Pure Hate (27 page)

Malcolm had changed cars again. He’d
found another Impala parked in an empty lot with a “For Sale” sign on it. The
ridiculously optimistic owner had tagged it with a twenty thousand dollar price
tag. If Malcolm had had the money, he might have actually bought it because it
was beautiful. A huge, eight cylinder, ’95 Super Sport with smoke tinted
windows, black leather interior, and a burgundy paint job so black it looked as
if it were bleeding oil and blood at the same time. The speedometer stopped at
160 miles per hour.

“Gangster!” Malcolm hissed as he ran
his hands over the dash. It was a compliment.

He tapped his foot on the gas,
revving the engine, marveling as the tachometer jumped from zero to eighty
every time he even touched the pedal. Malcolm popped the trunk on the Impala,
walked to the Mercedes, and lifted Natasha from the trunk. When her feet hit
the dirt, she wobbled on unsteady legs and nearly fell. She turned angry eyes
on Malcolm. Her chest heaved with each breath drawn between her clenched teeth.
He could see in her eyes that she wanted to fight. She’d no doubt been lying
back there gathering her courage, formulating a plan. Malcolm had no fear. He had
her and there was nothing she could do to get away.

“You want to fight? I’m going to hurt
you no matter what. Do you want the pain to start right now?”

He could see all the resolve drain
out of her. Her bottom lip quivered with emotion and her face cracked and
sprang tears.

“No, no, no, no, no. Please. Please!
Just let me go. Let me go!”

Malcolm wrapped one massive hand
around Natasha’s neck and dragged her to the Impala, tossing her headfirst into
the trunk with so much force that she nearly flipped head over heels. Malcolm
slammed the trunk lid down, almost catching her leg before she pulled it inside
with her. He could hear her muffled screams as he walked around and slipped
into the driver’s seat. He smiled, imagining hearing those screams in a more intimate
setting.

Malcolm pulled the Impala out of the
lot, jamming his foot down on the accelerator and whipping the steering wheel,
fishtailing the tremendous vehicle into a violent turn before speeding off down
the block with the 400cc engine growling like a dinosaur.

This car, he would keep.

Malcolm had one more risk to take, one more
message to send to the PPD before he could finish things between him and Reed.
He headed back down Eleventh Street, piloting the Impala through the bitter
night, cutting the tense evening air, heading back toward the police station
for another confrontation. He knew the detective would be in a panic to get to
CC. He’d have no idea how Malcolm had found the first safe house and would
figure that CC was also in danger.

When James leapt into the Intrepid
and raced off toward Washington Hospital, Malcolm was watching. In his rearview
mirror, City Hall receded. The statue of Ben Franklin shrank to the size of a
toy soldier. Ahead, the Spectrum arena grew to fill the windshield.

Reed was driving in circles and the voices in his
mind had multiplied. He could no longer recognize most of them. There was now a
great chorus, an ethereal choir of rage, howling for retribution. They were the
voices of all the people Malcolm had murdered, disembodied spirits because
Malcolm had slashed their bodies to gore-streaked ribbons. Now they possessed
Reed, haunting his thoughts. They had chosen him as their champion, their
avenger, and he was failing. Not only was Malcolm getting away, but he was
killing more people, adding more souls to the maddening choir screaming through
Reed’s head.

Kill him, Reed!

Kill that bastard, Daddy! Find him!
Find him and kill him! He hurt us Daddy!

He’s hurting people, Reed! You have
to stop him! Find him, Reed! Kill him, Reed!

There were dozens of them crying out
their rage, their pain, their hatred. The inside of his skull resounded with
their shrill cries, echoing like a cathedral. The noise was deafening, drowning
out the sounds of city traffic, drowning out every coherent thought that
attempted to surface when Reed needed his mind clear. He had to figure out
where to find Malcolm. He gripped the Beretta tight, using it to anchor him to
reality, to fend off the ghosts, as he steered the taxi through the somber
Philadelphia streets.

