The Scream Catcher

by Vincent Zandri

  Slipping out of the king-sized bed, she presses feet flat against the cool wood floor. She looks over one shoulder, then the other. Nothing but light blue plaster walls, two antique wood dressers, a full-length, stainless steel-framed IKEA dressing mirror, a flat-screened plasma television mounted to the wall directly across from her bed, its remote control set on the now empty side of the mattress where her fiancé used to sleep. Outside the windows of the lake-front condo, the bright morning sunshine beams down through thick locusts, junipers, birches, and pines onto calm water.

  A beautiful mid-summer day, yet, Blanchfield wants to get back in bed, sleep her consciousness away.

  Hector Lennox you are not dead . . . How long have you been back in Lake George? . . . Long enough to kill in your own special way.

  “Patricia Janice,” shouts the gruff voice from two floors down. “P.J. you awake?”

  She stands.

  “Coming, Da.”

  Twenty minutes later the prosecutor is dressed sharply in a blue, knee-length skirt, matching blue blazer over a simple white button-down. She’s dutifully fed her father, changed his bedding and dignity pants, made certain the T.V. remote is set within reach of both his bed and the wheelchair set beside it.

  “Eva will be here in an hour to clean house and get your lunch,” she informs the seventy something native Irishman and former Lake George Village tavern proprietor.

  The white-haired old man looks up at his daughter with round, red, glassy eyes, gaunt face covered with gray bristle, a clear plastic tube fed by a portable oxygen canister snaked up his left nostril.

  “I love Eva very much,” he mumbles in his native brogue. “And your ma. The memory of her face resides in my heart. You have her face, you know.”

  “Too bad you loved whiskey more,” P.J. comments while popping an earring into her right ear lobe. “You might still have ma, a home, a business, your health . . . Need I continue, Da?”

  Her father laughs as though engaging in a playful exchange with his daughter.

  But then she’s right.

  His love of the bottle has destroyed everything dear to him, leaving his only child to fend for herself in this big cruel world. And what a job she’s done raising herself from out of his drunken Irish ashes. Maybe he isn’t allowed to drink anymore, but mostly he’s just happy to lay his eyes on his beautiful, self-made daughter.

  “I get a kiss before you go off to fight the bad guys?”

  P.J. turns to the old man, leans into him, plants a peck on his stubble-covered cheek.

  “Still love you,” she says. “And keep those hands to yourself when Eva gets here.”

  Lake George Village Precinct

  Tuesday, 9:35 A.M.

  The surveillance photos back in hand, Fuentes exits the room in a hurry that begets his size. Immediately behind him follows Lt. Lino, the new L.G.P.D. detective anxious to meet up with the County Prosecutor to prep her for what everyone hopes will be a quick arraignment and indictment.

  Alone with his son for the first time, Mack reaches out, opens the laptop screen, fingers the power trigger. While waiting for the machine to boot up, he releases the top button on his white button-down, pulls on the ball knot of his tie making it hang Lou Grant-low.

  Seated beside his father, Jude can’t help but glance over his shoulder, stare into the old Captain’s round face.

  The hard, craggy face.

  Leather skin, bristly white stubble, bulldog nose that’s been broken one too many times and that now veers in the direction of his left cheek. It’s the sort of face he can’t help but look into rather than simply look at.

  Mack shifts himself, faces the radiant screen of the laptop.

  He types in several commands. After a few seconds, the website for ViCAP appears, or Violent Criminals Apprehension Program.

  Sitting back, Mack purses his lips. “I’m not sure if there’s a right or wrong way to explain this,” he says. “So, I’m just gonna say it. This morning’s homicide marks the third murder of its kind in Lake George in the last four years. Where a victim falls prey to some kind of stalking or thrill kill game.”

  Jude sits at the table, taking occasional sips of water from a disposable paper coffee cup, the now drying sweatpants and shirt causing his muscles to stiffen, skin to tingle and itch with an annoying relentlessness.

  A new page pops up.

  This one with a couple of mug shots posted on the right side of the screen beside a list of vital stats.

