Pure Hate

by White, Wrath James

  “The guy recognized him. That’s all the reason he needed. It almost looks like the suicide attempt Mr. Cozen described to me.”

  “What suicide attempt?”

  “Mr. Cozen said that Malcolm tried to commit suicide after he found out what had been going on with Cozen and his girl. Crazy fuck nearly decapitated himself.”

  “I’ve never heard of anyone trying to commit suicide by cutting their own throat. Jesus. That’s a guy who really wants to die.”

  “Yeah, that was my thought, too. It’ll be a lot of fun trying to bring this guy in.”

  “Yeah, it looks like he’s saying catch me if you can. This guy just said the wrong thing and he’s a corpse. Big sonuvabitch, too, but it doesn’t look like he had a chance to put up much of a fight. No signs of a struggle at all.”

  “I wonder if Malcolm knew the guy like with Reed, or if it’s every bit as random and spontaneous as it looks.”

  “Good question, Detective. I want you to go over there with Officer Wyatt and find out whatever you can from that witness. No, on second thought, leave that to Titus whenever he gets here. You grab some units and get over to Mr. Cooper’s house and make some arrests. I want someone in custody by the time the news media gets wind of this.”

  James was getting a kick out of seeing the Captain so animated. Captain Kelly had spoken more in the last ten minutes than James could remember him speaking in the last ten years.

  The next two hours were a nightmare. James made it to Paul Cooper’s house and found him bound and mutilated almost beyond recognition, hanging from some metal contraption in the middle of the living room. His body bore hundreds of welts, cuts, burns and bruises. He must have been tortured for hours before he was finally killed. His face was a swollen purple fright mask. His eyes were swollen shut and there were cuts above and below each one from where someone’s knuckles had repeatedly smashed into them. His nose was completely crushed and smeared sideways across his face. All the teeth had been smashed out of his mouth and his lips were split in several places. Blood and saliva ran down his chest. His tongue was missing. Bones and muscle tissue showed through all over his body where someone had worked him over with a knife, flaying his skin off in long strips. His penis had been completely skinned, peeled like a banana. Parts of his buttocks, his pecs and his cheek had been bitten away. His chest looked like someone had tried to chew right through him to get at his heart. It was missing as well.

  James knew without waiting for the coroner that most of this had been done while the victim was still alive. The Family Man never had much taste for necrophilia. He liked live prey. The most disturbing sight was the abundance of old yellowing bruises, half and fully healed scars and cuts. This man had been tortured for a long time. Where did this type of depravity come from? He thought of Reed stealing Malcolm’s high school sweetheart but that just didn’t explain . . . THIS!

  All over the house they found S&M and bondage paraphernalia. Metal and leather restraints, including the medieval looking iron shackles that Cooper’s body hung from, whips, scalpels, branding irons, long steel needles, iron dildos and all kinds of horrible “toys” were everywhere. The place looked like an Inquisition era torture chamber, something from the Marquis de Sade’s darkest imaginings.

  There was no sign of Malcolm anywhere. The forensic boys were going over everything, bagging, tagging and dusting for prints. James knew it was pointless. This guy wasn’t the type to stand trial. When and if he was finally caught, he would hold court in the street and go out blasting. A guy who tried to cut his own head off wasn’t the “Come out with your hands up” type. He was the “shoot to kill” type. Right now, he was the “armed and dangerous and still on the loose” type. And they were running out of leads. Malcolm could be anywhere now.

  XVII.

  No one had been to the Cozen’s house since the night of the murders. The front door was still covered in yellow tape. Titus swiped the tape aside and opened the front door. The carpets had not been cleaned and the smell of fetid blood wafted up his nostrils causing his stomach to lurch involuntarily. Blood spattered the living room walls, the couch, the shattered coffee table, the television and the Wii video game console. Even the stereo and CD tower were sprayed with splashes of dark red. The eggshell-white curtains looked like the linen from an operating room table. In his mind’s eye, Titus could still see the position of each victim. He could almost see the death scene as it unfolded.

