Pure Hate

by White, Wrath James

  “Well, that may be true, but you still haven’t given us an official statement and you might think of something else between today and tomorrow that might help us.”

  “I’ve already given you everything but the man’s address and phone number!”

  Titus straightened his cheap tie and flashed a cheap smile as he exited Reed’s hospital room.

  “Sleep on it. Maybe you’ll remember something, something you may not even think was important but that might help us. Goodbye, Mr. Cozen.”

  “Yeah, fuck you very much.”

  Baltimore shut the door quietly behind him and nodded to the uniformed officer stationed outside Reed’s door.

  “I can’t wait to interrogate that prick. Sonuvabitch is lying through his fucking teeth. He’s involved somehow. I just can’t figure out how. But I know he knows something. It’s time to look a little into Mr. Cozen’s background, see what kind of skeletons he’s got in his closet.”

  Detective Baltimore decided to re-question Reed’s neighbors. This time, he wasn’t going to be asking about suspicious looking strangers lurking around the Cozen house or strange vehicles parked on the street. He wanted to know about the Cozens themselves. He would go through address books and scraps of paper at the crime scene, call up friends, family, coworkers, find out if they had a babysitter and question her as well. He would question the family physician, see if he had any suspicion that there was abuse taking place either against the kids or the wife, any suspicious bruises or injuries on any of them. He wanted to find out if the Cozens were seeing a therapist or a marriage counselor. Baltimore would track down and question anyone who might have any knowledge about what went on in that household. He wanted to know just how loving a relationship Reed Cozen had with his wife and kids.

  Baltimore suddenly had an idea. He had just exited the hospital when he paused and started fishing through his wallet for a business card. Last year, he had worked a case where a ten-year old girl was kidnapped, raped, brutally beaten, and murdered by an intruder who dragged the child out of her bedroom window in the middle of the night and took her across the street to the park where her body was later found.

  The family was on TV every night for weeks pleading for anyone with information about the crime to come forward. They offered a reward that would have bankrupted them. They looked so genuinely grief-stricken that the public never considered the possibility the parents might be suspects themselves, and the police only conducted a half-hearted interrogation of them. The crime scene evidence—the jimmied bedroom window and the screwdriver that had obviously been used to pry open the window then used to repeatedly stab the child—seemed to all fit the pattern of a stranger abduction murder.

  After one of the couple’s tearful pleas for the killer to turn himself in or for anyone with information on the killer’s identity to come forward, someone did. A caseworker from the Department of Human Services called the station and told the detective that the child had come to her office just two weeks before the murder to report her father and mother’s brutal physical and sexual abuse. It turned the whole case around and the police eventually got a full confession out of the couple and the court put them each away for life without the possibility of parole.

  Detective Baltimore sifted through the forty or more business cards he had stuffed into his wallet that was at one time handsome sealskin, but was now just a worn out mess. Finally, he located the office number of Ms. Judy Hamilton, pulled out his I-phone and called her up. She answered on the first ring.

  “Hello, Department of Human Services, this is Caseworker Hamilton. May I help you?”

  “Hello, Ms. Hamilton. This is Detective Baltimore with the Philadelphia Police Department Homicide Division.”

  “Oh, yes, I remember you from that terrible case of the little Simpson girl, Etta Simpson, the little girl that was killed by her parents. That was such a tragic case. I felt bad because we just didn’t act quickly enough to save her. The day I went and talked to the parents, the little girl suddenly changed her mind and said she made the whole thing up or else we would have taken her out of there right then and there. We planned to come back and do a follow up investigation, but by then it was too late. They murdered that poor child.” Her voice was choked with emotion as she spoke.

