Scream Catcher

by Vincent Zandri

  Pulling himself up, Jude stuffs the crutches under his arms, stumbles his way out the front door across the porch floor, down the steps to the middle of the gravel drive. He directs his gaze towards the white L.G.P.D. Jeep Cherokee parked on the far side of the driveway by the stand of tall pine trees, the uniformed officer assigned the job of protecting his home seated behind the wheel. The uniformed cop seems to be steadfastly maintaining his position like not a thing is wrong, no amount of the property’s security breached.

  Without thinking Jude makes a three-sixty on the hard-packed gravel.

  In his brain he’s screaming, Lennox, you stay away from here!

  But in reality, he’s making no noise whatsoever. Not so much as a faint whisper.

  He turns to his left, peers down past the grass towards the garden where Rosie’s been working and beyond that the dock.

  Rosie isn’t there.

  At least, if she’s still there, he has no way of seeing her behind the two-bay garage. But out on the lake he spots a pleasure boat cruising past. Then another. Two matching red, green and white Donzi powerboats. From where Jude stands on the driveway he can make out the faces of the people riding in the boats. Kids, maybe nineteen or twenty, dressed in almost nothing, drinking beers, whooping it up. One of the kids he knows by name. Or by his handle anyway. He’s a tall, gaunt, bald-headed kid who on occasion secretly snitches for Mack. His name is Thoroughbred and the kid is glaring at the ex-cop through a pair of Wayfarer sunglasses.

  Jude shifts his gaze away from the lake, plants his eyes on the dark pine forest.

  “Lennox,” he whispers. But the effort feels like skin tearing off the roof of his mouth.

  The beast is nowhere in sight. There’s only the wind and the birds that fly from tree to tree and the living things that fill the dead silences of Assembly Point Road. But there is still an L.G.P.D. officer in charge of security.

  Jude goes to him.

  Not two feet separate the ex-cop from the open driver’s side window when he spots the arterial blood spatter that stains the windshield.

  107

  Assembly Point Peninsula

  Thursday, 9:40 A.M.

  Jude hobbles, trips his way back across the drive towards the log home, his broken body throwing off an electric jolt of pain each time he pounds down on his cast-protected leg.

  Making it up onto the porch, he barrels his way through the already open door. Having crossed over the vestibule, he makes his way down the short flight of stairs that leads into the game room.

  He spots Lennox immediately.

  The tight all-black clothing he wore for the August 14/15 kill game has been replaced with the phony Fed Ex outfit. Lennox is standing in the middle of the narrow room, left arm wrapped around Jack’s neck while kneeling before him on the floor is Rosie, her head down as though staring at the floorboards, hands apparently bound behind her back. Neither Rosie nor Jack make a sound as Lennox presses the barrel of a silenced .22 cal. up against the child’s right temple.

  From the open door of the game room, Jude stares into the face of the beast—the blue eyes now disguised with brown-tinted contact lenses, the now-repaired broken front tooth, the thin tight lips. Jude knows then Lennox must have entered the room through the back, ground floor door; that he must have made his way around the back of the house, took hold of Rosie and simply let himself in.

  Jude shuffles three or four steps into the room, leans his broken body atop the crutches, attempts to locate a proper center of balance. Broadcast on the plasma television mounted to the far wall is a paused PS3game—a Karate man caught in midair, his two legs thrust out at his opponent: a black robed, sword-wielding Ninja warrior.

  Is Jude afraid?

  The fear does not disable him, more than he already is. But the demon is awake, and it’s poking at the walls of his stomach, just enough to let him know it’s still there. He thinks back on his cop training. He knows how to handle a hostage situation.

  Bait your enemy by inviting him to come at you. Immediately shift your body perpendicular to his own. Raise your right leg, side-kick the gunman’s right knee …

  It’s exactly the maneuver Jude might have applied on Oscar Burns all those years ago. It’s exactly the move he might pull on Lennox. But then Jude is a physical train wreck. His leg is broken, his ribs cracked, his head still pounding from a concussion barely healed.

