Scream Catcher (33 page)

Is it possible Lennox took the time to slip Jack’s sneakers on?

In the bright Maglite, Jack appears to be rain-drenched and chilled, but otherwise unharmed. Or maybe that’s what Jude wants to believe.

Dropping down to his knees the ex-cop shines the Maglite in the boy’s face.

He prays,
Dear God, let him be alive!

The white light is meant as a shocker and it works.

“Jack,” Jude pleads, voice cracking. “Jack wake up.”

Rosie is standing off to the side. Jude can see that there is something gravely wrong with her. Something more than the obvious. He knows there has to be something going on with her insides. She’s grimacing in pain. She sets an open hand on her belly, sucks in a deep breath. But when she sees her husband looking her way, she quickly turns. There comes a quick, not too distant spark of lightning and thunder that rumbles across the valley as though making its way directly towards them from the lake. The cold rain falls harder. It pelts Jack’s face, makes his eyes blink, his eyebrows scrunch when it hits him directly on the cheeks, nose and lips. As the seconds pass, he begins to stir back to life.

He opens big brown eyes wide.

Voice groggy, he whispers, “Dad …” But it becomes immediately apparent that for now anyway, all attempts at making words will trail off into a haze of exhaustion and confusion.

Rosie stands.

From where Jude is kneeling he can see that her cotton nightgown is drenched, the thin fabric adhering to her breasts and thighs, open hands still pressed against her belly, long rain-matted hair veiling her narrow face. He wants to scream. But there isn’t a thing he can do for her.

Jack tries to sit up.

“Why am I outside? Why are my hands stuck together?”

Sensing the panic that is beginning to settle into the eight-year-old boy—because he has to know by now that this is not the usual “dark monster” dream—Jude takes him into his arms, clutches him tightly.

“You’re okay now, kid.”

Jude feels Jack trembling in his arms.

No doubt the sedative has begun to wear off while fear settles in.

“The dark monster woke me up,” says the boy, voice vibrating, teeth clicking together. “He made me scream into his phone before he put his hand over my mouth and stuck a needle in my arm.”

Jude feels a chunk of ice melt inside his stomach at the mention of Lennox and a needle. He pulls himself away from Jack, far enough to get a look at the boy’s face in the glow from the Maglite.

“Jack,” he says, hands still gripping both the flashlight and the boy’s arms. “He’s not the dark monster. He’s just a man.”

Out the corner of his left eye, Jude can’t help but see that Rosie is no longer standing up straight. She is somewhat hunched over, open right hand still pressed against her belly. And something else too: a spot of blood red that now stains her nightgown where it’s hiked up between her legs.

“Rosie,” Jude says from down on his knees. “Tell me what’s happening.”

She throws him a glance, does her best to painfully straighten herself back up.

“The baby …” she whispers.

Jude feels something inside him snap.

Turning back to the boy he watches the rainwater pour off his brow onto a soft round face, onto thick lips. He reaches out, unravels the duct tape that binds little wrists and ankles. Standing, he lifts the boy by his hands, pulls him back up onto his own two feet.

The boy wobbles, stumbles out of balance.

“I’m cold … I’m hungry.”

“Tell you what,” Jude says. “Let’s find the road that leads down the mountain to the village. We’ll grab one of the boats from behind the courthouse, drive it across the lake. When we’re home I’ll make us some scrambled eggs.”

“And … bacon,” whispers Jack, as if his spirit is lifting.

Jude holds out his left hand, palm up. Jack tries to reach out and take the hand. But when his hand falls like a suddenly wilted flower, Jude senses the fear that is leaking from the kid’s pores.

He turns back to Rosie.

He must get her to a hospital as soon as possible—
sooner
than possible. His smile dissolved, Jude nods, as if to say,
You know what to do, Rosie.
In single file, the three of them walk on towards the heavy tree cover.

“That bad man,” Jack says as they leave the clearing for the trees, “I wish he really was the dark monster.”

Jude shines the Maglite onto the trail. First down slope, then up. No one in his line of sight. No Lennox anyway.

“Why would you say such a thing, Jack?”

“Because the dark monster is a nothing. And nothing can’t hurt us.”

Tongue Mountain

Friday, 4:18 A.M.

Lake George and the mountain stream that helps feed it remains situated on the right-hand side. The Tongue Mountain summit and its dirt access road loom in the near distance to the left. While Rosie does her best to follow close behind, Jude grips Jack’s hand, leads his family on a bushwhacking trek through the woods in the direction of the open road.

“Why are we running?” huffs Jack, still groggy from the injected sedative.

“Don’t talk,” Jude answers. “Just keep going.”

In his mind he knows the truth. It’s a truth he keeps repeating to himself—that Lennox is watching; that the beast can pounce on them at any moment.

Coming upon the far edge of the wood, Jude holds out his hand, signals for his wife and son to duck down, take cover in the heavy scrub brush that hugs the road’s edge. Moving slowly ahead along the shoulder, he beams the Maglite towards the westerly uphill slope only to find nothing but open, hard-packed dirt road. But when he shines the light on the easterly downhill, he is able to spot a white van parked off to the side—a commercial cargo van with no windows installed along the side panels of the rear bay.

Instinct tells Jude that without question, the van belongs to Lennox.

The beast would require a big van for transporting three unconscious bodies plus one very large dead cop.

Turning back to the woods, he whispers to his wife and son, tells them to stay put while he makes a quick check on a vehicle he hopes will transport them down off the mountain.

