Pure Hate (12 page)

“Alright, what leads do we have so
far?” Titus tried to sound gung-ho. They had just finished talking to the ME
and watching the crime scene techs catalogue every possible scrap of evidence.
The body was on its way downtown and they were on their way to Malcolm’s
mother’s house. They made a quick stop to drop off Baltimore’s Mercedes at the
station. Baltimore was thinking what sweet revenge it would’ve been to drive
the Mercedes into G-town and then explain to his dad how crack addicts had
stolen it.

“Honestly, I ain’t got shit. We know who the
motherfucker is. We know where every damn member of his family lives. We have
pictures of him all over the place and enough sightings to fill an entire
filing cabinet. The whole city’s been chasing down leads all day and not one of
them has turned into anything.” James said.

“Well, even though it looks like Reed was telling
the truth about his look-alike, I still think there’s more going on that he
ain’t telling us. I think if we squeezed him we might even find out where
Malcolm is hiding.”

James looked at Baltimore with hard
serious eyes, recognizing in him the beginnings of a potentially hazardous
obsession, hazardous to their case.

“Look, Titus. That might be possible, but I doubt
it. I think this is all about Malcolm. Period. Mr. Cozen just probably feels
guilty for fuckin’ Malcolm over when they were kids. He told me he thinks that
his betrayal might be what pushed Malcolm over the edge. He feels like maybe he
brought all this down on himself and his family. Forget about him. Tell me
about Malcolm. I want to know what insights your Ph.D. in psychology has given
you on this type of psychotic.”

“Malcolm’s not a psychotic. He’s a sociopath, an
anti-social personality type. See, the rest of us have developed altruistic
emotions that help us get along in society together, emotions like sympathy,
empathy, compassion. Malcolm doesn’t have these. He’s extremely paranoid, a ‘the
world is out to get me’ type, but he isn’t crazy. There are no voices in his
head telling him to kill. He knows the difference between right and wrong, but
he justifies doing wrong, rationalizes his acts. That’s all Reed Cozen is for
him. A justification to do all the evil shit he’s probably been dreaming about
doing since long before he ever met Reed. He probably feels about as much
connection with the human race as a wolf feels with sheep.”

James nodded his head slowly, digesting
everything Baltimore said.

“Whatever happened to that profile we
got from the FBI on the Family Man?”

“I still have it, but I think we can pretty much
discount it. They said he would be a white male between twenty-five and thirty-five
and Malcolm is black. They said he would drive a van or a pick-up truck with a
shell on it. Malcolm drives an Impala. They said he would be a reclusive,
anti-social nerd with homosexual tendencies who has trouble meeting women and
may even fear them. Malcolm definitely does not fear women, regardless of his
tendencies, and he may be anti-social but he is not reclusive. They said he
would probably live out in the suburbs and Malcolm definitely does not . . .”

“Okay, okay so they were wrong, but that profile
was done before we knew all the cases were connected. If they knew about the
Pine Street killings and the Chaperone killings maybe that might change the
profile.”

“I’m certain it would. The Pine Street slashings
would indicate a very confident person, out-going, who can easily get people to
trust him because the victims were lured away from public places without anyone
noticing anything suspicious, and then murdered in their homes. The repeated
stabbing would indicate sexual frustration and rage, perhaps even a hatred of
homosexuals, an attempt to deny those tendencies within himself. The fact that
the men were all young and healthy would lead us to assume we were dealing with
someone very strong and very confident in his strength. See, the men were not
ambushed and rendered unconscious, as one would expect.

“Most serial killers are cowards at
heart. They don’t want victims who can fight back. They want the killings clean
and easy. But these victims were not knocked out, not drugged, not tied up.
They were struggling the whole time, but not one of them survived. This man was
supremely confident and extremely sadistic. He wanted them to see it coming, to
feel his power. The fact that they all look alike we know is because they were
meant to symbolize Reed. He was killing Reed over and over again. The fact that
they were all gay men may tell us something about his feelings toward Reed. He
probably has conflicting feelings about Reed, kind of a love-hate thing. Most
likely, there’s some sexual ambiguity there as well.”