  Last Name: Lennox

  First Name: Hector

  Alias: The Black Dragon; the Dragon

  D.O.B.: 10/17/75

  D.O.D.: 7/8/2002 (Not Confirmed)

  Sex: Male

  Race: White

  Height: 6:03

  Weight: 225-250

  Eyes: Blue

  Hair: Blond or Str

  Event #: 24011906 ————————— Image Captured

  Jude notices right away that no Image Captured date is listed. It means he has no idea when the mug was snapped. But one thing is obvious: his boy Hector is a chameleon—a master of the physical reinvention so to speak. In the color pic, the violent criminal’s hair is dark, cut close to the scalp. A jagged purple scar runs down the left cheek as if an animal has recently clawed him.

  And is he dead or alive???!!!

  In any case, the computer photo reveals that Lennox’s face definitely seems rounder than Jude recalls, clean shaven.

  No chin beard.

  No side burns.

  No mustache.

  No crazy long hair.

  The eyes are narrow. The only thing about them that resembles what he witnessed emerging from the gravel pit is their color: ice blue.

  Even the style of clothing depicted in the ViCAP mug can be construed as far different from what Lennox wore out back of Sweeney’s. In the photo, he’s wearing a navy blue cotton suit with a yellow silk tie accented in light blue polka dots. For an added mod splash, gold hoop earrings dangle from each of his ear lobes.

  The man Jude spotted giving chase outside Sweeney’s Gym sported long blond dreads and tight black clothing. As for earrings, he can’t recall noticing any. But then high stress situations distort memory. Even for former officers of the law.

  Mack perks up, says, “Suspect’s got a brand new alias: Christian Barter. And he’s got the proper documentation to back it up—driver’s license, social security card, credit cards. But I know of him by his real name: Hector Elijah Lennox. Thirty-six years of age, Gulf War vet, Marine computer hacker, clinical-psych dropout out from UCLA. Born and raised—if you want to call it that—in West Hollywood. The only son and child of an alcoholic Baptist minister who ran a storefront bible-belt church on Sunset Boulevard.

  “Lennox refers to himself as the ‘Black Dragon’ because of a tattoo he got planted on the interior of his right forearm during the second Gulf War. L.G.P.D. first picked him up on probable cause after a taxi cab driver looking for a place to shoot up witnessed an execution inside an abandoned tanning factory on the lake’s south end. But after three days of interviews between us and the prosecutor, the witness got cold feet and a serious case of the shakes. In the end, he backed out. And I mean backed out of town for good. That left the gate wide open for our Black Dragon boy to stand up tall before Judge Mann, plead false arrest and entrapment. Bastard went Al Sharpton on us, threatened to sue. In the end, the prosecution backed off due to a quote—‘lack of evidence’—end quote. In turn. Judge Mann buried the gavel, insisted that all charges be dropped. Even before a Grand Jury got a chance to convene down in Albany and vote a no bill.”

  Sitting back, Jude peers down at the table top.

  “Mistakes were made in due process,” he surmises. It’s more a question than a statement.

  “Truth is, county prosecutor couldn’t offer up sufficient facts and circumstances to warrant an indictment. In her defense, forensics and C.S.I. produced minimal prints, minimal blood residue. There were no hair follicles, no clothing o
r fabric fibers, no trace evidence to speak of.” Shaking his head. “Correction: some evidence was there—emphasis on some. It’s just that investigators couldn’t get any of said evidence to link Lennox directly to the crime scene other than probable cause. And, as you well know, probable cause cannot reverse presumption of innocence.”

  A spark of light flashes inside Jude’s head.

  “But you had a body.”

  Mack smirks, runs an open hand across his scalp.

  “Yeah, we had a clean stiff. But what we needed was scientific proof—forensics and trace evidence that could be attached directly to the monster himself.”

  “And a reliable eyewitness who was willing to walk the walk,” Jude adds, knowing full well where this is going.

  “An eyewitness like you,” Mack says, slate gray eyes burning holes into his son’s sternum.

  Lifting the pitcher up off the table, Jude pours more water into his cup.

