Scream Catcher (41 page)

He reads the neatly handwritten letter slowly, carefully absorbing each and every word of the self-confessed story of P.J. Blanchfield’s brief but fatal pecuniary liaison with Hector “the Black Dragon” Lennox—a confession that pretty much matches Mack’s explanation detail for detail. It also includes an accounting of her having handed over the surveillance bracelet codes to Lennox and to her having personally lifted the forensic (tox, ballistics, CSI) evidence from the L.G.P.D. evidence room. In essence the letter serves as a full confession of a county prosecutor who not only manipulated evidence in one murder, but in an entire series of Lennox kill game murders.

When he’s finished reading, Jude refolds the single-paged letter back up, stuffs it into its envelope, hands it back over to his father.

“Burn it,” he says.

Mack looks at his son, slate gray eyes open and unblinking.

“You too, huh?”

Jude knows exactly what his adoptive father means by
You too.
Mack and he might not be biologically related, but they are still father and son. They still think a lot alike. Having read the final testimony of P.J. Blanchfield and having witnessed the suffering she endured at the hands of Lennox during the final hour of her life more than makes up for any indiscretion she made by accepting illegal campaign contributions. But does it make up for her releasing Lennox from house arrest? Does it make up for manipulation and destruction of forensic evidence that would have been used against him in a court of law?

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 to?

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 so much 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 as his usual black suit and boots.

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

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 orders.

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 were 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 it, 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 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 ID. Bending while keeping the weapon planted on Lino, Mack picks up the ID, hands it to Jude. That’s when it becomes crystal clear just what his father is up to. The ID 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 insists. 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 e-mail he received on the morning just prior to the crime scene reenactment. The e-mail 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 e-mail 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 presses. “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 e-mail. 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 14 and 15.

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 offers. “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.”

“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.

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,
Tootaloo.
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 behind 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?”