“Fuck you, James! Titus told us he had everything covered and he was the primary on this case, not you! He told us we could go home. We’d already been watching the house for twelve hours straight with no sign of Malcolm. So we left. The next watch was coming on in two hours anyway. We figured the department was just trying to save some overtime. Baltimore made the call, not us. So, fuck you! And don’t you ever put your hands on me again, motherfucker!”
James glared at him and Trinidad glared back.
“Besides, there was still one more surveillance team in place. Where the hell were they?”
All eyes turned to Detectives Wilson and Jones who had been watching the Cozen house from a house directly across the street, taking pictures of everyone who came and went from that residence. They were unable to get a warrant to tap the phones or install listening devices, so they were virtually deaf, relying solely on visuals and a long range listening device. Wilson stepped up, unable to look James in the eyes. He looked like a beaten fighter flinching at blows that hadn’t even been thrown.
“Alright, so what tha fuck happened?!”
“Well . . . uh . . . Mike went to pick up lunch and I just turned around for a second to load the film. I . . . uh . . . had to go to the bathroom, too. When I got back to the window and adjusted the camera, I saw Mr. Cozen coming out of the house with a gun in his hand. I hadn’t heard any shots or anything, so I didn’t think it was an emergency. I figured maybe Titus had already left. So I called Titus’ cell to tell him the suspect was moving, and that he was armed. After I didn’t get an answer, I started looking up and down the street. That’s when I saw that Baltimore’s car was still parked up the block and I knew something was wrong. I got down there as fast as I could, but by the time I got to the house, Mr. Cozen was gone and Titus was already dead.”
“Reed couldn’t have done this himself. Did you see Malcolm go in there?”
“No, but like I said, I was on the toilet for a few minutes and he could’ve slipped in from the back of the house or something.”
“Fuck! Fuck!” James yelled at no one in particular. He shrugged off Lieutenant Woo, who was still restraining him, and stormed back into the house.
“We keep making mistakes and this motherfucker keeps getting lucky! I don’t believe this shit!”
“But what if it wasn’t Malcolm? What if Reed did it himself?”
Captain Kelly showed up, looking like he was ready to kill. Lieutenant Woo’s eyes shifted from Captain Kelly to the patrol car as if seeking an escape route.
“Woo? What-tha-fuck-happened here?” He spoke calmly and deliberately, his deep voice rumbling like an engine revving up in some terrible machine.
The lieutenant was still looking around. He looked at each detective as if wondering why he had been singled out when he wasn’t even at the scene, conveniently forgetting that he was supposed to be the head of the task force even though he had pretty much relegated that position to Titus and James, whose case it was before the task force was ever established. Baltimore had been considered by most to be the primary on the case. The task force was more a public relations gimmick to make it look to the press as if the police were doing more about the case than they actually were. It looked better to say that they had an eight-man task force assigned to the case than two over-worked detectives. But everyone here knew the truth. Still, Lieutenant Woo couldn’t exactly point fingers at a dead man with his partner just yards away, ready to rip the head off anyone who looked at him sideways. Officially, this was Woo’s case. So he was responsible.
“Uh . . . Detective Baltimore has been murdered.”
“I fucking know that. How? How the fuck did this happen?”
“Well, um, Detective Baltimore went to interview the suspect without his partner. He dismissed his back-up and the surveillance team was . . . um . . . taking a break.”
Captain Kelly looked at Wilson and Jones as if they were something he had scraped off his shoe.
“A break?” he grumbled.
“Well, see, um, Captain, I was in the bathroom and Mike had already left to get some cheese steak hoagies. I mean, we hadn’t eaten in over six hours so . . . .”
The Captain snarled with contempt and stepped up to the two detectives, staring them down until Wilson’s mouth finally stopped moving.
“Wilson, if you say one more word I’m going to unload an entire clip in your ass and with the way you motherfuckers handle an investigation I’m sure I’ll get away with it. Now, where’s James?”