  He imagined little Mark taking a blast from a shotgun in the chest at pointblank range, sending half his vital organs flying against the wall in back of him, Jennie Cozen stabbed a dozen times then tossed aside and Linda Cozen raped, stabbed, cannibalized. Alive. Alive as that monster thrust himself inside her. Alive as he chewed off her breasts. Alive as he drove his knife through her chest.

  But which monster was it? Malcolm Davis or Reed himself?

  Detective Baltimore turned away and began to walk into the Cozen’s bedroom. The Compaq Presario was still turned on and the novel Reed had been working on was still on the screen. He must turn off his screen saver when he worked. Papers were littered everywhere and Titus sat down at Reed’s desk to sift through them. They were mostly bills, three letters from Reed’s publisher in escalating degrees of urgency begging him to finish his novel, a post card from Linda’s mother on a gambling trip in Las Vegas, and notes for Reed’s novel written on three by five cards, receipts, brown paper bags, and notebook paper of varying sizes. Every other scrap of paper that looked vaguely important had already been bagged and tagged and was sitting in an evidence locker.

  Titus decided to browse through the computer again. He’d spent half the previous night printing out everything on the computer that looked relevant. He knew his way around Reed’s database pretty well now. Within minutes, he located Reed’s address book containing the phone numbers of Linda’s mother in Delaware, their baby-sitter, physician, pediatrician, and their marriage counselor.

  So, things weren’t perfect in paradise, Titus thought.

  He called the marriage counselor, a Dr. Elliot Berkowitz, and got his secretary, who was rather hesitant to put the man on the phone. She insisted that he was with a patient and could not be disturbed. Titus had to settle for leaving a message with his cell number. Next, he called Linda’s mother, hoping that someone had managed to inform her of her daughter’s passing before she’d seen it on television. It had slipped his mind and he prayed that Detective Bryant had at least taken care of that one little detail. Maybe the hospital or Reed himself had thought to call.

  “H-Hello?” the woman who answered sounded as if she had been crying.

  “Uh, this is Detective Titus Baltimore of the Philadelphia Police department. Is this Mrs. Reeser? Linda Cozen’s mother?”

  “Y-yes.”

  “I’m investigating your daughter’s murder and I was hoping you could answer a few questions for me.”

  “Y-y-yeah, sure. I-I just found out today. Reed called me and told me this morning and then it was all over the news. All day that’s all I keep hearing about. I finally turned off the TV and the radio and unplugged the phone. I just plugged it back in. Those damn reporters keep calling me.”

  “I know this must be terrible for you, but I must ask you some questions. It will only take a second. Do you know anyone who would want to hurt your daughter?”

  “What-what do you mean? I thought . . . Reed told me that it was that Malcolm Davis guy. That black guy Reed use to be friends with."

  “I know, but we just have to check out all possibilities. Now, do you know anyone who might want to harm your daughter?”

  “No. Everyone loved Linda.”

  “How was your daughter’s marriage? Any problems there? Between her and Mr. Cozen?”

  “No more than any other couple. She wanted him to spend more time with the kids, help out more around the house. They had money problems. He wouldn’t work a real job. Put all his time into writing those books. Sometimes they did well. Sometimes they did
n’t. They lived from royalty check to royalty check. It was often feast or famine. He didn’t write the kind of books that stayed on the shelves long. There would be the initial excitement from his small body of fans and then interest would peter out and the royalty checks would get smaller and smaller and then they would stop coming entirely. Then it was time to write another book. That’s hard on a woman, trying to stick to a budget when she doesn’t even know what their income is gonna be from month to month.”

  “Is that why they were seeing a marriage counselor?”

  “Well, not exactly. I mean she never said it directly, but I kind of got the impression that they were having some sexual problems.”

  “Is that what your daughter told you?”

  “No, of course that’s not the type of thing a daughter discusses with her mother so it’s more of a hunch. Just kind of reading into what she wasn’t saying.”

  “I see. Is that it? No other problems?”

