Pure Hate (13 page)

Mrs. Davis’s strong defiant face
began to crack, first with the trembling of her bottom lip, then with the tears
that began to slowly weep from the corners of her eyes and slide along her
pronounced cheekbones.

“Honestly detective, I’m sorry to
admit it, but I’m not surprised by any of this.”

“May we come in?” James placed a hand
gently on Mrs. Davis’ shoulder and guided her back into the house.

The living room was small, paneled
with fake wood that was starting to peel away from the sheetrock and sparsely
furnished with an old green leather lounge chair and ottoman, an eggshell white
sectional sofa, darkened in spots by sweat and dirt, and a natural pine coffee
table. The centerpiece of the room was an ancient Magnavox color TV set with
the knobs missing. A pair of pliers sat atop the set, presumably to change the
channels. The rug was a bizarre burnt orange that was gnarled, matted, and
nearly bald, like the fur of a dog with a serious case of mange. The first
thing James noticed was the lack of dust.

For such an old house with old
rundown furniture, it was impossibly clean. Even the old Magnavox was free of
dust and seemed to shine as if it had just been waxed. Titus instinctively
looked at the old woman’s hands and noticed that they looked raw and pinkish.
From scrubbing, he assumed. Obsessive-compulsive behavior. He wondered if this
behavior began before or after she found out her son was a murderer.

“Tell us, Mrs. Davis, why aren’t you
surprised by Malcolm’s . . . uh . . . outburst?”

“You can call me Wynona. No one calls
me Mrs. Davis except my supervisors at work and I hate those arrogant little
peckerwoods.” She didn’t even acknowledge the “peckerwood” that sat
uncomfortably on the other end of the sofa. James couldn’t help the little
smile that crept onto his face. He wondered if Baltimore still wanted to be the
one to ask the questions.

“Okay, Wynona, tell us about
Malcolm.”

Wynona took a long, deep breath and
rubbed the back of one dry hand across her forehead. When she spoke, her voice
was strong and steady, and all the tears had left her eyes. She was once again
the strong, poverty-hardened woman that greeted them at the door.

“Malcolm’s had a hard life. Jerome,
his step-dad, used to beat him and put him through these military exercises.”

“Military exercises?”

“Yeah, he wanted him to be tough in
case there was another war. See, Jerome was a Vietnam vet.”

Detective Baltimore instantly thought
of Dr. Medoff’s comment about the man who’d killed the bodybuilder having some
military training. He whispered to Detective James to ask Wynona about it.

“What went on during these
exercises?”

“Mostly just calisthenics. Lots of
push-ups and jumping jacks, but sometimes he would teach him hand-to-hand
combat stuff, teach him how to throw knives and even to shoot guns. Sometimes
Jerome would get a little carried away and beat Malcolm up pretty bad. He said
it would make him tough. They would stick fight full contact and Malcolm would
come in the house bleeding with lumps and bruises all over him and Jerome
wouldn’t even let me take him to the hospital. Once he even stabbed him.”

“Stabbed him?”

“He didn’t mean to. They were doing
some kind of knife fighting drills and it got carried away. Malcolm got stabbed
in the shoulder. Had to have thirteen stitches, but Jerome had him back out
there the next day. Tore open all the stitches and Malcolm had to go right back
to the hospital.”

Titus and James looked at each other
at the mention of knife fighting. The pieces were all coming together. Some
people might be born bad, but most are made.

“How did Malcolm feel about his step-dad?
Did he resent him?”

“Oh no, Malcolm loved Jerome. They
were inseparable. Until . . .”

“Until?”

“Well, we never told Malcolm that
Jerome wasn’t his real dad and when Malcolm was about eleven he found out. It
devastated him. All of a sudden he just seemed to withdraw. He would sit at the
dinner table and stare at Jerome. Some of the most hateful stares you ever saw.
They still wrestled and stuff in the backyard, but it didn’t look very friendly
anymore. Malcolm was getting bigger and Jerome was getting older. Sometimes
Jerome would come in the house as beat up and bloody as Malcolm. I tried to
tell myself it was just normal male competitiveness, but those looks Malcolm
would give him. Then Malcolm started trying to kill Jerome.”

