Dirty Harry 05 - Family Skeletons (11 page)

Harry welcomed their agitation. It would make his job that much easier. He continued unerringly toward Shanna’s place. He caught her just as she was going out. Callahan handled the situation carefully. He couldn’t just come out and ask her about Browne or accuse her of complicity. She would close down faster than a gin mill on a Sunday night.

“I’m a little late,” he said, surprising her. “Is dinner still warm?”

She whirled about at the sound of his voice, dropping her thin leather gloves in the process. But her reaction upon seeing him was not what he had expected. She laughed at his line, effortlessly. She honestly seemed to think it was funny. Then she put her hands on her hips and acted like an irate wife whose husband didn’t come home until late.

“Where were you last night? My roast was ruined!”

It was the one response Harry hadn’t been prepared for. He was expecting a nervous cover-up or an ashamed diversion. Instead, Shanna was acting as if Harry was her favorite friend. As if she were really happy to see him.

At first, all his concern and doubt left him. He saw her as she seemed to be: innocent, beautiful, and alive. Then his fears returned, doubled. If she was as she seemed to be, then she might still be in terrible danger. If she wasn’t, then Harry was subjugating his senses because he had once loved her.

Callahan pulled himself back on track. He leaned over and scooped up her gloves. “Things got a bit hectic,” he told her honestly.

She took them from him. “You should have called,” she reprimanded. “I was looking for you everywhere.”

“Didn’t Christine tell you where I was?” Harry asked in surprise.

“Christine?” Shanna echoed. “No, I didn’t see her after she left.”

Harry was getting dizzy from all the sudden changes in the situation. Somebody wasn’t telling the truth, and the way things were going, there was a distinct possibility that no one was talking straight. If Christine hadn’t gone back to the Unitarian offices that night, where did she go and why? And if she had, why didn’t Shanna see her, or why didn’t she admit having seen her?

Those questions led to even more. And more after that. Harry didn’t bother asking himself because he already knew he didn’t have the answers. And since no one else seemed inclined to fill in the blanks, Callahan decided it was about time he started finding things out for himself.

He forced himself to stop picturing Shanna as the guileless, delightful child he had been an uncle to. He stopped seeing her now as a beautiful young woman in a lot of trouble. She was a means to an end. Somewhere in her mind was the first step out of this mess. He had to use whatever means necessary to get to it. He felt the Magnum hanging heavily under his arm. His nickname was not Uncle Harry. It was Dirty Harry. If he didn’t want to leave Boston in a box, he had better live up to the name.

“That’s funny,” Callahan said to the girl cursorily. “She said she was going back to the office.” Before Shanna could pursue the matter, Harry changed the subject. “Where are you headed?”

Shanna easily forgot about the Christine question. “I’ve got a doctor’s appointment and then some classes. You want to walk with me?”

Harry thought she’d never ask. They set off down toward Beacon Street. Shanna was wearing the same tight, faded jeans she had had on when Harry first saw her. Only today she had topped them with a black turtle-neck pullover that had shrunk slightly in the wash. Not only did it cling to her closely and set off her flaming hair, but there was a quarter of an inch between the bottom of the sweater and the top of the denims. It was an extremely subtle showing of skin, but extremely effective as well. The little girl Harry had known had grown up into a sensual female.

Shanna seemed unconcerned by her sexual effect as they walked down the street. She seemed unconcerned about most everything, even as they passed the Emerson building Harry had been attacked in. Both doors were chained shut.

“What happened there?” Harry asked innocently.

“Don’t know,” said Shanna, raising her head to the early afternoon sun for warmth. “When I got up this morning it was already locked.”

Collins must’ve been keeping the Morrisson death secret. If he thought Jeff Browne had anything to do with Halliwell’s death, he didn’t want to spook him by announcing his dupe’s murder.

Shanna took a right onto Beacon Street. Harry followed. The man following Harry also followed.

“You said a doctor’s appointment,” Harry reminded her, keeping up the banter. “You don’t look sick.”

“I’m not,” Shanna replied earnestly. “He’s just my counselor who also happens to have a doctorate.”

