Pure Hate (14 page)

“You know, you really don’t know me
well enough to joke like that.” He tried the look again and again he started to
chuckle.

“Yeah, but I’m getting to know you.
Slowly, but surely.”

“Okay, smart ass, so what about the
fangs?”

“Well, first off, I seriously doubt
the fangs are made of silver. That’s just not Malcolm’s style. It doesn’t seem
to fit in with the designer suits. My guess is platinum. Malcolm likes money.
If he wears any kind of jewelry it would be diamonds and platinum.”

“Okay, but why fangs? Why not a nice
necklace or a ring if he wants to show off? I mean gold fronts went out years
ago, except in the south, and I never heard of any brothas with fangs and
definitely not platinum ones.”

“Like I said before, all these
murders are about Malcolm acting out a fantasy. The fangs are probably part of
the fantasy. With his proclivity for cannibalism, it would be easy to imagine
that he’s acting out some kind of werewolf fantasy. Perhaps he sees himself as
a vampire.”

“He certainly dresses like one, in
those morbid black suits. Dresses like a damn mortician.”

“But I suspect that the fangs have
more to do with how he sees us than how he sees himself.”

“Yeah? And how does he see us?”

“As prey. He’s the Big Bad Wolf and
everyone else . . .”

“. . . is just a bunch of little
pigs.”

“Sheep for the slaughter. That’s what
I think the fangs symbolize. He’s the ultimate predator, the top of the food
chain and the rest of humanity are his cattle.”

They were nearing the end of one of the longest
workdays either detective could remember when they pulled up in front of Reed’s
house. The police tape had been removed from the front door and they could see
Reed through the window, vacuuming the rug
. “How the hell do you vacuum up
blood?”
went through Baltimore’s mind, but he kept the thought to himself,
imagining a wet/dry vac filled with coagulated blood.

“Maybe he shampooed it first,” Baltimore thought,
as he slipped from the car and started walking up the driveway toward the
house. Reed looked out the window and he and the detective locked eyes. Reed
threw down the vacuum cleaner and strode toward the door in a huff, swinging it
wide before the detectives even reached it.

“Tell me you’re here to tell me that Malcolm’s
been captured and not to ask me another bunch of stupid questions!”

James spoke up first.

“Relax, Mr. Cozen. We just have a few questions.
It will only take a moment. It’s good to see you’ve recovered so quickly.”

“I still feel like I’m being jabbed in the ribs
with an ice-pick every time I sneeze, cough, or laugh. Of course, I haven’t
been doing much of the latter lately.”

“May we come in? I promise we’ll only be a
moment.”

Reed scowled, let out a long hissing breath, then
turned and headed back inside the house, leaving the door open wide for the
detectives to follow. His complexion was still pale and sallow and he walked as
if he was in constant fear of falling.

James bit the tip off a cigar and stuck it in his
mouth without lighting it. Chewing cigars was, in Baltimore’s opinion, one of James’s
more disgusting habits, but he had to admit that actually smoking them would’ve
been much worse. They followed Reed into the house that for them was still a
murder scene, a particularly gruesome and nasty one at that. They knew that
this was still Reed’s home, but the idea of someone living there again seemed
kind of sick, like someone taking up residence in a morgue. Baltimore noted
that the vacuum he’d seen Reed running was in fact a shampooer, but that he had
merely succeeded in making reddish brown suds where the huge bloodstains
covered the carpet.

He might as well write the Berber off
as a loss,
Baltimore
thought. It was unsalvageable. The coffee table was gone and the walls had been
scrubbed, spackled, and repainted, but no matter what he did to the house, it
was still a murder scene.

“We found Malcolm’s accomplice,” Titus offered.

“Did he tell you where Malcolm is? Did you catch
him?”

“The man was dead.” Titus replied.

“He was more than dead. He was destroyed, ripped
apart.” James added.

“Christ. Well, at least now you know I was
telling the truth. You know that night, when it was all happening, I wondered
why Malcolm hadn’t killed that guy. It seemed out of character for him to have
an accomplice. I think he brought the guy for my benefit . . . to make sure I
knew that the killings were all about me. I knew that guy was a dead man. The
way Malcolm kept calling him ‘white boy.’”

