The Scream Catcher

by Vincent Zandri

  “You can’t even walk.”

  “If you don’t help me, I’ll do it on my own.”

  Lino approaches the bed, holds out his hands as if signaling for patience.

  “Give me five minutes. Then I’ll take you to her myself.”

  “And Jack? Is he here too?”

  “With Mack at your home.”

  As always the Lieutenant is dressed in a black suit, matching pointy-toed cowboy boots, Brylcreemed hair slicked back against his head. He makes his way to the open door. Leaning out, he waves someone in.

  “Let’s have it,” he says out the open door.

  A quick moment later, an orderly appears with a laptop computer in her hand. She hands it to the cop and leaves without so much as a crooked glance at Jude.

  Setting the laptop on the tray stand, Lino boots the machine up. When it’s done, he double-clicks on the media button, bringing up a video screen. Shifting the cursor, he double clicks on Play. After a moment or two of black and white fuzz, Jude sees the digitally videotaped image of the Warren County Courthouse building shot not from Main Street or from the Lake George Park’s wide front green, but from the fourth story rooftop of an unidentified village building. From that vantage point, he can see that the entire concrete and marble façade of the newly constructed courthouse has collapsed—blown away by the I.E.D.’s explosion, exposing all the west-side offices and work spaces that surround the structure’s massive central rotunda.

  As the never-still camera pans and scans the badly damaged site, it zooms in to reveal the mounds of dust-clouded rubble and debris that surrounds the eight-story structure. The shot also reveals two people hanging from a severely angled eighth story concrete floor slab by their bare hands.

  Jude’s head begins to throb. His heart begins to race. Maybe he is viewing actual footage of himself and Lennox hanging from the exposed floor of the courthouse eight stories up, but he’s having an even harder time believing it. He finds himself fighting the distinct sensation that what he’s watching from that hospital bed is a bizarre Hollywood fabrication.

  “These images were shot only moments before the second series of collapses,” Lino points out while the long mpeg rolls.

  The tall cop reaches out towards the television screen with his right hand, uses an extended index finger as he would a pointer. He asks Jude to “Pay strict attention.” On the screen, Lennox is shifting himself hand over hand towards Jude’s vertical, two-handed position. When the beast is close enough, he pulls one hand away from the ledge, reaches for the iPhone. That’s exactly when the remaining interior west-wing portion of the structure collapses. Two bodies fall while a plume of smoke, ash and dust mushrooms up, consumes the building entirely.

  Lino stops the video, then clicks on another.

  One eye on the T.V., the other on Jude, he says, “What you’re about to see now is a far closer angle. I’ll run it in slow motion. That way you will know precisely how your life was spared.”

  Again, Lino double clicks on Play.

  This time, Jude is able to gaze at his screen image, not from the vantage of the four-story structure located across the street from the courthouse, but looking down from higher up in the sky. It’s obvious then that this shot has come from the chopper that hovered above them while Lennox and he clung to the broken floor slab.

  A kind of top-to-bottom domino effect occurs on the laptop screen. In slow-motion, the top floor gives way, followed by the floor below that and the floor below that until the entire interior structure appears decimated.

  Most of it that is.

  Because looking closely, Jude can see where more than half the sixth floor remains in tact. The helicopter video is proof positive that instead of plunging the entire eight stories to his death, he was saved by the still sound sixth floor slab. The fluttering, sometimes-out-of-focus, camera zooms in on his prone, unconscious body. Clearly, he could not have moved a muscle even if he wanted to.

  Through the smoke and the dust, Jude searches for a sign of Lennox—a human figure or shape moving through the thick gray/black haze. But in the end he makes out nothing that would lead him to believe the beast didn’t fall to his death.

  The video turns back to black and white snow.

  “Why didn’t Lennox kill me while he had the chance? Why try to pull me over the edge when he could just shoot me and be done with it? Why try to catch my screams?”

  “You were too easy to kill at that point,” Lino insists. “What he wanted were your shrieks and cries for help. That’s what gets him off. Not death.”

  “He’s a murderer.”

