He allows his hand and the digital phone it grips to fall to the side. He has no idea which way to turn for help. Not without getting his family killed in the process.
61
Assembly Point Peninsula
Friday, 12:20 A.M.
From where he sits behind the wheel of the van, Black Dragon sets the black sat phone onto the empty seat beside him. He opens the glove compartment, grabs hold of a black leather zip-up bag. He opens the bag, pulls a stainless steel pistol-shaped CO2-powered syringe from its designated elastic-banded place. Pulling one of the four remaining bottles of Ativan from out of its place beside the syringe, he presses the needle into the corked cap. He pulls back on the stopper, fills the chamber. Satisfied that no air bubbles have mixed with the liquid sedative, he zips the bag back up. Returning the bag to the glove compartment, he opens the van door, slips on out.
In black bodysuit and face paint he causally approaches the front door to the home as though he were just another invited guest. He lets himself inside. Quietly closing the door behind him, he heads immediately for the staircase. But it’s from down in the stone vestibule that Black Dragon spots Mr. Parish. The Player has fallen to its knees inside the top floor hall of the lake home. From where he stands, Black Dragon finds it impossible to discern if the Player is laughing or crying.
There will come a time for tears, Mr. Parish … There will come a time for screams … But now is not that time.
Auto-syringe in hand, the beast climbs.
* * *
The Molloy Gravel Pit
Friday, 12:20 A.M.
Pulling the Chevy Suburban into the gravel pit’s dirt access road, Lino drives on past the open gates, down a narrow descending roadway hewn out of black shale, into the cavernous depths in the direction of the car fire. He pulls up behind Mack’s Jeep, draws his .9mm, jumps out of the Suburban. He then heads immediately to the first Jeep Cherokee only to discover the body of Captain Mack, legs and feet hanging out of the open door, upper body face down on the driver’s seat in a blood pool.
Reaching out with his left hand he sets his index and forefinger against the old Captain’s jugular. He pulls back, whispers, “Barely.”
He steps over to the now mostly smoldering fire, tries to make a determination as to whether or not Ray Fuentes was still inside his own Jeep Cruiser when it began to burn. Inside the back cargo space is a charred bundle.
Impossible to tell just what the fuck that is, or was …
Grabbing the cruiser radio transmitter from off the bloody floor, he thumbs Call: “This is Lieutenant Lino. I’m reporting confirmation of one officer down, possibly two. I request immediate backup as well as fire and emergency medical assistance.”
Having relayed the now confirmed Molloy gravel pit address to dispatch, he grabs hold of Mack’s left hand and squeezes.
“The farm’s not for sale today, Captain. Not on my watch.”
* * *
Fort Anne Road en route to Glens Falls
Friday, 12:35 A.M.
The EMS van speeds over the winding, blacked-out Fort Anne Road towards the Glens Falls Medical Center. While one EMT inserts intravenous and blood transfusion lines into his outstretched right forearm, the second opens Mack’s eyes, shines a beam of bright light from a penlight flashlight against the retinas in search of a “live” reaction. Maybe the old Captain does not appear to be in extreme shock, but very little involuntary motion registers in his eyes, suggesting to the attending EMT that cyanosis might be setting in.
On the other hand, Mack is managing to breathe sufficiently on his own with the aid of an oxygen mask. The clear mask negates the need for an endotracheal tube or, what would be worse, a full tracheotomy.
Huddled into the back corner of the vehicle is Lt. Daniel Lino. The Lieutenant stares down at the now shirtless body, at the display of drains, wires, tubes and needles that already litter the blood-stained, pale torso even before its arrival at the hospital.
“Is he going to make it?”
The EMT closest to him stuffs the penlight into the breast pocket of her white uniform work shirt.
“He’s lost a lot of blood,” says the short, brunette woman. “He’s in some shock. But no vital organs were hit when the bullet passed through.”
“But will he make it?”
That’s when something amazing happens.