Steam rolled from the gutters
creating the atmosphere of a foggy London night from a Hammer Films horror
flick. Reed could almost imagine Peter Cushing skulking through the dark
alleyways. He caught the quick, furtive movements of sewer rats darting through
the shadows and wondered what other beasts were lurking just beyond his sight.
Reed’s paranoia was elevating. Every shadow seemed to resemble Malcolm. His
finger repeatedly jerked on the trigger as he caught movements from the corners
of his eyes that his mind hastily misinterpreted as potential attacks.

He drove nervously down Eleventh
Street almost to the police station then turned around and started back. His
eyes scanned the street for any sight of the Mercedes or Detective Bryant’s
white Intrepid. He cut over to Broad Street and began driving aimlessly up and
down, avoiding the pedestrians who tried to hail down the taxi for a ride.
There was no sign of Malcolm. Reed was about to make another U-turn and head
back up Broad Street, but he spotted a patrol car at the next intersection so
he continued straight ahead. Getting stopped for an illegal U-turn would end it
all. It would take all night to extricate himself from the cops’ tiresome
questioning. Who knows where Malcolm would be by then?

Reed was trying hard to hold his mind
together, but the longer Malcolm remained alive, the harder that task would
become. Malcolm had to die soon. Reed wanted desperately to join his family,
but first he had to wash his sins clean with Malcolm’s blood, wash away the
years of neglecting Linda and his family, wash away the betrayal, his guilt,
the smell of Crissy’s young pussy.

The tears were starting to flow again. Reed could
hear weeping. But they weren’t his tears. He recognized the heart-wrenching
sobs. They belonged to his wife. They were the tears she shed the night she
found out about him and Crissy, the same tears she had shed the night she was
murdered. Only Malcolm had ever hurt Linda as much as Reed, and he’d had to
kill her to do it. Reed felt his heart crack open and spill out all its dreams.
They boiled like a corrosive poison in his chest cavity. Everything he’d ever
hoped for was now just more pain. He continued down the street, checking his
rear view mirror for the patrol car. Linda’s anguished tears echoed through the
haunted night. He let his own tears join hers as he hunted down Broad Street,
chasing demons.

James was relieved to see the
familiar sight of Detective Jones’s old LTD parked in the Washington Hospital
parking lot. Matthew Jones was a veteran of the force, a timeworn soldier who
the District Attorney’s office often called upon to guard Mafia witnesses
before trial. He once protected a member of the Junior Black Mafia who’d turned
state’s evidence. While Jones was out in the hall, his partner had allowed the
witness to make a phone call to his cousin to tell him where the police were
hiding him. His cousin was also an enforcer in the JBM and Jones had soon found
himself in a shootout. When it was over, two ranking members of the JBM were
dead and four others had been captured fleeing the scene in a bullet-ridden
Lexus LX. Every single one of them was wounded. Jones had taken a couple slugs,
too, but the witness had never been touched. His partner took one in his forehead,
but miraculously the bullet traveled around the back of his skull and exited
without touching his brain. He was back to work in a month, but not with Jones.
Jones never worked with a partner again and he hadn’t lost a witness yet. Just
as relief started to settle in, James remembered again his own dire
pronouncement to Reed just a few days ago:

A
man who slit his own throat and tried to blow himself up isn’t gonna stop until
he feels he’s avenged whatever wrong you’ve done him or until we stop him.

James was sick of trying to stop Malcolm. For one
night he just wanted to forget about the case for a while. He wanted to lose
himself inside of CC, but he wasn’t sure that would ever be possible. She was
beyond traumatized. Her husband had been decapitated. She was in shock,
physically, mentally, and emotionally if not forever catatonic and withdrawn
from her last slender link to reality. She could blame James for everything. If
he’d heeded Malcolm’s warning and backed off the case, her husband might still
be alive, Baltimore might still be alive. If he had stayed out of her life,
Malcolm might never have come in. But that was just James’s guilt talking.
Being married to Rick had inescapably entwined her destiny with Malcolm’s long
before James entered her life. Being a homicide detective just meant her
destiny also entwined inexorably with his, even if it was his sexual addiction that
brought him to her first. As James climbed out of his car, still mulling over
the effects of destiny upon the outcome of this case, he couldn’t help but
wonder which was the bigger rationalization, his guilt or his attempts to
answer to it?