  “No. They were a pretty happy couple mostly. They just had the normal problems most young couples have these days.”

  “Okay, thank you, Mrs. Reeser. I’ll be in touch if we come up with anything.”

  Titus hadn’t learned much from his conversation with Mrs. Reeser, but that bit about sexual problems might be something. He needed to talk to their therapist. Maybe it had something to do with the allegations of child molesting. Talking to doctors could be touchy though. That doctor/patient privilege thing was a pain in the ass. Even with a warrant, they often refused to co-operate and Titus didn’t have a warrant or the probable cause to get one. All he had was his suspicions and those of Jennie’s teachers. His cell phone rang and Detective Baltimore answered to the sound of Captain Kelly’s low rumbling impatient voice.

  “Detective, where the hell are you? Didn’t Woo tell you we wanted you over here with us?”

  “Yeah, but I figured you guys could handle that yourselves. I’m over at the Cozen’s house, checking the scene for more clues.”

  “Well, Malcolm just left us another clue. A bodybuilder just got his throat slashed about two hours ago in broad daylight in front of a dozen witnesses and guess who did it? I need you down here now. It’s the Atlas Gym on Walnut Street.”

  “Shit! Alright, I’m on my way.”

  Titus was disappointed that he had to leave before he could follow up with the marriage counselor or the Cozen’s physician or their babysitter or pediatrician. He felt certain that one of them would confirm the story about Reed and his daughter and he was not looking forward to facing the media without a suspect in custody. He locked up the house and jumped back into the Mercedes, instantly regretting having brought it instead of the Mustang. When the other cops saw him behind the wheel of this $90,000 dollar rich boy’s toy, he knew they would instantly distrust him and the ones who already distrusted him would hate him. The reporters would be all over him. He could almost see the full color picture of him cruising up to the crime scene in his Mercedes under the headline: “Rich Boy Cop Fails to Catch Killer” or “Another Killed, Playboy Cop On Cruise Control.” Titus groaned and reached into his glove compartment for the Advil. He washed it down with tepid, day-old Evian and chewed on a Rolaids. He hit the Roosevelt Expressway at sixty miles an hour heading toward Center City and more headache.

  Detective Baltimore’s stomach was twisting in knots. His head started to pound before the Advil could kick in. His day had taken a very bad turn. Malcolm had left another body, in broad daylight, in front of a dozen witnesses, with half the city’s police force on a full-scale manhunt for him. Worse yet, Baltimore promised the city of Philadelphia, on live television, that he would have him in custody by today. They were going to chew him up and spit him out. Baltimore let out another loud moan, popped another Advil and hit the accelerator.

  “Fools rush in . . .” he thought and chewed another Rolaids.

  When Baltimore arrived at The Atlas Gym, he almost believed he had a chance of slipping in before the reporters noticed him. The Mercedes slid smoothly down the normally serene one-way street, narrowly inching past the news vans parked haphazardly along the street, half-on and half-off the sidewalk, with their gaudy satellite dishes protruding from the roof. Baltimore felt like giving them all parking tickets. For a moment, he looked away from the pandemonium in front of the Atlas and studied the architecture of the surrounding buildings. Two hundred-year-old colonials that had been restored to near original or better than original condition, lined the street in peaceful harmony. Many of them had been turned into stores and one of them was even a theater. This was Detective Baltimore’s favorite part of town, next to Chestnut Hill of course, and perhaps Northern Liberties. Today, however, he was not at all happy to be there.

  Titus was only a few storefronts away from the crime scene, looking for a place to park. The reporters hadn’t spotted him yet. He knew what he looked liked driving up in a vehicle that no police detective should be able to afford, and he had to struggle to keep his guilt from showing in his expression. The reporters had lain siege around a thoroughly harassed-looking Captain Kelly, assaulting him with microphones and TV cameras like a pack of hyenas ringing in prey. Almost no one seemed to notice the Mercedes slide into the no parking zone across the street. Titus started to feel a little better, but then, as soon as he got out of the car, the hyenas came to feed.

