“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.
LIV.
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.
LV.
CC was just slipping down into a drug and orgasm induced sleep when she felt the cool breeze wash over her. Unconsciously, she pulled the covers up over her shoulders and slipped down deeper into an exhausted slumber that bordered on collapse. CC had been nervous and agitated, wound up tight as a drum, wired by fear. Releasing that pressure had completely drained her. She had needed that orgasm, to let go, to release the tension and fear, needed to feel loved. James was a giving and considerate lover. After being kidnapped by Malcolm and watching Rick die right beside her, she had needed to feel safe. Wrapped in James’s arms, she had felt like nothing in the world could hurt her. Their lovemaking had been furious, passionate, and not hurried so much as urgent. Hungry. Their need had struck them so suddenly, so powerfully, that they were consumed by it. When she climaxed, it had felt like dying, like letting go of the world and all its troubles.
She was past dreaming, in a dark peaceful oblivion, when the weight of a body pressed down upon her and kisses fell on her face and neck. CC could feel hot breath on the back of her neck and gentle nips and bites. She knew it was James, but she was so tired that she couldn’t awaken. She felt hot wet lips kiss their way down her spine and two large hands knead her buttocks. There was a low guttural purr as he slid a tongue across each cheek, then an animalistic growl that seemed to vibrate through the bed. Hard sharp teeth bit into the soft flesh of her ass, and she awoke with a start and turned over.
“That hurt!” She mumbled sleepily.
A large dark shape rose up from between her legs and came down over her. The shape was much too big to be James. Fear vibrated through her flesh and locked her muscles. CC felt her legs being torn apart and a large phallus push up into her. She could hear the shower still running. She screamed and powerful arms locked around her waist, yanking her from the bed and hoisting her into the air.
LVI.
James rushed out of the bathroom and felt the bile rise in his throat as he absorbed the sight of Malcolm standing in the center of the room with one arm gripping CC’s naked ass, holding her off the ground with her legs wrapped around his waist. Malcolm was almost completely nude—nothing but a long trench coat hanging from his shoulders. It took only a second for James to realize that Malcolm was inside of her, raping her. James started toward him meaning to tear him from CC, tear Malcolm’s head from his shoulders, when he spotted the shotgun pointed directly at his chest.
“Detective Bryant. You have really been fucking up things between me and Reed.”
Malcolm pumped his hips to punctuate his words, sliding himself in and out of CC with a wet, squishy sound that withered the detective’s spirit and brought a drugged whimper of pain from CC.
“Tell me what I should do about that, Detective Bryant. Should I kill you and this bitch?”
James noted that Malcolm had referred to him by name, which gave him some hope that he wasn’t intending on killing him, but just as quickly he noted that he was still referring to CC as simply “bitch,” a thing with no name, completely depersonalized. He was still vigorously raping her as he stood pointing the gun at James. He was pounding harder, more angrily. The sound of his hard, unyielding flesh slapping against CC’s soft skin was sickeningly loud.
“Let her go, damn it! Let her the fuck go! I’ll kill you, you sick motherfucker! I’ll fucking kill you!”
There was an invisible wall between him and Malcolm that began at the tip of the shotgun’s huge barrel. James began pacing like a tiger on a leash, wanting to launch himself at Malcolm and beat him to a pulp, but the shotgun remained as an insurmountable obstacle. The detective’s pistol sat across the room on the nightstand.
He gets no real sexual gratification out of the intercourse itself. It’s the fear, the pain, the humiliation that gets him off. He uses his penis as another weapon . . . I’m sure he made the men watch. That’s another way of demonstrating his power and their powerlessness.
James remembered Baltimore’s words as he looked into Malcolm’s eyes. Locked onto his, Malcolm’s eyes calmly studied James’s, studied his expression, relished his pain, his powerlessness, while reveling in his own power.
