“Bring the bitch,” Malcolm growled as he stepped from the Jeep.
Rick seized a fistful of CC’s hair and dragged her with him out of the Jeep.
The detective’s door caved in beneath Malcolm’s foot. Malcolm wondered why a man who dealt with crime every day wouldn’t have a steel door with locks and an alarm system, but James had neither.
Like many people, James had faith in his gun. But guns didn’t fire themselves. To shoot an intruder, he had to be home and James wasn’t.
Malcolm didn’t mind waiting. Perhaps he could pass the time carving up Rick. Rick’s comparative passivity had reached beyond the level of an irritation. It felt to Malcolm like betrayal. He considered for a moment that it might have been good that love had been stolen from him. Love made bitches of men.
He stared as Rick flopped to the couch, still wrestling with CC even though the woman had long ago ceased to struggle. It was then Malcolm saw the car pull up outside. A white Intrepid with oversized cop mirrors on the sides. James’s car.
“Stay here.” Holding the shotgun in one hand, he started to slip out a window at the side of the house. He would catch the detective by surprise.
Rick climbed from the couch with his fingers still entwined in CC’s hair, lifting her up with him. He turned around to face the huge bay window, to see the show. He could see the detective now as he climbed from his car.
“Him? That’s who you cheated on me with? That old fat bastard?” Rick shrieked hoarsely in her ear, trying to yell and whisper at the same time while he dragged her deeper into the house, away from the front door, but still close enough to watch the detective die.
“James, run! It’s a trap!” CC screamed, and then braced for the slap she knew would come from her husband.
James ducked, drawing his weapon as he heard CC’s voice call out from the darkness where his front door had been. He heard the sound of knuckles colliding with flesh and heard a soft whimper he also recognized as CC’s. Malcolm would die for that.
James moved to the left of the walkway, ducking down by the bushes, out of the sight line from the door, right next to where Malcolm crouched with the shotgun.
James still could not see into the house. He had no idea where Malcolm or CC were. He couldn’t start shooting in there and risk hitting her. His breath was coming faster as he tried to figure out his next move. The darkness over his right shoulder smiled silver like the moonlight. Then the whole street turned red and white as a dozen police cruisers converged on his home.
Malcolm had been about to press the shotgun to the detective’s temple when he heard the squeal of tires as the first police cruiser pulled up to the house followed by another and another and still more. Malcolm slid back into the night, slipped away down the side of the house into the maze of alleyways just as Reed had done across town hours earlier. Rick would have to fend for himself. A few seconds after the first police car slid into position, Malcolm was already gone.
Rick, however, was panicked. The detective wasn’t dead and the street was filled with black and whites and he had no gun.
Where is Malcolm?
He had CC, but they had guns. Lots of guns. A dozen laser sights crawled blindly across the room, searching for him in the darkness. He watched twin beams of red light travel up his leg. He pulled his leg behind CC . He could use her as a shield. They wouldn’t shoot and risk hitting her. Even with the lasers, they couldn’t see in the dark.
When he saw the first officer turn his spotlight toward the house his heart sank. He was fucked. Spotlights and all the red dots previously wandering the floor gathered on Rick’s forehead quickly, voraciously, gobbling the darkness up. He had no time to give himself up. No voice bothered to call out for his surrender. He had no time to duck behind CC. No time to ask for forgiveness before the first shot propelled Rick’s brain from his skull. Five more shots followed and each removed a bit of his skull. CC fell to the floor as Rick’s grasp slackened. When Rick finally fell beside her, his head was simply gone from the nose up. What was left of his brain flopped out of his shattered skull onto the carpet.
XLV.
James rushed into the house when he saw CC’s husband fall. He’d hoped that it was Malcolm who been taken down, but he knew as soon as he saw the corpse that it wasn’t. Rick’s skin was far too light. But at least they’d deprived Malcolm of an accomplice. He was running out of friends to help him, running out of places to hide.
