Pure Hate

by White, Wrath James

  “But aren’t most serial killers white? I never heard of a black serial killer before. I know it sounds prejudiced, but I always associate black people with crimes of profit or crimes of passion. Drug dealers shooting each other over turf. Some kid shooting another kid for stepping on his sneakers or dissin’ his momma or lookin’ too hard at his girl. No offense, but when I think of sick shit like this, I think of white folks. I mean, a black guy might rape a woman and then kill her, but I thought only a white guy would kill a woman and then rape her. And then chop her up into little pieces, eat parts of her, stick the rest of her in the freezer and talk to it. I thought you sick bastards had the monopoly on that kind of crazy.”

  “That’s some pretty racist shit, James. Wayne Williams, the Atlanta child murderer was black.”

  “Yeah, if you believe he did it. Look, I know that it’s fucked up to think like that, but I’m a victim of that black liberal mentality that says that minorities who commit crimes do so because they are underprivileged, undereducated, oppressed, and deprived. Evil, I mean pure evil, for me always wore a white face. Charles Manson, Ted Bundy, Jeffrey Dahlmer, Adolph Hitler. I mean, even knowing that Malcolm was black, I still half expected Mrs. Davis to come to the door and be this old white lady with a bible in one hand, a cat o’ nine tails in the other and a big confederate flag on the wall over the mantel, married to some leering pedophile with a history of child and spousal abuse, maybe a few sex offenses thrown in as well. That would’ve made sense to me. ”

  “The same factors that turn Caucasians into these type of monsters can do the same to black people. There are fewer black serial killers in America because there are fewer black people in America. Actually, black people are only 20 percent of the population, but make up nearly 30 percent of all serial killers in America. So, a higher percentage of blacks become serial killers than whites even though there are less of them.

  “Malcolm was a very abused, very fucked-up kid who grew up to become a very fucked up man. His mother didn’t mention it, but I suspect that he was probably sexually abused as a child as well. White people don’t hold the monopoly on child molestation.”

  James nodded.

  “I’ve never heard of a black serial killer on the level of John Wayne Gacy or Ted Bundy though. Not someone killing thirty or forty people, carving them up, and eating them. I’ve never heard of that. The most famous, most prolific serial killers have all been white. I just can’t see a black guy acting like this. I know it’s fucked up for me to hold that stereotype. In fact, I’m admitting it’s a personal prejudice, one I definitely need to work on, but it is at least an understandable, if not justified one."

  Baltimore’s jaw dropped open. He shook his head and blinked several times.

  “What? Are you telling me you think there is actually such a thing as justifiable bigotry? Really, James?”

  “No, that’s not what I’m saying. All I’m saying is that if you’re on the job long enough you start to notice certain patterns in crimes. You start to put a certain look and, yeah, a certain color to certain crimes. You can’t help it. It’s just human nature. You bust a meth lab you’re pretty sure the perp will be white. A crack house . . . black or Latino. Someone shoots a guy outside a nightclub, you think black guy. Someone dices up a family, tell me you don’t picture a white guy? Tell me that isn’t half the reason you’re so convinced Reed Cozen had something to do with the murders? If Malcolm was white would you be so convinced he must’ve had an accomplice? Shit, prejudice is just an occupational hazard. At least I’m man enough to cop to it.”

  “Yeah, maybe you’re right. Maybe my feeling about Reed is really based on race and not the fact that he just smells so fucking guilty I could choke on the stench. But let me tell you, Malcolm is probably the worst serial killer I’ve ever heard of. He’s the most sadistic sonuvabitch I’ve ever seen—white or black.”

  “Well, you know how the saying goes, black folks have to be twice as good to be just as good. Maybe Malcolm’s just making a statement for equal opportunity,” James snickered.

  Titus knew James was just trying to fuck with his head and get him pissed off. So, he decided to ignore his little remark.

  “Malcolm is the archetypal sexual sociopath no different from Bundy or Dahlmer except he’s bigger and blacker, and I’m gonna be the one who puts his big black ass on death row. And if Mr. Cozen is guilty, too, he’ll be getting his hotshot ten minutes after Malcolm.”

