Pure Hate (10 page)

“I wonder if Malcolm knew the guy
like with Reed, or if it’s every bit as random and spontaneous as it looks.”

“Good question, Detective. I want
you to go over there with Officer Wyatt and find out whatever you can from that
witness. No, on second thought, leave that to Titus whenever he gets here. You
grab some units and get over to Mr. Cooper’s house and make some arrests. I
want someone in custody by the time the news media gets wind of this.”

James was getting a kick out of seeing the
Captain so animated. Captain Kelly had spoken more in the last ten minutes than
James could remember him speaking in the last ten years.

The next two hours were a nightmare. James made
it to Paul Cooper’s house and found him bound and mutilated almost beyond
recognition, hanging from some metal contraption in the middle of the living
room. His body bore hundreds of welts, cuts, burns and bruises. He must have
been tortured for hours before he was finally killed. His face was a swollen
purple fright mask. His eyes were swollen shut and there were cuts above and
below each one from where someone’s knuckles had repeatedly smashed into them.
His nose was completely crushed and smeared sideways across his face. All the
teeth had been smashed out of his mouth and his lips were split in several
places. Blood and saliva ran down his chest. His tongue was missing. Bones and
muscle tissue showed through all over his body where someone had worked him
over with a knife, flaying his skin off in long strips. His penis had been
completely skinned, peeled like a banana. Parts of his buttocks, his pecs and
his cheek had been bitten away. His chest looked like someone had tried to chew
right through him to get at his heart. It was missing as well.

James
knew without waiting for the coroner
that most of this had been done while the victim was still alive. The Family
Man never had much taste for necrophilia. He liked live prey. The most
disturbing sight was the abundance of old yellowing bruises, half and fully
healed scars and cuts. This man had been tortured for a long time.
Where did
this type of depravity come from?
He thought of Reed stealing Malcolm’s
high school sweetheart but that just didn’t explain . . .
THIS!

All over the house they found S&M and bondage
paraphernalia. Metal and leather restraints, including the medieval looking
iron shackles that Cooper’s body hung from, whips, scalpels, branding irons,
long steel needles, iron dildos and all kinds of horrible “toys” were
everywhere. The place looked like an Inquisition era torture chamber, something
from the Marquis de Sade’s darkest imaginings.

There was no sign of Malcolm
anywhere. The forensic boys were going over everything, bagging, tagging and
dusting for prints. James knew it was pointless. This guy wasn’t the type to
stand trial. When and if he was finally caught, he would hold court in the
street and go out blasting. A guy who tried to cut his own head off wasn’t the
“Come out with your hands up” type. He was the “shoot to kill” type. Right now,
he was the “armed and dangerous and still on the loose” type. And they were
running out of leads. Malcolm could be anywhere now.

No one had been to the Cozen’s house since the
night of the murders. The front door was still covered in yellow tape. Titus
swiped the tape aside and opened the front door. The carpets had not been
cleaned and the smell of fetid blood wafted up his nostrils causing his stomach
to lurch involuntarily. Blood spattered the living room walls, the couch, the
shattered coffee table, the television and the Wii video game console. Even the
stereo and CD tower were sprayed with splashes of dark red. The eggshell-white
curtains looked like the linen from an operating room table. In his mind’s eye,
Titus could still see the position of each victim. He could almost see the
death scene as it unfolded.

He imagined little Mark taking a
blast from a shotgun in the chest at pointblank range, sending half his vital
organs flying against the wall in back of him, Jennie Cozen stabbed a dozen
times then tossed aside and Linda Cozen raped, stabbed, cannibalized. Alive.
Alive as that monster thrust himself inside her. Alive as he chewed off her
breasts. Alive as he drove his knife through her chest.

But which monster was it? Malcolm
Davis or Reed himself?

Detective Baltimore turned away and began to walk
into the Cozen’s bedroom. The Compaq Presario was still turned on and the novel
Reed had been working on was still on the screen. He must turn off his screen
saver when he worked. Papers were littered everywhere and Titus sat down at
Reed’s desk to sift through them. They were mostly bills, three letters from
Reed’s publisher in escalating degrees of urgency begging him to finish his
novel, a post card from Linda’s mother on a gambling trip in Las Vegas, and notes for Reed’s novel written on
three by five cards, receipts, brown paper bags, and notebook paper of varying
sizes. Every other scrap of paper that looked vaguely important had already
been bagged and tagged and was sitting in an evidence locker.

Titus decided to browse through the
computer again. He’d spent half the previous night printing out everything on
the computer that looked relevant. He knew his way around Reed’s database
pretty well now. Within minutes, he located Reed’s address book containing the
phone numbers of Linda’s mother in Delaware, their baby-sitter, physician,
pediatrician, and their marriage counselor.

So, things weren’t perfect in
paradise
, Titus
thought.

