The girl’s father opened the door, looking tired and weak in the way middle-class people who overworked themselves in pursuit of wealth tended to look—world weary from the hours of overtime, the endless days of plotting and scheming, the mad, back-stabbing, cut-throat, free-for-all scramble up the corporate ladder, all for the sake of the next promotion, the elusive six-figure salary and the newer, bigger, custom-built house. Suburbanites worked harder to escape the middle-class than poor folks worked to escape the ghetto. The babysitter’s father had the $50,000 BMW, the $22,000 Ford mini-van, $160,000 cracker box house and a wife with a dependency on cosmetic surgery and Xanax.
Keeping up with the Jones’ had become their religion. The guy probably made a $70,000 a year income and carried $100,000 in debt. Detective Baltimore stared nakedly at the man’s painful-looking hair plugs and his wife’s tight, shiny skin. Her face was a mask of fine smooth scar tissue like the skin grafts on burn victims, almost plastic. Her breasts were ridiculously round like scoops of ice cream and spaced too far apart. He could probably fit his entire foot between her breasts and not touch either of them. They looked about as natural as wax fruit.
Detective Baltimore stifled his urge to slap both of them and shake them until they woke up. Instead, he introduced himself, flashed them his badge, and asked to see Crissy.
“Homicide? But . . . what?”
“She’s not in any trouble. I just want to ask her some questions about Mr. Cozen.”
“Oh, that sick bastard.”
“John!” Mrs. Green looked suddenly embarrassed.
“That sonuvabitch molested our little girl!” John Green was turning red. Anger flashed in his eyes and then all of a sudden it snuffed out and he just looked tired.
“Is this true?”
“Well, yes and no.” Mrs. Evelyn Green spoke up. Her voice was low and husky, and she dragged out her words as she spoke like a phone sex operator. She was in her forties, but looked less like a housewife and more like a madam for a high-class whorehouse. She was what’s known as a MILF or a cougar. She was a little too coy and sexual, and the way she stared directly into Baltimore’s eyes when she spoke and then looked away smiling was unnerving. She seemed to be flirting almost unconsciously, like a woman who hasn’t been fucked in awhile and needs it more than even she is willing to admit.
“What do you mean, yes and no?”
“I mean that Crissy is a little . . .” she paused and looked away, smiling demurely. When she turned back to Baltimore, she stared deep into his icy blue eyes as if challenging him. “She’s a little fast. She wasn’t a virgin before Mr. Cozen and she kind of made it clear to us that she seduced him.”
I wonder where she got that from? Baltimore wondered, trying hard not to stare at Mrs. Green’s unnaturally large breasts, squeezed into a T-shirt obviously purchased for the way they accentuated the plastic surgeon’s handy-work. Her large dark nipples poked shamelessly through the fabric. She smiled when she noticed him staring at them, then seemed to wave them at him, shaking them so they jiggled ever so slightly. It could’ve been accidental but he doubted it.
“That’s why we didn’t press charges. It’s bad enough with the reputation she already has. But seducing a man twice her age? What school could we send her to once that got out?”
Mr. Green flopped down in his chair and dropped his head down into his hands.
“Little slut,” he moaned. Baltimore talked with the girl’s mother and father for nearly twenty minutes before spending another torturous half-hour with an emotional sixteen-year old girl who cursed Mr. Cozen out of one side of her mouth while declaring her love for him out of the other. Detective Baltimore was shaken and angry when he left the Green’s house; the little girl had tried to flirt with him, too. Crissy interrupted him midway through his questioning to ask him if he was as good in bed as he looked. He had to restrain himself from slapping the shit out of her. He called the parents into the room to make sure she didn’t try anything with him that could get him thrown into jail. Once Mr. and Mrs. Green were in the room, she’d gone into graphic descriptions of her “love affair” with Mr. Cozen, delighting in the shock and discomfort on her parents’ faces. When Baltimore left the girl’s home, he felt like puking. Crissy definitely had problems, but Reed had still taken advantage of her.
