The three ducked into the back of an unmarked Ford LTD and headed up Eleventh Street, followed by a second car, which no doubt held additional security. Malcolm waited a few seconds to give them some distance. He swung the Mercedes into a tight U-turn and began to follow them, never noticing the taxi making a U-turn in his rear view mirror, nearly running down a pedestrian hurrying across the street to flag it down for a ride.
The procession of cars traveled up Eleventh Street and then turned right on Walnut Street at the Gay and Lesbian bookstore where a book signing was taking place. A small gay pride parade had formed outside its door and the police slowed down to let several conservatively dressed businessmen, perversely attired leathermen, and flamboyantly dressed transvestites saunter arm in arm across the street. Malcolm slowed to a complete stop and avoided coming too close to the police vehicles.
He smiled, recalling the day he’d picked up Paul at that same bookstore. He’d watched Paul flipping through the pages of a leather and latex fetish magazine, then turn his attention to another book lower down on the rack, flipping through an illustrated adult comic book featuring X-rated renderings of Marquis De Sade’s “Philosophy in the Bedroom” while his modest erection became apparent. He looked so much like Reed, Malcolm wanted to kill him on the spot.
When Paul spotted Malcolm staring at him with homicidal lust sizzling in his retinas, he recognized it instantly. He was drawn to it. He could see the want in Malcolm’s eyes. Malcolm made sure that his intentions were clear in his expression, his need, his lust, his love, as only the starving wolf can love the wounded deer, an obsessive adoration, a relentless hunger. Paul needed to be needed; to be consumed in the intensity of another human’s passion. It had been destiny. Paul was born to be Malcolm’s victim. They both knew it with the certainty of faith at the instant their eyes met. They lived together for months with the promise of torture and death hanging between them like an unconsummated marriage. Even as Malcolm began slicing into him, he’d seen nothing but ecstasy on Paul’s face. Pain, fear, yes, but greater than those had been an almost religious rapture. He had been the perfect sacrifice. After him, Malcolm knew it was finally time to kill Reed.
The parade moved on and the cops continued down Walnut Street all the way to Front Street, where the car pulled into the parking lot of a huge apartment complex. The safe house. Malcolm parked his car across the street and smiled in the dark. His platinum fangs shined even through the tinted windows.
PART III
Denouement
XLVIII.
The second unmarked police car circled the block before driving off. It paused for a second in front of each car parked on the block in front of the safe house, and the officers recorded license plates. Malcolm held the shotgun between his legs and slid lower into the seat as the detectives pulled up alongside the black Mercedes. They wrote down the license plate and continued down the block. As soon as they ran the plate, Malcolm knew they’d be back. A car this expensive had surely been reported stolen almost immediately.
Malcolm watched as the cops continued down the block. After they turned the corner, Malcolm waited another ten minutes to be sure they weren’t circling the block again before he left the Mercedes. The shotgun was still cocked as it hung down in the long pocket of his trench coat. Malcolm quickened his steps, crossing the street into the building. He walked over to the apartment’s entrance and cursed aloud when he saw the doorman. The man had surely been alerted to call the cops if he spotted a six-foot-five, 230-pound, black man with platinum fangs creeping around, and just killing the man would bring the cops too quickly. He might even be a planted cop bodyguard.
A young yuppie chick with flaming red hair piloted a black Chrysler 300 into the parking lot and drove around the back of the building. Malcolm followed her. If she wasn’t parking in the lot then there must be a garage, a garage with its own entrance to the building. Malcolm avoided the front of the building and the doorman’s vigilant gaze, sticking to the shadows as he slid through the parking lot and ducked around the corner in time to see a gate starting to lower on an underground parking garage. Picking up his pace, he ducked under the gate before it closed completely.
Malcolm spotted the redhead stepping out of the Chrysler, slinging a black Prada bag over her shoulder. She wore a red leather jacket and a tight black miniskirt with black leggings. She looked like a high-priced call girl only a year or two of hard tricks away from walking the street. Malcolm followed her to the elevator door.
She pushed the button for the elevator and Malcolm thought about following her up, but he knew he wouldn’t be able to control the urge to kill her. She was attractive and it had been awhile. Malcolm took the stairs.
Walter Essex was the security guard on duty that night. He’d been a real estate broker in better years, and a thief in worse. He’d lost a wife to alcoholism and chronic drug abuse and two daughters to an abusive and irresponsible nature. The kids were both grown and gone now, in therapy, and in denial of their father’s existence. His wife, their mother, acquired some of his vices over the years and, last Thanksgiving, she ODed on heroin while in the kitchen. The turkey burned and so did the house. The urn over the mantle at his daughter’s house probably held more ashes from their old house than it did her mother’s. The girl blamed him for that, too.
Walter didn’t expect much out of life. He had learned to pray for the best but prepare for the worse. Still, he was unprepared for the grinning black demon that roared out of the fire exit. It never occurred to him to reach for his gun. At least, not until he saw it in Malcolm’s hands, pointed at his chin. He hadn’t cleaned his gun in months, but it was loaded. He was sure of that, and the bullets, however old, were still fresh enough to kill him.
