The Scream Catcher

by Vincent Zandri

  Mack is putting his jacket back on when Jude stands, heads for the interview room door.

  “Where do you think you’re going, kid?”

  “This is my case, remember?”

  The old Captain cracks a crooked grin.

  “Just like old times,” he says.

  “Let’s hope not,” Jude says.

  Glens Falls Medical Center

  Tuesday, 11:03 A.M.

  Father and son stand inside the basement level, open double-doorway that accesses the Glens Falls Medical Center autopsy room. Jude’s head is reeling, not only from the .22 caliber bullet that grazed his scalp, but also from the pungent, systemic odor of formaldehyde and alcohol. If you want to stand inside the brightly illuminated, white-tiled room, you just can’t avoid it.

  The body of the shooting victim is laid out on the first of three identical, side-by-side stainless steel tables. From where Jude stands, he can clearly make out the blood and water seeping from the body where it collects drip by audible drip inside a steel vat positioned beneath the table’s drain. Almost thoughtfully, the thin man’s sex has been covered up with a green sheet, the ends of which hang over either side of the narrow slab.

  The M.E. has his back to Jude.

  He’s a short man, pudgy, dressed from head to toe in green surgical scrubs, a translucent visor that fits around his head and pulled down over his eyes like a welder’s shield. As father and son enter, the M.E. is standing over the mannequin-still body in his green-slippered feet, contemplating it like Dr. Frankenstein and his monster. In his right hand, he grips the table-mounted water spigot that he’s only just used to wash the body down with. In his right hand, he holds an old fashioned Microcassette tape recorder. Sensing the presence of another, he about-faces, thumbs Stop on the recorder, drops it into his baggy pant’s pocket.

  Mack takes a step further inside the white-tiled room.

  “Sorry to interrupt, Walter.”

  “You’re late,” the M.E. points out while pushing up the face shield, then peeling off the Latex gloves, discarding them into a blue medical waste bin at his feet.

  “You know my son, Jude,” Mack interjects by way of introduction.

  Jude and the M.E. shake hands almost cordially.

  But when Dr. Walter Fleming pulls his hand away, Jude can’t help but sense the cold, almost slimy residue that now coats his own palm. The residue gives him a bad case of the creeps.

  Jude dries his palm off on his sweat pants. But only when the doc isn’t looking.

  As if on cue, all three men shift their focus onto the body.

  “Massive head trauma and hemorrhage are the cause of death,” Fleming speaks up. “Manner of death came about by two .22 caliber slugs to the brain-pan, probably to ensure no exit wounds and to minimize spatter. It’s all spelled out in my initial report. Naturally, you’ll have to wait a minimum of seventy-two hours for tox and ballistics, not that anybody pays attention to ballistics anymore. In any case, my friends, we not only have a homicide, we have a carefully scripted assassination.”

  The M.E. moves only his lower lip when he speaks. His words, although precisely rendered, carry with them a slight lisp that carry the effect of making each syllable reverberate a little bit longer than nature intended. Or so Jude can’t help but notice.

  Positioning himself directly over the body, Mack gives it a cursory, personal examination. From toe to skull.

  “Do we have an I.D. on the deceased?”

  Fleming emphatically nods.

  “Fifty-year-old male. Last name Manion, first name Andrew. Owned and operated a convenient store in downtown Glens Falls. No family to speak of, no one thus far having shown up to claim the body.”

  Jude is standing just a couple of feet back from the two men. His gaze is locked onto Manion’s face—onto pale/yellow skin, sunken eyes, scraggily gray hair that has flopped over on the skull’s left side, exposing a bald scalp that now bears the thin red/purple line of where the M.E.’s razor saw cut and removed the cranial cap to allow for brain extraction.

  “If no one has come forward to claim the body,” he poses, “how’d you figure out an I.D.?”

  Fleming shoots Mack a look.

  “It’s okay, Walter,” the old Captain says. “Jude bore witness to this man’s murder. He’s agreed to testify.”

