Dirty Harry 05 - Family Skeletons (17 page)

Harry just kept glaring. The black detective finally looked away and went to make sure Browne was really dead.

The press conference was a huge success. In other words it was another in a long line of First Amendment fiascos. The reporters poured into the Justice Building, which was just down the street from the Prudential and Hancock buildings, to watch a police promotion and see the beautiful survivor of the “Beacon Hill Murders.”

Hot lights, cameras, and microphones were shoved in Christine’s face. But rather than shrink behind Harry, she just shone back. She smiled radiantly, answered questions with breathy sincerity and generally did her best to be a noble, brave, honest little trooper.

Collins was used to the scene but his policemanese was even sharper since he was the center of attraction. “Alleged perpetrators,” “stake-outs,” and other famous cop phrases were littering the air like pages of a Jack Webb script. It was just what the members of the press wanted. They lapped it up like starving dogs.

Harry scowled throughout the whole ceremony. But on his face a scowl looked fairly natural—even attractive. Not that many of the reporters noticed it. Their concentration was on the “beautiful brunette who survived the terrifying ordeal,” and the “brave black detective from the slums of the Roxbury section who came to the Big City Police Department to make good.” Harry was merely a “visiting Frisco Inspector who assisted in the arrest.”

Even if they had filmed his dour expression, they could not have possibly captured the taste of ashes in his mouth. Christine had gotten a lot of attention, and Collins had gotten a lot of glory, but the case still stunk. The whole thing was still a jumbled mess in Callahan’s mind. It just served to cap his feelings about the Boston “vacation.” It was Thursday morning and Harry figured he’d head back to San Fran a day early.

It made no difference, he thought. The killer was dead. Shanna didn’t have anything to do with it. It was time to kiss everybody off and hope they never wrote him again. Harry left the room as soon as the last decoration was pinned to Collins’ chest and the last close-up of Christine’s serenely gorgeous face was taken.

Collins broke away from the many clutching, congratulating hands to catch up with him in the hall.

“Hey, Inspector,” he called, “aren’t you sticking around? I figure I owe you at least a celebration dinner. Hell, I’ll take you, Christine,
and
Shanna to Pier Four, the most popular restaurant in the world.”

Harry spun toward him as if the black man had tapped him with a cattle prod. “You used me,” Callahan seethed. “You used me from moment one.”

“Hey, hey, Harry,” Collins backed off, his hands up. “I only did what I had to to solve the case.”

“You knew I had family here,” Harry snarled. “But you played dumb. Why?”

“It wasn’t hard to figure out,” Collins shrugged. “We checked all the Unitarian volunteers thoroughly in the first place. Shanna Donovan, daughter of Peter and Linda Donovan, mother’s maiden name Callahan. Then you just happen to show up right outside the offices at an opportune moment? Come on, now. Really.”

“So why not level with me? Why have me stumbling around in the dark?”

“I
did
level with you, Harry,” the black man maintained. “I didn’t lie to you once. Everything I said about the chiefs taking me off the case was true. But I looked you up. I found out your rep. ‘Dirty Harry.’ I figured you’d be more capable of cutting through all the bullshit than I would. Especially considering your personal stake in the matter.”

Harry pushed him against the wall. Once. Hard. Then he just looked at him.

“Give me a break, will you, Callahan?” Collins complained, straightening his dress uniform. “Don’t tell me you wouldn’t have done the same thing in my position.”

Harry didn’t bother. The black man was so starry-eyed from his moment of glory he wouldn’t have been able to understand that he had stepped on Harry to get ahead. That he had not only used Callahan but the deaths of everyone along the way to climb the police ranks. He didn’t care about the victims. He didn’t care about the murderer. All he cared about was himself.

Harry wished he could spit out all the bile he felt inside him into Collins’ face. Instead he turned silently and headed for the exit. He felt a tug on his sleeve just as he got to the door. He nearly whirled around and lashed out. Instead he turned slowly. Christine Sherman had run after him this time. She hugged him before he could do or say anything more. Then she kissed him.

“Aren’t you staying?” she asked brightly, holding onto his arms while leaning back.

He held her up by the hips. “It’s been a long few days,” he said apologetically. “I’ve still got a job in San Francisco.”

“You mean you’re going back tonight?” Christine asked incredulously.

Harry was sorely tempted to say no. The girl was wearing a wraparound dress that did even more for her than the designer jeans. But in her eyes, Harry could see parts of the last week. Parts he would sooner forget. “I’m afraid so,” he finally answered.

Christine’s full lips turned down into a practiced pout. “Are you sure?” she asked, fully aware of her effect on men.

Harry sighed, looked up at the ceiling, and grinned. His only answer was a helpless shrug.

Christine knew she had made progress. “Well,” she drawled. “Just in case your plane is leaving a little late, here’s my address.” She handed him an already made-out scrap of paper.

Harry put it in his jacket pocket. “Just in case the plane’s late,” he agreed.

Then she gave him something to remember her by as well as a promise of things to come. The kiss, this time, was long and serious. She broke away, moving back down the hall way slowly, luxuriously. “See you later,” she said with complete assurance.

On the way to the hotel, Callahan marveled at her rapid recovery from the “terrifying ordeal.” Well, why not, he told himself. She was unconscious half the time. As far as he could tell and as far as she had said in her statement, Browne had kept her so high on peyote all the time she hadn’t known whether she was asleep or awake.

The sun was out on this Thursday morning. Boston seemed to be moving again after the announcement that the “Beacon Hill Murderer” was no more. Ah, what the hell, Harry figured, shaking off the remnants of the case. It was lousy, it was uncomfortable, it was tragic, but it was over. He couldn’t bring back the dead any more than he could fly like Superman. At least he didn’t feel responsible for the wasted deaths.