“White boy? Why did that make you think he would
kill him?” James asked.

“Malcolm never called anyone by their real names,
not even Renee’ and Natasha. He would call them white girl, white boy, bitch,
ho, fool, nigga. That is, when he found it absolutely necessary to address
someone. Most often he ignored people all together. I was the only one he
called by name. I asked him about it one time and he said he was
depersonalizing them. He said he’d read somewhere that in hostage situations
police always try to get the suspects to understand that their victims were
real people with real lives, and not just objects, so they would repeat the
hostages’ names over and over again and try to get the suspects to refer to
them by name. He said this was supposed to make it harder for the suspects to
murder their victims, because it’s easier to murder some anonymous white girl
than it is to kill Mrs. Margaret Jones, mother of three, of 252 Greenblade
Drive. So he made it a point to never call anyone by name in case he had to
kill them one day.”

Reed smirked and shook his head as
memories from his high school years began to come back to him.

“He called me white boy for the first
two weeks I knew him. He would walk by my table at lunch and smack me in the
back of the head. Sometimes, he would knock over my milk or steal my dessert.
Once he just took my entire lunch. I stood up to say something, I don’t know,
‘Give me my lunch back, please sir’ or something like that, and he punched me
in the gut so hard it knocked all the wind out of me, and I nearly passed out.
I fell underneath the table and he sat down right beside where I’d fallen and
ate my lunch. A few days later he sat down and talked with me. He even bought
me lunch that day. After we’d been friends for about a year, I asked him why he
picked on me like that when we first met. You know what he said? He said he did
it because he wanted me to know what it would be like to be his enemy before he
could trust me to be his friend.”

“Guess he was wrong,” James mumbled.

“You know, the way you talk about Malcolm, like
he was some psychopath, makes me wonder why you were friends with him in the
first place. I mean, if he was as terrible as you say he was, why’d you become
his best friend?” Baltimore was going into his interrogation mode.

“Everyone was afraid of Malcolm. Even back then
you knew the guy was dangerous, but that was the attraction. There wasn’t a
person in school who didn’t want to be his friend.”

“Why?”

“Seriously? You don’t get it? Did you ever watch
those Godzilla movies when you were a kid?”

“Godzilla movies? Yeah, sure. Who didn’t?”

“Not the original one, but the campy sequels and
remakes where Godzilla would rise out of the water, destroy half of Tokyo, make
friends with a young Japanese kid, then save the world from some space monster?
If you had the chance to be that kid, the one who made friends with Godzilla,
would you turn it down? Every kid who ever watched one of those films wished
he
was the one. Imagine what it would be like to walk around town with Godzilla!
You could do whatever you wanted. I mean who’s gonna say ‘no’ to you with
Godzilla standing over your left shoulder? Well, that’s what it was like being
friends with Malcolm. It was like palling around with Godzilla.”

“So, if it was so great, why did you fuck it up?”

“Because after a while it’s not good enough to
just be Godzilla’s friend . . . you want to be Godzilla.”

Baltimore looked at James and they both turned
back to look at Reed.

“Mr. Cozen, I have a very difficult question to
ask you and there’s no delicate way to put it. Mr. Cozen, did you sexually
molest your daughter?”

All the color drained from Reed’s face then
returned in a scalding rush of red.

“What the fuck kind of question is that? Hell no,
I didn’t have sex with my daughter!”

“We understand that there were some accusations.”

“That old bitch from the school? She’s out of her
goddamned mind! She brought Human Services to my house and they almost took my
babies away, all because she thought I hugged and kissed my kids too much. Fuck
no, I never touched my daughter!”

“Mr. Cozen, exactly what were you and your wife
seeing a marriage counselor about?”

“None of your fucking business!”

“We can get a warrant for the counselor’s
records, but we would prefer you volunteered the information. If we have to
subpoena the records we will.” Titus lied. He knew no judge would break
doctor/patient privilege, but he was hoping Reed didn’t know that.

“Fuck you. Get a damn warrant then and get out of
my house!”

“It’s a simple question. If you’ve got nothing
to hide, just answer it. There’s no need to make this . . .”

“GET THE FUCK OUT!” Reed was shaking with anger
and tears were now rolling down his cheeks. James turned and walked out the
door, dragging Titus along with him. The young detective wasn’t done yet,
though . . . he still wanted answers.