  At the same time, he’s asking himself these questions: is Hector Lennox a serial killer? Is he a serial killer with a talent and resources for reinventing his physical appearance and legal I.D. to suit his needs? To blend into any environment he chooses?

  Mack lights another cigarette, exhales the smoke through his nostrils.

  “This is the part of the back-story where the weird takes a turn for the surreal,” he goes on. “Lennox is a militarily trained computer hacker. A talent he’s incorporated into the design and development of first-person video kill games.”

  “Kill games,” Jude repeats, his son’s numerous video game systems flashing through his mind. “Video kill games meaning violent video games?”

  “Video games that kids play precisely because of that violence. The plots are all the same: shoot and destroy, stalk and destroy, fight and destroy, Kung Fu and destroy. In clinical terms, impersonal perspective, stealth action games that thrive on intense graphic violence. Their popularity is growing so large and fast that kids now spend more money on them than they do the movies. A fact that hasn’t gone unnoticed in Tinsel Town.”

  “Jesus, Mack, for an old timer, you’ve been studying up.”

  “You have no idea.”

  Immediately, Jude pictures his son Jack sitting up on his bed, big brown eyes glued to the T.V., a plastic game controller in his hands. When was the last time they went to see a movie together?

  “With kill games,” Mack goes on, “the aggressor characters and their victims are modeled on real life human beings. At least in the physical sense. But what the thrill-kill game can not possibly convey is the sensitive nature of the human condition. Therefore, gone are the sense of fear, anger, adulation, panic, love, guilt . . . all those emotions one might naturally take for granted especially when associated with a man or woman in grave danger—a person fearing for his or her own life.”

  “Computers trying to mimic human beings,” Jude adds.

  “And failing miserably,” Mack insists. “First-person kill games lack the human element. They lack emotion and most of all a conscience. Let’s face it, they’re interactive cartoons. No one knows this better than Lennox. In his world, the killing of an innocent man or woman is not an act against civil and social mores. It represents a payoff, plain and simple. The more kills a player accomplishes, the more satisfied the player feels about him or herself, the more he or she desires.”

  “Okay, so Lennox designs violent video games and at the same time he likes to kill people. But where do the two come together, Mack? How exactly does a make-believe video game make the leap to becoming a real life murder?”

  Pulling the spent cigarette from between his lips, Mack drops it into the coffee cup, stares into it, waits for the dousing hiss.

  “Through his Black Dragon alter ego, Lennox has sought out a way to capture the elusive human element.”

  “How exactly?”

  “We believe he abducts a victim, engages him in an elaborately designed first-person kill game. In that manner, he’s able to observe how a human subject reacts to the chase.”

  “Kind of like an experiment.”

  “More like an experiment in terror and dying.”

  Now it’s Jude’s turn to bite down on his bottom lip; to contemplate the information his father has calmly conveyed.

  Crossing arms over chest, he says, “Yeah, but why bother?”

  “Why bother killing?”

  “No, what I mean is, why bother with all the fuss, all the planning? Why risk it? Why not kill someone and be done with it?”

  Mack cocks his head to one side.

  “How’s the song go?” he asks. “’The taste of blood is sweet?’ For Lennox, the taste of the kill game blood is even sweeter. He gets off on it. He gets off on the process. And now, from what you’re telling me about this morning, he enjoys capping off the thrill kill by recording the screams of his victims only seconds before their execution.”

  “The screams,” Jude says. “If Lennox likes to go for a big dose of reality in his video kill games, you think it’s possible he uses the real-life screams in his audio?”

  The old captain nods.

  “Would you?” he poses.

  The interview room door flies open, giving Jude’s heart a start.

  Again the robot-like Lieutenant Lino—the L.G.P.D.s newest top cop—steps inside.

  “Your line-up is set to go, Captain Mack,” he says, mustached face deadpan, machine-like. “Are we to proceed?”

