The Scream Catcher

by Vincent Zandri

  It’s a question Jude can’t answer, or maybe doesn’t want to answer.

  All he knows at this point is that Lake George is about to establish a memorial in Blanchfield’s name. What would be the point of ruining her life now that she’s dead and has a greater power to answer too?

  With the steady wind blowing against his face, Jude looks on in silence as Mack pulls the silver-plated Zippo from his jacket pocket, flips open the top, strikes a flame. The flame trembles in the wind as it catches the corner of the envelope. Together, Mack and Jude watch Blanchfield’s final confession disintegrate into smoke and ash, along with the memory of her short, unhappy life.

  Burns Cabin/Elizabeth Bay

  Wednesday, 12:57 P.M.

  Blanchfield’s letter isn’t an ashen memory for more than a half minute when a vehicle emerges along the two-track. Looking up, Jude begins to get a better sense of why Mack brought him all the way out to a place he’s spent the better part of five years trying to forget. Maybe part of the old Captain’s reasoning has everything to do with resolution. But then Jude also senses something else—that Mack is about to engage in a private showdown of his own.

  Together they make their way around the back side of the cabin where the now mostly overgrown, two-track comes to an end at a short fieldstone knee wall. The black Suburban comes to a full stop just before the wall. When the driver’s side door opens, out steps Lino, dressed in his usual black suit and boots.

  “Right on time,” Mack mumbles, glancing at his wrist watch.

  Lino shuffles his way around the stone wall onto the rocky outcropping, within a few feet of where Mack is standing.

  “Why the far away meeting place, Captain?”

  But instead of answering, Mack draws his .38 cal., aims the four-inch barrel point-blank at the Lieutenant’s forehead.

  “Grab his piece, Jude,” he says.

  Jude stares into his father’s granite hard face, his unblinking eyes.

  “Jesus, Mack. What the hell are you doing?”

  “Do it.”

  For Jude, if there was any question about Mack’s motives before, none exist now. Reaching out with his good left hand, Jude confiscates Lino’s weapon. He’s immediately surprised to see that it’s a .9mm porcelain Glock. Not the standard issue Smith and Wesson of the L.G.P.D.

  “Now, get his wallet,” Mack insists.

  Jude reaches into Lino’s jacket, pulls out the leather billfold.

  “Open it.”

  When Jude does, the familiar gold badge of the L.G.P.D. shines bright in his face.

  “You going to enlighten me, Mack?” Jude poses.

  “Exactly,” says the old Captain, pulling the wallet from Jude’s hand. Turning the billfold upside down he violently shakes it until most of its contents fall to the ground, including a driver’s license, several large denomination bills, credit cards, and what looks to Jude to be a single laminated I.D. Bending while keeping the weapon planted on Lino, Mack picks up the I.D., hands it to Jude. That’s when it becomes crystal clear just what his father is up to. The I.D. does not originate from the L.G.P.D. but from the FBI—Plattsburgh, New York field office to be exact.

  Lino swallows hard just as Mack begins telling the story of a Federal Agent who’s been planted at the L.G.P.D. under the guise of a cop who made the transfer from the Rochester P.D. and what a damned good job he’s managed of it too. But Mack made a check on Rochester. The last Daniel Lino they had on record passed away in his sleep in 1999 of lung cancer. The FBI’s new and improved Daniel Lino’s job is not only to infiltrate the L.G.P.D. as a senior officer but to build up a case against P.J. Blanchfield who’s been suspected not only of taking illegitimate cash during her run for prosecutor but also for purposely sabotaging Lennox’s indictment in the first kill game case. Mack tells of a man who was waiting to see if history was about to repeat itself. Lake George is dealing with a serial killer. It wasn’t a matter of if a third kill game murder would occur. It was a matter of when—when would Lennox return to Lake George to catch another series of screams and to kill again. When finally it happened, Lino would be counting on two things. First, that Lennox would be arrested for said murder. And second, that Blanchfield would purposely botch the incrimination proceedings. Should those precise set of circumstances come to fruition, the FBI would be satisfied that improprieties were indeed occurring inside the Warren County Prosecution.