  Detective Baltimore was impressed with how much Ms. Hamilton seemed to care for these children. He wondered how such a woman could handle the type of horrors she no doubt witnessed every day, crimes and abuses perpetrated against innocent women and children, families torn apart from within, and still stay so compassionate, so caring. Most of the DHS workers he’d met were as hardened and cynical as cops. They treated the kids who came through the system like they all brought their misfortunes upon themselves and, of course, there were many that had— teenaged mothers, adolescent prostitutes, drunks, drug addicts, and juvenile delinquents kicked out by families who just couldn’t take them anymore. The job tended to harden the heart to sob stories, but this woman’s heart still had quite a bit of giving left in it. Baltimore, looking into his own heart, wondered how long either of them could last.

  “I have to ask a favor of you, Ms. Hamilton. Have you seen the news? Have you heard anything about the family they believed was murdered by that guy they’re calling the Family Man?”

  “Yes, I’ve seen it. Are you involved with that case, Detective?”

  “Yes, ma’am. I’m in charge of the investigation. That’s the reason I’m calling. I have reason to believe that the same killer may not have committed this last murder or, at least, he may not have been working alone. I’m beginning to think the father may have had something to do with it. In fact he may be the Family Man or his accomplice. I need you to see if there’s a file on him. Maybe his wife or his kid tried to reach you.”

  “What was the name?”

  “Cozen. The father's name is Reed. The mother’s name was Linda and there was Jennie and Mark.”

  “Can you hold on while I check the computer? It should just take a second.”

  “Sure. I really appreciate this.”

  Detective Baltimore walked across the hospital parking lot with his iPhone wedged between ear and shoulder as he fished for his car keys. He slipped behind the wheel of his Mercedes and began to head back to Reed’s quiet little neighborhood to check out the neighborhood elementary school. Maybe there was a teacher or a counselor, even a school nurse in whom one of the children had confided.

  “Uh . . . Detective? Are you still there?”

  “Yes, Ms. Hamilton. Did you find anything?”

  “Well, it seems like the daughter, Jennie, came to us about six months ago. The Vice Principal, a woman named Anna Lamb, at her school brought her in, She believed the little girl’s father had molested the child. Little Jennie didn’t seem to think anything was out of the ordinary. When she was questioned by one of our staff assigned to her case, a Rita Franklin, Mrs. Franklin noted that she had gotten the impression that her father was perhaps a little overly affectionate, perhaps even inappropriately so, but nothing serious, nothing criminal. Mrs. Franklin said it seemed to her like a father who just really loved his little girl. She assured the teacher that she would talk to Mr. Cozen and then warned her to be more careful with those kinds of accusations around children.

  “Children have very active imaginations. Things can get all twisted in a child’s impressionable young mind and they can start to believe that they were victims of sexual molestation when it was actually something entirely innocent. The woman wasn’t completely convinced, so Mrs. Franklin agreed to go with her to Mr. Cozen’s house to drop off the child, and she talked to him there. She noted in her records that Mr. Cozen seemed rather confused and more than a little embarrassed by the whole thing, but that he was cooperative and assured Mrs. Franklin to her satisfaction that nothing illicit or untoward had taken place between him and his daughter. The child was returned and no follow-up was ever done.”

  Titus scribbled down all the information in his notepa
d, steering the Mercedes with his knees and with an occasional quick turn of his left hand before returning to scribble something else.

  “Would it be possible to interview Mrs. Franklin?”

  “Um . . . unfortunately she is no longer with us.”

  “Would you happen to know where she’s employed now?”

  “Detective . . . Rita Franklin died two months ago. She was very old, almost seventy, and she just went in her sleep. She was at work all day the day before she died. She could never stand the thought of retirement. Such a sweet old lady.”

  “I’m sorry to hear that. Listen, thank you very much for the help, Mrs. Hamilton.”

  “That’s Ms. Hamilton, Detective, and you can call me Judy.”

  “Well . . . uh . . . thanks Judy. You have been a tremendous help.”

  Now there was an accusation of sexual misconduct between Reed and his daughter. What if Reed really was molesting his daughter? If the mother found out and threatened to leave him and take the kids, or call the police, that would be a hell of a convincing motive for murder. It would definitely convince a jury. Juries don’t have much tolerance for crimes against kids. Baltimore wondered what had made the vice principal so certain the little girl had been molested. He turned off Frankford Avenue onto Tarsdale. He was only a mile or two away from Frankford Elementary. He would ask her himself.

