Scream Catcher

by Vincent Zandri

  With his shoulder pressed up against the gym’s rear block wall and the sweat-suited boxing students keeping a strange and careful distance, as if they can smell the demon rotting inside his ribs, he’s come to see what he fully expected: the arrival of a blaze-orange and white EMS van and its two-person crew of blue uniformed emergency technicians—one male, the other female.

  Right on their tail, arriving in a Jeep cruiser, is his adoptive father, L.G.P.D. Captain Jimmy Mack, slate gray eyes locking onto his own browns through the windshield.

  Mack exits the Jeep, leaving the driver’s side door wide open, radio spitting out a popping mix of static and voices. The stocky, gray-haired man nervously pulls on the ball-knot of his tie and approaches his son.

  “You’re hurt.” It’s a question.

  “Hurting, Mack. But not hurt.”

  Mack bites down on his lip, squints his eyes to get a better look at the cut on the right side of Jude’s head.

  “Just a graze,” he says. “Butterfly clamp will do the trick.” Clearing his throat, he shifts the subject. “Think you can give me a halfway decent picture of the perp?”

  Jude does it. No hesitation. Right from where he’s standing in the back lot.

  A killer has gotten away with murder. Maybe his head feels like it’s about to split down the center; spill his brains all over the lot. But the very least he can do now is shove the demon aside and play the role of old reliable.

  He can provide the old Captain with a decent ID of the killer he let get away.

  * * *

  When it’s done, Mack returns to his perch behind the wheel of the Jeep.

  He leaves the door wide open, short tree trunk legs hanging out, black cop shoes planted flat on the blacktop. Jude sees the old Captain pull the radio transmitter from the console, with which he begins issuing an A.P.B. on a “single male Caucasian, six-feet to six-feet-four, long blond and/or dreadlocked hair, possibly dressed in black pants, matching long-sleeved T-shirt and lace-up boots. Suspect is between the ages of twenty-five and thirty-five and was last seen driving a sedan, probably foreign made, color silver or platinum. He is armed and must be approached with extreme caution.”

  The EMTs approach Jude, one on either side.

  They make him take an awkward seat on the van’s rear fender.

  “Please be still,” orders the short dark-haired woman while applying a bandage and butterfly clip to the flesh wound on his head. The dressing completed, she then points a penlight flashlight into his open eyes.

  The light makes Jude dizzy, lightheaded, causing him to abruptly pull away from it.

  While her partner wraps a thick strap around his arm for a blood pressure reading, she suggests that an immediate E.R. visit to be followed up by a C.A.T. scan precedes any police assistance that might be required of him now.

  “My father will take me directly to Glens Falls Medical,” he white lies.

  Once more he catches sight of Mack in the near distance. The old Captain has left the Jeep cruiser. Now he’s climbing up the gravel pit embankment, eyes beaming down at the tops of his shoes. From Jude’s perch on the EMS van’s fender, he watches his father disappear over the side of the wooded embankment, down into the pit. He can’t help but wonder if the old Captain might uncover a clue that will lead to the dreadlocked killer.

  A set of car keys maybe; a wallet; a calling card!

  But when Mack returns from the gravel pit, Jude can’t help but notice the resignation that paints his hard face. Mack doesn’t have to say a word for Jude to know what’s happening. It’s just as he thought: no visible clues left behind inside the pit.

  The pouring rain, it will have erased even footprints.

  * * *

  One of the half dozen uniformed cops assigned to the crime scene escorts Jude directly to the back seat of Mack’s Jeep. Mack makes his way around the front of the vehicle, opens the passenger-side door, sets himself down. Reaching into his jacket pocket he hands over his cell phone.

  “Call your wife,” he orders. “She’ll be worried.”

  Jude breathes, calmly dials the number for his lakeside home. When Rosie answers, he begins telling her why he didn’t make it back immediately after the morning workout. Using a soft controlled tone, he reveals everything he can under the circumstances—that he is with Mack; that something’s happened that requires his complete attention and “Yes, don’t worry, I’m okay.”

