* * *
The wind blows steady and gentle off Lake George.
Up above a pair of nesting robins become suddenly startled by the men’s presence and fly off in the direction of the woods and the lake road. His vision of the Burns family having once more retreated to the back spaces of his brain, Jude turns away from the cabin, faces his father.
“Let the resolution begin, Mack,” Jude says.
Eventually, the gray-blazered old Captain clears his throat as if he were about to make a speech. In a way, he is. He breathes in, bites down on his lower lip, averts his eyes from his son’s. Obviously, what he’s about to tell Jude can be more easily rendered if he doesn’t have to look him in the face.
Speaking as softly as the wind, the old Captain says, “I’ve come to the conclusion that in the beginning—the very beginning—Lennox had yearned for something more than the cold plastic feel of the video game. What he lusted was emotion and raw, red hot passion. He craved real life; craved the experience of witnessing firsthand how a real human being would react to a real-life kill game; craved the precise emotions that might run through the veins of the first-person killer. With that in mind he began to design a game that would involve a real human being of his carefully controlled selection and that would take place at peak season inside our beautiful tourist-filled town. Inside an abandoned tanning factory to be specific.”
In Jude’s brain, a quick flashback to the first-person kill game the young boy was playing inside Wild Bill’s back on the morning of Lennox’s arraignment. A paranoid, claustrophobic game that took place inside the dark, damp basement depths of an abandoned factory. A game of real-life murder called Project Night Fright.
“The real-life, real-time kill game would not come easy,” Mack goes on. “Major risks were involved. Like all would-be serial killers, Lennox bore an almost uncontrollable urge to view a kill, but he also needed to hear what that death sounded like, which was why he began to collect his victims’ screams. Those screams became more important than the act of murder itself. By becoming a scream catcher, he could place the screams inside one of his video games, and relive the kill game again and again.
“He’s always known that, at base, what he was about to commit was murder, even if murder was simply a byproduct of his game of power and control. He couldn’t simply be satisfied with planning a kill game and letting it go at that. He had to plan for failure rather than fail to plan at all. This required that necessary measures be undertaken to cover his tracks should the worst happen and the law caught up with him which, in his mind, it inevitably would.
“One of the top items on his rather creative trouble-shooting list was to take advantage of the upcoming election of the new Warren County Prosecutor. In his mind, Lennox would make a series of contributions to his candidate of choice who in this case happened to be the beautiful Lake George native, P.J. Blanchfield. In short, Lennox liked her, admired her spunk, her aggressiveness, her youth, her beauty, her charm. Most of all he admired her passion, her lust for life. He also relished the fact that should she win—and how could she lose with his silent backing?—she would be the first female to run for Warren County and actually succeed.
“Now when Blanchfield received the first of what would become a series of $9,000 checks—each one of them coming from what appeared to be a different corporation attached to different overseas Swiss accounts—she had no way of knowing they were coming from video game designer Hector Lennox. All she saw instead were dollar signs. In a word, Blanchfield grew up a plastic-spoon-redneck. She was the daughter of a village tavern owner. She’d put herself through college, through law school. She had not a penny to her name, much less the money required to run a competent campaign against a three-term male incumbent. So, acting impulsively, she accepted the donation. She cashed it not through her campaign fund, but privately, and asked no questions.
“And why should she?
“There in her hands was not only enough money to wage war, it was enough for her to buy up television and radio spots to spread the word even beyond the boundaries of Warren County.
“But when more checks started arriving, she began to get suspicious. She could see that although the checks bore the marks of different companies and corporations, she listened to her intuition and began to suspect that they were originating from the same source. This meant that what had started as one large, more or less illegal contribution, had now blossomed into one giant series of illegal contributions.
“But then, she couldn’t turn back now.
“She was in too deep, really making a name for herself, causing headaches for the stodgy old incumbent and his network of old boys. Her campaign after all had snowballed into something special. Victory was at hand. What’s more, there were bills to pay; television and radio station debts to settle. There were even down payments for a waterfront condo up in Bolton and a brand spanking new fire engine red Porsche Carerra. In the end, she secured a resounding triumph, thanks to her secret financial admirer.”