And at least he’d saved CC. That now made three people who’d survived the Family Man. Perhaps Malcolm was slipping. Maybe they did have a chance of stopping him. James still had no idea what Malcolm was really after, what all this killing was supposed to mean. This was the first real lead they’d gotten, and Malcolm had somehow gotten away.
James spotted CC curled up next to Rick’s corpse and gathered her into his arms.
“It’s okay, baby. No one will hurt you now.”
“Malcolm is here! He’s here! He was on his way out there to kill you!”
James looked around in a panic. Malcolm was still close. Maybe they hadn’t missed him after all. James turned to the other officers who were staring at him and the far too familiar way that he held the witness.
“I want a net over this whole area, six blocks in every direction! Nothing gets out without a top to bottom search. Rip everything apart, but find this muthafucker! We just missed him! He’s out there somewhere. That bastard was in my house!”
They all understood what that meant. He had gone after one of them. If “armed and dangerous” didn’t say it loud enough, his assault on a fellow cop’s home and loved one did. There would be no arrests that night. They would shoot to kill.
They all turned away and started back out the doorway as James kissed the victim/witness. Most of them didn’t know that they’d just killed this woman’s husband, but somehow they knew what they were seeing was not right.
James looked at his bullet-riddled living room and felt all his anger drain away. What remained was fear. He felt as if he was into something way out of his depth, about to be pulled completely under by a riptide to where the sharks waited. The sharks with the silver fangs.
Agent Malcovich stepped into James’s house. It was then that the detective realized that this was no longer his home. It was a crime scene. Malcolm had taken away his sanctuary. Captain Kelly walked through the door behind the FBI agent. When he saw James standing with the half-naked, bruised CC in a desperate embrace, a stern look of disapproval and borderline disgust twisted his face. James saw it and wanted to break the Captain’s, but he wasn’t sure he could take him, comfort CC to the best of his abilities, and keep his job. The EMTs came in and the issue was settled. James was reluctant to let CC go and certainly not until he knew where Malcolm was headed.
“I’m going with her.”
“In a minute, James.” Captain Kelly said, pulling James and CC apart as the EMTs removed her from James’s protective grasp. “I need to talk to you first.”
James watched the EMTs begin their work on CC, and felt his life slipping completely out of control. Malcolm was killing him.
“James, why didn’t you take some units with you to apprehend the suspect. If Malcovich hadn’t notified me that you were going to try to take Malcolm in yourself, you could have gotten yourself and that girl killed. And I thought I told you to ride with Malcovich?”
“That was when I was on the case. You took me off it, remember? All I was doing was going home. I have the right to do that.”
“James, somehow this lunatic has set his sights on you. That means I have to keep you where I can see you. It also means you’re back on this case, but with Agent Malcovich. Everything you do, I want him along with you. Your girlfriend is now under protective custody. I’ll put her up at one of the hotels downtown and post someone at her door as soon as she gets out of the hospital. If you want to get a hotel room, too, the department will pick up the bill.” The Captain looked around the ruined living room and sighed, “You ob
viously can’t stay here.”
“Thanks, but I’ll stay with CC tonight.”
“Afraid not. You want to stay on this case? You can’t be fucking the witness.”
“You say ‘witness’ like you really think there will be a trial. You and I both know this muthafucka won’t ever live to see the inside of a courtroom.”
David Malcovich spoke up to change the subject. Murdering suspects is not something to discuss out loud, even in a room full of cops.
“Okay, so where do we look for him now?”
“Assuming we don’t catch him tonight, all we have to do is find Cozen. Where Reed is, Malcolm will be.”
“Unless, of course, he’s switched targets.” Malcovich said, staring emotionlessly at James, obviously wondering how to use him as bait.
“No, Reed is still his primary target. I’m just an obstacle he wants to remove.”
Detective Willis strolled in followed by Vargas, who was now dressed in a sharkskin suit with no tie and his hair slicked back like an Italian gangster.
“James, where did you say you were when the shooting started?”
“I was crouched over there beside those bushes.”
Willis and Vargas gave each other a look. Detective Willis’s huge Adam’s apple bobbed as his eyes slid sideways.
“Why? What?”
