Pure Hate (24 page)

“Big Bird! Why don’t you make yourself useful and
send a couple cars over to pick up Reed.”

The Lieutenant started across the room toward James.
He had had enough. The lap dog had decided to bite.

James smiled as the tall lanky Chinese cop strode
toward him and the other police officers cleared a path for him. He raised his
balled fists and curled his body into a tight defensive stance.

“Bring it, Big Bird.” He growled.

“Stop it! Lieutenant! Detective! Back off!”

It was the first time anyone could remember
actually hearing the Captain yell.

“Woo, go ahead and get somebody over to pick up
Reed Cozen. James get the fuck out of my precinct or your ass is on
suspension!”

“For what?!”

Captain Kelly snarled in reply. James left.

Agent Malcovich chased after him. He caught him on the stairs.

“Detective Bryant! Detective Bryant!”

“What?” It sounded more like a threat than a
question.

“I’m supposed to ride with you.”

“I’m off the case.”

“You’re what?”

“Captain took me off the case. You’re gonna have
to find another driver.”

“What about Malcolm? He’s going to your house.
He’s coming after you. What are you gonna do?”

The detective smirked. Then he grinned. Then his
eyes went flat and lifeless, hard like the smooth surface of a river rock. The
grin died from his face like a heart monitor flat lining. It was like
witnessing a death.

“I’m going home.”

Reed didn’t know what to do when he
heard the first sirens shred the night air. He couldn’t remember how long he’d
been sitting on Rick’s couch, listening to the voices of his dead wife and dead
children raking his brain, no longer a comfort but a mind-rending cacophony,
watching headlights from passing cars travel past the living room window. In
between reality lapses where he found himself arguing back at the voices,
telling them to be patient, that their deaths would be avenged, he toyed with
the gun in his lap. He was no longer certain that Malcolm’s death would stop
the voices and, despite the turmoil they caused in his head, he wasn’t sure he
wanted to lose them. He would be very alone without them.

Reed had never been this close to his
family when they were alive. He had never heard them so clearly. The characters
in his novels had been more real to him. They had received most of his
attention, attention stolen away from his family. Now, his family had his full
attention and if their voices were suddenly gone, his loss would be complete.
Perhaps killing himself now and joining them was the better answer, he thought.

The voices screamed out in protest.

Come to us, Daddy! But kill the bad man first.
Make him pay, Daddy! Make him pay and then you can come to us!

But Reed wanted to join his family now. He missed
them more every second and as lost as he knew he’d feel without their voices in
his head, it killed him to hear their pain, to hear their rage. He wanted to
hear them laugh again, and he knew that couldn’t happen until Malcolm was dead.

The sirens were closer now and there were a lot
of them. There was no longer any doubt that they were coming to Rick’s house.
Reed abandoned his post on the couch and slipped out the back door into the
miniscule yard with its ill-kept lawn and bald patches, like a human scalp
during the latter stages of chemotherapy. His body felt weak and numb as he
scrambled over the weather-torn wooden fence that ringed in the yard. The need
for sleep was pressing on him. He staggered and swayed down the alley, away
from the wail of the sirens, but the voices would not let him.

Not yet, Daddy. Not yet.

The alleys became a maze and Reed had no idea
where he was when he finally emerged onto the street after twenty minutes of
climbing fences and wandering alleys. He looked up and spotted Willard Rouse’s
two phallic monoliths and began heading in their direction, toward Broad Street
and the subway.

Reed had neglected to ask Natasha where the
detective lived. He knew Malcolm was going there, but he didn’t know where
“there” was. Malcolm was out there killing and Reed didn’t know how to get to
him. He sat on the subway, traveling toward Germantown with no idea how he
would locate James’s home. His eyes closed and he had nearly fallen asleep when
he heard a staticky radio voice mention Malcolm’s name. His eyes snapped open
and he saw that there were two police officers standing above the subway bench
where he had been slumped, nearly asleep. They didn’t seem to be paying him any
attention. They were eyeing a group of black teenagers at the end of the subway
car who didn’t seem to be doing anything particularly illegal. Their radios
continued to squawk and, through the police jargon, Reed could make out enough
to know that half the cops in the city where converging on an address in Mount
Airy.

Malcolm. It had to be where Malcolm
was headed. Reed almost blew it and shot the two cops on the train. The police
officers had suddenly shifted their attention to him as he rose from his seat
to exit the subway, and Reed’s hand gripped the Glock, clicking the safety off
and aiming it toward them beneath his jacket. But their attention returned to
the group of teenagers, and Reed simply slipped past them and out the door, his
nerves vibrating beneath his skin. Nervous perspiration rained down his
forehead, but the cops hadn’t noticed.