  Jude peers into his son’s brown eyes. Although the boy is positioned maybe ten feet away from his father, Jude can feel the boy’s fear. It enters Jude’s body, lodges itself up against the inside of his sternum, in the exact place where his own demon once festered.

  Slowly he begins to lift his shoulders up off the two supporting crutches. He feels the pain shoot up from his leg like a jolt of white heat. His eyes locked on Rosie and Jack, he has no choice but to ignore it. Because at that moment, Lennox breaks into a smile, pulls an iPhone from his pocket, places it in front of Jack’s mouth while manually cocking the .22.

  “Scream. For. Me.” begs the beast.

  “Jack!” Jude shouts while swinging both arms out, flinging the aluminum crutches towards Lennox’s head … at the same instant a pistol shot rings out.

  * * *

  The dime-sized hole instantly appears directly above the orange and black Fed Ex pocket logo. For a quiet, almost peaceful moment, Hector Lennox stands poised and perfectly still, the barrel of the silenced .22 cal. now aimed at the floor. The expression on his tight-jawed face is neither happy nor sad nor indifferent. The slight grin, the scrunched brow, the startled eyes suggest a kind of wonderment. As Jude balances himself on one good leg, he senses that Lennox has finally gotten something he’s wanted all along. Because his face screams, Now I know what it’s like to die.

  Then, just as sudden and unexpected as the gunshot, the pistol comes loose from the fingers on his right hand, the iPhone from his left. Both the pistol and the phone drop to the floor. Knees give out from beneath his own deadweight. In that manner Lennox falls flat onto his face, left arm slapping the PS3 game controller on his way down causing the video game to resume.

  It’s also the cue for Mack to holster his smoking service weapon. The old Captain reaches out with his left hand for Jack and with his now healed right arm for Rosie.

  “Who’s hurt?”

  He pulls off the tape from Rosie’s wrists before she collapses into him and cries.

  “I’m okay, grandpa,” Jack volunteers. No tears.

  “Good old, Jack,” Mack says while exhaling a clearly relieved breath.

  Mack’s eyes connect with Jude’s.

  The ex-cop knows that his father is looking for a personal status report. Jude is hurting all over. But he never says a word about it. He couldn’t speak if he wanted to. His eyes are still glued to Lennox’s fallen body. In his mind he can’t help but think that at any moment the bleeding beast will resurrect; by the power of the underworld, bound back up onto his feet for yet another round of killing.

  But then resurrection occurs only in video games.

  The dark monster is dead, the scream catcher silenced.

  * * *

  Sirens.

  Jude can hear them clearly enough coming from the direction of Lake George Road. Then, the clatter of boot heels descending the steps outside the home’s first floor game room.

  Daniel Lino appears inside the open door. Gripped in his hand, the .9mm Glock.

  The FBI agent hasn’t left town after all.

  “I came across the lake as fast as I could. I ran the plates on the Fed Ex van on the way.”

  Jude realizes then that the agent must have been scoping the place on his own, knowing that Lennox would return. Sooner, as it turns out, than later.

  Mack runs a hand over his short gray-haired scalp, peers at the agent while pressing both Rosie and his grandson against his sides.

  “It’s all over,” he says. Still eyeing Lino, he adds, “Get your FBI on the horn, Danny. They’ll want to know how all this ended;
how you came to our aid.”

  Jude shakes his head as if to wake himself from a daze. He pulls his eyes away from the dead man and goes to Rosie. Slowly he slips her away from his father and into his own arms. His pain doesn’t matter any more, so long as Rosie is alive.

  “It’s okay, baby,” Jude says, running his hand down across her pigtails. “It’s okay.”

  She cries and trembles. But Jude holds her as tightly as he can. Behind them the PS3 game continues unabated, running on its own, the grunt and kick sounds of a karate man and a Ninja engaged in electronic hand-to-hand combat. Until a loud, smacking chop followed by a short sharp scream signifies death to the Ninja man.