  The doctor turns to Jude, eyes the former cop curiously up and down and up again. Like his handshake, the glare gives Jude the creeps, like the M.E. is sizing him up for a casket.

  “One of the orderlies recognized our victim right away,” Fleming states after a beat. “Used to buy his coffee in Manion’s grocery store every morning before starting his shift.” Now cocking his head. “Up until three weeks ago, that is, when the store suddenly closed and never reopened.”

  “Three weeks,” Jude says as if the amount of time carries with it a special significance. And it does.

  “You want to know what I think?” Fleming poses.

  “That’s why we’re here,” Mack says.

  “I believe your man—if he is indeed the reincarnation of Hector Lennox—abducted Mr. Manion, confined him, starved him.” Stepping closer to the body, the M.E. inhales, holds out his right arm as if he’s about to begin a presentation. “Notice, if you will, gentlemen, the brittle hair, the swollen joints and weak musculature.” Circling the table. “Notice the bloated stomach and abdomen indicating severe constipation. Notice the yellowish, dry skin; the frail fingernails. If I had to make my most educated guess, I would say this man was verging on anemic. It could be the effects of alcoholism, but initial tests on extracted body fluids produced low potassium, magnesium, and sodium levels. I won’t know for sure until tox comes back with a full evaluation, but I would bet dollars to jelly donuts that his electrolytes were sky high. And my God, you only have to breathe on him to make him bruise.”

  Jude, too, comes closer to the prone body and what he sees makes him cringe. The skin is covered in black, blue, and purple welts, some of them the size of coasters.

  “Those welts,” Jude says. “They also the result of starvation?”

  Fleming slips on a new pair of rubber gloves. He presses his fingers onto a particularly large welt that protrudes from the skin on Manion’s lower neck, causing it to blanch, even in death.

  “Excellent question,” he says turning not to Jude, but to his father.

  For the ex-cop, it doesn’t take a whole lot of figuring out that Mack and Fleming have seen this kind of thing before.

  “Pepper-balls,” Mack nods. “Pepper-balls and .22 caliber slugs. Just like the first two victims, matching Lennox’s M.O. pretty much to the bone. In my opinion, anyway.”

  Jude peers at Mack, then back at the M.E.

  “I don’t follow.”

  Mack says, “One of Lennox’s favorite activities as the Black Dragon is to strip his victim’s bare, then chase them down for a couple of hours with a pepper-ball launcher.”

  You have to be a sick puppy to torture anyone, or anything, great or small, Jude thinks. You have to be doubly sick if you get creative about it.

  “Pepper-balls exploding against bare skin would cause severe bruising,” Fleming adds. “Naturally it’s not enough to kill anyone—that is, you avoid the face, especially the eyes. But I imagine the pain this poor soul endured before he died was severe and traumatic.”

  Mack turns to his stepson.

  “You didn’t happen to notice if Lennox was carrying an object about the size and length of a shotgun?” he asks. “From the right distance, a pepper-ball launcher would look a hell of a lot like a rifle or shotgun.”

  Jude explains that aside from a flashlight and a pistol, he didn’t notice anything like that. Although he did see that Lennox might have had something strapped to his back and shoulders. Something Jude took for a holster or a pouch of some kind.

  Mack nods.

  “He might keep the launcher strapped to his back.”

  Moving away from the table, Jude takes a step back. I
n his heart and in his mind, he has to wonder what kind of animal Hector Lennox really is. For the first time that morning, the sour scent of doubt fills his head. He wonders if he’s doing the right thing by testifying.

  What happens if Lennox gets off?

  Will he come after me?

  Will he harm my family—my wife, my son, my daughter to be?

  Will he makes us scream for him?

  In his mind, Jude can’t help but the feel the pepper-balls slapping against his own bare skin. He can only pray the sensation is not prophetic. But then he thinks of the dead man lying on the table. He knows that if he backs out now, chances are Lennox will be released from police custody. The beast will strike again.

  Besides, people are depending upon Jude now to do the right thing.

  Especially his old man.