  Frankford Elementary was one of the older schools in Philadelphia. It was right next to Frankford’s low-income housing project, which was right next to an upper-middle class white neighborhood. The fifty-year old three-story red brick building covered in creeping ivy was a racial battleground. It was filled with over-privileged white kids and under-privileged black and Latino kids.

  The poor kids saw, in the clothes the white kids wore and the expensive cars that dropped them off in the morning, exactly what they would probably never have. The city planner who zoned the housing projects and the school for that area seemed to have been some kind of racist out to turn every white kid in that neighborhood into Philadelphia’s version of Hitler Youth. Their whole perception of the black and Latino community was of down-trodden, angry, rebellious black and brown faces that stared out at the white kids from their hellish projects and extorted lunch money, sneakers, jackets, jewelry and anything else of value the white kids were stupid enough to bring into this war-zone. Every one of those white kids would grow up to hate and fear blacks and Latinos, except the ones who idolized and emulated them, the so-called whiggers who would eventually join the same gangs and wind up on the same nowhere path the projects condemned the minority kids to.

  Reed actually lived a little further east in the homogeneous, all white, northeast section of Philadelphia. Why he sent his kids to a school way down here in this combat zone instead of a nice, safe school in his own neighborhood, Baltimore could only guess. This was the first school that Reed and Malcolm attended together. It seemed that Reed was a little sentimental after all. If he remembered the school so fondly that he would risk his kids’ lives and their social objectivity to send them there, Baltimore found it hard to believe that he hadn’t thought of Malcolm in over a decade as he had claimed. Every time he dropped his kids off at school, he most certainly thought about him. Baltimore would bet his badge on it. But did Reed shudder when he thought of Malcolm or did he smile fondly? That was the question. Baltimore felt he was getting closer and closer to finding the answer. He could almost see the far-off wistful look in Reed’s eye and the nostalgic grin on his face.

  Detective Baltimore was instantly transported back to his own childhood as he walked into the bustling elementary school. His grade school had been just like this one, filled with students’ artwork and awards, stupid motivational slogans about getting along with others and anti-drug messages painted on the peach-colored walls. This school, however, seemed to contain four times as many kids as had attended his little academy. It seemed like there were more kids crowding the hallway between him and the principal’s office than there had been in his entire school. Baltimore was fighting against the current on a seemingly endless tide of pre-adolescents making their way toward the schoolyard. He was stepped on, kicked, elbowed and cursed as he struggled through the crowd. He felt like he should have worn full riot gear.

  Finally, Baltimore made it to the principal’s office without having to draw his gun. He was a little bumped and bruised, but he had survived the recess rush. A young blonde-haired woman, who looked as if she had graduated from elementary school not too long ago herself, sat behind the reception desk, appraising him with a bright Colgate smile as he walked into the office. She had big blue eyes and was dressed in the same oversized baggy clothes as the kids.

  “Excuse me, I’m here to speak to Vice Principal Lamb,” Baltimore said, showing her his badge, at which point her smile faltered and her eyes hardened a little. I guess he wasn’t so attractive anymore. Hating cops was in style these days.

  “Do you have an appointment with her, Officer?”

  “That’s Detective Baltimore and I’m sorry, no, I don’t. I’m investigating the murder of the Cozen family and I understand the children attended school here.”

  “Oh, yes. That was so tragic. I’ll let her know you’re here.”

