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the rest of his twenty-five years on the force. James’s
GI-Joe partner finally got his wish during one of the many riots on South
Street. He’d finally gotten his Purple Heart, chopped in half by friendly fire
and left paralyzed from the neck down. Years later, after thousands of hours of
physical therapy, he’d regained enough movement in his right arm to point a gun
at his temple and blow his brains out.
    Now he had Tight Ass. From the moment
he heard about the youngest detective on the force, James had hated him. James
had been on the force for thirteen years before he finally made detective, and
here this young punk gets his detective’s shield after spending less than two
years on the streets. Regardless of his Ph.D. and genius level IQ, James felt
all cops needed to do their time, pay their dues. What they learned in the
streets they could never learn sitting in a classroom reading case studies.
    James aimed the Intrepid towards
Broad and Olney with his mind still lost in the past and hiding from the
present. It was easier to direct his anger at long-dead partners, an ex-wife he
hadn’t seen in years, and a partner who was not here to defend himself than at
the monster he was tracking. The man who had committed these crimes scared
James worse than the shootouts he’d had as a rookie, worse than “Crazy Cliff” ever
had. This man was completely outside his frame of reference. He’d looked all
kinds of murderers and rapists right in the eyes without fear, but he had
understood them. No matter how sick or depraved they were, he’d been able to relate to them. He knew what
motivated them. The Family Man, he could not relate to, could not understand.
    James knew that if he had any chance
of catching Malcolm Davis he had to find a way to comprehend his madness, and
that meant finding out all he could about the killer. He needed to go where
Malcolm lived, to breathe the air he breathed, smell the scents he smelled, see
what he saw. He needed to talk to Reed Cozen and drag Malcolm Davis out of him.
    James knew that this case would take
a toll on him. He wasn’t sure he could afford to pay it anymore. He felt old,
tired. Something this dark and ugly might destroy him. In some ways, it felt as
though it already had.
    He and Titus had been working the
case for two years, and it had already worn him down. Some of the things he’d seen
still kept him up at night—especially the kids. The children made this whole
thing so much more terrible. There was a reason why James didn’t work vice.
Seeing abused and exploited children everyday was something he hadn’t wanted to
deal with. Now, he dealt with their corpses and the Family Man left him knee
deep in them.
    It was more than simply catching the
man. A part of him needed to understand him, if only to convince himself
that he could never be like him.
    James had been to enough Sex Addicts
Anonymous sessions to know that he also had a problem. He’d talked to enough
murderers, rapists, and child molesters to know that his problem was a little
too similar to theirs. He was a sexual predator just as they were, only he used
smooth talk instead of coercion and violence to trap his prey. What he did was
not a crime. The women he’d seduced and told that he loved to get between their
legs, had come to him willingly. Still, he’d left them just as emotionally
scarred as if he’d raped them, and the passion
he felt when he was with them was a little too close to the passion he saw in
Linda Cozen’s mutilated corpse. He needed to know that he would never, could
never, become that . He needed to know what made Malcolm tick.
    James pulled up outside of University
Hospital, squealing his tires as he pulled into a handicapped-parking zone. An
overweight nurse with the 2010 version of a bouffant hairdo, started toward his
car looking unnecessarily irate. James backed the Intrepid out of the
handicapped zone before Henrietta Hippo could initiate an argument. He had to
cruise the lot