Both detectives lurched forward at
the same time and stared at Wynona, trying to make sure they’d really heard
what they thought they had.

“Malcolm tried to kill your husband?”

“Oh, he ain’t my husband no more. He
ran off one night, couldn’t take it. He was scared of Malcolm. He made Malcolm
into some kinda psycho with all that Vietnam shit and then he ran off and left
me to deal with it. One night Malcolm crept in the room with one of those sawed
off broomsticks they used to fight with and tried to beat Jerome to death.
Jerome had to knock Malcolm out to get him to stop. The next night, Malcolm
came at him with a knife. Cut him up pretty bad before Jerome managed to get
the knife away from him. Jerome was about to turn the knife on Malcolm, but I
threw myself between them to break it up. That’s when Jerome turned around and
walked out the door. He never came back.”

“And that’s why you think Malcolm’s
guilty?”

“Not just because of that. Because of
the fire.”

“Malcolm tried to burn down your
house?”

“Not this house, the old folks home
over on Johnson Street. The one that
used
to be over on Johnson Street.
I can’t prove it, but I just know it. The day before it happened, two staff
members from the old folks home called the police on Malcolm, accusing him of
sneaking onto their property and peeping in at the old ladies when they were
dressing. They said he exposed himself to one of them. When the cops picked him
up and I had to go down to the station to get him, I was so embarrassed. I was
absolutely furious! When we got home I took off my belt and tried to beat him
half to death.

“See, I was a single mother now,
dealing with the responsibilities of both mother and father and that meant
being the disciplinarian. It was ridiculous really. I mean after all the stuff
Jerome did to him. What the hell was my scrawny little ass going to do? But
Malcolm seemed to take that beating really hard. He cried like I never remember
seeing him cry. I couldn’t take it. I stopped and hugged him to me and promised
him that we would get him help. He kept saying he was sorry over and over. I
told him that I loved him and everything would be all right.

“The next day the old folk’s home was
burned to the ground. The Fire Marshall said it was arson. Someone had thrown a
Molotov cocktail through one of the windows. Five people died, including two of
the women that Malcolm was accused of harassing. The cops questioned Malcolm.
He denied everything and the whole thing just kind of went away. But I knew
what he’d done, just like I know what he’s doing now.”

James asked Mrs. Davis more about
Malcolm’s childhood and learned that he had wet the bed until age twelve, a
humiliation for which he was badly beaten by his step-dad. He had been caught
mutilating cats in the basement. Malcolm said he was interrogating them. He was
beaten for that, too. In school, his freakish size and poor hygiene made him a
target for the other kids to pick on until he, in his mother’s words, “turned
mean.” Right after he chased off Jerome, he put a stop to the teasing by
breaking the school bully’s leg. Malcolm became the new school bully.

The two detectives thanked Mrs. Davis
for her time and left quietly. They were no closer to finding Malcolm, but they
were a lot closer to understanding him. They sat silently, absorbed in their
own little worlds, processing all that they’d heard as they drove out to the
Northeast to question Reed.

“Arson, bed-wetting, torturing
animals—this guy has all the typical warning signs of the classic serial
killer.” Detective Baltimore muttered, talking more to himself than to his
partner.

“You know, I still can’t believe that
this is a black guy doing all these murders. I would’ve never imagined the
Family Man was black. Even the FBI profile said we’d be looking for a middle-class
white guy.”

“Yeah, the fact that he targets white
families is what threw them off. Serial killers usually stay within their own
race. But Malcolm has demonstrated a lot of atypical behavior. The killing of
both men and women is unusual. Though that could be attributed to bisexuality.
The killing of both adults and young children is highly unusual . . .”

“But aren’t most serial killers
white? I never heard of a black serial killer before. I know it sounds
prejudiced, but I always associate black people with crimes of profit or crimes
of passion. Drug dealers shooting each other over turf. Some kid shooting
another kid for stepping on his sneakers or dissin’ his momma or lookin’ too
hard at his girl. No offense, but when I think of sick shit like this, I think
of white folks. I mean, a black guy might rape a woman and then kill her, but I
thought only a white guy would kill a woman and
then
rape her. And then
chop her up into little pieces, eat parts of her, stick the rest of her in the
freezer and talk to it. I thought you sick bastards had the monopoly on that
kind of crazy.”