  As a husband he’s not ready to reveal the fact that he nearly took a bullet to the brain. But as a former cop he does not spill even a single detail about the morning’s events, other than letting her know that a man was killed outside Sweeney’s Gym and he just happened to be on hand to see the whole thing unfold.

  He swallows.

  He pictures his newlywed wife. Her long brown hair, deep brown eyes. He sees her standing in the kitchen by the big picture window that looks out over the lake. In his mind she’s still dressed in her white nightgown, a protruding belly four months pregnant, open hand gently pressed against it. He sees the ten-year-old Jack seated at the kitchen table downing a plate of buttermilk pancakes drenched in maple syrup. Through the open screen door the bushy haired, round-faced boy will be able to see the down-sloping back lawn, the calm lake lapping against the docks at the end of it.

  His family; his life. It’s what he lives for now. It’s what he fights the demon to protect.

  “Has Mack asked you to be an eyewitness?” Rosie asks, voice trembling over the cellular connection.

  “Question is,” Jude answers before hanging up, “does Mack have a choice?”

  * * *

  Issuing a heavy sigh, Jude hands the phone back to his father.

  “Let’s have it,” the old Captain says. “The whole story from shit to roof shingles.”

  Just as he was quick with a physical ID of the perp, Jude recounts everything he saw and heard go down outside Sweeney’s—from the moment he spotted the two men running out of the gravel pit down through the wooded no-man’s land, to a pistol aimed at his own face, to total unconsciousness (and the killer’s getaway!).

  Mack bites down on his lower lip like he always does when he’s nervous or buried in deep thought.

  “You’re sure the victim was being hunted?”

  “It was a search and destroy. I’m sure of it.”

  “Either one of them say anything? They argue?”

  Jude recalls eyeing the two men through the darkness and the rain. One man far thinner than the other, dressed in nothing but a T-shirt and boxer shorts, going down on his knees onto the pavement, the long-haired killer standing over him, massive body clothed all in black, blue eyes glowing in the dim spotlight. In his right hand he gripped a silenced automatic. In the other, an iPhone.

  “The long-haired man … the shooter … Just before squeezing the trigger on that little man, he shouted out, ‘Scream for me.’”

  “Scream for me.”

  “He made the little man scream for him, and he recorded the sound of it in his phone, and then he shot him in the head.”

  Mack bobs his head, chews his lower lip. But Jude is taken aback. Because it’s apparent to him now that the phrase “Scream for me” carries with it more than its share of familiarity for his father.

  Exhaling, Mack says, “Victim never put up a struggle? No defense at all?”

  “I’m guessing the poor guy had to be spent. He just threw himself to his knees, screamed on command with every bit of whatever strength he had left, and then took two bullets to the back of the head like it was supposed to happen that way.”

  Pulling a pack of Marlboro Lights from his blazer pocket, the old Captain fires one up with his Zippo. For Jude, a former smoker, the blue smoke that suddenly fills the cruiser smells good.

  “What do you make of the whole thing?”

  Pulse pounding; brow slick with sweat, Jude is now officially on the spot. Meaning, his old man isn’t just picking his brain so much as confirming whatever theory or theories might be spi
nning inside his own.

  After a beat he says, “A not so random act of violence played out over time in the gravel pit. And for whatever reason, finally ending in the parking lot.” Pausing, thinking. “The killer took nothing from the victim before or after he shot him. If he robbed him of anything at all it was the sound of his screams.”

  “Maybe an all too deliberate act of scripted violence,” Mack adds. “Because if our long-haired perp is who I think he is, you just might be balls on right.”

  Jude stares into his father’s eyes. Marbles of slate gray partially obscured by cigarette smoke and worry. A sinking, organ slide feeling begins to wreak havoc on his insides. It’s the demon shifting, much like a baby will shift inside its mother’s womb. It tells him that by fate or by chance he’s entered into something larger and more complicated than the relative simplicity of one man killing another.

  “But you are positive you did not freeze up or lose consciousness until after the perp took a shot at you?” Mack presses. “It’ll be important that we establish precisely when that happened. It can mean the difference between a reliable and an unreliable witness.”