Reed got off the subway at Broad and
Erie and caught the H bus to Mount Airy. The bus driver eyed Reed suspiciously
as he boarded, but Reed didn’t care. He would not be an obstacle. The transfer
was so soaked with sweat when he handed it to the driver that the man almost
handed it back.

The rocking and swaying of the bus as it
navigated the minefield of potholes began to lull him to sleep. He was so
tired.

Reed? You have to find him sweetheart. You
have to kill him. He hurt me Reed. He . . . he . . . raped me . . . and . . .

Reed snapped awake with the sound of his wife’s
voice still whispering in his ear like a lullaby.

You can do it, Reed. You have the gun. You can
put two bullets in that black bastard’s head and then I’ll be yours again.

“Yeah, I can do it.”

Reed fell back to sleep, nuzzled safe in the
memory of his wife’s warm embrace, her arms wrapped protectively around him and
her voice curling into his eardrum like cigarette smoke. The bus hit a pothole
and his head banged against the bus window. He continued to snore.

Reed woke up just as the bus pulled up two stops
past where he’d intended to get off. He dashed from the bus with his head
spinning from waking up too quickly and standing up too fast. He paused on the
sidewalk and stared into the darkness while he brought the vertigo under
control. Police cruisers whizzed past him, lights flashing, sirens silent. He
slowed his pace and followed.

Reed focused on what he had to do. Kill Malcolm.
Kill Malcolm’s friend. Kill the man he’d betrayed. Add insult to injury. Rip
open those old wounds and rub salty vinegar into them.

Jennie’s voice protested.
What the
fuck are you saying, Dad? He murdered us. He tortured Mom! He raped her! He
killed your family! He’s not your friend! He’s not even human! He’s a monster!
A vicious monster! KILL HIM, DADDY!

Another voice in his head countered. This one
sounded exactly like Malcolm.
You started it, Reed. You brought this shit
down. I return every injury, every injustice, tenfold. You knew this. You knew
this, but you hurt me anyway. You fucked Renee’! You fucked Natasha! You killed
your family, Reed! You brought this on them! You, Reed! You!

Reed screamed. He pressed his hands to his head
and screamed his throat raw. Lights went on and shocked, curious faces pressed
to windowpanes as he passed houses, shrieking his anguished wail. Tears rolled
freely down his face. Again, he wondered if perhaps he should simply turn the
gun on himself, but he missed his family and Reed knew they wouldn’t take him
back if he tried to join them in that way.

Malcolm’s every muscle was tense, poised for
violence, when he pulled up in front of the detective’s house. Rick was getting
on his nerves even silently in the front seat. His pathetic domesticity sapped
Rick of all the qualities that had allowed him to rank among Malcolm’s friends.
Malcolm could no longer count on Rick, and this realization increased his
feeling of isolation. Rick was now a pale mockery of what he’d been.

Now, the only person alive who
Malcolm still considered qualified to be his friend was Reed, and Reed had betrayed
him. That left Malcolm completely alone. He wanted to kill Rick for that, for
not being worthy. He wanted to kill everyone, to torture CC nice and slowly
while the detective watched. He wanted to see the look in the detective’s eyes
as he pulled his woman apart. Perhaps he would even let the detective live, let
him live with that sight forever seared into his mind, forever a scar on his
heart. Perhaps he would rip the detective apart, too.

“Bring the bitch,” Malcolm growled as he stepped
from the Jeep.

Rick seized a fistful of CC’s hair and dragged
her with him out of the Jeep.

The detective’s door caved in beneath Malcolm’s
foot. Malcolm wondered why a man who dealt with crime every day wouldn’t have a
steel door with locks and an alarm system, but James had neither.

Like many people, James had faith in
his gun. But guns didn’t fire themselves. To shoot an intruder, he had to be
home and James wasn’t.

Malcolm didn’t mind waiting. Perhaps
he could pass the time carving up Rick. Rick’s comparative passivity had
reached beyond the level of an irritation. It felt to Malcolm like betrayal. He
considered for a moment that it might have been good that love had been stolen
from him. Love made bitches of men.

He stared as Rick flopped to the
couch, still wrestling with CC even though the woman had long ago ceased to
struggle. It was then Malcolm saw the car pull up outside. A white Intrepid
with oversized cop mirrors on the sides. James’s car.

“Stay here.” Holding the shotgun in
one hand, he started to slip out a window at the side of the house. He would
catch the detective by surprise.

Rick climbed from the couch with his
fingers still entwined in CC’s hair, lifting her up with him. He turned around
to face the huge bay window, to see the show. He could see the detective now as
he climbed from his car.

“Him? That’s who you cheated on me
with? That old fat bastard?” Rick shrieked hoarsely in her ear, trying to yell
and whisper at the same time while he dragged her deeper into the house, away
from the front door, but still close enough to watch the detective die.