  “Game over,” speaks a deep, computer-generated voice.

  “Game over,” Jude whispers as he dries Rosie’s tears with the back of his hand.

  Epilogue

  108

  Assembly Point Peninsula

  Tuesday, November 28th, 4:05 A.M.

  It’s one o’clock in the morning and Jude is dreaming.

  In the dream he’s raising his head up off the pillow to focus sleepy eyes on the foot of the bed where he makes out the images of a mother and her young daughter. They stand before him, the fair-haired mother dressed in pajamas, exit wound in her cheek red and purple where the broken skin flaps over itself; the smaller daughter still wearing blond hair in pigtails, the wound in her forehead dripping fresh blood.

  The expression on their tight, unblinking faces is both sadness and confusion. Despite the wounds, they don’t seem injured or in any pain whatsoever.

  They just seem lost.

  After a time, the mother raises her hand, reveals a thin, pale wrist. That’s when Jude notices that the hand on her watch reads 6:00 in the morning.

  “It’s okay, Jude,” the mother whispers. “You couldn’t help what happened.”

  Jude is not afraid.

  He is calm and relaxed. He knows that what he is experiencing is just an imagined thing, even if for the moment it feels real.

  “Go home,” he says.

  That’s when something wonderful occurs: the wound on the mother’s cheek fades to a healthy peach flesh, disappears completely. Likewise, the wound on her daughter’s face also spontaneously heals itself, as though touched by God’s fingertips. No more blood or bruising. Just two perfect faces.

  The mother smiles, turns to her little girl, takes her by the hand. Behind them now, a great white light is just starting to glow. The light begins pinhead small but quickly expands until it surrounds the mother and daughter like a full body halo.

  “Thank you, Mr. Parish,” whispers the mother.

  “I’m glad you’re not afraid anymore,” adds the daughter with a bright smile. “I’m happy the demon is gone.”

  Together the two turn away from the bed, walk out of darkness, enter into the light.

  * * *

  Jude Parish opens his eyes onto the night and the sound of the windswept lake splashing up against the docks. He stares up at the darkness. In the late fall there are no more crickets strumming, no more dogs barking, no more loons wailing sad songs from the lake. There are only the lake waves and the beating of his heart and an unusual lightness in his chest.

  Sitting up, he presses an open hand against his face and breathes. When he hears the rustling of a down comforter, he knows for sure that Rosie must be awake too.

  “You were talking in your sleep,” she gently whispers.

  Laying himself back down onto his side, Jude shifts his torso closer to Rosie’s warm body. She lazily reaches out with her right hand, silver bracelets dangling against one another, and runs her fingers through his short hair.

  Without a word Jude bites down on his lip, slips his hand under the covers, searches for the bottom of Rosie’s nightgown where it has crept up against her waist overnight. Placing pursed lips to her soft, pillow-dimpled cheek, he sets his hand on her hard, now newly emerging belly and exhales.

  “In your sleep,” Rosie says, “you said the words, ‘Go home.’”

  For the flash of an instant Jude recalls the faces of the Burns mother and daughter, not in death but in perfect peace. Leaning back into Rosie, he brings his lips to hers, kisses her gently.

  “Go back to sleep,” he insists. “You guys are going to need all the rest you can get.”

  Smiling, Rosie closes her eyes. Jude waits until her chest begins to rise and fall gently with sleeping breaths before he allows his own lids to close.

  THE END

  THE INNOCENT

  Foreword

  Story goes, Vincent Zandri—prominent photo-journalist and globe-trotter—stumbled backwards into the story for this book, back in the nineties. He was working on the memoirs of some guy used to work as a prison guard at Sing Sing or Alcatraz or some such, when the basic premise of the novel As Catch Can came to him.