Baltimore pulled himself together, shaking off his anger and revulsion, reminding himself that this was probably his last shot at Reed. He had tried the full frontal assault and that was unsuccessful, so now he figured maybe he could sweet talk the man. After all, his lips were already in practice from Doctor Berkowitz’s receptionist. Why let his newly acquired ass-kissing skills go to waste?
“Go away, Detective. I have nothing to say to you. Now get off my property!”
Detective Baltimore stood on the porch, ringing the doorbell, but Reed refused to open the door. Baltimore resisted the urge to kick it in.
“Look, Mr. Cozen. I just wanted to apologize for upsetting you earlier. I was completely out of line and I am sorry if I caused you any inconvenience.”
“Okay, so you’ve apologized. Now go!”
“I know you’re upset, but Malcolm is out there killing people and we’ve got no clue to his whereabouts. Something you know just might lead us to him. You’ve got to help us, Mr. Cozen.”
Baltimore was getting better and better at begging for help.
“Detective, I’m on the phone with my lawyer. If you don’t get off my porch right now, I swear I’ll have your badge!”
“Please, Mr. Cozen. What if Malcolm takes another family tonight and something you know could’ve stopped him? Could you live with that? Because I swear, restraining order or not, if that happens, I will never leave you alone. I don’t care if you’re involved or not, guilty or not. Once I tell a jury about those allegations of child molestation and I get the little girl up the street to talk about your little love affair, you’ll be lucky to get life without parole.”
“Please Detective, just go away.”
“Just answer a few more questions and tomorrow I’m out of your life for good . . . well, at least until the trial.”
“Ha! You think you’re gonna get Malcolm to stand trial? If you don’t kill him the second you see him, he’ll definitely kill you.”
Baltimore smirked.
“Listen, I think that you having sex with your babysitter is just plain sick, but since the parents don’t want to press charges, and it doesn’t have any bearing on my investigation, I really don’t care. But if it turns out that you know something that you’re not telling me, I’ll use this little incident to bury you.”
Reed finally opened the door. Baltimore’ smile widened.
“Okay Detective, you win. What do you want me to tell you?”
Baltimore stepped through the door and withdrew a pen and pad.
“Well, first off I want you to convince me that you had nothing to do with your family’s murder.”
“Jesus Christ, Detective! If I was working with Malcolm would I be so eager for you to catch him?”
Baltimore nodded and raised an eyebrow.
“Well, actually you seem more eager for me to kill him than to catch him . . .”
“I just want you to stop him before he kills me and the only way you’re gonna stop him is to shoot on sight. If you think I’m lying and just trying to get Malcolm killed so he can’t implicate me, then go ahead and try and take him alive. I’ll make sure to come to your funeral.”
“Is this supposed to be convincing me?”
“Look Detective, sure I fucked up by sleeping with Crissy. I fucked up my marriage, my reputation. But my wife and I were putting it all back together. She was sticking by me. I talked it over with the girl’s family. They weren’t gonna press charges. Everything was gonna be all right. So why would I want my family dead? And why would Malcolm help me if I did? Even if you don’t believe that I loved my family, you know enough about Malcolm to know that he hates me. Why would he do me any favors?”
Baltimore was visibly annoyed at Reed’s logic. But he couldn’t deny it either. He was starting to believe the man.
“Okay, then the next thing is . . .”
Detective Baltimore leaned forward, looking deeply into Reed’s eyes. He was still looking for the guilt he’d seen there before, but now all he saw was fear and profound sadness. The man was scared half to death.
“Where do you think I can find Malcolm?”
“I told you, I have no idea where he is. I hadn’t seen him in fifteen years before he showed up on my doorstep. “
“But he’s been watching you. He’s been right there with you for the last fifteen years.”
“What do you mean?”
“Mr. Cozen, when did you and your wife get married? Or rather, when did you first get serious? When did you two move in together?”
“I don’t remember the exact date. It was back in 2000. In February, I think. We got married in June.”
“The Chaperone killings began in July of 2000. And when was Jennie born?”
“Um . . . January seventeenth, 2001.”