  Raising his right hand, Jude touches the tender, now bandaged side of his head.

  Blood runs fast through the veins.

  He allowed a killer to get away. Or, at the very least, made no attempt to stop him from killing the T-shirted man. As Mack so gently put it, he froze up, hid himself behind the dumpster. Maybe there’s no changing that now. But then, it’s not the first time the demon has gotten the better of the former cop.

  Perking up, Jude makes a futile attempt at a fake smile.

  “I got an excellent look at him. Just before he took a shot at me.”

  Maybe he’s reaching sky high for a vote of confidence, but Jude can’t help but sense the hesitation in Mack’s tight-lipped expression. Can’t help but sense the distrust.

  Mack returns the smile with a smile of his own. But the gesture is almost too shiny-happy-polite. Too forced.

  “If you’re okay with that, kid,” Mack whispers. “Then I’m okay.”

  4

  Sweeney’s Boxing Gym

  Tuesday, 7:40 A.M.

  Pregnant silence and stale cigarette smoke compete for space inside the Jeep.

  Mack stares at Jude with eyes like x-rays, able to see through the skin and flesh, all the way into the demon. Jude locks on to those eyes and at the same time, feels the breath leave his lungs.

  Fathers and sons …

  Without either man having to acknowledge it, both are thinking the same thoughts.

  The murder/suicide of Oscar Burns—the single defining moment in Jude’s adult life. The day the demon invaded his body and kicked out his soul.

  The not-so-distant memories flash-fire through Jude’s brain.

  He and Mack entering into Elizabeth Bay by patrol boat, slipping into an empty dock slip; Mack begging his son to sit the hostage crisis out; that it’s still too soon since Jude’s transfer from Missing Persons to Violent Crimes.

  But Jude having none of that.

  He’s going in and nothing can stop him. Burns has asked for him by name and Jude is the only member of the L.G.P.D. who can enter into the cabin in the hopes of talking the crazy man into laying down his weapon or, at the very least, releasing his wife and thirteen-year-old daughter. This is what Jude has trained for. This is why he fought so hard for the transfer to V.C. in the first place.

  Handing over his service weapon to his father, Jude makes his way up the slope until he stands atop a concrete doorstop covered with a doormat that says “Go Away!” Jude knows how much Burns must mean it. You don’t set up inside a cabin off Elizabeth Bay because you need a break from civilization. You do it because you want out.

  Slowly approaching the door, Jude is surprised to hear his voice tremble when he barks, “It’s me, Mr. Burns! Jude Parish, L.G.P.D! I’ve come to help you!”

  What happens next seems to occur in a sort of timeless haze, so that Jude doesn’t know if events are occurring swiftly or slowly. All he knows is that the door is opened, and a shotgun barrel stares him in the face. He enters into the cabin only to hear the big wood door slammed behind him. It’s then a bearded, sweating, panting Oscar Burns screams, “They promised! They promised!”

  Jude feels his legs turning to rubber, his lungs constricting, mouth going beach-sand dry, eyes focused beyond the shotgun barrel to a mother and daughter huddled in the far corner of the empty cabin. They are dressed only in pajama bottoms and tops, faces painted with terror.

  Adrenalin begins to fill Jude’s veins and capillaries. All warmth leaves his body, and a sickening coldness replaces it. Bright white lights flash behind his eyeballs, and his body freezes up.

  Then comes a team of Glens Falls S.W.A.T. crashing through the back doors and kitchen windows. Screams and the stomp of jackboots fill the small cabin.

  Burns raises the shotgun barrel up, presses the stock into his right shoulder, aims point blank for mother and daughter. Jude is only a couple feet away from Burns, but there is nothing he can do. He is paralyzed by the frigid demon.

  What follows are explosions and blood and spattered brains.

  What follows is violent death.

  But what follows for Jude Parish is nothing but darkness and regret, as he collapses to the cabin floor and loses consciousness …

  Mack reaches out over the seat back, practically places his hand up against his adoptive son’s face. With a quick snap of his fingers he breaks Jude out of his memory trance.

  “That tragedy … that horrible shit. It’s five years gone now; five full years behind you. Let it go, kid.”