  I don’t know if he ever wrote those memoirs. But in ‘99, As Catch Can was published and got all the accolades that a young writer always hopes for: it sold pretty well, the critics dug it, and there was even some vague stirrings of interest from the Cash Cow we call Hollywood. Riding on the success of As Catch Can, Zandri wrote another two novels and was well on his way to establishing himself as a major name in hardboiled fiction circles.

  Then something happened, I dunno what. He dropped out. Some say Zandri—who, remember, is a sort of world-travelin’ action man type—was forced on the lam after seducing the wife of a prominent South-East Asian warlord. Some people were convinced he’d been murdered by a drug cartel after discovering a secret connection between them and the C.I.A. Others still were certain that Zandri had finally fallen into the bottle and was strapped up in some padded room in his hometown of Albany.

  Thing is, no one really knew what happened.

  Thing is, nothing happened.

  Zandri had only been recharging, and re-acclimating himself to the new world of publishing. While he’d been away, working the day job as a picture-snapping super-hero, the industry had changed dramatically and even someone with as remarkable a track record as our hero had his work cut out for him getting a new book on the stands.

  So he went to the small press, with his novel Moonlight Falls.

  Out of necessity, Vin is a relentless self-promoter. By the sweat of his brow he made sure readers and critics noticed Moonlight Falls and his hard work paid off—Falls actually sold remarkably well for a small press release and was reviewed favorably all over the place. His next small press novel, The Remains, was even better and showed off Vin’s diversity and lean style beautifully.

  I’ve told you all that to tell you this: The novel you hold in your hands (or on your Kindle, or whatever) is really As Catch Can, just with a new title and a fancy new cover. Our hero has come full circle, you could say. And I kinda envy you, about to read this book for the first time. It has all the wild enthusiasm of a young writer’s first crack at the genre, and it’s tough-minded and lyrical and unforgettable.

  And, as a new starting place for Vincent Zandri, it’s more than a little symbolic. Vin has lots more stories in his head, and this “touching base” with his origins, I suspect, is just a prelude to even more great work.

  Heath Lowrance, noir critic and author of The Bastard Hand

  Detroit, MI

  September 4, 2010

  Stone walls do not a prison make,

  Nor iron bars a cage; Minds innocent and quiet take

  That for an hermitage. If I have my freedom in my love,

  And in my soul am free, Angels alone, that soar above,

  Enjoy such liberty.

  —RICHARD LOVELACE, 1649

  BOOK ONE

  GREEN HAVEN PRISON

  Statement given by Robert Logan, the senior corrections officer in charge of the transportation of convicted cop-killer Eduard Vasquez at the time of his escape:

  You wanna know about Vasquez, well I’ll tell you about Vasquez. He looked like death twisted inside out. That dentist did a real job on him, or so I th
ought at the time. What I didn’t know was that Vasquez was one hell of a faker, one hell of an actor. You should have seen him sitting in the backseat of that station wagon all bound up in shackles and cuffs—skin white, lips swelled, gauze stuffed inside his cheeks. Blood and spit were running down his chin. His eyes were glazed and puffed up. That toothache must have been a real headache now that A. J. Royale, the butcher of Newburgh, had gotten to him. No way could Vasquez escape. But then how could I make any sense out of the feeling I’d had since we’d started out? The feeling that told me he was going to make the break?

  But here’s how it really happened:

  My partner, Bernie Mastriano, he drove the station wagon while I adjusted the rearview mirror to just the right angle so I could get a better look at Vasquez in the backseat without turning every ten seconds. He was sucking air like there’s no tomorrow. His feet and hands were bound up and he was locked up in that cage and you could see the pain all over his face. He just put his head back on the seat, opened his mouth wide, let his tongue hang out like a sick puppy. He didn’t seem so tough then. Seemed kind of stupid and pathetic, not at all like the crazy psycho who pumped three caps into the back of that rookie cop’s head back in ‘88. Vasquez kept suckin’ up that air like it somehow relieved the pain from the hole Royale left in his mouth. Then out of nowhere he doubled over, threw his head between his legs, started heaving blood all over the floor.