Mack’s slate gray eyes open up on their own. They open up wide as if an electrical switch has been suddenly pulled inside his brain. He raises himself up achingly onto an elbow. With the wires and clear tubes hanging off of his torso, the bloody padding taped to his wounded shoulder, he glances up at Lino, pulls off the oxygen mask, looks the cop directly in the eye.
“Lennox has got my family,” he spits. “You can bet your ass that I. Will. Make. It.”
62
Tongue Mountain
Friday, 1:15 A.M.
He’s lost all track of time and space.
One minute Jude is down on his knees on the top floor hallway of his home and the next he’s somewhere completely different—somewhere foreign, as if he only then woke up from a long mid-summer’s nightmare. But then the nightmare is only just beginning.
When the cell phone rings it wakes him from out of a drug-induced sleep.
The picture phone issues a rhythmic chime, while wet pine needles remain plastered to his right cheek. He opens his eyes onto a darkness broken only by a tiny flashing red light embedded inside the plastic phone casing. Climbing onto his knees, he reaches out for the phone, opens it, holds it up to his ear.
He’s wet and shivering.
He’s dizzy and out of balance, like the earth has suddenly shifted on its axis. But this is not what concerns him. All that interests Jude now is the voice at the other end of the connection. But then it dawns on him that with this phone, there will be no voice.
Setting the phone flat in the palm of his hand, he peers down at the light radiant screen. Opening and closing his eyes, he attempts to focus; to overcome the sedation.
A Maglite is set on the ground to the Player’s left,
he reads.
The Player picks up the Maglite, turns it on.
From down on his knees Jude reaches out with his free hand, probes the wet mix of pine needles, leaves and earth with bear fingers until he locates the heavy Maglite. Thumbing the Latex-protected switch, he produces a powerful beam of light. The light not only provides him with a means of vision, it also reveals the truth: Hector Lennox acting as the Black Dragon has dropped him inside a thick patch of woods. The beast must have drugged him, hauled him out to some remote area, dropped his unconscious body inside it. Somewhere wild; somewhere dense with cover. And judging by the cold, somewhere far above sea level.
Next command:
Player goes to the Media App. Then clicks on Pictures.
Jude does it.
A picture appears. A man whose legs and wrists have been hogtied with duct tape. A big, burly man who is down on his knees. Like Jude, the man seems to be kneeling inside a thick patch of woods, at least judging from the backdrop. In the picture, Jude can clearly see that the man’s hair is gray and cut flat on top. He’s wearing a dark blazer, navy blue slacks, black shoes over white socks. The face has been bound with two separate strips of tape—one covering the eyes, the other covering the mouth, leaving only an exposed nose through which to breathe.
The tape acts like a mask.
But then Jude doesn’t need to see the entire face to recognize the man for who he is. He worked with Lt. Ray Fuentes for more than ten years before taking his mandatory leave from village P.D. For these past two days, Fuentes has been a fixture outside the Assembly Point Peninsula homestead.
My own personal witness protection program … now at the mercy of a thrill killer, a scream catcher.
Jude wipes beaded rainwater from the small screen, moves on to the next picture.
It shows a man standing behind Fuentes. The man is dressed in black. He is tall but thinner than the cop. All black clothing fits him tight. So tight you can see muscle definition. He wears a black ski mask or hood over his head. In his hand he holds a long knife. The knife is almost as long as a sword. With pounding heart, Jude thumbs to the next picture. The man in the mask is running the blade across the neck of the kneeling Fuentes.
Jude drops the phone, falls to his knees.
He coughs up acid. It fills his mouth, burns his throat.
He spits it out and inhales deeply of the cool wet air.
Jude is afraid to pick up the phone. He doesn’t want to see what comes next. He’s already seen enough. But his family has been taken hostage. He has to pick up the phone. He has to keep looking.
It seems to take every ounce of his will, but he thumbs to the next picture, draws his eyes to the screen.
This time he’s startled to see himself. Rather, not only himself, but him and Rosie standing together inside the kitchen. The picture appears to have been snapped from directly outside the window. It occurs to Jude that the picture could easily have been snapped from a boat out on the lake with the use of a zoom lens. Maybe even from the L.G.P.D. Whaler itself—the patrol boat assigned to provide lakefront protection.