The second floor where CC had been
moved from the ER and Trauma Center was well lit with no visible way to
approach unseen. James scanned the parking lot quickly for anything that looked
out of place. He was further encouraged when a patrol vehicle rolled into the
parking lot and two serious looking police officers pulled up alongside his car
and shined a light inside. James held up his badge. The officers lowered the
light but didn’t turn it off.

“Sorry, Detective, but when I saw
you parked over here casing the hospital . . . well . . . you know what
happened to Vargas and Willis? I just wanted to make sure everything was safe?”
the angry looking young cop offered, phrasing it like a question.

“Yeah, it’s all safe.”

They gave him one last suspicious
look before driving hesitantly on. James parked the car and headed up to where
Jones stood guard over CC. He climbed the steps to the second floor, still
looking around nervously in fear of being ambushed. Jones had scouted this
location well. James had to walk past a large window to get to CC’s room giving
whoever was inside a full view of who was coming as the overhead light cast his
shadow on the drawn curtains.

When James knocked on the door he
heard the frighteningly familiar sound of a shotgun chambering a round. He
stepped back from the door, and back over to the window.

“Matt? It’s me, James . . . James.
Don’t shoot me, man. You don’t want the paperwork.”

The door slowly crept open and Jones
appeared, still aiming the shotgun at James’s midsection. He looked at James
for a long moment, then looked beyond him over his shoulder and left and right.
James had an uncomfortable second or two when he thought Jones didn’t recognize
him or recognized him but was so determined to protect his witness that he
would shoot him anyway. Finally, Jones lowered the shotgun and let the
detective in.

“Sorry, I just had to be sure there
wasn’t anyone with you. Someone might’ve had a gun on you, forcing you to
knock.”

“Damn. You’re hardcore, man.”

“James!” CC called to James from her
bed, trying to open her arms to his embrace as if afraid someone would pull
them apart.

“Are you okay, sweetheart?” He
brushed her limp hair back from her eyes, revealing a gruesome black and blue
hematoma swelling beneath her left eye. His heart crumpled like used newspaper
at the sight of it.

“I’m okay, really. It doesn’t hurt . .
. much,” she smiled crookedly through bruised lacerated lips and Demarol as James
felt that pang in his heart again.

He kissed her gently on her battered
lips, hugged her close, and stroked her hair. Jones turned self-consciously
toward the window. He gripped the shotgun and bounced nervously from foot to
foot. James and CC were embracing more urgently, so fervently engrossed in
their passion they’d forgotten that they were not alone. They needed each
other’s comfort to soothe the pain and stress they’d so recently endured.
Finally, Jones could no longer take it.

“I’m going outside to watch the parking lot.
Holler if you need me and stay away from the windows.”

Jones left the shotgun by the door as
he stepped outside, shaking his head in annoyance at how unprofessional it was
to be outside guarding a door where inside a fellow cop was about to try
fucking a witness in her hospital bed. He slammed the door behind him and never
even saw the knife until it was sticking out of his throat.

Malcolm dragged Detective Jones’s corpse next
door where the bodies of the two patrol officers were already piled on an empty
bed; their blood saturated the mattress. In the adjacent room, James was
slipping beneath the sheet covering CC. Malcolm could hear the sounds of their
painful lovemaking. He sat down in a chair in a dark corner of the room.
Artificial light from outside spilled through the curtains casting a twilight
glow on half the room. Malcolm sat just beyond its reach. He found even this
mild light harsh and invasive and physically recoiled from it. The light fell
across the faces of the dead policemen. Detective Jones’s eye sockets filled
with shadows. He seemed to be winking at Malcolm.

Next door, the bedframe began a rhythmic smack
against the wall as Detective Bryant got his groove on with CC. It built to a
thunderous climax and for a second Malcolm was afraid they would come right
through the wall. Then everything went silent. Malcolm waited for several more
minutes until he heard the bathroom door open and close and the sound of a
running shower. He knew the patrol cops would be missed soon. Their radios
continued to squawk and hiss with statically voices that Malcolm could just
barely discern.

Malcolm stood up and began to
undress, shrugging out of his expensive clothes. He flexed and stroked himself
slowly as he imagined killing CC. He waited a while longer then slipped out of
the room, carrying Detective Jones’s keys and his own clothes tucked under his
arm.