“That’s good. Keep going. What about
the Chaperone killings? What does that tell us about him?”

“The Chaperone killings add a new
element, the women. This is when the violence first escalates to include
partial dismemberment and rape. He is feeling confident now with his prowess as
a killer, but he’s also frustrated. The fantasy isn’t living up to the reality.
He needs more. So he goes after couples. Probably still over compensating for
possible gay tendencies. He rapes to feel potent. To feel like a man. But he
gets no real sexual gratification out of the intercourse itself. It’s their
fear, their pain, their humiliation, that gets him off. He uses his penis as
another weapon. Another way of inflicting pain.

For him, it is interchangeable with
his knife. He is a true sadist. He needs to feel in control of his victims. I’m
sure he makes the men watch. That’s another way of demonstrating his power and
their powerlessness. It’s all about control. He wants God-like power over his
victim’s lives. The removal of their hearts is a way to relive the experience.
It is a souvenir, a memento of the experience. He uses it to masturbate, to
sustain him between victims. Plus, with all the symbolism in our culture
involving the heart, by taking the women’s hearts he could be trying to steal
back the love Reed stole from him. ”

“And now, the Family Man.”

“This is more difficult. We see the
same pattern re-emerge. The same male figures again, the overkill stabbing, the
rape, the souvenir taking, the same themes of dominance and control. Even the
cannibalism is a predictable escalation in the pattern. It must be the greatest
high imaginable to literally consume his victims, the ultimate statement of
dominance and control. This escalation in violence is consistent with the idea
I first put out about him being on a degenerative cycle.”

“I’m still not sold on that idea.”

“Well, look at it. He’s escalated the
violence, the number of victims. He’s killing more frequently. Even his choice
of victims suggests he’s out of control. He’s not killing strangers anymore.
He’s killing people he knows, people close to him, Reed Cozen’s family, Renee’
Volare’s family, Paul Cooper. Then he lashes out and murders a guy in broad
daylight, in front of dozens of witnesses. He’s in self-destruct mode. He’s
making mistakes. He’s got half the cops in the city after him now. This is not
the same careful, meticulous killer who did the first homicides. Now, he’s
completely lost the plot.”

James nodded. “Yeah, but up until
this most recent spree, he was still careful. He may have escalated the number
of victims and the violence, but it still seemed controlled. It still seemed to
be following some kind of pattern. Even in the middle of that frenzy of
violence, he still took the time to clean up the crime scene, even to the point
of vacuuming up all the hair and fiber, and using condoms during the rape. I
don’t see an out of control guy stopping to put on a condom. The Cozen murders
were the first time he left any kind of evidence at all. That was the first
time he seemed to lose control. I mean, all of a sudden we have a messy crime
scene full of physical evidence. Before that, nothing. I mean, even the way he
killed the kids seems wrong somehow. It seems out of character, like there
must’ve been some reason for it that we’re just not getting.”

“You’re right. The kids don’t fit. It
looks like they were killed almost as an afterthought. The way they are killed
is almost merciful compared to what he did to the parents. He discarded the
bodies face down, sometimes even covered them up. That usually indicates guilt
or remorse. He even brought along a gun and shot several of the children to
further distance himself from their deaths. None of the sadism is displayed
toward the kids. They are simply executed as a matter of course.”

“So, why does he kill them at all if
he doesn’t get off on it? I mean, all that bullshit about Reed aside, these
freaks kill because it gets them off. But if the children don’t do it for him,
why not just stick to couples? Why does he go after the families?”

“It’s as if he finds it a distasteful
but necessary chore. Like he has some purpose or cause that includes the kids
somehow. Reed may not have made him this way, but that betrayal was definitely
the stressor that sent him off on his murder spree. He’s probably been
fantasizing about these killings for years, but just needed a push, something
to get him started. Reed did that. Now he’s acting out his fantasies and Reed
is the star. My God! It can’t be! What if . . . ? No.”

“What is it?”