Malcolm’s mind seemed to be completely disconnected from his body. His attention remained unblinkingly focused on James even as he slammed himself into CC with still increasing ferocity. She was crying now, sobbing in pain. Her body was limp as a rag doll. James was desperate to kill Malcolm, but he knew that the psychopath would not hesitate to pull the trigger, and at that range, with a shotgun, there was no way he could miss.
James watched helplessly as Malcolm began to roar, his whole body shaking with what could only have been an orgasm. James was repulsed at the thought of Malcolm’s evil seed erupting into CC’s womb. Malcolm bared his platinum fangs and bit down on CC’s shoulder. Blood squirted into his mouth and ran down CC’s shoulder. She squealed in pain and began to thrash as he tore into her. Malcolm’s eyes remained pinned on James. He let CC fall away like an empty sack, dumping her onto the floor. Malcolm’s erection was now bobbing in the air, pointing directly at James, enormous, dripping with sexual fluids and blood and showing no sign of diminishing. It looked violent, lethal. Malcolm was still smiling. He moved toward James, bearing his erection in one hand like a weapon and the shotgun in the other hand like it was a phallus.
James backed away from Malcolm, now more afraid of the swollen, angry penis than of the shotgun. He backed into the bathroom, and Malcolm continued to advance. He could see CC writhing across the floor, trying to get away. Malcolm forgot about her. All his attention was now focused on the detective, mind, body, and diseased spirit. James felt fear grip him, shake him like never before as for the first time he could picture himself as Malcolm’s victim.
The detective backed into the bathroom knowing he had nowhere else to go. He squared his shoulders and prepared to fight. It was better to be shot outright than submit to whatever Malcolm had planned. James heard a shot ring out and Malcolm staggered, his face twisted into a horrible rictus of rage and pain. He spun around, letting out a bloodcurdling roar.
James didn’t know what had happened. Had Malcolm been shot? There was blood on the bathroom floor, but it was not his. He saw Malcolm flying toward CC who stood her ground, holding the detective’s misplaced pistol. She fired a second shot that brought another horrifying roar from Malcolm and caused him to drop the shotgun, but just as quickly, his other arm came up with a huge survival knife gripped in his fist. In one blurred movement he slammed the blade into her stomach and knocked her nearly across the room. She struck the wall and fell in a heap with the blade still in her, a long gash yawned open to split her torso where Malcolm had ripped her from her belly all the way to her sternum. Malcolm charged past her, moving fast, running out of the room as James charged out of the bathroom and scooped the Mossberg off the ground.
James fired at Malcolm’s back as he leaped out of the closed window. All that leadshot couldn’t have missed, but Malcolm fell to the pavement and came up running. James leaned out the shattered window, again firing as Malcolm dashed through the hospital parking lot.
LVII.
Malcolm climbed into the Impala and started the engine. He had fucked up badly and was now wounded. Patrol vehicles screeched into the lot, sirens flashing. Malcolm jammed his foot down on the accelerator and the Impala flew. A dozen police vehicles were in pursuit as the Impala went careening up Broad Street. Malcolm had a bullet in his hip, a bullet somewhere in his chest, and smaller twelve gauge balls scattered into his back. It didn’t feel like anything immediately vital had been hit. A rib felt shattered, but his heart and lungs seemed fine as Malcolm brought his pulse and respiration under control. Shock and blood loss were his only fear.
The Impala’s speedometer showed ninety miles per hour. The police cars struggled to keep up. Malcolm wove in and out of traffic with recklessness beyond courage. He charged through slower moving traffic and late night strollers, leaving the cops behind. They had to consider the safety of others. Malcolm made no such considerations and ran down two pedestrians as he turned the Impala up onto the sidewalk and then barreled through an intersection. The falling bodies created a barricade for the police who could not so casually run them over as had Malcolm.
The Impala picked up speed, opening up the distance between Malcolm and his pursuers. He checked his watch. It was four o’clock in the morning. There were already early morning commuters out getting a head start on the rush hour traffic. At this hour, Malcolm knew the school would be unalarmed. The first of the janitorial staff would have already arrived and would be busy mopping floors and emptying trashcans. No one would look for Malcolm there. No one but Reed.