  What Jude already knows as a former dick: hidden behind the long white curtain is a long pane of thick translucent safety glass. Protected behind the window is a separate room that houses a lineup of seven men, all of them standing shoulder to shoulder. The ages of the men in this particular lineup will be anywhere from twenty to thirty-five. They will all be of large to extra-large frame, excellent health.

  His heart beats so rapidly, it’s nearly impossible to ingest a deep breath. Behind his eyeballs, quick flashes of brilliant light. It makes him think.

  Maybe Mack was right. Maybe I should have visited the emergency room after that bullet grazed my skull.

  Jude squeezes his fists, tries to calm himself down, curb the onset of anxiety.

  Mack cocks his head in the direction of the window. He reminds his son of the obvious: that if he can pick out the suspect in the lineup, then back it up by making a second positive I.D. in a court of law, the State will get a second shot at prosecuting a serial thrill killer.

  The old Captain sets a heavy hand on his son’s sweat-shirted shoulder.

  “So what’s it going to be, Jude? You up to the task?”

  The newly carpeted floor feels like it’s about to be pulled out from under the ex-cop.

  But then, here’s his chance to do something good, a chance to make up for his ineffectiveness at the morning’s kill scene.

  Jude gives the nod to open the curtain.

  Mack barks, “Now you’re cooking with Wesson.”

  Turning to the wall mirror, Lino raises his right hand, makes a thumbs up.

  The lights in the room are automatically dimmed at the very same moment the curtain slides open revealing a small, not-to-distant platform that holds seven men. One of them a kind of real-life, real-time comic book villain—with a head full of blond dreadlocks, a crooked sneer, and a black dragon tattooed on his right forearm.

  L.G.P.D. South Pearl Street Precinct

  Tuesday, 10:31 A.M.

  The closing curtains automatically trigger the bright overhead lights.

  Mack glances at his watch, picks up the telephone extension. When he says “Round up the Jeep,” Jude knows his father has to be talking to his driver (“Long legs”).

  Jude is happy about the directive, happy that his revisit to the L.G.P.D. precinct is coming to an end. He’s beginning to feel cooped up. Beyond cooped up.

  Claustrophobic.

  He feels like all eyes inside the precinct have been focused on his backside since his arrival. Or maybe he’s just being paranoid. But then, his tighter than tigh
t sternum is speaking to him. It’s saying, Get me the hell out of here!

  “Where you heading, Mack?”

  “Medical Examiner. You wait for me here, catch some rest. Maybe grab a bite to eat.”

  Jude can’t help but feel the needle prick of disappointment. But then, he knows that in Mack’s mind, it makes sense for him to take a breather while the old Captain makes the short road trip down to Glens Falls. After all, between the two-way drive and the meeting with the M.E., he’ll eat up the better part of an hour. Time enough to allow Jude the chance to catch a nap.

  But Jude is not tired . . .

  Scratch that . . . He’s tired all right. But, at the same time, so wired he could not possibly sleep. And the last thing he wants right now, besides sleep, is food. Every time he thinks of food he pictures the two quick blasts from a sound suppressed automatic, the way the victim’s head violently jerked forward, chin against chest. He sees the frail body fall limply forward, rubber-like, splashing into a puddle of rain water. He hears the screams.

  There’s something else he sees too: he sees himself dropping to the pavement at the precise moment he should have been stopping the killer before he got away.

  Jude knows if Mack were to leave him alone for an hour, he would be reduced to pacing the interview room—heart a flutter so to speak. Minutes would go by like days.

  But there’s another reason Jude does not want to be left alone—or left behind, to be more accurate. He watched a man die today. He knows neither the victim’s name, age, nor what he looked like up close. He has no idea if the man lived alone or had a family. Jude knows nothing about him. Not even the color of his eyes.

  Jude’s played the part of the puppet long enough.

  Mack, the puppeteer, has led him by the strings, told him what to do, how to do it. At the same time, Jude senses an over-protectiveness—the father still watching out for the son, even in adulthood. But perhaps if he could find out just a little bit more about the man who screamed on demand and who kneeled idly while taking two shots to the head outside that gravel pit, then he might afford himself just a hint of control. He would know what he’s fighting for.