“Oh, shit.” He croaked. He was sure that this man would take his life. He didn’t value it enough to beg for it.
“You can save yourself some pain if you tell me where those cops went with the girl,” Malcolm whispered, in a voice like wind whistling through a graveyard.
Walter didn’t believe that this man would spare his life even if he did tell him what he wanted to know. There was something in those eyes—hardness, a coldness, that looked inhumane, the way a fisherman looked at the fish before he gutted and filleted it, but Walter told him anyway. It was worth a try.
“Top floor. Room 1016.”
Walter hated cops. He didn’t feel any regret imagining what the huge, ferocious-looking black man would do to them. His only regret when he saw the blade come out from under Malcolm’s jacket, was never having apologized to his daughters. And, finally, deep in his heart, he accepted that their mother’s death truly was his fault.
“I’m sorry, Bethany,” he whispered as Malcolm savagely bared knife and fangs.
When the knife slammed into his belly and began slicing upward, Walter tried not to scream. He tried to grab the man’s wrists, and he tried to prevent the knife from rising, but the man was impossibly strong, and all Walter could do was try to slow him down a little. Blood rained from the ever widening wound in his gut from beneath his naval to just below his saggy man-boobs. The man withdrew the knife and turned to walk away as ropes of bluish purple intestines erupted from the enormous gash in Walter’s belly.
The old security guard struggled to push his guts back inside his belly. The pain was overwhelming, sickening; his stomach roiled even as it flopped out of his body, and Walter vomited into the growing pool of bloody intestine at his feet, which in turn sent a new wave of pain through his bowels. He collapsed amid the blood and vomit, convulsing from pain and blood-loss with the onset of terminal shock. He had forgotten the struggle to hold back his screams and agonized cries now filled the entire lobby as Walter’s killer disappeared into the stairwell.
Malcolm took his time walking up the stairs. The detectives wouldn’t be as easy as the security guard had been. They would be cautious and on guard after the death of their peer. Malcolm had to be careful. He had to be smarter than they were. He knew that
someone would be outside watching the hall. He had to take him out quietly. Malcolm still had the knife, now dripping wet with the security guard’s blood. If one of the cops was outside in the hall, Malcolm would try to catch him by surprise with the knife and take him out silently before he could squeeze off a shot. Cops put too much faith in the ten-foot rule. Malcolm knew that he could close twenty feet and slice the detective open before he could even free his weapon from its holster. Acting was a lot quicker than reacting, and Malcolm would have surprise on his side. If both cops were inside the apartment, things might get a little more complicated.
Malcolm made it to the top floor and stared out the fire exit’s thick glass window at the long empty hall. There was no detective in the hallway, not even a bored, half-conscious uniform. No one to ambush, no one to force to open the door, to hold hostage and make the other cop give up his gun, to use as a human shield as he charged into the apartment blasting. Malcolm could see room 1016 halfway down the hall, only one hundred feet away. It would be a pointless trip. Going through that door would be suicide. He looked around the stairwell and spotted a window that led to a rusting fire escape.
Malcolm slid through the window onto the rickety steel framework. The winds were thirty miles per hour and Malcolm had to hang on as the entire structure rattled and shook. Malcolm climbed from the fire escape onto a thick ledge that wrapped around the building. The wind threatened to tear him from the ledge as he crept from window to window. He counted the distance from the fire escape to where he’d seen the apartment as he passed one dark window after another, slipping unnoticed past entangled or embattled lovers. He stopped just outside the apartment where Natasha was supposedly safe. The shade was pulled but the lights were on and he could hear voices. He could also hear the unmistakable squawk of a police radio. This had to be the right place.
Malcolm slid the sawed-off Mossberg out of his coat pocket and aimed it at the window. He waited until he saw a large male silhouette fall across the shade before he pulled the trigger.
XLIX.
Natasha was lying on the couch, watching television, and falling asleep when the window imploded and Detective Willis went down in a spray of glass shards and blood. She heard the unmistakable sound of a shotgun chambering a round as Malcolm smashed through what remained of the window and stepped into the living room. Detective Vargas drew his gun and fired shots in the vicinity of the window, not aiming, just trying to buy time and distract Malcolm long enough to get to Natasha.
Malcolm smiled as bullets flew past him and punched chunks out of the drywall. Detective Vargas dove for the couch, reaching out for Natasha to shield her from the monster who’d just murdered Willis. If the detective could reach her and pin Malcolm down with gunfire long enough to get her to the door, she might have a shot at surviving this. But Malcolm was moving far too fast. In one leap, he moved from the window to the couch, firing the shotgun as he landed between the detective and Natasha. Vargas landed behind the sofa with a steaming hole in his chest. His silver sharkskin suit turned red as his life drained from severed arteries and perforated organs.
Natasha curled into a tight ball on the couch waiting for the shotgun to turn on her. Malcolm put his dark cavernous eyes on her. She could see terrible things stirring deep within them.
He was breathing hard, like a prizefighter in the twelfth round. Natasha could not believe the chance he’d taken to get her. She knew that he’d be even angrier because of the extreme risk. He’d almost lost his life getting to her. He could have died falling off the ledge or been gunned down stepping through the window, but he’d risked death for her. Another time and she might have been flattered, but now, all she could do was scream, explode from her fetal ball, and scramble to her feet to run away from him just like she’d run from him when he’d caught her fucking Reed.
