Scream Catcher (5 page)

Because from the moment they plant their sad puppy eyes on him, Jude gets the feeling they’re all thinking the same thing: there goes Jude Parish, the one man in L.G.P.D. department history who had a shot at Violent Crimes and blew it his first day out.

* * *

Maybe he isn’t a stranger to the place, but Jude’s father leads him though the vestibule, past the stand-off area, past station security, past the Watch Commander’s desk where he’s required to sign in with the visitor’s log (although Mack quickly takes care of the task for him), past the property storage area, empty detention cells, booking and processing rooms.

His final destination? The interview room.

While a large mirror takes up much of one wall, the opposite wall is covered with a curtain that hangs stage-like from a wall-mounted track. As he shuffles his way to a long wood table set in the center of the cramped square-shaped space, Jude catches a glance of his mirrored reflection, smiles nervously for the invisible video camera that will certainly be recording his testimony from the opposite side of the glass.

Mack plants himself to Jude’s right-hand side while the door opens and another man steps inside. The unfamiliar man quickly seats himself on the former cop’s left flank, sets a blue plastic folder onto the table not far from where a powered down laptop computer resides.

The old Captain ignores the plastic “Smoke Free Workplace” placards posted just about everywhere one travels inside the seventy-year-old precinct, fires up a Marlboro Light. He finger-taps the newly lit ash end of the butt into his Styrofoam coffee cup, sits back in his chair, exhales a blue cloud, settles himself in for the legal procedure about to take place.

The chesty, mustached man to his left introduces himself as Lt. Daniel Lino. He’s a newly employed L.G.P.D. detective, now nine months with the department, having transferred from the Rochester P.D. He will be assisting Mack directly with Lennox’s case file. Jude recalls Mack’s cell phone conversation during the drive to the station, recalls hearing the name “Lino.” He begins to realize that, for better or worse, events are moving rapidly.

Mack stands, pulls off his gray blazer, sets it neatly on the chair back.

“I’m gonna tell him now, Daniel.”

The Lieutenant smooths out his mustache with index finger and thumb. Dark eyes beamed on Mack, he issues a go-ahead nod.

Mack says, “Here’s the deal, Jude. Acting on a reliable tip, we just picked up
your
blond-haired suspect inside a village video arcade.”

Stomach cramping; stomach going way south.

“Lennox,” Jude poses. But inside his brain he’s back at Sweeney’s back lot. He’s down on his belly beside the dumpster, a black pistol barrel pointed at his face, the demon cramping his insides, paralyzing him.

Turning away from his son, Mack faces the one-way glass, raises his hand to wave someone in. A fast moment later the soundproof door to the room opens, making way for another cop. This one older than Mack by maybe two or three years. A plainclothes cop whom Jude immediately recognizes.

“Well if it isn’t Shakespeare come back from the dead,” the chesty, round-faced man barks.

Standing, Jude holds out his hand. “Ray Fuentes,” he says, as the big man snatches up all five digits, squeezes them hard in place of a shake.

“Loved your book,” Fuentes smiles. “You were pretty tough on yourself though. Burns was going to shoot his wife and kid whether you tried to wrestle him to death or not.”

As though on cue, Jude finds himself peering Mack’s way.

In return, the old Captain shoots him a furrowed brow gaze like,
Told you so.

Fuentes may be a good kidder, not to mention years past retirement age. But Jude suspects that Mack keeps the big man on as much for his knowledge of the cop job as he does his ability to act like a father to younger officers.

“You have my photos, Serpico?” Mack poses while deep-sixing his latest cig.

Reaching into his wrinkled brown blazer, Fuentes pulls out a yellow and black photograph envelope, tosses it onto the interview table.

Taking hold of the package, Mack opens it, pulls out the pictures, spreads them across the tabletop in no discernable order.

“Look these over, kid. Try to concentrate on the face you saw right before that bullet bounced off your skull. Tell me positively absolutely if he’s your man.”

Jude peers down onto the table, glances at twenty different versions of the same image: a tall, powerfully built, pale-faced male with bleach-blond chin beard and mustache, a head full of matching blond dreads.

The photos appear to have been shot with a digital camera through a telephoto lens directly across the road from a neon lit arcade that, as a former Townie-slash-cop, he recognizes as
Wild Bill’s All Day/All Night Arcade
located on Main in the north Village.

Duty calls, buries its legal claws through the skin that covers Jude’s stomach.

With Lt. Lino standing on his left-hand side, Mack on his right and Fuentes’s considerable bread basket bearing dead ahead, Jude shuffles the pictures around on the table until he locates the one that best matches his memory of the killer—a full frontal.

But instead of black trousers and a matching long-sleeved shirt, the photo reveals that the killer is wearing Carhardt carpenter’s pants and a sleeveless T-shirt. A T that bears a black stenciled rendering of Christ, the words, JESUS IS MY SUPERHERO! superimposed over His haloed head.

“Remember,” Mack presses, “you gotta be sure it’s the same guy or this thing will be shot.”

Jude dry swallows.

Reaching up with his right hand, he presses fingertips against the butterfly bandage. A dull, tender pain shoots through his head, all the way down to his teeth. Picking up the photo by its border, he holds it high above the table.

“Gentlemen and Fuentes,” he announces, locking eyes with his father, “you have your winner.”

Bolton Landing

Northern Tip of Lake George

Tuesday, 9:10 A.M.

The ringing phone wakes her from out of a restless hung-over sleep.

Warren County Prosecutor P.J. Blanchfield reaches out from under the blankets, fumbles for the bedside phone.

“Yes … What is it?” Her brain is a big brass bell, her mouth a dry chamber filled with cotton.