“Your counselor?”

“Yeah, college counselor. Everybody at Emerson has one. They’re members of the staff who get together with you once a week to help you adjust to the ‘college experience’ as they call it. But basically, it’s like a free shrink.”

Harry marveled at the progress universities had made. It wasn’t like school when he was twenty. Now every kid had their own private nursemaid.

“It’s really great,” Shanna professed, “He’s really helped me get myself together.” She could see from Harry’s expression as they turned onto Newbury Street that the cop didn’t completely buy it. The girl decided to take the bull by the horns.

“It’s like he doesn’t know you at all,” she said quietly. “You are whoever you want to be with him. He doesn’t remember your past so he doesn’t have any preconceptions of you. You can look at yourself objectively because of that.”

Callahan heard and understood. “How long does that take?”

“Dr. Gerrold keeps his schedule loose. Sometimes we talk for a couple of minutes, sometimes the session takes hours. I don’t have my first class until three, so we can take our time.”

It was what Harry had wanted to know. He needed Shanna out of the way so he could confront Browne without interruption. He left her at the door of the doctor’s office. Newbury Street was a Bohemian section of the city. Each side of the street was lined with cafés and art galleries. Gerrold’s office was in between a record store and a cheese shop.

She was safe there, Harry thought. At least for a while. He looked back at her from across the street. She had been waiting for him to do that. She was half-in and half-out the doctor’s door, looking at Harry’s retreating figure. When he turned, she waved and smiled brightly.

Harry waved back, then turned to go after her boyfriend, Jeff Browne.

C H A P T E R
S i x

W
hile Shanna Donovan was getting her head together, Cathy Bryant was getting murdered. She wasn’t an Emerson student. She wasn’t a Unitarian. She was a cocktail waitress in Brookline, a quiet suburb of Boston. Her only crime was being too good-looking and parking her car in the same place every day.

She was supposed to check in at about four so she could eat and set up before the restaurant opened at five. The restaurant was just one of several establishments in the little suburban plaza. It nestled amid a ski shop, a bank, and an investment firm, all held together by a large concrete shell.

Underneath these establishments was a two-story underground garage. Cathy had fallen into the habit of parking her Volvo in the third space to the right in front of the elevators.

It was still an hour before the other places closed. It was still an hour before the restaurant opened. It was the quietest time of the business day. Cathy pulled into the usually deserted parking facility and tooled over to her spot. There was a big, dark car in the second space in front of the elevators. Seeing no reason to be concerned, she pulled in. Turning off the engine, she checked her appearance in the rearview mirror.

Long blonde hair. Blue eyes. About five-five. Wearing a dark suit with slit skirt, high heels, and a tight, silky shirt. A thin band of gold around her neck. Pearl earrings the size of BB shots. While Cathy was checking, so was her killer.

She picked up her bag, which matched the color of her shirt, pulled back the door handle, and slid out. She closed the door. She was grabbed from behind by her breasts and slammed headfirst onto the roof of her car.

The pain in her chest and her head mingled and exploded numbly across her body. She felt herself falling. She felt something reach in under her skirt and between her legs. Something else wrapped around her neck.

Dimly, she saw the door of the other car open in front of her. She felt herself being propelled into the back seat. She fell forward heavily onto the richly padded seat. Her mind started to clear as she felt the clutching, spasmodically clawing fingers on her breasts again. She felt a weight on her back and wheezing breath on the back of her neck. She regained control of her muscles just as she became aware of the knife.

Cathy fought back. She threw up her right arm, feeling it connect with flesh. She heard a sudden, hissing exhalation as the weight atop her yielded somewhat. She twisted her torso, then managed to turn all the way over onto her back.

Her murderer was sitting on her hips in the back seat of the car. She saw the killer’s face and the knife in the killer’s hand. She couldn’t put the two together. It didn’t make sense. The shock interrupted her escape attempt, and by the time she tried moving again, it was too late.

