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caught,
but it wasn’t going to help catch him and that was all James was interested in.
The fingerprints would help confirm the witness’s identification, but James was pretty sure they had a good suspect.
Malcolm Davis.
    “Hey, Baltimore!”
    “Yeah, you got something?” Detective Baltimore
was beaming with enthusiasm.
    “Uh, no. I’m done here. I’m gonna head back to
the station and run these prints.”
    Titus glared at him like he couldn’t believe what
he was hearing. He gestured around the victim’s living room at all the evidence
to be collected and then shook his head.
    “Yeah, whatever,” he said.
    “Tight Ass.” James hissed under his
breath as he turned to leave.
    Detective Bryant slid behind the
wheel of the almost new, white, 2009 Dodge Intrepid the Department had given
him and cruised away from the crime scene , headed for University
Hospital. Tight Ass had promised the press he would have a suspect in custody
by sunrise. James wasn’t so sure. Fools rush in. James wanted to know a little
more about the Family Man, the Chaperone, the Pine Street Slasher, the butcher
who had hacked through the Cozen family like a lawnmower—Malcolm Davis.

VIII.
    James had been with the force a long
time. He’d already buried two partners and survived one brutal divorce. Rosalyn
Ali had been his partner for fifteen years when she’d fallen to a stroke during
the search for a serial child murderer ten years ago. The stroke left her
partially paralyzed on her right side, relegating her to a desk for two years
before another stroke relegated her to the grave. Rosalyn, Rosie, who was a
double minority as a Puerto Rican/Filipino female with the added handicap of
being young and sexy, had fought her way up from the streets with him, even
making detective before he did. She’d had to kick a lot of ass to prove that
she was not the useless piece of fluff most policewomen were considered back
then. Everything she did, every case she volunteered them for, every arrest she
made, seemed to be aimed at getting that gold shield and she’d gotten it, years
after other non-minorities in the department had already gotten theirs, but
she’d done it. Even now thinking back, he was
proud of her.
    The glass ceiling, which from where
they stood was not transparent but opaque, hadn’t bothered either of them at
the time. They both knew the realities of racial politics in Philadelphia,
particularly in the police departments where minorities generally only came in
handcuffs. They were both just happy to not be teamed up with one of the many
corrupt and racist dinosaurs that polluted the PPD back in the ’90s. Neither
one of them wanted to have to deal with being forced to decide whether to turn
in a fellow officer who’d gone buck-wild on some innocent or even guilty black
kid, or whether to keep quiet and thereby become an accomplice. And they
definitely didn’t want to deal with a partner who took bribes or shook down
dealers and prostitutes. Neither one of them wanted to feel like a sellout. It
had been important to them that they feel like a benefit to their respective
communities rather than yet another hardship. Back then when the department was
overwhelmingly white and male, they had been extremely grateful for one
another.
    When James finally made Detective,
Rosie fought to have him partnered with her again. As James struggled to pass
the detective’s exam, she’d been partnered for nearly a year with Greg
Jonieack, a lazy, moronic, Polish Neanderthal who Mother Teresa would’ve made
dumb Polack jokes about, and who was bringing her closing rate for murder cases
way down by spending most of his time flirting with prostitutes. Every murder
case seemed to take them to Broad and South where they’d spend hours
questioning prostitutes and Jonieack would inevitably take one into an alley
for “questioning” while she waited in the car. If they hadn’t gotten her a new
partner, the department would’ve had a scandal
on