Scream Catcher (42 page)

“Not exactly what I had in mind. Considering this property is still under L.G.P.D. jurisdiction.”

“You gonna arrest me? Take me in?”

Mack bites down on his lip.

“Fucking out of season deer poachers,” he nods. “Always getting drunk and burning things that don’t belong to them.”

For a few more minutes they watch the fire consume the cabin, until finally Jude says, “Give you a lift home?”

In his mind, Jude pictures Rosie and Jack.
They
are his home.

“Over the lake and through the woods,” sings the old Captain.

Together, father and son turn away from the burning cabin, hobble their way down the hill towards the dock on the bay.

Assembly Point Peninsula

Thursday, 8:30 A.M.

The next morning Jude stands over the gas stove inside the kitchen of the log home, aluminum crutches holding him up, while a teaspoon of salted butter melts in the skillet. He’s already cracked four eggs into a bowl, beat them smooth along with a tablespoon of heavy cream, some chopped chives, a little finely chopped Vidalia onion, four generous pinches of shredded Munster cheese, salt and pepper to taste. The butter fully melted, he adds the blended eggs into the pan, cooks the mixture slowly over a medium flame.

When the eggs are lightly cooked some two minutes later he slides them out of the pan onto a white dinner plate set in the middle of the big wood dinner table. In the fridge he digs out some Green Mountain salsa, some more grated Munster, places it on the table in between the plate of eggs and a freshly baked baguette. Last but not least, two big freshly squeezed orange juices over ice.

“Finally a good breakfast,” he says to Jack while breaking off the end piece of the still warm bread, slipping some of the egg, cheese and salsa onto it, popping it into his mouth.

“What happened to the bacon?” the boy smiles.

“Eat now squawk later.”

Glancing over his shoulder, Jude stares out the picture window not onto the lake but onto the vegetable and flower garden where Rosie is busy working. She’s wearing the same pair of farmer overalls Jude first met her in two years before. Covering her hands, a pair of green garden gloves. The temperature for mid-September is unusually warm—maybe eighty degrees. Underneath the overalls, she wears only a white muscle T-shirt. Even from where he’s sitting Jude can see the little splotches of mud that stain her slim bare arms, the moist perspiration that makes the brow above her brown eyes glow where her long dark hair is pulled back into braids and partially veiled with a red kerchief knotted below the hairline. Just looking at her makes Jude’s heart beat a little faster.

Turning back to Jack he sees that some stray scrambled egg has found a home on the boy’s shirt. Maybe it makes Jude’s heart beat faster to watch Rosie working in the garden, but it makes his whole body feel lighter than air just to be home and looking at a piece of scrambled egg sticking to the boy’s
Final Fantasy
T-shirt.

Father and son eat in silence, not needing to talk, Jude’s eyes shifting from Jack to Rosie working in the garden back to Jack again. There is the good smell of the breakfast and the cool welcome breeze that blows in from the open windows and the steady chop of the lake as it slaps against the stone retaining wall and the dock piers beside it.

Breakfast is nearly history when the front doorbell rings.

The ringing doorbell is such a rare occurrence at the county home that it causes Jack to shoot up from his seat. Not out of fright, but out of a genuine pleasure to see who the unexpected company might be. Cautious, Jude grabs hold of the crutches that lean against the table, orders the boy to “sit tight.”

“Keep eating,” he insists. “You’re still hungry I can always make some more.”

“Maybe you can run down to the store, pick up some bacon,” the boy mumbles with a mouthful and a grin.

“Funny,” Jude says while, using the crutches as supports, he crosses over the vestibule floor, makes his way to the front door, opens it onto a Fed Ex man. He’s a large young man dressed in uniform shorts, ankle high socks, a blue and orange Fed Ex polo shirt with the collar down and a standard issue baseball hat. With his short dark hair and trim goatee, his smile feels warm and inviting to Jude. The smile goes well with the warm sunny day and the trees that only now are beginning to shed golden leaves.

The young man holds a clipboard in one hand, a small package about the size of a tissue box in the other. The box is stuffed inside the usual Fed Ex envelope. It’s addressed to Mr. Jude Parish, marked “Personal and Confidential.”

“Any return address?”

Pursing his lips, the young man turns the package over, examines the attached pink slip.

“P.O. Box. Gare du Nord. Paris, France.”

Fed Ex man holds out a clipboard that also serves as an electronic signature pad.