  “Am I leaving anything out Daniel? Or do I call you by another name?”

  The agent shakes his head.

  “You saw the file, didn’t you, Captain Mack?” Lino calmly acquiesces. “On that morning just before the courthouse blew, you went into my bottom left-hand drawer for some aspirin and you saw the file with Blanchfield’s name on it. You saw the cancelled checks, you saw the paper trail. Shit, you must have had it copied.”

  “That file told one hell of a story,” Mack says, the hand-cannon still steady in his hand. “You do realize that it’s illegal not to inform the presiding commander of a precinct of an FBI initiated investigation—covert or otherwise, Special Agent Lino?”

  “I’m sorry, Captain. But I don’t make up the rules of the game. I do what I’m assigned to do. Under the circumstances, you’d do the same.”

  When the old Captain cocks the pistol, the mechanical click echoes off the lake.

  “Stop it, Mack,” Jude says. He’s never seen his father like this. The look in Mack’s gray eyes is pure hate. If Jude’s beating heart is any indication, he knows the old Captain is only a second or two from shooting this man dead.

  Lino says, “I’m on your side, Captain. I tried to help you and your family. I tried to locate Lennox for you. I personally warned Jude even before the kill game started.”

  Mack seems taken aback.

  “Liar,” he says.

  Then it comes to Jude. The email he received on the morning just prior to the crime scene reenactment. The email from a person named “Fox.”

  “You’re Fox,” he says. “You told me to watch my back, that I wasn’t safe.”

  “What the fuck is going on?!” Mack barks.

  Jude turns to his father, tells him that on the morning after the murder behind Sweeney’s Gym he received a strange email alerting him to possible danger; that he never mentioned it because he assumed it came from a crank e-mailer. And besides, Mack already had enough on his mind. He didn’t need something else to worry about.

  “You should have told me,” the old Captain says.

  “Put the gun down, Mack,” Jude insists. “You’re not really going to kill him. I won’t let you.”

  Turning to his son, Mack says, “The way I see it, if it wasn’t for this man’s decision to keep closed-mouthed about the Blanchfield investigation, your personal kill game would not have happened.” Swallowing something rock hard. “Don’t you see what I’m saying, kid? Rosie’s baby—your baby, my grandchild—would still be alive if it wasn’t for secret agent man.”

  Jude has to admit it, just looking at Lino’s expressionless face makes him red-hot angry inside. Maybe Mack is right in assigning blame, even if the blame is essentially misallocated. Maybe he should be exacting his just revenge upon Lino. Because maybe Jude does want nothing more than to reach out, grab hold of the agent’s neck, wring it until mustached face turns purple and his heart…if he’s got a heart…seizes up.

  But then Lino’s done nothing wrong. At least not in the eyes of federal law. He tried to help Jude and his family, even if the help amounted to a simple, anonymous email. But at the same time, Jude can’t help but picture the imaginary face of the baby Rosie lost during the eleven hour kill game of August 14th and 15th.

  Mack is acting totally out of line; acting purely out of emotion. None of this is Lino’s fault. Standing by the abandoned cabin, the yellow crime-scene tape whistling in the wind, Jude knows that none of this would have happened had Blanchfield not knowingly accepted the illegal contributions in the first place.

  “Let him go,” Jude says.


  Mack, eyes wide open, bottom lip caught between his teeth.

  “You’re sure about this, Jude?”

  “What do you gain by blowing his brains out? Is that going to heal you and me, heal Rosie and Jack? Is that going to bring back my unborn child?”

  Taking a step back, Jude exhales. By that point, he feels certain that he’s given his father the answer he needs whether the old Captain realizes it or not. As if to prove it, a narrow tear falls from his right eye, drops the length of his ruddy cheek. He lowers his head, chin against chest. Then he lowers the pistol, resets the hammer to safety position. Bending cautiously at the knees, he retrieves the wallet and all that it contained, including the credit cards and cash. Standing, Mack hands it all back to Lino.

  “You can go now, Danny,” he whispers. “It is Danny, isn’t it?”

  Jude hands the agent back his piece, grip first.