  They drove along in a rigid silence for another ten minutes before James spoke again.

  “Okay, so explain those damn silver fangs to me. What the fuck is up with that?”

  Detective Baltimore grinned mischievously.

  “Oh, that. I just thought it was a black thang.”

  James turned halfway around in his seat to face Baltimore and attempted his hardest interrogation room stare, the “crazy nigger” stare that was known to turn hardened career criminals into whining stool pigeons. But the ill-timed intervention of his sense of humor instead caused him to chuckle and shake his head.

  “You know, you really don’t know me well enough to joke like that.” He tried the look again and again he started to chuckle.

  “Yeah, but I’m getting to know you. Slowly, but surely.”

  “Okay, smart ass, so what about the fangs?”

  “Well, first off, I seriously doubt the fangs are made of silver. That’s just not Malcolm’s style. It doesn’t seem to fit in with the designer suits. My guess is platinum. Malcolm likes money. If he wears any kind of jewelry it would be diamonds and platinum.”

  “Okay, but why fangs? Why not a nice necklace or a ring if he wants to show off? I mean gold fronts went out years ago, except in the south, and I never heard of any brothas with fangs and definitely not platinum ones.”

  “Like I said before, all these murders are about Malcolm acting out a fantasy. The fangs are probably part of the fantasy. With his proclivity for cannibalism, it would be easy to imagine that he’s acting out some kind of werewolf fantasy. Perhaps he sees himself as a vampire.”

  “He certainly dresses like one, in those morbid black suits. Dresses like a damn mortician.”

  “But I suspect that the fangs have more to do with how he sees us than how he sees himself.”

  “Yeah? And how does he see us?”

  “As prey. He’s the Big Bad Wolf and everyone else . . .”

  “. . . is just a bunch of little pigs.”

  “Sheep for the slaughter. That’s what I think the fangs symbolize. He’s the ultimate predator, the top of the food chain and the rest of humanity are his cattle.”

  They were nearing the end of one of the longest workdays either detective could remember when they pulled up in front of Reed’s house. The police tape had been removed from the front door and they could see Reed through the window, vacuuming the rug. “How the hell do you vacuum up blood?” went through Baltimore’s mind, but he kept the thought to himself, imagining a wet/dry vac filled with coagulated blood.

  “Maybe he shampooed it first,” Baltimore thought, as he slipped from the car and started walking up the driveway toward the house. Reed looked out the window and he and the detective locked eyes. Reed threw down the vacuum cleaner and strode toward the door in a huff, swinging it wide before the detectives even reached it.

  “Tell me you’re here to tell me that Malcolm’s been captured and not to ask me another bunch of stupid questions!”

  James spoke up first.

  “Relax, Mr. Cozen. We just have a few questions. It will only take a moment. It’s good to see you’ve recovered so quickly.”

  “I still feel like I’m being jabbed in the ribs with an ice-pick every time I sneeze, cough, or laugh. Of course, I haven’t been doing much of the latter lately.”

  “May we come in? I promise we’ll only be a moment.”

  Reed scowled, let out a long hissing breath, then turned and headed back inside the house, leaving the door open wide for the detectives to follow.
His complexion was still pale and sallow and he walked as if he was in constant fear of falling.

  James bit the tip off a cigar and stuck it in his mouth without lighting it. Chewing cigars was, in Baltimore’s opinion, one of James’s more disgusting habits, but he had to admit that actually smoking them would’ve been much worse. They followed Reed into the house that for them was still a murder scene, a particularly gruesome and nasty one at that. They knew that this was still Reed’s home, but the idea of someone living there again seemed kind of sick, like someone taking up residence in a morgue. Baltimore noted that the vacuum he’d seen Reed running was in fact a shampooer, but that he had merely succeeded in making reddish brown suds where the huge bloodstains covered the carpet.