“He was just here. He must be in there . . . in the house.” Lieutenant Woo pointed back towards the open door to Reed Cozen’s house that was now a crime scene for the second time in fewer than seventy-two hours.
“Has Crime Scene arrived yet?”
“Not yet, but they’re on their way. The ME should be here soon, too.”
“Fine.”
James looked up when the captain walked in. He was sitting on the floor beside his fallen partner and Captain Kelly squatted down next to him. James and the captain stared at Baltimore’s body in silence. The blade was still sticking out of Baltimore’s eye-socket and James resisted the urge to pull it out himself. He didn’t want to disturb the crime scene before it could at least be photographed, and the Crime Scene Unit had gone over it for possible evidence, but he couldn’t stand to see Baltimore like that.
“Where’s his gun?”
“I think Mr. Cozen took it. We’ve got an APB out for him.” James was still staring at the body, his eyes unmoving. He seemed to be in shock.
“Wilson said he didn’t hear any gunshots.”
“I can’t find any bullet holes. And there are no shell casings. The CSU boys are bringing the metal detector, but I don’t think they’ll find anything. I don’t think Titus had time to get off a shot. It looks like he was ambushed from behind.”
“Do you think it was Reed?”
“Well, I’d like to think that Titus would have been able to take that little wimp, but who knows? My gut feeling is that it was Malcolm. But maybe it was both of them. Maybe Titus was right, and they were working together. Wilson said he saw Reed walking out of the house with a gun. It might have been Baltimore’s. And if he wasn’t involved and it was Malcolm, why would he leave Reed alive again?”
“Why did he leave him alive the first time?”
“I don’t know. It’s all fucking crazy.”
“I’m sorry, James. I know you two didn’t always get along, but this must still be hard. I mean, losing a partner . . . like this.”
“I was just starting to like the little sonuvabitch, too.” James’s eyes teared up for a moment. He shook his head, took a deep breath, and the tears were gone.
The CSU arrived and began their horribly efficient task of raking the crime scene for evidence. James sat and stared while they went over Titus’s corpse. He watched them dig under his fingernails. He watched them dust the knife sticking out of his eye socket for prints. He watched while they pulled little bits of fiber from his sports jacket with tweezers then vacuumed the carpet from the door to where his body lay, in case they missed anything. They vacuumed his jacket as well.
Dr. Medoff arrived and James was still kneeling at Titus’s side. Captain Kelly intercepted the ME before he could tell James to move out of the way and possibly wind up lying beside Baltimore in his own pool of blood. Dr. Medoff worked around James . . . and James watched. After the ME was through making his preliminary report, his assistants lifted the body into a long, black zippered bag and carried it out to the coroner’s van. James followed. The other officers stared in silence as their fallen comrade was carted off to the morgue.
Reporters were already on the scene. They buzzed about like flies. The smell of carrion was in the air and they had come to glut themselves on Baltimore’s remains. James ignored them even when their buzzing rose to an annoying whine in his ears. He shrugged them off as he ducked under the yellow tape and crossed the street. He climbed into his patrol car and follo
wed the coroner’s van down to the city morgue.
XXVII.
Captain Kelly was watching James’s Romeroesue shuffle/stagger over to his squad car and was about to intercept him and suggest that he have one of the officers drive him home when Detective Nellis ran over to him in a panic.
“Captain Kelly! Sir, I can’t get Vargas and Johnson on the radio. They‘re staked out at Mrs. Davis’ house!” Nellis was holding his balding head in his hand and his eyes were jittery and frightened.
“Now I can’t get them on the radio. I can’t think of a reason they’d be out of their car.”
“There ain’t no toilet in that car is there?”
“No, sir.”
“And you can’t think of one reason why they’d be out of their car? Try them again before we call SWAT.”