The killer was taking no chances. The knife was at the girl’s throat, and the slit in her skirt was torn all the way to the waist. Everything beneath was ripped off. Then the ripping hand pressed tightly over Cathy’s mouth. The killer leaned in. Cathy began to hyperventilate. She was going into shock. Her eyelids fluttered, and then she fainted.

She never regained consciousness. Through the rear window of the dark car, a knife could be seen rising and falling, rising and falling.

Harry slammed his fist in the tail’s face like a piston. Turning the tables on the man following him had been no problem. From Newbury Street, Harry had walked back to Beacon Hill. He had kept going until he had passed Government Center and was amid the Italian North End, which seemed to have the same design as the rest of Back Bay, only its buildings were more rundown, more closed in. And there was the smell of tomato gravy everywhere—even in the garbage.

Harry’s tail had not been a pro. All Callahan had had to do was move ahead a little faster, slip into the mouth of an alley, then wait for the guy to come trotting by. Packing all his frustration behind his right elbow, he had waited until the follower realized his mistake and turned toward him. Then Harry had released all his aggression in a straight-arm shot.

The tail’s head snapped back as Harry’s other hand wrapped around his shirt front. As the man tried to fall back, Harry jerked him forward into the alley. The street was empty of witnesses, but even if there had been someone there, Callahan doubted if anything would be done. In almost any major Italian section of any major city, this sort of thing had come to be expected.

The young man fell into the alley on his face. But he was resilient. His mind cleared as soon as he hit the ground, and he rolled over onto his back, preparing to leap up. Foreseeing this, Harry had dropped as the man was falling. When he had rolled over onto his back, Harry had put one knee on his chest and the Magnum in his nose.

“I’m looking for Jeff Browne. Could you give me directions?”

If the tail had considered arguing before, the big opening at the end of the .44 barrel changed his mind. He gave Harry Browne’s address and agreed to lead the cop there. Harry put the gun away and helped the tail to his feet.

They walked down to the end of the winding North End street and came out on the water’s edge. They were in a particularly wealthy section of Boston Harbor, which the city and private industry had been renovating for the past half-decade. “What’s your name?” Harry asked as they moved west, back toward the main part of town.

“You’re doing a terrible thing, you know,” was the tail’s answer. “You have no right to persecute the Order of the Orenda. We do only good. We’re not a cult. We’re not like the Scientologists. We don’t stand around on street corners begging.”

“No, you just skulk around in alleys, following people.”

“Jeff was just worried about Shanna, that’s all!” the young man complained. “He didn’t like the way things were going. He thought the police were trying to pin those Beacon Hill Murders on us. Just because Judy worked at the Unitarian Church.”

“How did you find me?” Harry asked. He figured it was an easier question. The tail could come back to remembering his name when he was ready.

“After Shanna’s folks were told you were in the hospital, they told Shanna. Shanna told Jeff.”

“And Jeff told you,” Harry finished for him. He nodded. It made sense. It may not have been the truth, but it made sense. There was still the question of how Christine had known where to find him before.

“Man, you must be made of steel,” the tail commented. “We heard you had the crap beaten out of you, but I had just gotten to the hospital when you came out.”

That was him, all right, Harry acknowledged, the man of steel. He might have been faster than a speeding bullet, but it wasn’t doing him a hell of a lot of good.

They passed through Boston’s Chinatown and into the one-block-long German section of the city. The tail moved down a street to their left. Harry looked down the street to their right. He saw the infamous “Combat Zone.” Somehow, the politicians, porn merchants, and the fates had combined to localize the X-rated shops and clubs on a two block radius of the city—sandwiched between the main shopping district and Chinatown.

Every porno store, theater, bar, and whorehouse was located along this one small stretch. It officially ended on one side at the corner Harry was standing on and on the other side at the closed-down Paramount Theater. Harry looked away and followed the tail down the opposite street. They stopped at the entrance to a pedestrian apartment house. It was the least appealing dwelling Harry had run into since his arrival.

“Jeff comes from New York,” the tail said, seeing the look on Callahan’s face. “He likes this place. It reminds him of home.”

“Which apartment is he in?” Harry asked.