“That’s some pretty racist shit,
James. Wayne Williams, the Atlanta child murderer was black.”

“Yeah, if you believe he did it.
Look, I know that it’s fucked up to think like that, but I’m a victim of that
black liberal mentality that says that minorities who commit crimes do so
because they are underprivileged, undereducated, oppressed, and deprived. Evil,
I mean pure evil, for me always wore a white face. Charles Manson, Ted Bundy,
Jeffrey Dahlmer, Adolph Hitler. I mean, even knowing that Malcolm was black, I
still half expected Mrs. Davis to come to the door and be this old white lady
with a bible in one hand, a cat o’ nine tails in the other and a big
confederate flag on the wall over the mantel, married to some leering pedophile
with a history of child and spousal abuse, maybe a few sex offenses thrown in
as well. That would’ve made sense to me. ”

“The same factors that turn Caucasians
into these type of monsters can do the same to black people. There are fewer
black serial killers in America because there are fewer black people in
America. Actually, black people are only 20 percent of the population, but make
up nearly 30 percent of all serial killers in America. So, a higher percentage
of blacks become serial killers than whites even though there are less of them.

“Malcolm was a very abused, very
fucked-up kid who grew up to become a very fucked up man. His mother didn’t
mention it, but I suspect that he was probably sexually abused as a child as
well. White people don’t hold the monopoly on child molestation.”

James nodded.

“I’ve never heard of a black serial
killer on the level of John Wayne Gacy or Ted Bundy though. Not someone killing
thirty or forty people, carving them up, and eating them. I’ve never heard of
that. The most famous, most prolific serial killers have all been white. I just
can’t see a black guy acting like this. I know it’s fucked up for me to hold
that stereotype. In fact, I’m admitting it’s a personal prejudice, one I
definitely need to work on, but it is at least an understandable, if not
justified one."

Baltimore’s jaw dropped open. He
shook his head and blinked several times.

“What? Are you telling me you think
there is actually such a thing as justifiable bigotry? Really, James?”

“No, that’s not what I’m saying. All
I’m saying is that if you’re on the job long enough you start to notice certain
patterns in crimes. You start to put a certain look and, yeah, a certain color
to certain crimes. You can’t help it. It’s just human nature. You bust a meth
lab you’re pretty sure the perp will be white. A crack house . . . black or
Latino. Someone shoots a guy outside a nightclub, you think black guy. Someone
dices up a family, tell me you don’t picture a white guy? Tell me that isn’t
half the reason you’re so convinced Reed Cozen had something to do with the
murders? If Malcolm was white would you be so convinced he must’ve had an
accomplice? Shit, prejudice is just an occupational hazard. At least I’m man enough
to cop to it.”

“Yeah, maybe you’re right. Maybe my
feeling about Reed is really based on race and not the fact that he just smells
so fucking guilty I could choke on the stench. But let me tell you, Malcolm is
probably the worst serial killer I’ve ever heard of. He’s the most sadistic
sonuvabitch I’ve ever seen—white or black.”

“Well, you know how the saying goes,
black folks have to be twice as good to be just as good. Maybe Malcolm’s just
making a statement for equal opportunity,” James snickered.

Titus knew James was just trying to
fuck with his head and get him pissed off. So, he decided to ignore his little
remark.

“Malcolm is the archetypal sexual
sociopath no different from Bundy or Dahlmer except he’s bigger and blacker,
and I’m gonna be the one who puts his big black ass on death row. And if Mr.
Cozen is guilty, too, he’ll be getting his hotshot ten minutes after Malcolm.”

They drove along in a rigid silence
for another ten minutes before James spoke again.

“Okay, so explain those damn silver
fangs to me. What the fuck is up with that?”

Detective Baltimore grinned
mischievously.

“Oh, that. I just thought it was a
black thang.”

James turned halfway around in his
seat to face Baltimore and attempted his hardest interrogation room stare, the
“crazy nigger” stare that was known to turn hardened career criminals into
whining stool pigeons. But the ill-timed intervention of his sense of humor
instead caused him to chuckle and shake his head.