Nellis looked like he was about to cry as he raised the cell phone to his lips. The Captain was playing it cool even though the hairs on the back of his neck were standing up. If he lost any more officers tonight he’d probably be looking for a new job.
“Damn it, Tony! I thought something happened to you. Why aren’t you guys answering your radios?”
Captain Kelly snatched the phone from Nellis and barked into it at Detective Tony Vargas.
“Vargas, we just lost one of ours tonight. This shit has gotten serious. No more disappearing acts from anyone. I want everyone on their toes. Malcolm is now a cop killer. If you see him, do not try and apprehend him yourself. Call for backup and stand by. Maintain visual contact. Nobody try to be a hero on this. I don’t want any more funerals.”
Captain Roy Kelly spoke loud enough this time for all the other task force members to hear. Minutes later, the same message went out from police dispatch citywide. Every cop in town was now after Malcolm’s scalp.
XXVIII.
At the end of the block, slumped down in the front seat, peering out through the Jeep Cherokee’s dark tinted windows, Malcolm watched. The coroner’s van drove past his Jeep, followed by James’s white Dodge. The headlights from the Intrepid momentarily illuminated the inside of the Jeep. Malcolm slipped down even lower in his seat. He saw the Detective’s face—a cold, hard, mask—absolutely expressionless.
Malcolm turned the key in the ignition, noting that the keys still had blood on them from their previous owner. The solemn procession of coroner and cop turned the corner. Malcolm followed. It felt more natural for him to hunt then to be hunted. As long as he was watching the police, he was comfortable they would never catch him. Soon, he would have to get rid of Detective Bryant, too. The man was starting to get in the way.
XXIX.
James always thought there was something humbling about a morgue. Being inside one brought him to an immediate awareness of his own mortality that was as real and palpable as if he were on his deathbed or facing execution. No one felt invincible or immortal in a morgue. As a cop, James had gotten used to it. That is, until he watched the Medical Examiner wrench a seven-inch Japanese tanto knife from his partner’s eye-socket and realized that the man who put it there was still out on the streets and it was up to James to go after him. That’s when James began to wonder what it might feel like to have his throat slit. What went through a people’s minds when they were gargling their own blood and watching it spurt from their throat and two feet in the air?
Watching the ME’s assistant saw open the top of the skull of a teenaged runaway who’d been brutally raped and beaten by a person or persons unknown, while a guy from the University of Pennsylvania’s Neurology lab waited impatiently for the kid’s brain, made him wonder if there really was a heaven or if it was all just an endless hell.
And if hell was all there was? Were we already there? Were we foolishly running from death when that was the only real peace we could hope for? If there was a heaven, how did the death of this kid fit into the divine plan?
Fuck. I’m trippin’. I need to pull it together, James thought.
The young boy had purple bruises all over his emaciated, tattooed body, along with older, yellowing ones. The streets had not been kind to him. James looked around the postmortem room. He avoided a glance at Baltimore’s corpse but found the other sights no more comforting. James wondered what the hell were they going to do with that kid’s brain? James remembered that Baltimore was a registered organ donor just as the ME’s assistant removed the boy’s eyes and plopped them in a jar. Detective Bryant turned and left when they began sawing open Baltimore’s chest. In his mind he kept hearing that old saying: “Today is a good day to die!”
It wasn’t. Not in Philly. Not ever. Here, death was always ugly, never peaceful, and never glorious. He wished he were one of those people who passed out at the sight of blood. At least then he wouldn’t have to walk around with the image of Baltimore’s corpse being sawed open, an image seared into his mind like the ghostly, electric-blue, after-images when a flashbulb flares.
Now it was time to go after Malcolm and that thought made his Beretta, his badge, his handcuffs, the bulletproof vest and Remington pump shotgun in the trunk of his car, feel like one of those dollar ninety-nine toy cop sets you got from the supermarket with the little plastic gun, plastic billy-club, and little plastic handcuffs. He felt like a thirteen-year old Masai warrior about to try to claim his manhood by hunting down a lion with nothing but a spear.