Malcolm reached out and caught her arm as she tried to make it past him to the door. Natasha screamed again. Her one chance to escape, to survive, was gone. She continued to struggle but knew it was hopeless. Malcolm locked one iron-muscled limb around her neck and lifted her off the ground. She was choking, but she had enough air left in her lungs to continue screaming.
“Shut the fuck up,” he growled, but there was no way she could. She kept hoping that there were other cops around who would hear her screams and come save her. There had to be someone who could save her. She couldn’t die. There was so much more she wanted to do with her life. Murder was what happened to other people, like those cops there on the floor. People like her didn’t get murdered.
Malcolm opened the door and marched past the curious and frightened neighbors as they came out of their apartments. He still had her by the throat and he still had the Mossberg, his finger hovering over the trigger. Natasha still screamed.
A long time ago she’d loved this man. She’d told him she’d die for him, that she wanted to die with him. Now, all she wanted was to live, to go back to her perfect job, her perfect apartment, and her mediocre boyfriend. But Malcolm was going to take it all away. Malcolm was going to kill her. She knew that now even if she still could not fully accept it. She had to keep fighting until the end.
“Help me! Someone help me! My god he’s going to kill me! Help! Help!” Natasha screamed, but the other residents had come out to look, not to get involved. None of them wanted to become a victim. They watched as she was dragged to the fire exit by the tremendous black man and down the stairs. They watched as she was thrown into the trunk of Malcolm’s car. They were still watching, dialing 911 on their cell phones, while Malcolm sped away from the scene in the Mercedes, Natasha still screaming her horror under the listless stars.
Somehow, Reed had lost Malcolm in the downtown traffic. It surprised him when the entire procession had suddenly stalled before the parade of freaks at the gay bookstore and Reed had continued up Eleventh Street, afraid to stop directly in back of Malcolm’s vehicle and risk being spotted. Malcolm was apparently not as concerned about the cops spotting him. Reed didn’t have enough room to turn onto Walnut Street anyway with the three vehicles stopped on the corner.
Instead, he continued up Eleventh Street. His intention was to circle the block, but he’d forgotten thatTenth Street was one-way in the opposite direction and by the time he made his way all the way to Ninth Street to come back around, they were gone. He turned down Walnut and drove all the way to Fourth Street, then retraced his path when he couldn’t find them up again. When he saw squad cars race down Walnut Street with sirens and lights blazing, he knew he was too late. He followed anyway on the remote chance that they’d actually managed to capture or kill Malcolm.
Reed had to pull over to the curb to allow an ambulance to pass, heading toward Front Street where the street was lit up like a discotheque by what looked like the entire police precinct, and was most likely more. As he passed Second Street, the somber angry faces of the police officers barricading the next block told him all he needed to know. He pulled the taxi as close to the parking lot as possible before the cops told him to move on. A plainclothes puerto rican officer that Reed recognized from the night of his family’s murder, came storming from the apartment building with his face twisted into an angry scowl and tears streaming down his sallow, hollow cheeks. He punched one black leather-gloved fist into the other and looked around for something else to hit. Reed spun the taxi into a U-turn and drove off. Malcolm hadn’t been captured here, and he’d gotten away with Natasha. Reed was once again left with no clue where to find Malcolm. His only consolation was that Malcolm wouldn’t know where he was either.
L.
Detective James Bryant drove back to the station with fatigue, anxiety, frustration, and fear weighing down his limbs and coating his mind in a thick sludge that mired his thoughts and slowed the flow of ideas to a trickle. Malcolm had been inches away from him, hiding in the dark, preparing to ambush, preparing to kill him. He’d come to rescue CC and, instead, nearly became another victim of the man he was supposed to be saving her from. This cas
e had turned as bad as any case possibly could. When James thought about the pain CC had gone through, he felt his own pain, the pain of his failure, pour down over him like a flash flood. He almost allowed himself to weep before he caught himself. He bit his lower lip until it bled. The new, little pain helped him hold back the tears.
James wanted off this case. Fuck pride. Fuck revenge. He didn’t even want to be the guy who found Malcolm anymore. He just wanted to wake up, turn on the news, and hear that some zealous cops had riddled Malcolm with bullets.
His near death experience was causing a short circuit in his mental computer. Things were no longer adding up. This case made no sense to him and was making less sense every passing minute. He wanted no more part in this madness. Catching Malcolm was no longer nearly as important as not being caught by him and not letting him catch CC again.
Malcovich, conversely, had a hard-on for Malcolm now. A killer who callously, brazenly hunted cops threatened what little safety and authority the badge retained. Respect for the badge was often the best protection a cop had on the street, more than his gun, his vest, or all the backup available. There were far more criminals than cops. Respect for the badge kept them from storming the walls and overwhelming the city’s meager police force. On the ride back to the station, Malcovich told James about places in Sicily where cops were no safer walking the streets than an average citizen. He told him about places in Mexico where they were actively targeted.
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