Jude signs on the electric dotted line.

The signature pad back in hand, Fed Ex man about-faces, jogs back down the porch steps in the direction of the Fed Ex van parked in the gravel drive. Not far from the L.G.P.D. Jeep Cruiser and the Lake George cop newly assigned to watch over the lakefront property (a simple precaution insisted upon by a still overprotective Mack).

Closing the front door behind him, Jude makes a point of locking the closer, pushing and pulling on the brass knob just to make sure it’s good and secure. The package in hand, he carries it back into the kitchen, sets it gently down onto the kitchen table. He might open it right there and then, but Jack is holding out his now empty plate.

“More eggs,” he gleams.

Assembly Point Peninsula

Thursday, 9:10 A.M.

His second breakfast devoured, Jack retires to
PS3-land
.

While electronic squirts, screams and blasts filter up from the first floor, Jude pours himself a second cup of coffee. Steak knife in hand, he sits himself back down at the kitchen table. For a fleeting moment, he thinks seriously about taking the package outside, opening it up far away from the house. But then, that’s what the old, demon-tormented Jude Parish would have done.

Lennox is dead.

There’s nothing to be afraid of any more.

Slicing open the Fed Ex envelope, he pulls out the box. Just a small, nondescript gray cardboard box with no writing on it. Placing it in the palm of his hand, Jude bobs it up and down, getting a feel for its light, but somehow solid weight.

He opens the box, a bit tentatively, peeks inside and using his fingers, pulls out its contents. He recognizes the little machine immediately. It’s a Game Boy Advance identical to the one his son plays with whenever he isn’t preoccupied with his more elaborate television or computer video game systems.

Jude thinks about how strange it is that someone should send him a handheld gaming system. But then, as an author, he’s received more bizarre presents than this (once, a woman from San Francisco sent him a blow up doll with her name tattooed across its belly). Picking up the empty box he holds it up to his face, searches inside for a note or an explanation of some kind. But like the first time he checked, there’s nothing. Just the game and that’s all.

Jude turns the translucent gray, plastic machine one way, then the other, until he notices that a game has been preinstalled. Flipping the switch, the screen immediately begins to fill with electronic light, the word NINTENDO appearing in full 3D. The pleasant chime that follows indicates that the preinstalled game is now locked and loaded.

Jude stares down at the screen, at the animated caricature of a muscular bald man dressed in a too-tight black T-shirt with the sleeves exploded off by fully flexed muscles. The muscle man character is holding a long, kind of black, futuristic pistol in his right hand. In the place of a gun barrel mounted to the gun’s housing however is a long shiny needle. He is raising the weapon up high, aiming it at the video game sky, revealing at the same time a black dragon tattoo planted on his right interior forearm.

Maybe it’s the force of the instant recognition, but Jude’s head becomes a hive of buzzing adrenalin. He also discovers it’s not required of him to press any buttons or controls on the little machine. The game operates by itself on demonstration mode.

A second character appears.

Unlike the first one, this man character has short cropped, salt and pepper hair. He wears a white T-shirt and dark pants. The words SCREAM FOR ME suddenly flash across the narrow screen in big blood red letters.

The real Jude Parish’s eyes are glued to the electronic screen.

He doesn’t feel an ounce of pain.

No shortness of breath. No dizziness.

Instead he begins to sense that he is living a dream. He knows for certain that he’s seated at the kitchen table. But at the same time he swears he’s levitating off the plank floor. He swallows and stares at the game while it automatically forwards to Level Two.

Then begins Level Three.

Heart pounding, breathing quick and shallow, the real Jude sets the Game Boy Advance back down onto the table. He recalls the Fed Ex package, the P.O. Box coming all the way from Paris; recalls the young Fed Ex man who stood outside the door of his house only moments ago; recalls the young man’s nice smile, dark mustache and goatee. In his mind Jude sees the man’s strong-shouldered build. He knows that Lennox can disguise himself to look like anyone. Because after all, creating characters is a part of his M.O. as a video game designer. Jude also remembers something Agent Lino told him a little less than a month ago: that it was possible Lennox survived the fall from the courthouse’s eighth floor; that he might have managed to get away via the still erect and undamaged northeast portion of the courthouse; that in all the chaos and confusion he might have gone unnoticed. And from there he might have hidden himself inside the forest, made his way up to Canada.

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.