  “Maybe you can accept my apology,” he says. “Maybe you can’t. Just know that it’s been a trying few weeks for me and my father.”

  Nodding, Lino takes hold of the weapon, holsters it. For a moment, he just stares at Mack and Jude, mustached face as cold as a cadaver. After a time, he makes his way slowly, almost confidently, back up the driveway to his ride. But before slipping behind the wheel, he calls back out to the father and son.

  “Blanchfield,” he says, tone typically deadpan, “the investigation into her illegal campaign contributions; the botched investigations and prosecutions . . . I came up with nothing.”

  “Nothing,” Mack repeats like a question. “I don’t get it.”

  Lino adds, “Nothing conclusive that would lead me to believe she’d done anything wrong . . . case closed.”

  So Lino has a heart, after all . . .

  “What about Fox?” Jude calls out.

  “Excuse me?” Lino answers.

  “Where does the name, Fox, come from?”

  Miracle of miracles, Agent Lino actually smiles.

  “You ever watch X-Files reruns, Jude?” he asks, slipping himself inside the Suburban.

  The ex-cop has to laugh.

  Special Agent Fox Mulder . . .

  Lino is not beyond having a heart and a sense of humor.

  As the agent backs out towards Lake George Road, he honks the horn as if to say, Toodaloo. But Jude thinks it more likely that he’s offering his Farewell to Lake George. Speaking for both his father and himself, they are more than happy to see him go.

  Burns Cabin/Elizabeth Bay

  Wednesday, 1:31 P.M.

  Jude looks up, breathes in.

  Some fresh water gulls are swooping down and diving into the flat water of the bay. Probably snatching up minnows and small rock bass in their beaks. He turns back to a cabin that, like his past, is crumbling before his eyes. He focuses on a flaky gray wasp nest that hangs from the cabin’s eave and the winged, stinging insects that guard it. Back when he was a boy, Jude used to think of honey bees as the good guys of nature, black wasps the bad guys.

  Turning back to Mack he says, “Help me down to the boat. There something I want to do before we leave this place.”

  Without protest, Mack places his good hand under Jude’s elbow and together they make it back down to the docked boat. Grabbing two of the several white rags stored inside an empty plastic taping compound bucket, Jude soaks them in gas from the five gallon can stored in the boat’s stern. Under his own power, he makes his way back up onto the dock.

  This time when he makes the trek back up the hill to the cabin, he never bothers with asking Mack for his help. The old Captain simply follows his son, no doubt knowing all along what he’s about to do, but for some reason holding back.

  When they are right outside the cabin window, Jude asks Mack for his gun and his lighter. He hands him both. Aiming the .38 Caliber revolver at the picture window, Jude shoots it out with three, quick rounds. Handing the smoking gun back to his father, he lights the three rags with the Zippo, tosses them inside the now open window. It doesn’t take long for the dry wood to catch. In just a few minutes, Jude and Mack find themselves back-stepping away from the raging heat of the conflagration.

  Jude says, “My kill game didn’t start with P.J. Blanchfield, or with Lennox, or even with Lino. It began right here in this spot and it began with me the afternoon I allowed Burns to shoot his family.” Now waving his left hand in the air as if he were a wizard calling up the flames. “So how’s that for resolution, Mack? How’s that for breaking the bonds of my fragile past?”

  “Not exactly what I had in mind. Considering this property is still under L.G.P.D. jurisdiction.”

  “You gonna arrest me? Take me in?”

  Mack bites down on his lip.

  “Fucking out of season deer poachers,” he nods. “Always getting drunk and burning things that don’t belong to them.”

  For a few more minutes, they watch the fire consume the cabin, until finally Jude says, “Give you a lift home?”

  In his mind, Jude pictures Rosie and Jack. They are his home.

  “Over the lake and through the woods,” sings the old Captain.

  Together, father and son turn away from the burning cabin, hobble their way down the hill towards the dock on the bay.

  Assembly Point Peninsula

  Thursday, 8:30 A.M.