“What’re you hiding? We know you’re hiding
something!”

“GET OUT!” Reed winced, grabbed his sides, and
plopped down on the couch, still glaring murderously at the two cops as they
sauntered out the door.

“Come on, Titus. You’ve said enough.”

When they got outside, James grabbed Titus by the
lapels and nearly lifted him off the ground.

“What the fuck was all that? That was completely
out of line!”

“Fuck that! That sonavubitch knows something! You
don’t think it’s a little strange that he just moved back in to the same house
where his family was murdered? He could have gone to a motel, stayed with
friends or family, but he goes back there and starts spring cleaning. Would you
ever go back in that house if it was you?” He stared back at James, not backing
down. James let him go and walked to the car.

“Well, if he does know something we’re never
gonna get it out of him now. He’ll probably lawyer up and have a restraining
order on both our asses by the morning if not a fucking lawsuit.”

They climbed into the car and James
hit the accelerator, stomping it to the floor and roaring away from the curb,
taking his frustration out on the Intrepid’s transmission. Baltimore was
already planning to approach Reed again. He had to know what Reed knew.

Another day was gone and James found himself back
at the Star Bar, wondering what the hell was wrong with him. He was so
exhausted he could barely keep his eyes open on the short drive from the
precinct. He hadn’t eaten since breakfast, which was contributing to his
fatigue. He had maybe six hours before he had to get up and hit the gym for the
first time since the case began and try to save his physique before his muscles
began to atrophy. After the gym, it was back to work again. Still, he intended
on spending every spare second until then with CC, even if that meant paying
for lap dances.

James had an anxious moment as he entered the
club when he was afraid CC wasn’t there. He wandered the club fending off
advances from writhing, topless, silicone Barbie dolls, eager to grind their
g-stringed asses into his groin for twenty dollars. When he finally spotted CC,
she was doing just that with an overweight, middle-aged, financial district
shark, in a blue Botany 500 suit that was at least two sizes too small and
bursting at the seams. Even though the club had a hands-off policy, it was
loosely enforced. The man was eagerly rubbing his hands across her generous
ass, which was bouncing mere inches from his face. James was surprised that he
felt not an ounce of jealousy. In fact, he felt pity for the shark-man. As soon
as he ran out of money, CC would be gone and he’d be abandoned to deal with his
erection all by himself.

CC spotted James and winked, then
turned back to her businessman and whispered in his ear, at which point he
produced two crisp one hundred-dollar bills and stuffed them in her G-string.
CC smiled, winked at James again and went back to bouncing her ass in
greaseball’s face. Once again, James felt sorry for the guy. He knew that CC
would keep him hypnotized by her superior posterior until every large bill in
his wallet and most of the small ones had found their way into her G-string,
then she would go find another lonely, fat, horny, businessman and liberate his
paycheck as well. James knew because such had been his fate on far too many
nights. But not this night. Tonight, all he wanted was to take CC home with him
and pretend they were married for a few hours before he had to send her home to
her real husband. He sat back, ordered a drink, and waited for CC to drain her
mark dry.

As he watched her work her latest
sucker, hips swaying in a seductive bump and grind, eyes half-lidded, lips
slightly parted, slightly puckered, slightly quivering, in a convincing parody
of ecstasy, James found it amusing that so many moral activists thought it was
the women in these places who were used and exploited. All he ever saw were the
visually stimulated sex-drives of countless men being exploited to the economic
advantage of the women and the people who employed them.

James shook his head and chuckled to
himself as yet another hundred-dollar bill slipped from the man’s wallet into
CC’s underwear. He couldn’t help wonder just how much these women made a night.
He’d heard stories of women who made a thousand, up to two thousand a night. He
thought those figures were just exaggerations and rumors started by the owners
of these clubs to lure more girls into the profession. Now he wasn’t sure those
numbers were so farfetched.

James was so engrossed in the parade of glistening, perfumed flesh,
that he didn’t notice the shadow sitting motionlessly in a corner, a shadow
darker than the other shadows, more substantial. A shadow that tensed and
flexed, anxious, but cautious, watching and waiting, smiling a savage silver
smile.