“We found two footprints on the other side of those bushes. Size fifteen.”
James began to sweat. He fought to control the tremor in his knees. He knew what the detectives were trying to say. He wanted to run out of there before they finished, to just jump in the back of the ambulance with CC and get away from all the madness.
“He was right next to you, man. If those units hadn’t shown up . . .”
James didn’t say a word. He turned and walked out of the room. He’d heard it, but he didn’t have to react to it. Agent Malcovich followed as James headed toward the ambulance.
CC looked terrible. Her already limp hair was thinning. Vivid purple bruises stood out on her face and she seemed smaller, weaker, helpless. Her eyes were closed, but tears streamed from beneath her eyelids. James wanted to comfort her, but he felt too responsible for her pain, for her husband’s death, and for her own near death. He hadn’t earned the right to comfort her. Malcovich was hovering nearby at a respectable distance watching as the EMTs helped CC onto the gurney and into the ambulance. Only after the ambulance sped off did he approach.
“Come on, Detective. We’ve got a killer to catch. I need to look at the crime scene photos. I need to see all the files on the Family Man.” Agent Malcovich said, as he climbed into the car beside James.
“Then I’ll drop you off at the station because I’ve looked at enough pictures. I just want to catch this bastard. Besides, everything that was relevant has already been sent to the bureau. If you didn’t do your homework, you’ll have to catch up on your own time.” James didn’t even look at Malcovich when he spoke. He pulled out of the parking lot, keeping his eyes on the road, gripping the steering wheel so hard the skin on his knuckles felt ready to rip, the muscles in his jaw fully flexed.
“There’re enough files on the Family Man to fill two filing cabinets. I didn’t pack that many suitcases. I need to review the files because there’s something I haven’t quite figured out.”
“Yeah, and what’s that?” James smirked.
“The Family Man was so organized, so calculating—a stone cold sociopath, but ever since he’s been identified as Malcolm Davis, he’s been reckless, disorganized, psychotic.”
James shook his head.
“No. You still don’t get it. Since he was identified, since he went after Reed. The Cozen family was not the work of the thrill killer that murdered for sexual gratification like those other killings. He wasn’t the Family Man when he went after them. He was just Malcolm Davis and it was personal. It’s been personal ever since. These aren’t signature killings anymore. They’re crimes of passion. Now it’s all about revenge. What we have now is not a serial killer with a predictable pattern. It’s a pissed off muthafucka who knows how to kill, enjoys killing, and who’s out to kill Reed and anyone else who gets in the way . . . including us.”
Agent Malcovich looked frightened for the first time. He looked exactly how James felt.
XLVI.
Reed was dreaming again. He was still walking, following in the direction of the sirens, but his mind had flown free of his exhausted body. Linda was cooking for him again. He could smell mushroom and zucchini casserole with too much garlic and cayenne pepper baking in the oven, filling the entire house with a heavy exotic musk. He was hungry, but he couldn’t get Crissy out of his mind. They had a date, and he knew she was waiting for him. He told Linda he was going for a walk and he walked around the corner to meet the babysitter in her daddy’s car. Minutes later, Crissy’s father caught his little girl lifting her head from Reed’s lap with his cum dribbling off her chin.
Linda was crushed, but she stuck by him. He could see her tears rolling down her beautiful cheeks, see the pain and anger in her eyes wrestling with her determination to hold her family together. He’d felt like shit, helpless, useless, unworthy of her, the same way he felt the night she died.
Reed stopped walking. He stared up the block where several patrol vehicles were gathered then he looked down the street. A hundred yards or so from where he was standing, something moved. He saw something slip across the street, illuminated for a second by the street light overhead . . . something large and black. A piece of the night had separated itself from the rest of the darkness and slid across the street to rejoin the night again. Reed recognized the way it moved. It was familiar, anthropomorphic. It was Malcolm.
Reed felt his feet moving before he consciously decided to run after the darkness. He saw a silhouette dashing across the dark. It slipped over a fence, moving fast. He followed. He pulled out the Glock and pointed it into the solid wall of night, looking for the human shape he’d glimpsed there. Reed could hear the sound of heavy footprints thudding across dirt. He followed blindly, slowing down so he wouldn’t overtake his prey in the dark.