He called the marriage counselor, a
Dr. Elliot Berkowitz, and got his secretary, who was rather hesitant to put the
man on the phone. She insisted that he was with a patient and could not be
disturbed. Titus had to settle for leaving a message with his cell number.
Next, he called Linda’s mother, hoping that someone had managed to inform her
of her daughter’s passing before she’d seen it on television. It had slipped
his mind and he prayed that Detective Bryant had at least taken care of that
one little detail. Maybe the hospital or Reed himself had thought to call.

“H-Hello?” the woman who answered sounded as if
she had been crying.

“Uh, this is Detective Titus Baltimore of the
Philadelphia Police department. Is this Mrs. Reeser? Linda Cozen’s mother?”

“Y-yes.”

“I’m investigating your daughter’s
murder and I was hoping you could answer a few questions for me.”

“Y-y-yeah, sure.
I-I just found out today. Reed called me and told me this morning and then it
was all over the news. All day that’s all I keep hearing about. I finally
turned off the TV and the radio and unplugged the phone. I just plugged it back
in. Those damn reporters keep calling me.”

“I know this must be terrible for you, but I must
ask you some questions. It will only take a second. Do you know anyone who
would want to hurt your daughter?”

“What-what do you mean? I thought . . . Reed told
me that it was that Malcolm Davis guy. That black guy Reed use to be friends
with."

“I know, but we just have to check out all
possibilities. Now, do you know anyone who might want to harm your daughter?”

“No. Everyone loved Linda.”

“How was your daughter’s marriage? Any problems
there? Between her and Mr. Cozen?”

“No more than any other couple. She wanted him to
spend more time with the kids, help out more around the house. They had money
problems. He wouldn’t work a real job. Put all his time into writing those
books. Sometimes they did well. Sometimes they didn’t. They lived from royalty
check to royalty check. It was often feast or famine. He didn’t write the kind
of books that stayed on the shelves long. There would be the initial excitement
from his small body of fans and then interest would peter out and the royalty
checks would get smaller and smaller and then they would stop coming entirely.
Then it was time to write another book. That’s hard on a woman, trying to stick
to a budget when she doesn’t even know what their income is gonna be from month
to month.”

“Is that why they were seeing a marriage
counselor?”

“Well, not exactly. I mean she never said it
directly, but I kind of got the impression that they were having some sexual
problems.”

“Is that what your daughter told
you?”

“No, of course that’s not the type of
thing a daughter discusses with her mother so it’s more of a hunch. Just kind
of reading into what she wasn’t saying.”

“I see. Is that it? No other
problems?”

“No. They were a pretty happy couple
mostly. They just had the normal problems most young couples have these days.”

“Okay, thank you, Mrs. Reeser. I’ll
be in touch if we come up with anything.”

Titus hadn’t learned much from his
conversation with Mrs. Reeser, but that bit about sexual problems might be
something. He needed to talk to their therapist. Maybe it had something to do
with the allegations of child molesting. Talking to doctors could be touchy
though. That doctor/patient privilege thing was a pain in the ass. Even with a
warrant, they often refused to co-operate and Titus didn’t have a warrant or
the probable cause to get one. All he had was his suspicions and those of Jennie’s
teachers. His cell phone rang and Detective Baltimore answered to the sound of
Captain Kelly’s low rumbling impatient voice.

“Detective, where the hell are you?
Didn’t Woo tell you we wanted you over here with us?”

“Yeah, but I figured you guys could
handle that yourselves. I’m over at the Cozen’s house, checking the scene for
more clues.”

“Well, Malcolm just left us another
clue. A bodybuilder just got his throat slashed about two hours ago in broad
daylight in front of a dozen witnesses and guess who did it? I need you down
here now. It’s the Atlas Gym on Walnut Street.”

“Shit! Alright, I’m on my way.”

Titus was disappointed that he had to leave
before he could follow up with the marriage counselor or the Cozen’s physician
or their babysitter or pediatrician. He felt certain that one of them would
confirm the story about Reed and his daughter and he was not looking forward to
facing the media without a suspect in custody. He locked up the house and
jumped back into the Mercedes, instantly regretting having brought it instead
of the Mustang. When the other cops saw him behind the wheel of this $90,000
dollar rich boy’s toy, he knew they would instantly distrust him and the ones
who already distrusted him would hate him. The reporters would be all over him.
He could almost see the full color picture of him cruising up to the crime
scene in his Mercedes under the headline: “Rich Boy Cop Fails to Catch Killer”
or “Another Killed, Playboy Cop On Cruise Control.” Titus groaned and reached
into his glove compartment for the Advil. He washed it down with tepid, day-old
Evian and chewed on a Rolaids. He hit the Roosevelt Expressway at sixty miles
an hour heading toward Center City and more headache.

Detective Baltimore’s stomach was
twisting in knots. His head started to pound before the Advil could kick in.
His day had taken a very bad turn. Malcolm had left another body, in broad
daylight, in front of a dozen witnesses, with half the city’s police force on a
full-scale manhunt for him. Worse yet, Baltimore promised the city of
Philadelphia, on live television, that he would have him in custody by today.
They were going to chew him up and spit him out. Baltimore let out another loud
moan, popped another Advil and hit the accelerator.