Mack pauses to breathe. Or to calm himself. Jude can’t be sure which.
“Some months later,” continues the old Captain, “came the first kill game and along with it, Lennox’s arrest. Sensing her first capital crime victory and the major publicity that might come with it, P.J. prepared herself for what promised to be the trial of the century, at least as far as the Adirondacks were concerned. That is, until the newly arrested Hector ‘the Black Dragon’ Lennox dropped an atom bomb on her.
“During a closed door interrogation between himself and Blanchfield, he began to recount for her some information only the prosecutor would be privy too—namely the precise amount of each campaign check received and privately cashed, plus the name of each false corporation set up for them. Lennox then calmly issued a threat to the freshman prosecutor, warning her, You proceed with my indictment, I’ll not only reveal the size and extent of the cashed and pocketed illegal contributions, I’ll reveal that they came directly from the man you now wish to indict for murder in the first degree.
“That’s when our beautiful prosecutor proceeded to make the mistake of her young life. Instead of immediately handing over this information to the proper authorities, own up to her blunder of taking bad money, Blanchfield did exactly the opposite. All reason left her. She became overwhelmed with the prospect of a very bleak future. Instead of the world at her fingertips, it was suddenly goodbye prosecutor’s office; goodbye future senatorial candidacy; goodbye private box at the Saratoga race track; goodbye any hope she might have had for erasing her redneck past. Shit, she’d be lucky to keep herself from being prosecuted for obstruction of justice. In other words, instead of doing the right thing, Blanchfield did the wrong thing, and it was exactly what Lennox had been counting on all along.”
The wind is picking up now, cooler than before. Not far from where father and son are standing, some squirrels battle over what Jude guesses to be acorns that are hidden in the tall grass. Nature’s fury. In his head he listens carefully to the words and deeds Mack reveals to him. But in his soul, Jude’s not sure that he truly believes them. Rather, he can’t say that he doesn’t believe them exactly. It’s just that he’s having trouble conceiving of the idea that Blanchfield might not fess up to the illegal campaign contributions when given the chance. She may have cherished her public position and the power that went along with it. But she wasn’t stupid. Still, who knew what a person was capable of when filled with panic?
Mack breathes in and out, steady and controlled.
“So what happened next? Fearing Lennox would go public with what he knew, Blanchfield struck up a private deal to deep-six the State’s case, citing ‘Insufficient evidence.’ In the end, Judge Mann had no choice but to drop the indictment, dismiss the entire proceeding as a ‘No Bill.’
“So you see, kid, at the snap of a finger Blanchfield, through her ability to manipulate a simple series of events, got to keep her job and her shot at what she expected to be a brilliant political
future. So long, that is, as nobody knew the truth; so long as Lennox didn’t talk about all those checks.”
Jude finds himself gripping the handle on his one aluminum crutch. He hobbles a step back, glances over his shoulder at the wide hole in the cabin’s picture window—a hole made from the stray buckshot that exploded from Burns’s Remington 1187.
“I know that you’d grown suspicious of P.J.,” he says. “But when did you become aware of the actual truth?”
“Glens Falls CSI was offered federal permission to scour through the rubble of what once upon a time was Blanchfield’s office. What they discovered was the VHS ‘close-watch’ interview tape that reveals her admitting to Lennox’s face that she cashed the illegal checks. We also discovered a blackmail note in which Lennox clearly spelled out his intention to destroy P.J.’s political future unless she dropped the indictment for the first kill game. That blackmail note was still locked inside her top desk drawer. The note, taken along with the tape, pretty much tells the whole story. The gaps that remained were easy to fill in because of a second, far more recent letter that was also discovered.”
Mack perks up, reaches inside his blazer, pulls out a crumpled No.10-sized business envelope. Without a word, he hands it over to Jude. Staring down at a plain white envelope Jude can see that much of it has been water damaged. He can also see that the envelope hasn’t been addressed to anyone at all. There’s no writing on it of any kind.
Balancing his weight upon the single crutch, Jude opens the letter, begins to read.
“I hereby address this letter of apology to the members of the court and to you, the people of Warren County, whom as your elected official, I represent …”
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.
103
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 ha
d 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.
Scream Catcher Page 31