LVIII.
Reed was cruising down Broad Street when he heard the thunder of the shotgun blast and saw the police cars descend on the hospital. He turned the taxi toward the commotion and barely avoided a head-on collision with the massive Impala as it came hurtling from the parking lot, a three-ton fiberglass and steel projectile. Reed slammed on his brakes so hard and so quickly his forehead struck the windshield, smearing it with his blood and dazing him for a moment. Shaking off the momentary wooziness, he could still hear sirens but could no longer see the police. He pulled the taxi into the lot and spotted Detective Bryant slumped out of the second story window. There were several other cops visible in the room but they were keeping their distance from the detective, surrounding him but wary of him as well. The detective appeared to be muttering to himself. Reed wondered if James could now hear the same voices that filled his head.
LIX.
James had had more than enough. Malcolm had thoroughly beaten him. If someone else wanted to play the hero, that was fine with James, but he was through. He felt it for the first time tonight. He had finally felt what victims felt, that terror, that helplessness, knowing that death was coming and nothing could not stop it. He had been powerless. Malcolm had wanted him to feel it and he had. He was powerless as Malcolm raped CC, powerless as he punched the knife into her. He had been powerless as Malcolm came at him, looking as if he might rape him, too. He had thought of Reed’s hunt for Malcolm as prey chasing predator, but now he realized that he was prey as well, they were all prey for Malcolm, the entire police force, the entire city. Chasing him just meant bringing him more victims.
James couldn’t turn around to look at CC. He heard other officers telling him that she was still alive, that she would be okay, that the trauma team was on its way. But James knew better. People didn’t survive wounds like that. CC had trusted him to protect her and he had failed and now she was dying. James wanted no more. He could not stop Malcolm and had lost all will to try.
LX.
When Reed approached him, Detective Bryant was still on his knees by the window and still cradling the shotgun. Reed simply walked through the ring of cops that were surrounding the detective.
He glanced into the other room and saw a stack of bodies on the bed. Some of the cops standing around the bodies were in tears. Others were enraged. The next room held several cops hunched over a bleeding woman, trying to bandage her wounds with towels. He looked back toward the detective who had his back turned to all of it. He was still staring off down Broad Street in the direction that Malcolm had gone.
Reed knelt beside him, and with eyes that were wildly insane asked, “Where did he go? Where’s Malcolm?”
Reed could no longer distinguish his own voice from the choir of voices in his head. He wasn’t completely certain he had actually spoken. His own voice may have just been another voice in his head.
Then the detective answered, “I can’t stop him. No one can. We can’t stop him.”
; “Don’t quit now, Detective. He wants you to think he’s invincible. He wants you to be afraid. But he’s just human, just a man.”
Detective Bryant shook his head and sighed heavily. He turned to look up at Reed, tears streamed down his face.
“I’m through. I quit.”
“You can’t quit! Malcolm won’t stop. He’ll just keep killing. We have to stop him!”
Detective Bryant rose from his knees and pushed his way past Reed and past his fellow police officers.
“I quit.”
Reed ran past him, down the stairs, and outside into the parking lot. He could hear the cops ordering him to stop and to begin chasing him as he leaped into the taxi. Then he heard Detective Bryant’s weak voice croak, “Let him go.”
When Reed spun the taxi out onto Broad Street, no one followed.
The howling in his head was constant now. The voices no longer resembled human speech. They became the auditory embodiment of pain, the sound of death, the sound of rage. His head shook with their horrible racket. His bones vibrated with the sound of their agony and anger. His head felt as if it was breaking apart. The taxi swerved all over the road as he steered it toward . . . what? Where? Reed was lost again.
Where would Malcolm go? Think. Think. Think!
He punched his temples with his fist trying to quiet the din and jar his thoughts back into place.
Where? Where? Where was Malcolm? Where would he go?
It came to him like a flash of inspiration.
Where it all began . . . back to the school . . . the High School of Creative and Performing Arts.
Pure Hate Page 26