  She sprang from her chair behind the desk and barged, without knocking, into an office only a few feet away. As she stuck her head inside to talk to the vice principal, her butt swayed from side to side as she shifted from one foot to the other. Baltimore wondered how he was able to tell that she had a nice ass when she wore jeans two sizes too large. But he could tell. He wondered if that show was for his benefit. The girl couldn’t have been older than twenty, twenty-one at the maximum. True, he was only twenty-five himself, but the job along with his above-average intelligence made him feel much older. Too old for this one, although she was tempting. She was more James’s type, he thought, and wondered where his partner might be right now, if he was even working the case or if he was off at some sandwich shop somewhere scarfing down a cheese steak hoagie. Everyone said he was a good detective and maybe he was at one time, but in the two years that Baltimore had been paired up with the guy, he’d seen very little evidence of any commitment to the job. All the guy seemed to want to do was eat and chase pussy. There could be a body laying cut up on the floor and, while Baltimore was gathering evidence, James would come out with some story about a girl he fucked two years ago who had tits just like the corpse.

  When the fluffy little blonde returned, she had two people with her. A short, balding, over-weight, black gentleman stepped forward and seized the detective’s hand in his stubby little fingers. He pumped Baltimore’s arm enthusiastically and introduced himself as the principal. Beside him, in a tan skirt suit with a white silk T-shirt, stood a striking older woman with blonde hair streaked with gray, high cheekbones, full lips, and steel gray eyes like a timber wolf. She stepped forward and introduced herself as the vice principal. When she shook his hand, her breasts wobbled pleasingly beneath her shirt. It was obvious that she was voluptuously endowed despite the great pains she took to hide it.

  ‘A prude perhaps?’ Detective Baltimore thought. Maybe the whole child molestation thing was just the over-active imagination of a spinster who feared her own sexuality and was suspicious of any type of intimacy between men and women. He hoped not. If he could tie Cozen into a motive like this he was certain he could use it to squeeze a confession out of him. Shit, he wouldn’t need a confession to get a conviction. If he could prove that Reed Cozen molested his own daughter he wouldn’t need a shred of evidence to convict him for the murders. The jury’s revulsion would guarantee that bastard a lethal injection. The only thing that bothered him was that the coroner had found no evidence of rape or sexual assault on either of the two kids and only on the mother. But rape didn’t always mean penetration. Detective Baltimore knew there were any of a number of things a pervert could do to a young kid that wouldn’t bruise or tear the vaginal walls or the rectum. The detective’s stomach lurch
ed at the thought of it.

  He was led into the vice principal’s office where he took a seat on a leather couch across from a huge pine desk that had been stained a dark brown to resemble oak.

  “What can we do for you, Detective? Of course, we heard about the murders and we’ve all been racking our brains trying to remember if we saw anyone suspicious hanging around after school looking like they were, you know, stalking the children. But, so far, no one can remember seeing anything out of the ordinary.”

  Detective Baltimore turned his attention to Ms. Lamb.

  “I understand that you once took Jennie Cozen to the Department of Human Services to see an abuse counselor. May I ask why?”

  “Well, Detective, she was called to my office repeatedly for cursing and extremely inappropriate sexual language and behavior.”

  “Behavior?”

  “Yes. Grabbing little boy’s penises, grabbing girls between their legs and on their backsides, making comments about her own sexual prowess. In short, we believed that this type of premature and somewhat oversexed behavior was consistent with what we have seen in children who have been sexually abused.”

  “And on the basis of this you took her to see an abuse counselor?”

  “Not only that. One day she was called to my office for pulling up her dress and showing her breasts to the boys in her class. When I called her into my office she said that they had just developed and she was proud of them and wanted to show them off. It was simply the last straw and I had to suspend her. When her father came down to pick her up . . . the way she kissed him . . ...”

  “You mean he used his tongue?”

  The vice principal blushed.

  “No . . . uh . . . not exactly. It was the way she draped her arm around his neck and he slipped his arms around her waist and they kissed right on the lips. You kind of got the impression that if they weren’t in public he would have French kissed her and when they talked to each other it was more like husband and wife than father and daughter. I mean, she spoke to him like he was another one of her little playmates. No respect at all. It was just unnatural. Even when they left she wasn’t just holding his hand she was hugging it to herself the way newlyweds do. I know it sounds like I’m over-reacting, but it just all started to add up. Even Tom here noticed it. As soon as they left, we just looked at each other and we knew something about that wasn’t proper. You would’ve had to see it. It was almost lewd.”