“Chief, we’ve got a homicide,” comes the voice on the connection’s opposite end. “Captain Mack’s people hand delivered an initial Police Complaint that details the whole thing.”

Lifting her heavy head up from off the pillow, the prosecutor brushes back disheveled shoulder-length hair, exposes pale naked breasts.

“What time is it, Lois?”

“Going on nine-fifteen.”

“Shit. Why didn’t you call me earlier?”

The prosecutor throws off the blanket. Her heart is pumping like the paddlewheel on the Minnehaha. Murders don’t occur all that often in Lake George. Almost never. Mostly just bar fights, snatched purses, fender benders, or the occasional vandalism to boat, Jet Ski or lakefront dock. There’ve been two homicides since her election to the county seat. While the first case never made it past the Grand Jury, the second case didn’t get tried at all.

But since then, peace.

Until now.

“And Chief,” Lois goes on. “One more thing.”

“What is it, Lois? I have to jump in the shower.”

“A suspect has already been taken into custody. He’s about to enter a lineup.”

“So that’s a good thing.”

“So get this: Captain Mack has reason to believe the murderer’s true identity is that of Hector Lennox.”

Blanchfield’s heart is no longer beating so much as it’s expanding, causing her sternum to split down the center.

“I’ll be there as soon as I can,” she says setting the phone back down onto the cradle.

Slipping out of the king-sized bed, she presses feet flat against the cool wood floor. She looks over one shoulder, then the other. Nothing but light blue plaster walls, two antique wood dressers, a full-length, stainless steel-framed IKEA dressing mirror, a flat-screened plasma television mounted to the wall directly across from her bed, its remote control set on the now empty side of the mattress where her fiancé used to sleep. Outside the windows of the lakefront condo, the bright morning sunshine beams down through thick locusts, junipers, birches and pines onto calm water.

A beautiful mid-summer day, yet Blanchfield wants to get back in bed, sleep her consciousness away.

“Patricia Janice,” shouts the gruff voice from two floors down. “P.J., you awake?”

She stands.

“Coming, Da.”

* * *

Twenty minutes later the prosecutor is dressed sharply in a blue, knee-length skirt, matching blue blazer over a simple white button-down. She’s dutifully fed her father, changed his bedding and dignity pants, made certain the TV remote is set within reach of both his bed and the wheelchair set beside it.

“Eva will be here in an hour to clean house and get your lunch,” she informs the seventy-something native Irishman and former Lake George Village tavern proprietor.

The white-haired old man looks up at his daughter with round, red, glassy eyes, gaunt face covered with gray bristle, a clear plastic tube fed by a portable oxygen canister snaked up his left nostril.

“I love Eva very much,” he mumbles in his native brogue. “And your ma. The memory of her face resides in my heart. You have her face, you know.”

“Too bad you loved whiskey more,” P.J. comments while popping an earring into her right ear lobe. “You might still have ma, a home, a business, your health … Need I continue, Da?”

Her father laughs as though engaging in a playful exchange with his daughter.

But then she’s right.

His love of the bottle has destroyed everything dear to him, leaving his only child to fend for herself in this big cruel world. And what a job she’s done raising herself from out of his drunken Irish ashes. Maybe he isn’t allowed to drink anymore, but mostly he’s just happy to lay his eyes on his beautiful, self-made daughter.

“I get a kiss before you go off to fight the bad guys?”

P.J. turns to the old man, leans into him, plants a peck on his stubble-covered cheek.

“Still love you,” she says. “And keep those hands to yourself when Eva gets here.”

Lake George Village Precinct

Tuesday, 9:35 A.M.

The surveillance photos back in hand, Fuentes exits the room in a hurry that belies his size. Immediately behind him follows Lt. Lino, the new L.G.P.D. detective anxious to meet up with the County Prosecutor to prep her for what everyone hopes will be a quick arraignment and indictment.

Alone with his son for the first time, Mack reaches out, opens the laptop screen, fingers the power trigger. While waiting for the machine to boot up, he releases the top button on his white button-down, pulls on the ball knot of his tie, making it hang Lou Grant-low.

Seated beside his father, Jude can’t help but glance over his shoulder, stare into the old Captain’s round face.

The hard, craggy face.

Leather skin, bristly white stubble, bulldog nose that’s been broken one too many times and that now veers in the direction of his left cheek. It’s the sort of face he can’t help but look into rather than simply look at.

Mack shifts himself, faces the radiant screen of the laptop.

He types in several commands. After a few seconds the website for ViCAP appears, or Violent Criminals Apprehension Program.

Sitting back, Mack purses his lips. “I’m not sure if there’s a right or wrong way to explain this,” he says. “So I’m just gonna say it. This morning’s homicide marks the third murder of its kind in Lake George in the last four years. Where a victim falls prey to some kind of stalking or thrill kill game.”

Jude sits at the table, taking occasional sips of water from a disposable paper coffee cup, the now drying sweatpants and shirt causing his muscles to stiffen, skin to tingle and itch with an annoying relentlessness.

A new page pops up.

This one with a couple of mug shots posted on the right side of the screen beside a list of vital stats.

Jude notices right away that no Image Captured date is listed. It means he has no idea when the mug was snapped. But one thing is obvious: his boy Hector is a chameleon—a master of physical reinvention so to speak. In the color pic, the violent criminal’s hair is dark, cut close to the scalp. A jagged purple scar runs down his left cheek as if an animal has recently clawed him.

And is he dead or alive?

In any case, the computer photo reveals that Lennox’s face definitely seems rounder than Jude recalls, clean shaven.