  He might as well write the Berber off as a loss, Baltimore thought. It was unsalvageable. The coffee table was gone and the walls had been scrubbed, spackled, and repainted, but no matter what he did to the house, it was still a murder scene.

  “We found Malcolm’s accomplice,” Titus offered.

  “Did he tell you where Malcolm is? Did you catch him?”

  “The man was dead.” Titus replied.

  “He was more than dead. He was destroyed, ripped apart.” James added.

  “Christ. Well, at least now you know I was telling the truth. You know that night, when it was all happening, I wondered why Malcolm hadn’t killed that guy. It seemed out of character for him to have an accomplice. I think he brought the guy for my benefit . . . to make sure I knew that the killings were all about me. I knew that guy was a dead man. The way Malcolm kept calling him ‘white boy.’”

  “White boy? Why did that make you think he would kill him?” James asked.

  “Malcolm never called anyone by their real names, not even Renee’ and Natasha. He would call them white girl, white boy, bitch, ho, fool, nigga. That is, when he found it absolutely necessary to address someone. Most often he ignored people all together. I was the only one he called by name. I asked him about it one time and he said he was depersonalizing them. He said he’d read somewhere that in hostage situations police always try to get the suspects to understand that their victims were real people with real lives, and not just objects, so they would repeat the hostages’ names over and over again and try to get the suspects to refer to them by name. He said this was supposed to make it harder for the suspects to murder their victims, because it’s easier to murder some anonymous white girl than it is to kill Mrs. Margaret Jones, mother of three, of 252 Greenblade Drive. So he made it a point to never call anyone by name in case he had to kill them one day.”

  Reed smirked and shook his head as memories from his high school years began to come back to him.

  “He called me white boy for the first two weeks I knew him. He would walk by my table at lunch and smack me in the back of the head. Sometimes, he would knock over my milk or steal my dessert. Once he just took my entire lunch. I stood up to say something, I don’t know, ‘Give me my lunch back, please sir’ or something like that, and he punched me in the gut so hard it knocked all the wind out of me, and I nearly passed out. I fell underneath the table and he sat down right beside where I’d fallen and ate my lunch. A few days later he sat down and talked with me. He even bought me lunch that day. After we’d been friends for about a year, I asked him why he picked on me like that when we first met. You know what he said? He said he did it because he wanted me to know what it would be like to be his enemy before he could trust me to be his friend.”

  “Guess he was wrong,” James mumbled.

  “You know, the way you talk about Malcolm, like he was some psychopath, makes me wonder why you were friends with him in the first place. I mean, if he was as terrible as you say he was, why’d you become his best friend?” Baltimore was going into his interrogation mode.

  “Everyone was afraid of Malcolm. Even back then you knew the guy was dangerous, but that was the attraction. There wasn’t a person in school who didn’t want to be his friend.”

  “Why?”

  “Seriously? You don’t get it? Did you ever watch those Godzilla movies when you were a kid?”

  “Godzilla movies? Yeah, sure. Who didn’t?”

  “Not the original one, but the campy sequels and remakes where Godzilla would rise out of the water, destroy half of Tokyo, make friends with a young Japanese kid, then save the world from some space monster? If you had the chance to be that kid, the one who made friends with Godzilla, would you turn it down? Every kid who ever watched one of those films wished he was the one. Imagine what it would be like to walk around town with Godzilla! You could do whatever you wanted. I mean who’s gonna say ‘no’ to you with Godzilla standing over your left shoulder? Well, that’s what it was like being friends with Malcolm. It was like palling around with Godzilla.”

  “So, if it was so great, why did you fuck it up?”

  “Because after a while it’s not good enough to just be Godzilla’s friend . . . you want to be Godzilla.”

  Baltimore looked at James and they both turned back to look at Reed.

  “Mr. Cozen, I have a very difficult question to ask you and there’s no delicate way to put it. Mr. Cozen, did you sexually molest your daughter?”

  All the color drained from Reed’s face then returned in a scalding rush of red.

  “What the fuck kind of question is that? Hell no, I didn’t have sex with my daughter!”