“Fools rush in . . .” he thought and chewed
another Rolaids.

When Baltimore arrived at The Atlas Gym, he
almost believed he had a chance of slipping in before the reporters noticed
him. The Mercedes slid smoothly down the normally serene one-way street,
narrowly inching past the news vans parked haphazardly along the street,
half-on and half-off the sidewalk, with their gaudy satellite dishes protruding
from the roof. Baltimore felt like giving them all parking tickets. For a
moment, he looked away from the pandemonium in front of the Atlas and studied
the architecture of the surrounding buildings. Two hundred-year-old colonials
that had been restored to near original or better than original condition,
lined the street in peaceful harmony. Many of them had been turned into stores
and one of them was even a theater. This was Detective Baltimore’s favorite
part of town, next to Chestnut Hill of course, and perhaps Northern Liberties.
Today, however, he was not at all happy to be there.

Titus was only a few storefronts
away from the crime scene, looking for a place to park. The reporters hadn’t
spotted him yet. He knew what he looked liked driving up in a vehicle that no
police detective should be able to afford, and he had to struggle to keep his
guilt from showing in his expression. The reporters had lain siege around a
thoroughly harassed-looking Captain Kelly, assaulting him with microphones and
TV cameras like a pack of hyenas ringing in prey. Almost no one seemed to
notice the Mercedes slide into the no parking zone across the street. Titus
started to feel a little better, but then, as soon as he got out of the car,
the hyenas came to feed.

“Detective! Detective Baltimore! You
said you would have the killer in custody by now. Have you apprehended a
suspect?”

“No. I . . .”

“Detective do you have any leads on
the whereabouts of Malcolm Davis?”

“No, but . . .”

“How could he walk right into a
public establishment in Center City, murder someone in broad daylight, and get away when the police are supposed to be
conducting a manhunt for him?”

“I can’t answer that right now, but I
assure you we are doing everything in our power . . .”

“Can you guarantee the citizens of
this city that one of them won’t be his next victim?”

“As I said, the Philadelphia Police
Department is doing everything we can to bring this killer to justice and
fulfill our duty to the citizens of this town to keep them safe. This man will
be caught.”

“And if he isn’t? Are you going to
patrol the whole town in that Mercedes to make sure he doesn’t murder another
family?”

The hairs on Baltimore’s neck raised
and his eyes shot daggers at the young reporter who had so brazenly attacked
him, some punk from one of the local weeklies. A nobody. But now, Titus was in
front of TV cameras, in front of his shiny new Mercedes sport convertible with
that searing question still hanging in the air like the caustic stench of an
overcooked meal. Detective Baltimore gritted his teeth and leaned forward into the
reporter’s face, glaring at him with murder in his eyes.

“No comment,” he hissed.

The young news hound recoiled and
shrank back into the crowd. Detective Baltimore shoved his way through the
hyenas to get to Captain Kelly’s side. They began their chant of “No comment”
in unison, a mantra to ward off the ghouls that came to feast on the remains of
the dead, as the detectives made their way back into the gym. They slid under
the police tape and past the five officers who had their hands full holding back
the crowd of eager spectators. The ME was already on the scene making his
preliminary examination of the body, knees splashing around in the victim’s
blood as he knelt over the body.

“Who is this guy? Do we have an ID on
him yet?” Titus asked.

“Yes. He had a wallet in his sweat
pants. His name’s Michael Lipshutz. He owns a liquor store around the corner. A
lot of these guys knew him. I’ve stopped through that store once or twice
myself on the way home from a long day of the dead.”

“What can you tell us right now?”
James asked

Doctor Medoff was a fastidious old
gentleman who had been with the city morgue since computers were the size of
Ford trucks, but he had changed well with the
times and was quite good at what he did. He was always petitioning the city fathers
for more money, to upgrade the city’s woefully outdated forensic equipment.
Sometimes, he even managed to squeeze a nickel or two out of the budget.

“Well, it’s exactly what it looks
like. The victim’s carotid artery was severed in one stroke that also severed
the jugular and sliced clean through his esophagus as well. My guess is he
stabbed the knife in like this . . . .” Dr. Medoff made a hooking gesture
towards the Captain’s throat. “Then grabbed the hilt of the blade with both
hands and tore it across his throat. That would explain why the wound is so
deep. He would have had to be tremendously powerful to slash clean through the
neck in one stroke using only one hand. Hmmm?”

“What is it, Doctor?”

“You know, when I was in the marines
recon unit, this is how they taught us to cut a throat. Stab the knife in deep
and then pull it across with both hands. Most people would just slash the knife
across the throat. They wouldn’t stab it in first. This guy may have had some
military training.”

“Not by our records.”

“There are all kinds of ways to get
military training off the record.”

“You mean a merc school? You mean
this guy might be some kind of trained mercenary? An assassin or terrorist or
something? Fuckin’ great!”