* * *

Maglite in hand, Jude moves slowly along the road’s edge, careful to keep the circular beam of light focused on the white van. T-shirt plastered to his back, heart beating in throat and temples, he can’t help but feel exposed. At any given moment, the Black Dragon might emerge from the forest, put a bullet in his head. Or maybe the beast would prefer to slap him around with more pepper-balls. In those dark woods, anything is possible.

When he reaches the van, Jude goes to work shining the light through the windshield, working his way from passenger side of the vehicle to the driver’s side. What he discovers surprises the hell out of him. What he learns is that Hector “the Black Dragon” Lennox has planned something far larger than this mountaintop kill game. He has something else in mind. Something far more complicated.

The proof is evident in the equipment stored inside the van.

There’s a laptop computer that’s been set out onto the front passenger side seat. Attached to the laptop’s rear utility panel is a wire that leads to what Jude recognizes as a portable bionic ear booster—a handheld, disk-shaped electronic apparatus with attached plug-in earphones. Jude is no stranger to the device. Similar devices are assigned to stakeout detectives in order to amplify the voice of a person or persons either protected behind a wall or positioned too far out of earshot. With that device, Lennox could no doubt record the screams of his victims for up to a mile away.

There is a portable radio scanner and a satellite phone charger that’s been plugged into the dashboard cigarette lighter which immediately explains Lennox’s ability to call Jude, but why he has not been able to make an outgoing call. Placed atop the center console is a half-spool of gray duct tape. Next to that, a black Weider weight-lifting belt probably intended to support the beast’s lower back while he hoisted and transported the bodies to and from the van. Beneath the belt, an open cardboard box that contains maybe a dozen clear vials of what Jude can only assume is the sedative that he, his wife and child were injected with earlier in the night.

But the objects of Lennox’s kill game are not what shock him the most. Shifting to the back bay doors of the van, he flashes the Maglite through the square windows. The penetrating light allows him to see that set up at the far end of the cargo bay are two separate stacks of fertilizer. Nothing organic. Judging by the red-lettered WARNING labels printed directly onto the bags, chemically produced material. Standing out on the Tongue Mountain access road—a road Jude has traveled both on foot and by Jeep maybe a dozen times before—he counts a total of twelve one-hundred-pound bags of Ammonium Nitrate mix stacked one atop the other in two separate identical rows of six.

Each one of the bags has been crisscrossed with gray duct tape as though to reinforce their packaging and at the same time, hold in place what appears to be a total of twenty-four (or two per bag), shotgun shell-sized blasting caps. Emerging from beneath the duct tape and the caps is a system of red and black wiring that feeds directly to a plastic one-gallon milk jug now half-filled with a crystal clear liquid—what Jude guesses to be a detonator of Nitroglycerin.

The bags and the explosive detonator have been connected to a second laptop computer to which is connected yet another series of color-coded wires with white pads attached to their ends—wires that, at present, have been connected to nothing.

Jude steps back away from the van, lowers the Maglite, inhales a mouthful of the rainy night air. He considers the possibilities. What exactly is it that Lennox intends to destroy? What does it have to do with the carefully constructed kill game he’s devised and inflicted upon his family? Is Lennox trying to outdo his previous contests? Is he reaching for an entirely new method of delivering the thrill kill? Something more complex and daring?

Taking a step back from the van, Jude wipes the rainwater from his eyes with the backs of his hands. Something inside his head begins to buzz as though he were standing beneath a set of high tension wires. It comes to him then that this would make the fourth kill game Lennox has engaged in within the Lake George town limits. The numeral four might make a nice, even number.

The magic number!

This might be the fourth and final kill game—the one in which he will attempt to make his mark. Or, his final mark anyway. Maybe this exercise of fear and death in the woods has only been prologue to something more terrible—foreplay before the big thrill kill; the kill game climax.

Is that why Lennox hasn’t killed them yet?

Maybe the beast is willing to forego their deaths for the sake of their participation in the big kill game ending.

The van-bomb, once detonated, will pack a devastating punch to be sure. Judging by its size, it’s capable of killing more than just a few people. This well-fueled bomb has to be capable of taking out dozens, perhaps hundreds of people. Clearly, Lennox intends to commit mass murder.

But where exactly is the big terrible going to happen? And when?

When Jack shrieks, Jude loses all train of thought.

Tongue Mountain

Friday, 4:30 A.M.

Lennox stands massive behind Jack and Rosie.

While he poses no immediate physical threat to Rosie, he has the barrel to a silenced automatic pressed up against Jack’s head.

Staring out at his family on the dirt access road, Jude wants to shout out to his wife, tell her to make a run for it. But he’s well aware that he and Rosie both know exactly what would happen if she were to attempt a break. Clearly, from where they all stand, it’s obvious who maintains the upper hand.

When Lennox shouts, “The Player drops the Maglite to the road and crawls into the back of the van,” Jude does so without an ounce of hesitation; without argument.

He does it in the interest of preserving the lives of his loved ones.

* * *

In the rear spaces of the Ford cargo van, Lennox quickly goes to work. He starts by binding Jude’s knees with a half-dozen revolutions—or layers—of gray duct tape, then gagging him by sticking a second, smaller piece of duct tape over his mouth.

At the time, this course of action seems like nothing special—just the prudent securing of hostages. But then Lennox proceeds to do something very unusual. Rather than bind Jude’s wrists together behind his back and to the ankles (in the standard method of hogtying), the beast forces Jude to hold his arms straight down at his sides so that each of his wrists are pressed tightly against its accompanying hip. He then secures the ex-cop’s hands to his hips by wrapping another six layers of tape tightly around his belted waist. Jude wonders,
just what exactly is Lennox trying to prove by tying me down in this manner? What is it he has planned that requires hands and wrists to be attached to the hips?