He heard the sound of cloth flapping around brisk moving limbs, the sound of a lock popping open, the sound of a car door slamming. Malcolm had found wheels. Reed leapt another fence and found himself huffing, wheezing, out of breath, and standing next to a state liquor store back on Germantown Avenue.
There were six cars parked on the street at that hour. A red Chevy Nova with a white racing stripe, a green Hyundai Sonata, a candy-apple red Toyota Tercel, a white Ford F150 with a dent in the door, a ten-year old white BMW with dented fenders, and a black, drop-top, Mercedes coupe. Reed aimed his gun at the coupe, but it was already pulling away from the curb. He couldn’t see the passenger, but he knew. The Mercedes was just Malcolm’s taste.
Reed had no idea how to steal a car. He hailed a cab. The cab driver slowed down and looked at Reed, appraising him. He looked wild but he was white. White people never looked dangerous to people in G-town unless they were wearing uniforms. Reed knew nothing about the cab driver. He didn’t know the man was a recently legalized immigrant from Haiti who had a wife, three kids, a young sister, and a mother that he supported back home or that he was trying to raise the money to bring them to America with him. When Reed opened the car door, pointed the gun at the bridge of the driver’s nose, and told him to get out, all he knew about the man was that he would never see another day if he didn’t do exactly as Reed told him. The driver did not hesitate a moment and gave up the cab without resistance. No job was worth never seeing his family again.
The Mercedes cruised up Germantown Avenue at exactly five miles over the twenty-five mile-per-hour speed limit. Not too slow or too fast, nothing to raise suspicion. The top was up, the windows were tinted and not even the driver’s outline was visible. Reed followed the Mercedes down Germantown Avenue, through the Richard Allen projects where angry kids threw empty bottles atthe taxi but not at Malcolm’s black Mercedes as if they
knew. He followed Eleventh Street downtown into Center City. Reed had been following Malcolm for over half an hour when he recognized where they were going. He should have known.
XLVII.
Malcolm pulled up outside of the police station and parked the car. He was tired but anger made him sharp. He knew Natasha had gotten away. How else had the cops known he was headed for the detective’s house? They had gotten close this time. It enraged Malcolm to think of himself gunned down on the detective’s front lawn with Reed and Natasha still alive, free to fuck each other all over again, to cum on his grave. Malcolm gnashed his teeth and punched his fist into the dash, sending little chips of high impact plastic flying back at his face. He didn’t even blink as they struck his cheek. His eyes were glazed, staring deep into the night, trying to see through the walls of the police station. He wanted Natasha back. She belonged to him, not to the cops, not to Reed. She would always be his. She would die for him.
Malcolm knew he’d never get his time alone with Reed until he rid himself of the fleas that were tracking him, drawn to his heat. He knew that killing the cop had been a mistake, but now that he’d done it there was no choice but to kill more. He’d kill them all if necessary, if that’s what it took get them to back off. He’d drive a stake of fear through the police department’s heart, reacquaint them with their own mortality, paralyze them. That would give him the time he needed to finally bring full closure to his relationship with Reed. And he still needed to reclaim Natasha, which meant going through her protectors, killing more cops.
Malcolm watched for over an hour, his focus never wavering, his anger ebbing and then crashing back upon him like waves upon a jagged shore, never noticing the taxi that idled down the block and across the street. Finally, two unmarked squad cars pulled up in front of the station house. A tall, awkwardly built, white cop, along with a foppish Puerto Rican, hurried out of the station house flanking Natasha. She was still wearing Rick’s clothes and jacket. Malcolm felt a tug of desire as he watched her stroll defiantly down the station steps with no outward signs of nervousness despite the peril she must feel. His sex drive and homicidal instincts had long become indistinguishable and the thought of drawing her blood heated his own. This would not be a cold, merciful execution. He had waited too long for that. Malcolm needed time with her, time to enjoy her again.
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