  The next morning Jude stands over the gas stove in the kitchen of the log home, aluminum crutches holding him up while a teaspoon of salted butter melts in the skillet. He’s already cracked four eggs into a bowl, beat them smooth along with a tablespoon of heavy cream, some chopped chives, a little finely chopped Vidalia onion, four generous pinches of shredded Munster cheese, salt and pepper. The butter fully melted he adds the blended eggs into the pan, cooks the mixture slowly over a medium flame.

  When the eggs are lightly cooked some two minutes later, he slides them out of the pan onto a white dinner plate set in the middle of the big wood dinner table. In the fridge, he digs out some Green Mountain salsa, some more grated Munster, places it on the table in between the plate of eggs and a freshly baked baguette. Last but not least, two big freshly squeezed orange juices over ice.

  “Finally a good breakfast,” he says to Jack while breaking off the end piece of the still warm bread, slipping some of the egg, cheese and salsa onto it, popping it into his mouth.

  “What happened to the well done bacon?” the boy smiles.

  “Eat now, squawk later.”

  Glancing over his shoulder, Jude stares out the picture window not onto the lake but onto the vegetable and flower garden where Rosie is busy working. She’s wearing the same pair of farmer overalls Jude first met her in two years before. Covering her hands, a pair of green garden gloves. The temperature for mid-September is unusually warm—maybe eighty degrees. Underneath the overalls, she wears only a white muscle T-shirt. Even from where he’s sitting Jude can see the little splotches of mud that stain her slim bare arms, the moist perspiration that makes the brow above the brown eyes glow where her long dark hair is pulled back into braids and partially veiled with a red kerchief knotted below the hair-line. Just looking at her makes Jude’s heart beat a little faster.

  Turning back to Jack, he sees that some stray scrambled egg has found a home on the boy’s shirt. Maybe it makes Jude’s heart beat faster to watch Rosie working in the garden, but it makes his whole body feel lighter than air just to be home and looking at a piece of scrambled egg sticking to the boy’s Final Fantasy T-shirt.

  Father and son eat in silence, not needing to talk, Jude’s eyes shifting from Jack to Rosie working in the garden back to Jack again. There is the good smell of the breakfast and the cool welcome breeze that blows in from the open windows and the steady chop of the lake as it slaps against the stone retaining wall and the dock piers beside it.

  Breakfast is nearly history when the front doorbell rings.

  The ringing doorbell is such a rare occurrence at the country home that it causes Jack to shoot up from his seat. Not out of fright, but out of
a genuine pleasure to see who the unexpected company might be. Cautious, Jude grabs hold of the crutches that lean against the table, orders the boy to “sit tight.”

  “Keep eating,” he insists. “You’re still hungry, I can always make some more.”

  “Maybe you can run down to the store, pick up some bacon,” the boy mumbles with a mouthful and a grin.

  “Funny,” Jude says while using the crutches as supports, he crosses over the vestibule floor, makes his way to the front door, opens it to a FedEx man. He’s a large young man dressed in uniform shorts, ankle high socks, a blue and orange FedEx polo shirt with the collar down and a standard issue baseball hat. With his short dark hair and trim goatee, his smile feels warm and inviting to Jude. The smile goes well with the warm sunny day and the trees that only now are beginning to shed golden leaves.

  The young man holds a clipboard in one hand, a small package about the size of a tissue box in the other. The box is stuffed inside the usual FedEx envelope. It’s addressed to Mr. Jude Parish, marked “Personal and Confidential.”

  “Any return address?”

  Pursing his lips, the young man turns the package over, examines the attached pink slip.

  “P.O. Box.The Gare du Nord. Paris, France.”

  FedEx man holds out a clipboard that also serves as an electronic signature pad.

  Jude signs on the electric dotted line.

  The signature pad back in hand, FedEx man about-faces, jogs back down the porch steps in the direction of the FedEx van parked in the gravel drive. Not far from the L.G.P.D. Jeep-cruiser and the Lake George cop newly assigned to watch over the lake-front property (a simple precaution insisted upon by a still overprotective Mack).

  Closing the front door behind him, Jude makes a point of locking it, pushing and pulling on the brass knob just to make sure it’s good and secure. The package in hand, he carries it back into the kitchen, sets it gently down onto the kitchen table. He might open it right there and then, but Jack is holding out his now empty plate.