  “We understand that there were some accusations.”

  “That old bitch from the school? She’s out of her goddamned mind! She brought Human Services to my house and they almost took my babies away, all because she thought I hugged and kissed my kids too much. Fuck no, I never touched my daughter!”

  “Mr. Cozen, exactly what were you and your wife seeing a marriage counselor about?”

  “None of your fucking business!”

  “We can get a warrant for the counselor’s records, but we would prefer you volunteered the information. If we have to subpoena the records we will.” Titus lied. He knew no judge would break doctor/patient privilege, but he was hoping Reed didn’t know that.

  “Fuck you. Get a damn warrant then and get out of my house!”

  “It’s a simple question. If you’ve got nothing to hide, just answer it. There’s no need to make this . . .”

  “GET THE FUCK OUT!” Reed was shaking with anger and tears were now rolling down his cheeks. James turned and walked out the door, dragging Titus along with him. The young detective wasn’t done yet, though . . . he still wanted answers.

  “What’re you hiding? We know you’re hiding something!”

  “GET OUT!” Reed winced, grabbed his sides, and plopped down on the couch, still glaring murderously at the two cops as they sauntered out the door.

  “Come on, Titus. You’ve said enough.”

  When they got outside, James grabbed Titus by the lapels and nearly lifted him off the ground.

  “What the fuck was all that? That was completely out of line!”

  “Fuck that! That sonavubitch knows something! You don’t think it’s a little strange that he just moved back in to the same house where his family was murdered? He could have gone to a motel, stayed with friends or family, but he goes back there and starts spring cleaning. Would you ever go back in that house if it was you?” He stared back at James, not backing down. James let him go and walked to the car.

  “Well, if he does know something we’re never gonna get it out of him now. He’ll probably lawyer up and have a restraining order on both our asses by the morning if not a fucking lawsuit.”

  They climbed into the car and James hit the accelerator, stomping it to the floor and roaring away from the curb, taking his frustration out on the Intrepid’s transmission. Baltimore was already planning to approach Reed again. He had to know what Reed knew.

  XIX.

  Another day was gone and James found himself back at the Star Bar, wondering what the hell was wrong with him. He was so exhausted he could barely keep his eyes open on t
he short drive from the precinct. He hadn’t eaten since breakfast, which was contributing to his fatigue. He had maybe six hours before he had to get up and hit the gym for the first time since the case began and try to save his physique before his muscles began to atrophy. After the gym, it was back to work again. Still, he intended on spending every spare second until then with CC, even if that meant paying for lap dances.

  James had an anxious moment as he entered the club when he was afraid CC wasn’t there. He wandered the club fending off advances from writhing, topless, silicone Barbie dolls, eager to grind their g-stringed asses into his groin for twenty dollars. When he finally spotted CC, she was doing just that with an overweight, middle-aged, financial district shark, in a blue Botany 500 suit that was at least two sizes too small and bursting at the seams. Even though the club had a hands-off policy, it was loosely enforced. The man was eagerly rubbing his hands across her generous ass, which was bouncing mere inches from his face. James was surprised that he felt not an ounce of jealousy. In fact, he felt pity for the shark-man. As soon as he ran out of money, CC would be gone and he’d be abandoned to deal with his erection all by himself.

  CC spotted James and winked, then turned back to her businessman and whispered in his ear, at which point he produced two crisp one hundred-dollar bills and stuffed them in her G-string. CC smiled, winked at James again and went back to bouncing her ass in greaseball’s face. Once again, James felt sorry for the guy. He knew that CC would keep him hypnotized by her superior posterior until every large bill in his wallet and most of the small ones had found their way into her G-string, then she would go find another lonely, fat, horny, businessman and liberate his paycheck as well. James knew because such had been his fate on far too many nights. But not this night. Tonight, all he wanted was to take CC home with him and pretend they were married for a few hours before he had to send her home to her real husband. He sat back, ordered a drink, and waited for CC to drain her mark dry.