James had faced down countless murderers in his career. He’d confronted gangbangers with rap sheets a mile long, gangsters and Mafia hitmen, husbands who’d murdered their wives, wives who’d murdered their husbands, parents who’d killed their children, and cold-blooded killers who murdered for profit. But this was his first serial killer and he was so different from the rest.
He could usually put himself inside a criminal’s mind. He could think like they thought, understand their motives. He knew why a guy would kill someone during a robbery. He even knew why someone would kill during a rape. He knew why spouses killed each other. He’d never admit it to anyone, but he could even understand why someone would kill their own children. But Malcolm was a different breed. His were not crimes of passion or profit. His were crimes of perversion. They came from a place that James’s mind could not go and that terrified him. Malcolm was motivated by pure rage and hatred. It seemed to be the only emotion he felt, an overwhelming hatred that had been festering inside him for decades. It had twisted into a murderous bloodlust that consumed more than two dozen lives and the body count was still rising.
James tried to tell himself that his fears were irrational. He was safe. He had the entire Philadelphia Police Force behind him . . . but so had Baltimore. James couldn’t help wonder if he was next, if Malcolm was out there sharpening his blade for him. Instinctively, James reached for his gun. Feeling its lethal weight normally made him feel confident, but today it felt small and cheap, like a plastic toy.
James drove from the morgue to the station, cursing and beeping his horn at the early morning traffic. A fat guy in a business suit riding one of those little scooters with the knobby tires pulled out in front of the Intrepid. James tried to tell himself that his foot just slipped off the brake, causing him to tap the scooter’s rear tire with his bumper, that it had nothing to do with the fact that the guy riding it looked like the man who’d been shoving hundreds into CC’s g-string the night before. James wasn’t a jealous man. At least that’s what he told himself when his foot once again slipped off the break and he nearly drove the scooter off the road into the gutter. The man struggled to keep the bike from falling over. He turned and gave James his middle finger in the all-American “fuck you” salute. James gave him a cold tight-lipped smile in return.
James hadn’t had time to shower. He could still smell CC’s scent on him, cigarettes, alcohol, Obsession, and pussy. He wished he were still lying in bed beside her. The news of his partner’s murder reached him just as he was falling asleep in CC’s arms. He’d put her in a cab and headed directly to the scene without sleep. Now he’d officially been up for twenty-four hours straight. I
t had been four days since he’d been to the gym and, despite his fatigue, he figured an hour on the heavy bag would help him shake off the fog around his mind. At this point, an hour of sleep would only make him more exhausted.
James drove to the police headquarters downtown where they had the nicest gym facilities and the most corrupt cops in the city. When he worked there, he made it a point not to get too friendly with anyone he didn’t know. He never discussed his cases with any of the downtown boys, or the South Philly boys. They were all in the Mafia’s pockets and he didn’t want them leaking any information to the local wiseguys about his cases, whether it involved them or not. Being on the task force made him multi-jurisdictional, which meant he worked all over the city. James didn’t necessarily like everyone he met. It was probably unfair to say all the downtown cops were corrupt, but it was probably safer to keep in mind that they just might be.
He entered the gym and was relieved to find it empty except for Captain Kelly who was bench pressing half the weight in the gym. It seemed like the Captain was always there. Roy Kelly was one of those mutant freaks who never did any cardio but seemed to have virtually no body fat. Unlike James, who despite countless hours skipping rope, shadow boxing, and hitting the heavy bag, had watched his gut grow nearly half an inch a year since he turned thirty. At forty-five, it had just reached the point where other people commented on it.
“Haven’t seen you in here all week,” Captain Kelly said. He was not the least bit out of breath, despite the three hundred and fifty pounds on his chest. He pumped out a dozen repetitions with little effort before resting the bar back on its rack.
“Yeah, it’s been a rough week,” James said, as he stepped into the locker room.
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