Free Pure Hate by Wrath James White Page B

bell peppers for an omelet.
    CC smiled and blushed.
    “So, what are you making?”
    “It’s my own recipe. A cream cheese omelet. You
chop up some onions, garlic, bell pepper, and tomatoes. Mix it with a few eggs,
some basil and oregano. Then you cook it up and just before you fold the omelet
in half you place about two tablespoons of cream cheese and some grated
Monterey Jack cheese in the center.”
    “Mmmmm, sounds delicious. I guess
after last night I can’t really call anything decadent, but it seems like a lot
of effort and a lot of calories.”
    “Trust me, it’s worth it. In a world like this,
where everything is all fucked up, even something as trivial as making the perfect
omelet can take on an almost Zen-like quality. That and the fact that the
weekends are the only days that I eat fatty foods.”
    By the time James and CC finished breakfast, it
was already past eight o’clock. James drove her home, figuring that if her husband
was at home pissed-off because she’d been out all night, he could flash his
badge and make up a story about her being attacked or something. They took
Lincoln Drive, doing forty-five miles an hour through those ridiculously tight
turns with the signs that announced a twenty-five mile per hour speed limit and
doing seventy on the straights as they left Mount Airy, speeding down to South
Philly. James found it chillingly ominous that CC’s home was right in the
middle of one of Malcolm’s favorite hunting grounds.
    They pulled up to one of those little
two hundred plus-year old, post-Revolutionary War row homes that the tourists
think are so adorable and quaint, but the residents hate because of the poor
insulation, rusted plumbing, and walls so thin that neighbors could hear each
other fart. There were gray-haired Italian grandmothers pushing their
grandchildren around in strollers, dogs locked behind fences yapping at
shadows, and normal nosy spinsters sitting on their front stoops, keeping their
eyes on everyone’s business because they had none of their own. However, just
as she’d predicted, CC’s husband was already gone. They sat in the car for a
few minutes before she went in.
    “I had a great time, CC. You are an incredible
woman.”
    “You sure you don’t think I’m a slut? I don’t
usually cheat on my husband.”
    “I believe you,” he lied. ”And, no, I don’t think
you’re a slut. I think you are something truly special and I hope that man of
yours appreciates what he’s got.”
    “He doesn’t,” she stated flatly. She kissed him
deeply then slid from the car.
    “I hope you come to see me again, James.”
    “I don’t think I could stop myself if I wanted
to,” the detective replied, meaning it a little more than he was comfortable
with.
    James made it to the office at nine and was
surprised to find his normally punctual partner had not yet arrived. He sat
down at his desk and allowed his mind to go back into the case.
    Where are you, Malcolm? What are you up to?
What is it you really want?
    “Never leave an enemy behind or it will rise
again to fly at your throat!”
    Something told James that Malcolm Davis was not
done yet. There would be more murders. Unless they could catch him, there would
be a lot more.

XIII.

Titus barely slept all night. His mind was
wrapped around the case like a boa constrictor, but he couldn’t digest it,
couldn’t make sense of it. A man the entire city had been hunting for years had
stepped out of the night, slaughtered a family, practically autographed the
crime scene , and vanished back into the night.
They should have had him in custody an hour after they received the 911 call,
but somehow he had eluded them.

He had been all over the Cozen’s house
inspecting every bit of evidence as fast as the crime scene techs gathered it.

He followed the medical examiner’s van to the
city morgue and sat through the preliminary autopsy. Afterwards, he went back
to the precinct and pulled out all the files on the three