“I’m not sure. I just have this
hunch. I think I may know why he goes after families. It all goes back to the
fantasy and Reed. It’s almost too sick. I don’t know. I’m probably wrong.”

“Tell me. What are you thinking?”

“Look can you do me a favor and
interview Malcolm’s mother? I need to talk to Reed again.”

“I’m going with you. I think we need
to do this together. Besides, I have some questions of my own. Let’s talk to
his mother since we’re damn near there anyway and then we’ll both head over to
Reed’s house. He got out of the hospital today, so he should be home resting.”

The two detectives drove silently
through the bizarre clash of classes that was Germantown. Within eight blocks
they’d passed through what looked like the suburbs into a war-zone then into a
lush affluent landscape of Colonial Mansions and manicured lawns and back into
the urban asylum. They brought the white unmarked police cruiser to rest in
front of a narrow, three-story red brick row home adjoined on each side by its
twin. About half-a-dozen young kids between the ages of nine and twelve were chasing
each other up and down the street, hurling what appeared to be wet newspapers
with deadly accuracy at one another’s heads. The loud “Thwap!” of wet paper
hitting flesh echoed loudly off the domino-like houses as one papier-mâché
projectile after another found its mark.

Titus leapt from the car and was
about to pound on Mrs. Davis’ door like the entire SWAT team had come calling. James
grabbed his arm and eased him back.

“Take it easy. See that car over
there? Detectives Vargas and Jones have been staking this place out for days
and I can assure you, Malcolm ain’t in there. And if he shows up, they’ve both
got our backs. What we don’t want to do is charge in there like the goddamned
Gestapo and put this woman on the defensive. You sit back and take notes and
try to figure out how what she tells us fits into the profile. I’ll ask the
questions. If you have a question, just whisper it to me and I’ll ask.”

“Why the hell do you get to ask all
the questions?”

James gave Titus a long look of
irritation like the ones kids give to their little brothers or sisters when
they say something embarrassingly stupid, the look little Jennie Cozen had
often given her brother Mark.

“You’ve got the Ph.D., bright boy.
You figure it out.”

James shook his head in exasperation
and knocked on the door. A surprisingly young looking black woman opened the
door and greeted the two detectives with a sullen and baleful glare. She wore a
tattered red terry cloth robe that was missing buttons and did little to hide
the sensuous swell of her cinnamon brown breasts or the long, smooth, subtly
muscular legs that seemed to grow out of the bottom of the robe and go on
forever or the high round curve of her buttocks. Her face bore the hard lines
of a hard life and her wild wooly hair was lightly speckled with gray. Still,
she was far from the senescent matron they were expecting. James sized her up
within seconds and decided, without hesitation, that she was beautiful and
that, if they’d met under different circumstances, he would have already
propositioned her. Baltimore thought she was probably a very stunning woman
years ago, but, in his eyes, age and a hard life had weathered away her beauty
even if her body had survived the storm remarkably well. Though he, too,
acknowledged that if given the chance he would probably still do her.

“What?”

“I’m Detective James Bryant and this
is Detective Titus Baltimore of the Philadelphia Police Department Homicide
Division . . .”

“And?” Mrs. Davis rolled her eyes and
tapped her foot impatiently, then focused an accusatory glare at Detective
Baltimore. He tried to return the look, but failed miserably and felt it. She
smirked scornfully at his failure.

“You know why we’re here. Just answer
a few questions for us and we’ll be gone.”

“I have no idea where my son is.”

“I’m sure you do not. I want to ask
you some questions about his childhood.”

“If you know he ain’t here, why are
those cops parked over there all day and night? Why are there more cops
following me every time I leave the house?!”

“It’s for your own protection.”

“I’m his mama! Malcolm would never
hurt me!”

“Ma’am, I know this might be hard for
you to accept, but Malcolm is out of control and is seriously in need of help.
I don’t think you or I really know what he might do in this state. I’m sure you
believe you know your son. No parent wants to admit that they don’t really know
everything about their own children. But did you know that Malcolm would murder
that man’s family or that guy in the gym or any of the other people he’s
suspected of harming?”