Scream Catcher (4 page)

An eyewitness who got away with life.

Soon the L.G.P.D. superheroes will come to arrest him. When they do, they will attempt to ID him as Hector Lennox.

But he will deny the obvious.

There must be some mistake,
he will insist.
His name isn’t Hector Lennox.

But the alibi will be challenged. All because of a gaunt man/boy by the name of Thoroughbred. At present, Thoroughbred is ratting him out to the cops. The wild-haired kid stands on the opposite side of the arcade, picking at a hooked nose with an index finger on a pale right hand. With an iPhone pressed up against his egg head, he’s singing like Tweety Bird to the bad ass L.G.P.D.

The coppers have wasted no time.

Even now there’s a Jeep Cruiser parked directly across the street from Wild Bill’s, the large jar-headed cop in the driver’s seat no doubt staking the place out, snapping photographs.

But Lennox is in control.

He’s well aware that his kill game student, Thoroughbred, secretly snitches for the cops. He knows the kid does it for the easy money. But to make things interesting, he’s insisted that the kid make the call. Because what the police do not know is that Lennox
wants
to be arrested. He wants the challenge of manipulating the law. He craves the adventure, the challenge, the drama. Most of all, he requires the real-life experience of arrest, escape, and finally, the hunting down of his prey.

His imminent arrest will serve as a prologue to his brand new kill game—the most challenging to date.

The challenge will not only provide the script to a brand new, first person kill game. It will offer up a brand new series of screams. And for an artist like Hector “the Black Dragon” Lennox, catching the real screams that come from real death is what will make his video games more revered than God.

Lake George Road

Tuesday, 8:22 A.M.

A blue uniform silently slips behind the wheel of the Jeep, shifts the bucket seat backwards a few notches to accommodate long legs. As Mack lights another cigarette, the cop fires up the engine, pulls out of Sweeney’s rear lot, turns off in the direction of the lake road.

Seated in the back, Jude can’t help but think that had he done even one thing differently, he might never have been in the position to witness the murder. Had he stayed in bed for three minutes more he would have missed it. He would have been too late. He would be home by now in the shower, the smell of bacon already frying on the stove.

Mack’s cell phone rings. Pressing it up against his ear, he listens.

Then, “You’re absolutely sure about this, Thoroughbred. There’s a man fits the A.P.B. playing a video game inside a village arcade … A fucking video game … You’re sure it’s him; that he matches the description … You’re not pulling snitch shit over my eyes for the sake of a quick buck … Okay, okay, T-Bred. I believe you. I think we just might have our man. Find a way to make sure he stays there and I’ll double your fee. You hear what I’m saying? Do whatever it takes.”

Jude knows someone is in the process of tipping Mack off.

Maybe somebody who keeps a scanner close at hand; someone who must have picked up on the A.P.B. issued out of Sweeney’s back lot; someone who goes by the handle Thoroughbred, or T-Bred for short.

Yanking the cell from his ear, Mack nods as if confirming some silent hunch he’s been mulling to himself ever since he and his son exited the kill scene.

“What’s happening, Mack?”

“Give me a minute, kid,” the old Captain grouses while punching another series of numbers into the cell.

Sitting back, Jude breathes in slowly, exhales even slower. The cigarette-tinged air inside the Jeep has gone from good smelling to stale and acrid. It settles like a cancer in his lungs, right beside the demon.

“Lino please,” Mack says. After a brief holding period he continues: “I think Lennox is back … Yeah, alive, I’d bet the mortgage … The stiff laid out behind Sweeney’s makes three confirmed kills … CSI is on site now trying to lift a print while we got a crystal golden window … Yes, yes, if they get something they’ll fax it to you before I get there so you can make an L.D.I. reference. In the meantime call in the Staties. Tell them not to look for a man, but for a car—a silver or platinum sedan, make and model unidentified. Tell them that if they find it, to leave it untouched. I want Glens Falls forensics to comb for trace evidence. You hear what I’m saying? This time, we leave nothing up to chance.”

Jude gazes out the window onto the lake, its calm morning surface speckled with a handful of commercial fishing and pleasure craft. He knows now that his father has to be on the line with a member of his support staff inside the L.G.P.D. A person named Lino. A real name. Not a handle meant to conceal a real identity. Maybe someone sharing in the responsibility of apprehending the man Mack just seconds ago referred to as “Lennox.”

The one-sided conversation continues: “Yes, bring him in now … If Longhair just happens to be the newest incarnation of our boy Hector Lennox, then we won’t have another chance like this one to snag his ass.” Another pause. Longer than the others. “That’s correct, my son made the kill scene ID …”

Jude’s stomach makes like a vice grip as Mack pockets his cell phone.