  “Detective! Detective Baltimore! You said you would have the killer in custody by now. Have you apprehended a suspect?”

  “No. I . . .”

  “Detective do you have any leads on the whereabouts of Malcolm Davis?”

  “No, but . . .”

  “How could he walk right into a public establishment in Center City, murder someone in broad daylight, and get away when the police are supposed to be conducting a manhunt for him?”

  “I can’t answer that right now, but I assure you we are doing everything in our power . . .”

  “Can you guarantee the citizens of this city that one of them won’t be his next victim?”

  “As I said, the Philadelphia Police Department is doing everything we can to bring this killer to justice and fulfill our duty to the citizens of this town to keep them safe. This man will be caught.”

  “And if he isn’t? Are you going to patrol the whole town in that Mercedes to make sure he doesn’t murder another family?”

  The hairs on Baltimore’s neck raised and his eyes shot daggers at the young reporter who had so brazenly attacked him, some punk from one of the local weeklies. A nobody. But now, Titus was in front of TV cameras, in front of his shiny new Mercedes sport convertible with that searing question still hanging in the air like the caustic stench of an overcooked meal. Detective Baltimore gritted his teeth and leaned forward into the reporter’s face, glaring at him with murder in his eyes.

  “No comment,” he hissed.

  The young news hound recoiled and shrank back into the crowd. Detective Baltimore shoved his way through the hyenas to get to Captain Kelly’s side. They began their chant of “No comment” in unison, a mantra to ward off the ghouls that came to feast on the remains of the dead, as the detectives made their way back into the gym. They slid under the police tape and past the five officers who had their hands full holding back the crowd of eager spectators. The ME was already on the scene making his preliminary examination of the body, knees splashing around in the victim’s blood as he knelt over the body.

  “Who is this guy? Do we have an ID on him yet?” Titus asked.

  “Yes. He had a wallet in his sweat pants. His name’s Michael Lipshutz. He owns a liquor store around the corner. A lot of these guys knew him. I’ve stopped through that store once or twice myself on the way home from a long day of the dead.”

  “What can you tell us right now?” James asked

  Doctor Medoff was a fastidious old gentleman who had been with the city morgue since computers were the size of Ford trucks, but he had changed well with the times and was quite good at what he did. He was always petitioning the city fath
ers for more money, to upgrade the city’s woefully outdated forensic equipment. Sometimes, he even managed to squeeze a nickel or two out of the budget.

  “Well, it’s exactly what it looks like. The victim’s carotid artery was severed in one stroke that also severed the jugular and sliced clean through his esophagus as well. My guess is he stabbed the knife in like this . . . .” Dr. Medoff made a hooking gesture towards the Captain’s throat. “Then grabbed the hilt of the blade with both hands and tore it across his throat. That would explain why the wound is so deep. He would have had to be tremendously powerful to slash clean through the neck in one stroke using only one hand. Hmmm?”

  “What is it, Doctor?”

  “You know, when I was in the marines recon unit, this is how they taught us to cut a throat. Stab the knife in deep and then pull it across with both hands. Most people would just slash the knife across the throat. They wouldn’t stab it in first. This guy may have had some military training.”

  “Not by our records.”

  “There are all kinds of ways to get military training off the record.”

  “You mean a merc school? You mean this guy might be some kind of trained mercenary? An assassin or terrorist or something? Fuckin’ great!”

  “Whoa! Whoa! I was just throwing that out as a possibility. These aren’t exactly political targets he’s going after. He could’ve picked it up in a book or one of those survivalist magazines. Hell, they have whole websites on the internet about physical interrogation techniques, tips on assassination, anti-personnel techniques. He could have learned this trick almost anywhere. But to do it so quickly and confidently, so automatically, means he’s been practicing.”

  “That much I’m pretty sure of myself. I think this guy has been killing for a long time. We may never know what his real body count is”

  “Well, he certainly knows what he’s doing. There’s no way anyone without medical training and equipment could have stopped the bleeding in time. He must have bled completely out before the paramedics even arrived. Drowned in his own blood.”