“The same year the Family Man killings began. Your life is the pattern. When you were single, he stalked single guys. You get married, he switches to couples, and even more telling, the attacks become more sadistic. Most of the violence is now aimed at the woman as if Malcolm was punishing them for being with their husbands and boyfriends. That’s why we started calling the killer the Chaperone, because it seemed like he was punishing the couples for some moral indiscretion. But now, it’s obvious that the increased violence was due to jealousy. Malcolm wanted you all to himself. That’s why we never made the connection between the Pine Street Slasher and the Chaperone. The women didn’t fit the pattern. A guy stalks gay men and then suddenly switches to couples and starts raping and mutilating the women? It didn’t fit. But, if he was rehearsing you and your wife’s murder, it fits.”
“You know, it slipped my mind before now, but that’s how he put it to me. He said that the other killings were practice runs.”
Baltimore scribbled a note in his pad.
“See, that makes sense. You start a family and he starts killing families. That explains the children. We could never understand why he killed the kids, but that explains it. He was patterning his killing spree after you.”
Reed went silent for a second and his eyes glazed with a far off look that Baltimore recognized as horror and resignation.
“So, then he definitely won’t stop until I’m dead. My death completes the pattern.”
Baltimore said nothing.
“Did you check his Mom’s house?”
“We’ve got round the clock surveillance on Mrs. Davis. And Malcolm definitely isn’t there.”
“If Rick is still around, he might go to his house.”
“Who’s Rick?”
“He’s mini-Malcolm, another little psychopath who used to hang around with Malcolm because he got off on violence. I would have expected him to be Malcolm’s accomplice in this. They grew up in the same neighborhood, just a few blocks from one another. Rick wasn’t that bright, though, and he had severe anger management problems. He might be in prison already or dead.
He was extremely vicious and would fly into a rage without provocation but he was just a little guy, a few inches shorter than I was. About 5’5”, 5’6”, only one-hundred-twenty, one-hundred-thiry pounds. He had wet dreams about being as big as Malcolm. The rest of us had nightmares about him getting that big. A stupid, out of control Malcolm who could flip out on anyone for any reason was about the worst thing I could’ve imagined.”
“Well, now we’ve got a highly intelligent, extremely cunning, out-of-control Malcolm, who could murder anyone for any reason.”
“Oh, I’ve got a reason.” Malcolm said as he stepped into the room behind Detective Baltimore, grabbing Baltimore by the hair and jerking his head back. Baltimore cried out in surprise and groped for his Glock. When he saw the glint of surgical steel in Malcolm’s free hand, he knew he would never get to his weapon in time to save his life.
XXV.
Reed jumped as if someone had sent a thousand volts through the floor. He hadn’t locked the door behind the detective and had left it half-open, anticipating the detective would be leaving soon. So, neither of them heard Malcolm slip into the house. Death was once again standing in Reed’s house and Reed was once again at its mercy.
Reed shuffled backwards, yelping and screaming like a frightened infant, knocking over the rug shampooer, stumbling, and splashing down in the bloody foam and suds. Malcolm was smiling. He ran his tongue over his platinum tipped canines as he stabbed a long Japanese tanto knife into Detective Titus Baltimore’s neck and ripped it across the man’s throat with one hand, twisting his head in the opposite direction with the other. Detective Baltimore struggled to free his Glock nine-millimeter from its shoulder holster.
Malcolm smiled as the gun came out of its holster and the detective attempted to point it over his shoulder at Malcolm’s head. The huge black man appeared to be amused by the detective’s valiant struggle for survival. Reed clamped his hands over his ears to muffle the whistling, wheezing gurgle coming from the detective’s throat.
Despite the Baltimore’s obviously mortal wound, he still tried to aim the gun at Malcolm’s head. Reed paused, hopeful that the detective would succeed and it would all be over. Malcolm would be out of his life forever.
The good guy couldn’t die could he?