  Mack makes his way into an adjoining office. As he reemerges with a yellow manila envelope in hand, his cell phone begins to ring. He answers the phone, tells whoever’s calling (Lt. Lino?) that he and his son will arrive back in Lake George in fifteen minutes.

  Hanging up, Mack nods in Jude’s direction.

  “We gotta go, kid.”

  Fleming purses his lips.

  “Have you called in the Feds yet?”

  “I’m waiting until after the arraignment and a positive I.D. of Lennox. That happens, I won’t have a choice but to call them in.”

  “Let’s hope this time you get your man, Captain.”

  Mack nods.

  He says, “Walter, we already have.”

  But in Jude’s head, he sees his father crossing imaginary fingers behind his back. He also knows then why the old Captain decided to make a personal visit to the M.E. He’s convinced that he has his man in custody and the faster he can collect the evidence necessary to make a proper indictment, the faster Lennox disappears from the earth.

  Mack asks Jude if he’s set to go.

  Jude nods.

  But before they leave, the ex-cop can’t help but take one last good look at the Lennox’s latest victim. At Manion’s face.

  Like the man who executed him, his eyes are blue.

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

  Tuesday, 11:50 P.M.

  Mack makes Jude wait in the wings while he confers with Lt. Lino in private.

  As though a guest in his own home, Jude watches them through the glass, mouths moving, words being exchanged, hand gestures galore. He might have belonged to this place once, but considering the morning’s events and the ineffective part he played in them, he can’t help but feel more like an outsider.

  Whispering “Fuck it” to himself, the former cop makes his presence known by invading the small square-shaped office uninvited. The first thing he sees is his father’s face lit up like a strobe-light of intensity. The old Captain isn’t just nibbling on his lower lip. He’s practically chewing on it.

  “Judge Mann is calling for an arraignment in exactly one hour.” Mack barks, patting his chest pocket for his smokes. “Wild Bill Stark is, at present, being subpoenaed by the prosecutor’s office to make an appearance.”

  Jude can’t help but feel a little bit lighter inside.

  A quick arraignment can mean only one thing: an indictment against Lennox for murder is imminent.

  “Congratulations,” he offers.

  “Save it,” Lino says, flat tone hinting of annoyance. “Mann already knows that Lennox took a shot at you.”

  Jude smiling. “So what’s the problem? That should speed things along.”

  Lino throws Mack a glance like, He doesn’t get it. Then, turning back to Jude, he says, “The problem is that Mann also knows you lost consciousness at the kill scene.”

  Jude feels the roof collapse on top of him. Elated to depressed in two-point-three seconds. If he didn’t get it before, he gets it now. Cop Job: Jude’s very own testament regarding his fear, his lack of grace under pressure. What Lino is trying to say, of course, is that Mann considers Jude unreliable at best—a man who could very well have passed out from fear before the murder even occurred.

  As if sensing his son’s disappointment, Mack gives his son a glare that Jude immediately interprets as let’s get the hell out of here.

  “There’s something you should see,” he says.

  Wild Bills All Day/All Night Video Arcade

  Tuesday, 12:10 P.M.

  Moving through the gauntlet of chain-smoking teens loitering outside the glass entry, Mack leads Jude into a dimly lit game room. The old Captain shoots and scoots around the dozens of stand-alone game systems like a pro running back through high school level linebackers. Only when he comes upon a game that occupies a space of honor in the building’s far corner, does Mack stop.

  Jude swallows a lump of bitter anxiety.

  Stepping up behind his father, he’s surprised to see that a young boy is playing the game. Nine or ten-year-old kid’s face is glued to the big screen while he uses both hands to maneuver the game’s colorful buttons and control. Unhindered by the adult intrusion, the boy plays on as if Mack and Jude do not exist. And Jude can only guess that for a young boy wrapped up in a fantasy cyber world, they don’t.

  “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 Whiteys. 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 back story—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 in 2004 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 t
he 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 quick, Jude and Mack face a large black-bearded man.

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