  Jude feels the all too familiar lump in his stomach, a dull pain in the space between his eyes. He might be glancing out the open window onto a murdered man, the rubber sheet that covers the corpse now stained with blood. But somehow he’s also looking inward at a beautiful mother and daughter, their faces blown away by the actions of a madman.

  “I had a window, Mack. I had a fucking window of opportunity to disarm Burns and I froze up. I saw that little girl’s brains paint the walls.”

  Mack smokes, exhales a thin blue stream.

  “Under the circumstances—with S.W.A.T. crashing the party like that—you did all that could be done.”

  Looking up into his father’s face, Jude works up a smile. But there’s nothing shiny happy about it.

  “Blame S.W.A.T., Mack,” he says. “Go ahead. It’s easier that way.” Then, shifting his gaze downward, he stares at hands folded tightly in his lap. “But you can’t blame them for what happened this morning. Because what happened under this morning’s circumstances was my fault. I should have stopped that murder from happening.”

  Mack bites his lip, tosses the now spent cig out the open window, exhales the last of the blue smoke.

  “Look on the bright side, kid,” he says. “At least you got a good look at our perp.”

  “But did I do enough?”

  Nodding, the old Captain reaches into his jacket pocket, pulls out a breath mint, pops it into his mouth.

  “You’re here. You’re alive. And you’re going to be my eyewitness. I’d say that’s enough.”

  5

  Wild Bill’s All Day/All Night Video Arcade

  Lake George Village

  Tuesday, 8:15 A.M.

  Main Street cuts like a fault-line through Lake George Village.

  The narrow two-way is situated one hundred yards west of the Warren County Courthouse and the village green that surrounds it. During the summer, the crowded “strip” has the feel of a never-ending carnival. Its tourist-congested, six mile north/south runway is flanked on both sides with single- and multi-storied brick or wood-sided bodegas, specialty clothing shops, pizza parlors, Chinese take-out joints, Indian eateries, falafel stands, doughnut shops, gift shops, a Gap outlet, an Abercrombie & Fitch, and a Frankenstein Wax Museum of Horrors and Tortures. And bars. Bikers bars. Lots of them.

  Nestled within t
he smorgasbord of commercial establishments is Wild Bill’s All Day/All Night video arcade. Having discarded both the sedan and the silenced .22 caliber automatic into the Hudson River not far from the lake’s heavily forested south end, Hector “the Black Dragon” Lennox now stands glued to a stand-alone video game called Hurl. At base, the kill game’s object is to manipulate a first-person shooter through a maze of under- and above-ground tunnels, passageways and hallways while killing off the mutated monsters (some of them invisible!) that leap out from every corner of the dark setting.

  For Lennox, Hurl represents participatory video entertainment in its purist form. It enlists the classic components of a topnotch kill game: shadowy atmosphere, claustrophobic setting, disturbing pursuit and kills.

  Lennox should know.

  The video game software designer could not be more aware of the specific components that go into making a great kill game. First you consult your map design. Then you add your polygons, your virtual imagery, your dynamic lighting, your dramatic shadowing and your mesh optimizations. And of course, you add the screams. All those beautiful screams. From there you blend the cyber stew all into a realistic, almost Hollywood cinematic display of repeat kills and slaughter.

  Inside Wild Bill’s, ceiling-mounted neon lamps provide indirect illumination.

  Nearly every square inch of wall space is occupied with stand-alone, first-person-point-of-view kill games like Night Fighter, Frog Man, Fatality, Sniper Kill, Zombie Slayer, Hurl and even Project Night Fright—a local favorite. The cacophony of electronic explosions, gunfire, laser fire, screams, and colliding fists make the place seem more like a battleground than a video game parlor. For most of the kids who occupy the place, only empty pockets can keep them away from video death—from their High Scores, their H.P. (Hit Points).

  He is no longer a kid.

  Nor are his pockets empty. But the thirty-six-year-old Lennox can compete with the best of them. He stands like a messiah before his disciples, they being completely unaware of his true identity, nor the fact that he is the developer of two popular kill games.