  “His automatic was discovered in the wreckage. The clip was empty. If he was planning on killing you, he forgot to bring bullets.”

  Something occurs to Jude.

  What if by simply staying alive I was able to beat Lennox’s kill game?

  Jude pulls his eyes away from the screen, presses his head back onto the spongy acrylic pillows, stares directly up at the white antiseptic ceiling.

  The reason I am still alive: I beat the kill game. In the end, I saved the life of my wife and son . . . Stop. Wait just a minute, Parish. You have no business jumping to conclusions, especially when Lennox had every chance to kill you while you were still up on Tongue Mountain. There’s got to be a reason he let you live—let your family live. So in the end, what you have to ask yourself is this: What if by having survived the kill game you actually claimed the ultimate loss? Because the only thing worse than dying is losing the life of someone you cherish more than yourself . . .

  Jude is immediately transported back to the eve of the preliminary hearing. He sees himself bursting into his bedroom only to see a naked Rosie gagged and bound to the four corners of the bed.

  What did Lennox do to my wife? To my unborn child?

  He gazes upon Lino. At this point, instead of feeling something breaking inside his body, he feels something caving in. He wants to scream at the Lieutenant, demand where they’ve hidden his wife and son. He knows his family better than he knows himself. They would have been there for him from the moment he came to. No matter how long it took, they would have waited for him to come around.

  Why aren’t they here?

  The answer: only something terrible could be keeping them away.

  He wants to beat the answer out of Lino. But even if he could—even if he possessed the physical capability—he is too afraid of what he might find out.

  The Lieutenant sets the remote control on the end of the bed.

  He says, “At this point, we are confident that Lennox’s remains will be discovered inside the courthouse wreckage.”

  “Any sign of him yet?”

  Lino admits that despite the use of forensic K-9s, nothing thus far has been uncovered. But this is not an unusual circumstance considering Lennox’s body might have been completely consumed by a gas main fire that continues to smolder inside the heavy rubble.

  Jude’s body might be throbbing like one big open sore, but it’s nothing compared to the shock and sadness tail-spinning inside his brain.

  “Is it possible Lennox escaped?”

  “The entire northern portion of the courthouse and its attached emergency stairwells remained intact. I suppose it’s possible that in all the chaos and confusion, Lennox somehow made his way down six flights of stairs and simply walked out the side door. But I believe we would have caught it all on video. Thus far, there is no evidence he ended up anywhere but beneath tons of burning debris.”

  “So that’s it?” Jude exhales. “We just go on with our lives?”

  Lino answers the question the only way he can: by saying nothing and by simply cracking a kind of sad, half smile that quickly fades back into his mustache. Like a man who hasn’t anymore answers, he stuffs both hands into his pants pockets, shrugs his shoulders. Turning away from Jude, he heads for the open door.

  But he doesn’t get far before ex-cop calls out for him.

  “My wife. You promised me you’d take me to se
e my wife.”

  The Lieutenant turns slowly back around.

  “You’re absolutely right,” he says. “I gave you my word.”

  Glens Falls Medical Center

  Saturday, 10:29 A.M.

  Rosie’s private room is located on the fourth floor, directly across from a central nurse’s station. Lino wheels Jude into the dimly lit room, pushes him directly up to the bed that hold’s the sleeping patient, and leaves. Like Jude, she has an I.V. attached to her left forearm. The monitors beside her record blood pressure and heart rate.

  Although long dark hair veils more than half her face, Jude can see just how pale she is. The paleness tells him she’s lost a lot of blood. It also tells him she’s been through an ordeal separate from the one Lennox put her through.

  Reaching out, Jude takes hold of Rosie’s hand. He squeezes the cold fingers and begins to cry. Her eyes open up then. Turning towards him she begins to shed tears.

  “I’m sorry,” she whispers.

  Jude just shakes his head. He wants to tell her not to apologize. What could possibly be her fault? Her body and the pregnancy had been at risk from the moment she contracted the S.P. She wasn’t supposed to strain herself in the least. But she found herself up on a mountain, fighting for her life—for her baby’s life. She did everything she could to stay alive. He wants to shout this out to her, but he cannot talk.