Fucker could have killed the crew … He could have killed them, dumped their bodies into the drink …
In the picture Jude is facing his wife, she holding a dinner plate in her hand, a dish towel draped over her shoulder. The image, while crystal clear, is tinted a luminous green. The look on Jude and Rosie’s faces is pure worry, anxiety. Like his demon is somehow plaguing them both.
Night vision. No flashes …
Head spinning, throat closing, he depresses the button on the keypad with an almost frantic anticipation, moves on to the next picture. And the next, and the next …
Rosie and me burying her Betta fish on the back lawn by the lake’s edge, a streak of white lightning crashing into the earth in the far distance … Me, shotgun in hand, searching the perimeter of my home in the rain … Me, sitting down on the stone vestibule floor inside the house, Atticus the cat laid out across my lap … a dark left side profile of Rosie sitting on the edge of the Jack’s bed while she reads to him by candlelight … then flames shooting up from the boy’s mattress.
Despite incessant shivering he can’t help but notice that the last two pics have been shot from outside Jack’s third story window. It means that somehow Lennox climbed up onto the second floor overhang in order to gain visual access to the log home’s top level—did it without their having a clue.
Jude thumbs through the remaining images—the dead fish; the canary both alive and dead; the green-eyed pics of Atticus the cat; even a picture of his empty writing study, the hand-corrected pages to what he hopes will be his new book stacked atop the desk. It’s all laid out for him like a stranger than strange version of
This is Your Life.
But that isn’t all.
There are two more pictures, the last to be viewed before the order once more starts from the top. Images of Rosie and the Jack not captured at their home, but very close by. He can tell how close just by taking notice of the trees and the dark, leaf-covered floor in the background.
Then, another text.
Player goes back to Media, presses Ring Tones.
He does it.
There’s only one ring tone for him to click on. He clicks on it.
A scream emerges from the phone’s speaker. A desperate scream that quickly turns into a gurgle, as if the person were drowning. That’s when Jude realizes the scream is definitely coming from a man who is drowning. Only not in water.
The man is drowning in his own blood.
Slamming the phone down onto the wet grass, he knows precisely the source of the captured scream. It comes from Ray Fuentes as Lennox decapitated him.
63
Tongue Mountain
Friday, 1:18 A.M.
Jude picks the phone back up, tries to swallow his anger. He reviews the photos once more. Both Rosie and Jack have been riot-bound with duct tape. Thick gray strips that cover their mouths, leaving only the nostrils through which to breathe. Maybe it has something to do with the effects of shock and awe, but viewing the images of his loved ones broadcast on a smart phone leaves him feeling somehow detached.
It isn’t as if these people are not connected to him. It’s as if they do not exist at all. As though these two gagged and bound people do not live as real flesh and blood.
The phone screams.
Ray’s screams.
A dying Ray has become the ringtone.
It not only breaks Jude from out of his spell. It sends an electric shock through his system.
He thumbs Send, reads,
The Player looks down at its feet.
Jude shines the light on his boot tops.
Only inches from his right foot lays a transparent Ziploc Freezer bag. A large, two quart job Rosie might use for storing leftovers in the freezer. He bends down, picks the bag up off the wet ground, holds it in the fingers of his right hand along with the Maglite. He unzips the bag, shines a light inside, finds a rolled sheet of paper that’s been coated with a thin protective plastic. He also discovers a Swiss Army directional compass. Pulling out the coated sheet and the compass, he allows the bag to fall to the ground.
Shining the light down onto the sheet, he immediately recognizes the computer-generated topographical satellite map. Maybe one inch to ten miles in scale. Some hand-drawn lines have been added to the map. A line made from red pencil highlights a road that runs through the center of the area, from one corner of the square paper to the opposite corner. To the right of the road, in the direction designated North, the area has been marked off as “Woods.” To the left of the road, or to the South, the area has been designated as “Mountain.” Highlighted in blue pencil is a stream that runs down from the mountain, continues under the road via culvert, then cuts its way through the woods.