In Reed’s upright and moral world, the hero would somehow aim the gun over his shoulder into Malcolm’s face and blow him away. Then Reed would get to the phone and call the paramedics who would arrive just in time to save the detective’s life. But Reed was learning more and more that his world had changed. Everything he’d known, all the laws and rules he’d come to believe in, were gone for good. And this new world he now found himself trapped in, was a dark and terrible place where no one escaped unscathed.
Malcolm laughed a harsh, guttural, feral bark that made Reed cringe. Then he thrust the tip of a long thin knife that looked like a miniature sword through Detective Baltimore’s eye socket, sinking the blade into his skull up to the hilt. Reed watched the detective’s gun hand fall limply to the ground, the Glock tumbling down across the blood stained Berber carpeting, and all hope fell with it.
Reed backed up across the room as far as he could and curled up in a corner, holding his knees and moaning, waiting for the killing blow, hoping Malcolm would have more mercy on him then he’d had on Linda, and feeling like shit for it. But he didn’t want to suffer like Linda had. Oh god, he didn’t want to hurt like that.
“If you kept him out of it like I told you to, he’d still be alive. Who you gonna call now Reed? How many more people you want to get killed? It’s just you and me now, Reed. This is between you and me.”
Reed was trembling and weeping.
“Please. Please don’t. Don’t hurt me.”
Malcolm dropped Detective Baltimore’s ruined corpse to the floor, studied it for a second with a look of satisfaction, turned, and walked out the door. Reed was still curled into a fetal position watching the blood gush from the detective’s lacerated throat onto the carpet that was still stained with the blood of his wife and children. He stared at the hilt of the knife sticking out of Detective Baltimore’s eye socket. The blade completely disappeared into the detective’s skull. He stared into Baltimore’s remaining eye. It was completely still, empty of any life. The detective was gone. His life had fled and left its bleeding shell in Reed’s living room. It was only then that Reed became aware of his own inexplicable survival. He was still alive. For some bizarre reason Malcolm had once again allowed him to live when he could have snuffed him out as easily as blowing out a candle.
“What the hell do you want from me?”
But Reed knew. He knew what Malcolm wanted the day he killed his family. He wanted Reed to come to him, willingly, to try to stop him. He wanted Reed to come at him with th
e same rage and hatred Malcolm had shown his family. He wanted Reed to come to him with a heart craving vengeance so he could carve that heart from his chest. Reed’s head filled with memories of his lost family smiling, laughing, and then finally screaming in horror as Malcolm tore them apart. He remembered his childhood, his high school years with Malcolm. He saw again the day he met the huge black kid, the day he first accepted Malcolm’s friendship, the day he betrayed that friendship. He saw the blade ripping across the detective’s throat. He saw it ripping across his own throat.
Reed felt the scream rising inside him, not in his throat, but in his mind, a loud, agonized screech that rattled his teeth and twisted his thoughts. It was the sound of his family dying and it stayed in his head and never reached his throat, becoming a chorus of screams. He could hear Jennie, Mark, Linda, and others, many others. It was the others that scared him the most. It sounded like hundreds. It grew louder and louder, wiping every thought from his mind, every thought but one . . . killing Malcolm. That was the one thought that seemed to quiet the screams. He seized it and followed it out of the madness. Reed knew he would stand almost no chance against Malcolm. Still, he picked up Detective Baltimore’s Glock and stepped out of the house in search of his tormentor. He had only one clue to Malcolm’s whereabouts, the same one he had given to the detective before Malcolm had taken him.
Rick’s house.
XXVI.
“Where the fuck were you! You were supposed to be watching the house! Where the fuck were you?"
James attacked the two detectives, grabbing both of them by the throat and nearly driving them over the hood of the car. The entire eight-officer Family Man Task Force was there and all of them rushed to pull James off Detectives Trinidad and Nellis. James fought them as they wrenched his hands from the detectives’ throats and pulled him backward until he and the other officers all fell back against another squad car. James pulled himself free and tried to go at the two detectives again, but the others grabbed him. Trinidad was no punk, and he stepped up to James as he raged in the arms of his fellow task force members and pointed his finger in James’s face.
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