  “I’m so sorry. I’m so, so sorry.”

  Squeezing her hand, Jude somehow manages to work up enough strength to speak, if only in a whisper.

  “Sleep,” he says. “Go to sleep.”

  “I’m . . . sorry,” Rosie says again, eyelids falling.

  For what seems forever, Jude just sits staring at his sleeping wife.

  But when the door opens back up, it’s Lino who steps back inside.

  He says, “They’ve arranged for you and Rosie to share a room. It should only take about another hour for them to set it up.”

  Wiping his eyes, Jude looks up at the Lieutenant from his chair.

  “Take me out,” he says.

  Once wheeled out into the corridor, Jude spots his little boy. He and Mack are waiting for him just beyond the nurse’s station. Jack shouts and runs to his father, wide-eyed and happy. He goes to hug Jude, but Lino holds him back.

  “Easy young man,” he says. “Your dad is pretty fragile right now.”

  The bushy-haired Jack takes hold of his dad’s free hand anyway, squeezes it hard.

  Mack’s right arm is supported in a sling. He isn’t wearing the usual gray jacket, but only a white T-shirt that has a cartoon-like drawing of a muscle-bound half man/half bulldog on the front. The dog-man is hefting a barbell over his head above the words “Pit Bull Gym.” The old Captain approaches, leans himself down towards his son.

  He whispers, “The doctor assures me that, in time, Rosie will have no trouble conceiving again.”

  Jude’s throat closes up on itself. He bobs his head, presses lips together, tries his best to swallow. Using the back of his hand, he dries his face.

  Glens Falls Medical Center

  Wednesday, September 6, 10:29 A.M.

  September settles onto Lake George with a whimper.

  With the Labor Day weekend fireworks, boat races, motorcycle rallies, outdoor concerts, beer blasts and barbeques now a fleeting memory, the throngs of tourists have all but abandoned the village, leaving the bars, gift shops, pizza parlors, coffee houses and arcades strangely quiet.

  It’s the time of year when the leaves on the trees begin to show just a hint of the red-orange Technicolor that will come to define autumn in the Adirondacks. Boat traffic on the lake is reduced to a few scattered sailboats intermixed with the early fall lake trout and salmon fisherman. The public beach located on the far side of Lake George Park and to the immediate south of the county courthouse bomb site is now empty, its white sand as smoothed over and undisturbed as a sand trap. While the nights are filled with the Northern Lights that scoot and shoot across the wide open upstate sky in a cavalcade of yellow, white and blue hews, the early mornings have already begun to take on that crisp, alive coolness that only a native Lake Georgian can truly know.

  Not five miles away from the southeastern banks of the lake, Jude has executed all the necessary documentation required for his official Glens Falls Medical Center discharge. His doctor’s best wishes and further healing instructions in hand, he’s packed up his private room, tossed out the now wilted flowers, passed out what was left of any cookies, cakes, chips and doughnuts to hospital staff, filled his duffel with both clean and soiled laundry, then settled into a wheelchair, the letters G.F.M. stenciled into the heavy plastic chair-back in white-on-black letters.

  He’s lost a total of twenty-three pounds, but the weight loss doesn’t make him feel any lighter. While Rosie awaits his arrival from their home, he shares an elevator car with Mack and Jack. Staring straight ahead, he catches his reflection in the chrome doors. His face stares back at him, distorted and unfamiliar, like a funhouse mirror reflection.

  I know I’m supposed to be relieved, but . . .

  Almost tranquilly, the elevator glides three generations of fathers and sons gently down to the first floor where they proceed along the extended length of the narrow hospital corridor to the exit. Jude is barely through the automatic sliding glass doors before being besieged by the scattered reporters who shout out questions regarding his and his family’s eleven hour abduction of August 14th and 15th.

  “Do you plan on bringing a class action suit against Warren County for negligence?”

  “Do you plan on writing a book about your abduction?”

  “Can you verify the rumors that you have sold the movie rights to your story?”