“James, run! It’s a trap!” CC
screamed, and then braced for the slap she knew would come from her husband.

James ducked, drawing his weapon as
he heard CC’s voice call out from the darkness where his front door had been.
He heard the sound of knuckles colliding with flesh and heard a soft whimper he
also recognized as CC’s. Malcolm would die for that.

James moved to the left of the
walkway, ducking down by the bushes, out of the sight line from the door, right
next to where Malcolm crouched with the shotgun.

James still could not see into the
house. He had no idea where Malcolm or CC were. He couldn’t start shooting in
there and risk hitting her. His breath was coming faster as he tried to figure
out his next move. The darkness over his right shoulder smiled silver like the
moonlight. Then the whole street turned red and white as a dozen police
cruisers converged on his home.

Malcolm had been about to press the
shotgun to the detective’s temple when he heard the squeal of tires as the
first police cruiser pulled up to the house followed by another and another and
still more. Malcolm slid back into the night, slipped away down the side of the
house into the maze of alleyways just as Reed had done across town hours
earlier. Rick would have to fend for himself. A few seconds after the first
police car slid into position, Malcolm was already gone.

Rick, however, was panicked. The detective wasn’t
dead and the street was filled with black and whites and he had no gun.

Where is Malcolm?

He had CC, but they had guns. Lots of
guns. A dozen laser sights crawled blindly across the room, searching for him
in the darkness. He watched twin beams of red light travel up his leg. He
pulled his leg behind CC . He could use her as a shield. They wouldn’t shoot
and risk hitting her. Even with the lasers, they couldn’t see in the dark.

When he saw the first officer turn
his spotlight toward the house his heart sank. He was fucked. Spotlights and
all the red dots previously wandering the floor gathered on Rick’s forehead
quickly, voraciously, gobbling the darkness up. He had no time to give himself
up. No voice bothered to call out for his surrender. He had no time to duck
behind CC. No time to ask for forgiveness before the first shot propelled
Rick’s brain from his skull. Five more shots followed and each removed a bit of
his skull. CC fell to the floor as Rick’s grasp slackened. When Rick finally
fell beside her, his head was simply gone from the nose up. What was left of
his brain flopped out of his shattered skull onto the carpet.

James rushed into the house when he
saw CC’s husband fall. He’d hoped that it was Malcolm who been taken down, but
he knew as soon as he saw the corpse that it wasn’t. Rick’s skin was far too
light. But at least they’d deprived Malcolm of an accomplice. He was running
out of friends to help him, running out of places to hide.

And at least he’d saved CC. That now
made three people who’d survived the Family Man. Perhaps Malcolm
was
slipping. Maybe they did have a chance of stopping him. James still had no idea
what Malcolm was really after, what all this killing was supposed to mean. This
was the first real lead they’d gotten, and Malcolm had somehow gotten away.

James spotted CC curled up next to
Rick’s corpse and gathered her into his arms.

“It’s okay, baby. No one will hurt
you now.”

“Malcolm is here! He’s here! He was
on his way out there to kill you!”

James looked
around in a panic. Malcolm was still close. Maybe they hadn’t missed him after
all. James turned to the other officers who were staring at him and the far too
familiar way that he held the witness.

“I want a net over this whole area, six blocks in
every direction! Nothing gets out without a top to bottom search. Rip
everything apart, but find this muthafucker! We just missed him! He’s out there
somewhere. That bastard was in my house!”

They all understood what that meant. He had gone
after one of them. If “armed and dangerous” didn’t say it loud enough, his
assault on a fellow cop’s home and loved one did. There would be no arrests
that night. They would shoot to kill.

They all turned away and started back
out the doorway as James kissed the victim/witness. Most of them didn’t know
that they’d just killed this woman’s husband, but somehow they knew what they
were seeing was not right.

James looked at his bullet-riddled living room
and felt all his anger drain away. What remained was fear. He felt as if he was
into something way out of his depth, about to be pulled completely under by a
riptide to where the sharks waited. The sharks with the silver fangs.

Agent Malcovich stepped into James’s house. It
was then that the detective realized that this was no longer his home. It was a
crime scene. Malcolm had taken away his sanctuary. Captain Kelly walked through
the door behind the FBI agent. When he saw James standing with the half-naked,
bruised CC in a desperate embrace, a stern look of disapproval and borderline
disgust twisted his face. James saw it and wanted to break the Captain’s, but
he wasn’t sure he could take him, comfort CC to the best of his abilities, and
keep his job. The EMTs came in and the issue was settled. James was reluctant
to let CC go and certainly not until he knew where Malcolm was headed.

“I’m going with her.”

“In a minute, James.” Captain Kelly said, pulling
James and CC apart as the EMTs removed her from James’s protective grasp. “I
need to talk to you first.”