He turns to the driver, eyes wide, glaring.

“Step on it Long Legs. We’re the cops. We own the fucking road.”

Wild Bill’s All Day/All Night Video Game Parlor

Tuesday, 8:32 A.M.

How does Hector Lennox morph into the Black Dragon?

By becoming the product of his own invention.

Inside the neon lighting of the video arcade, his new surgically-constructed cheekbones, silicon injected lips and resculptured chin give his face a chiseled-like intensity. Veiling the face are shoulder-length dreadlocks that took the entire nineteen months he spent in Paris to grow out. With an iron-pumped, Human Growth Hormone-fed body, he presents an awesome self-invented physical prize—a scream catching athlete.

On the outside.

On the inside, Hector “the Black Dragon” Lennox is a complicated blend of fearlessness and fantasy. His long dead father would have attested to the fact that manipulation, domination and will-of-force were key components of the little video gamer’s obsessive personality. The Christian Minister feared them like the devil himself. Feared them like the mark of the beast. Feared them, resisted them, fought them.

But Little Hector would not take “the wrath” lying down.

Perhaps the fully grown Hector’s attraction to a game like
Hurl
has something to do with the sentimental memories of that first kill. The kill and the scream. Case in point: now on the video game screen, a gruesome looking old man, who appears not altogether different from the late Papa Lennox, is rising up from a concrete tomb. He’s screaming into the first person player’s face. The business-suited, pale-faced mutant is approaching the player. He’s growing larger, more menacing, more monstrous, more ear-piercingly loud the closer he comes …

… Until just the right moment when WHAM! off goes the mutant’s head with one quick, well-placed swipe of a computer-animated battleaxe.

It’s an easy kill. But not very satisfying. It was the same story for little Hector’s first kill. The act of killing his father proved too easy.

It made him sick. Not the sloppy murder itself; not the rage that instigated it. But the method by which he spontaneously chose to make it happen. There seemed to be no challenge to the whole business. No fun; no fairness. From the moment the EMTs lifted the bloody mess of a father off the West Los Angeles living room floor, little Hector vowed never to kill easily again. If he ever did kill again, he would do so as part of a grand design in which he was the controller, the master manipulator, the scream catcher.

Killing, if it was to be done right, would have to become
fair
.

Over the years, Lennox has developed a talent for controlling the events that lead up to the kill. In adulthood, happiness has not been derived from the direct act of triggering a pistol, plunging a blade or igniting an explosive.

Satisfaction has come from the hunt, the chase; from the power he wields over the petrified victim. Gratification is derived in the choosing of the kill game site, the selection of the victim(s), the careful preparation of the contest, its implementation and in the end, the recording of the scream which will be added to the collection of recorded screams. As for the last act of killing, it is merely the necessary end-all to a game well played.

His talents are not lost in the video game arena.

The video game arena is his training ground. A place to hone his athletic kill skills.

Fearlessness and control have made him a more aggressive, more determined kill gamer. His accuracy with the joystick and its red thumb trigger is unsurpassed. So much so that Townies of all shapes, sizes and persuasions gather round the white-dreadlocked muscleman while the arcade explodes with rapid gunfire, swinging battleaxes and multiple mutant kills.

Even the geeky Thoroughbred watches in amazement at the steady, calm, precise manner of killing—at the computerized blood spatter; at the piercing screams of mortally wounded mutants; at the rapid accumulation of H.P.

T-Bred is so drawn into the hypnotic style of his mentor’s first-person kill game ability that he barely takes notice of the half-dozen L.G.P.D. who come bursting through the front and rear entrances, service weapons drawn, screaming “Down on the floor! Down on the fucking floor!”

Lake George Village Precinct

Tuesday, 8:44 A.M.

Earth’s gravity feels like it’s bearing down on Jude with twice its normal force.

Maybe the pressure has something to do with water-logged sweats. Maybe it has something to do with the Lake George Village Precinct—being hit with the toxic odor of cheap disinfectant the second he walks through the reinforced glass door; being barraged with its ringing phones, buzzing faxes and chattering voices. Maybe it has to do with being once again trapped within its glossy painted concrete block walls. Or maybe it has something to do with the tentative expressions planted on the faces of his former brothers and sisters in arms.

It’s not as if they aren’t cordial or respectful.

Fact is, most of them are quick with a smile or a “Hey.” One officer who mans a computer terminal congratulates Jude on
Cop Job
, tells him he’s going to read it as soon as his brother-in-law finishes with it. Another uniformed officer—this one a woman—greets him with a hug and a peck to the cheek.

They are all very nice, which in a way makes Jude especially nervous. Behind their smiles, their back pats and hugs, he senses something else at work. Something deeper than just good vibrations. It’s almost like he can read their minds.