whisper. “And an M.O. that appears to match the previous two Lake George homicides of 2008 and 2010.”

  “Duly noted,” Mann goes on. “Also another north county citizen has been robbed of his life not to mention the fact that your eyewitness nearly took a bullet to the brain. What all this means of course is that I must play this one out to its rightful conclusion and do it fast. There could be a killer on the loose. With that in mind, I’ll offer up a Preliminary Hearing in the matter of Christian Jordan but only if you have enough proof and evidence to support a case of murder in the first degree, and only if your eyewitness proves himself reliable. I don’t want to waste Captain Mack’s time if the real killer is still out there somewhere just waiting for the chance to pounce on one of our fine tourists.”

  “And the request for the Defendant to be remanded to the Warren County Jail, your Honor?” Blanchfield quietly pushes.

  “Denied,” Mann exclaims. “I know it’s highly unusual in the case of murder, but I have an eyewitness who was rendered unconsciousness. More importantly, it’s one man’s word against another. I am not in the business of locking up innocent people, especially at the height of tourist season. Lake George has an image to uphold and public relations to consider. Therefore this court agrees to release this man on two-hundred-fifty thousand dollars bail bond pending a return for the Preliminary Hearing which I am personally scheduling for three days from now on Friday, fifteen August.” Eyes now on Jordan/Lennox. “Mr. Jordan you will make your bank check or licensed bond payable to Warren County, care of the Town of Lake George. You will surrender the materials directly to the Bailiff immediately subsequent to these proceedings along with your passport if you have one.” Setting half glasses back on the crest of his nose. “Any questions? Anything I’ve missed?”