James watched the EMTs begin their
work on CC, and felt his life slipping completely out of control. Malcolm was
killing him.

“James, why didn’t you take some units with you
to apprehend the suspect. If Malcovich hadn’t notified me that you were going
to try to take Malcolm in yourself, you could have gotten yourself and that
girl killed. And I thought I told you to ride with Malcovich?”

“That was when I was on the case. You took me off
it, remember? All I was doing was going home. I have the right to do that.”

“James, somehow this lunatic has set his sights
on you. That means I have to keep you where I can see you. It also means you’re
back on this case, but
with
Agent Malcovich. Everything you do, I want
him along with you. Your girlfriend is now under protective custody. I’ll put
her up at one of the hotels downtown and post someone at her door as soon as
she gets out of the hospital. If you want to get a hotel room, too, the
department will pick up the bill.” The Captain looked around the ruined living
room and sighed, “You obviously can’t stay here.”

“Thanks, but I’ll stay with CC tonight.”

“Afraid not. You want to stay on this case? You
can’t be fucking the witness.”

“You say ‘witness’ like you really think there
will be a trial. You and I both know this muthafucka won’t ever live to see the
inside of a courtroom.”

David Malcovich spoke up to change the subject.
Murdering suspects is not something to discuss out loud, even in a room full of
cops.

“Okay, so where do we look for him now?”

“Assuming we don’t catch him tonight, all we have
to do is find Cozen. Where Reed is, Malcolm will be.”

“Unless, of course, he’s switched targets.”
Malcovich said, staring emotionlessly at James, obviously wondering how to use
him as bait.

“No, Reed is still his primary target. I’m just
an obstacle he wants to remove.”

Detective Willis strolled in followed by Vargas,
who was now dressed in a sharkskin suit with no tie and his hair slicked back
like an Italian gangster.

“James, where did you say you were when the
shooting started?”

“I was crouched over there beside those bushes.”

Willis and Vargas gave each other a look.
Detective Willis’s huge Adam’s apple bobbed as his eyes slid sideways.

“Why? What?”

“We found two footprints on the other side of
those bushes. Size fifteen.”

James began to sweat. He fought to
control the tremor in his knees. He knew what the detectives were trying to
say. He wanted to run out of there before they finished, to just jump in the
back of the ambulance with CC and get away from all the madness.

“He was right next to you, man. If those units
hadn’t shown up . . .”

James didn’t say a word. He turned and walked out
of the room. He’d heard it, but he didn’t have to react to it. Agent Malcovich
followed as James headed toward the ambulance.

CC looked terrible. Her already limp hair was
thinning. Vivid purple bruises stood out on her face and she seemed smaller,
weaker, helpless. Her eyes were closed, but tears streamed from beneath her
eyelids. James wanted to comfort her, but he felt too responsible for her pain,
for her husband’s death, and for her own near death. He hadn’t earned the right
to comfort her. Malcovich was hovering nearby at a respectable distance
watching as the EMTs helped CC onto the gurney and into the ambulance. Only
after the ambulance sped off did he approach.

“Come on, Detective. We’ve got a killer to catch.
I need to look at the crime scene photos. I need to see all the files on the
Family Man.” Agent Malcovich said, as he climbed into the car beside James.

“Then I’ll drop you off at the station because
I’ve looked at enough pictures. I just want to catch this bastard. Besides,
everything that was relevant has already been sent to the bureau. If you didn’t
do your homework, you’ll have to catch up on your own time.” James didn’t even
look at Malcovich when he spoke. He pulled out of the parking lot, keeping his
eyes on the road, gripping the steering wheel so hard the skin on his knuckles
felt ready to rip, the muscles in his jaw fully flexed.

“There’re enough files on the Family Man to fill
two filing cabinets. I didn’t pack that many suitcases. I need to review the
files because there’s something I haven’t quite figured out.”

“Yeah, and what’s that?” James smirked.

“The Family Man was so organized, so calculating—a
stone cold sociopath, but ever since he’s been identified as Malcolm Davis,
he’s been reckless, disorganized, psychotic.”

James shook his head.

“No. You still don’t get it. Since he was
identified, since he went after Reed. The Cozen family was not the work of the
thrill killer that murdered for sexual gratification like those other killings.
He wasn’t the Family Man when he went after them. He was just Malcolm Davis and
it was personal. It’s been personal ever since. These aren’t signature killings
anymore. They’re crimes of passion. Now it’s all about revenge. What we have
now is not a serial killer with a predictable pattern. It’s a pissed off
muthafucka who knows how to kill, enjoys killing, and who’s out to kill Reed
and anyone else who gets in the way . . . including us.”

Agent Malcovich looked frightened for the first time. He
looked exactly how James felt.