  “Are you moving back to New York City?”

  The questions are machine-gunned as microphones are shoved within inches of his face even while being wheeled out into the parking lot. Until Mack—injured arm and shoulder ever supported in the adjustable sling—stops the chair, steps around the front, blocking any and all access to Jude and Jack.

  “Ladies and gentlemen,” he exclaims. “I speak to you not as the Chief of Detectives for the L.G.P.D. but as the father of my son, the grandfather of my grandson. Please leave us in peace. In time, my son will release a statement regarding last month’s ordeal. But until then, we ask for your patience and understanding while the process of convalescence continues. I thank you.”

  But as soon as Jude is seated beside his boy in the back seat of Mack’s Jeep, the old Captain set behind the steering wheel, the ex-cop decides to break his silence.

  “That was almost eloquent, Mack,” he says, eyes planted in the rearview.

  Mack catches Jude’s stare with his own. Firing up the engine, he slips his arm out of the sling, throws the transmission into reverse. One-handed, he backs the Jeep out of its space.

  “You know the score, kid,” he says with a shrug of his good shoulder. “Half my job is public relations.”

  Mack motors the Jeep out beyond Main Street, past the village limits, onto Lake George Road. With the lake visible on the right-hand side and nothing but a near perpetual stand of pines on the left, Jude glances again into the rearview mirror only to once more spot Mack’s slate gray eyes.

  As if to only add a voice to the otherwise heavy silence, he begins bringing Jude up to speed regarding the few developments that have occurred during his time in the hospital. That Wild Bill Stark—owner and proprietor of Wild Bill’s All Day/All Night video arcades—has been arrested, charged with providing a false alibi and falsified evidence on behalf of Hector Lennox during the August 12th Arraignment (the Acting County Prosecutor is at present also seeking out a charge of complicity to commit murder); that the Town of Lake George plans to level what remains of the courthouse building and that a memorial to P.J. Blanchfield will be erected there in its stead; that already Mack has been invited to be interviewed by several night-time talk-shows regarding not only Jude’s affair with Lennox, but abo
ut domestic terror as well; that back to back memorial services for both Blanchfield and Ray Fuentes concluded last week after his charred torso was uncovered from the severely burnt-out L.G.P.D. Jeep-cruiser (their individual remains have been buried at opposite ends of the Lake George Rural Cemetery); that a day after the courthouse explosion, the L.G.P.D. patrol boat and its murdered two-man crew were uncovered by divers one-hundred feet off the eastern tip of the Assembly Point Peninsula. And finally, that traces of Lennox’s body were uncovered in the rubble only yesterday morning; that not even the press knows about it since the remains, which consist of some charred teeth and a palm-sized piece of skull, are only now arriving at the FBI forensics lab in Quantico for DNA verification.

  “What if the teeth are somebody else’s?” asks Jack, lifting up his head. “Does that mean the dark monster is coming back to Lake George?”

  Mack is quick to shake his head.

  “On the contrary,” the old Captain responds. “It means we now have the evidence we need to prove once and for all that the old Black Dragon burned up in the bomb blast.”

  Jack perks up his brow.

  “How can you be sure, Grandpa?”

  Jude shifts his aching body, brings his arm down around the boy’s shoulders.

  “Only one other person besides P.J. Blanchfield died in the bomb blast,” he explains. “That person was Hector Lennox. I assure you, Mr. Jack, the Black Dragon…the dark monster himself…is no more.”

  Looking down upon him, Jude sees the boy purse his lips, as though unconvinced.

  And who can blame him?

  Dark monsters, like nightmares, have a nasty habit of returning again and again, night after night.

  As the Jeep-cruiser pulls onto the gravel drive of the Assembly Point Road home, Jude finds Rosie standing out on the front porch awaiting his arrival like a young bride for her war-weary husband. Catching his attention immediately is a newly created two-track that leads from the far edge of the lawn, into the woods. Jude knows without asking that it must have been made by the off road vehicles carting the technicians who attended to the spot in which Ray Fuentes was beheaded.