He had avenged the dead cops at the Star Market. The bartender had shot Tim Marchelli. Collins had finally killed Browne. None of it was his fault, it was just that he had never been in control. Somebody had been pulling his strings and punching his buttons all along. That frustrated him. That made him angry.

Harry stalked into the Holiday Inn without asking for messages. He went upstairs and packed, his mind preoccupied with things Californian. He was about to close his bag when he noticed something was missing.

It was a pair of slacks, some pants he had bought a few months ago in San Antonio while on a work trip. Harry looked in the closet and in the drawers until he realized what must have happened. Linda had had his cases overnight while he was getting beaten and had to go to the hospital. Being the domestic woman she was, she must have hung them up neatly in Shanna’s old room until Peter had convinced her that Harry had to go.

Well, Harry reasoned, might as well kill two birds with one stone as Collins might say. He could say good-bye in person while getting the slacks. Harry locked up his luggage, checked out, and got a taxi.

The Donovans lived in the bigotry capital of the Northeast, namely, South Boston. Harry mused about how Collins had described it. He must have known full well that Harry’s cousins lived there while he was condemning the place.

Looking out the taxi window, Callahan had to admit the visual prospects weren’t promising. The first thing he saw after the “South Boston” sign was factories. Grim, gray factories belching smoke into the blue ocean sky. Beyond that was a city that reminded him of Baltimore or Pittsburgh. Rundown, lower-middle-class houses riffling right against each other like a worn pack of cards.

On every block in downtown Boston, there was at least one little bistro and a decent place to eat. In Southie all there was were Donut Shops and fast-food joints for as far as the eye could see. Then the cab was beyond that section and entering the waterfront part of town.

It looked like the real estate developers had tried but failed. It looked like they had built the best condominiums they could on the loot they had and had hoped for the best. The best never came. The developers ran out, the money ran dry, and the buildings were running down.

The Donovans’ place was on the beach. It was a square apartment building that looked like a couple of giant, prefabricated shoeboxes placed one on top of the other. There were no swimmers or sunbathers on the beach. There were just empty beer bottles and cans to mark where they had been. It was the most dismal beach front Callahan had ever seen. He began to think he should’ve called to say so long and kissed the slacks good-bye.

The taxi stopped in front of the cracked walk. Harry paid, got out, and walked between all the retirees rocking in the beach chairs on the lawn to the apartment house foyer. An old lady was coming out so Harry didn’t have to go through the buzzer routine to get in. He held the door open so the old woman with the walker could move slowly past him.

“Thank you, young man,” she said.

The day wasn’t a total loss, Harry figured. It had been quite some time since anyone had considered him a “young man.” He rode up in an elevator, which was about as slow as the lady with the walker. It lurched from floor to floor, most of the bulbs behind the floor-marking numbers not lighting. It bounced to a tentative stop on the eighth floor. As the doors opened with a jolt, Harry saw faded numbers and arrows on the wall opposite him. According to them, the Donovans’ apartment was all the way down the hall to the left.

The walls were thin, and the doors were of cheap wood. It would’ve been a cat burgler’s paradise if there had been anything to steal. As it was, Harry could hear conversations in each dwelling as he passed them.

He stopped at the end of the hall in front of the Donovans’ door. He was about to knock when he heard the unmistakable sounds of a barely controlled argument.

“We should have told him,” Linda whined. “She’s our daughter.”

“She’s not my daughter!” Peter roared, the sound of falling cutlery following his shout. “That miserable prick-sucking cunt. She’s no daughter of mine!”

Linda broke down into tears. “No matter what she’s done,” she wailed. “She’s still our daughter.”

“I say no!” There were more crashes from within. Callahan’s feeling of
déjà vu
returned. This was how the case had started, only then he had been listening to Morrisson, Sherman, and the Donovans’ daughter, the one Peter seemed so vicious about disowning. Harry lowered his fist. He would listen a bit more.

“She’s your daughter,” the man seethed at his sobbing wife. “You’re all alike, sucking up to other men, wiggling your goddamn asses at other men. Shoving your goddamn tits in other men’s faces!”

Linda’s voice was like a crushed little girl’s. “How can you say that?” she barely managed to get out. “When it was you . . . When it was you . . .”

“I don’t want to hear it!” Peter absolutely screamed.

“You’ll have to hear it,” Linda came back, her voice growing strength once she realized she had hit a pain center. “You’ll have to admit the truth! Shanna . . . our daughter went to that man because you . . . !”

Harry heard the table go crashing over and Linda’s scream just before he identified the sound of flesh hitting flesh. He heard Peter shrieking “I’ll kill you! I’ll kill you, you goddamn cunt!”

Then Harry kicked down the door.

C H A P T E R
N i n e

T
he partition disappeared around Harry’s flying foot. It was hardly strong enough to stand up against a hard rain, let alone a kick from the seasoned inspector. Instead of breaking the lock and the door swinging in, Harry’s leg went right through the cheap material. It was an awkward and painful position. Harry threw his torso forward to smash through the rest of the way. The door frame stayed shut, just a hole the size of Callahan’s body opened up.

Peter Donovan hardly noticed the interruption. He had one meaty hand around Linda’s neck, and he was slapping her back and forth with the other. She was trying to tear at his hair while beating at the arm around her throat.

“That’s enough!” Harry shouted, moving into the combination kitchen, living, and dining room.

Harry’s voice brought Peter back to reality. But it was not the reality of a quiet, gentle husband taking care of his wife and daughter. It was the reality of a frustrated, failed, violent man who wanted to lash out at anything that got in his way. He stopped hitting Linda and looked up at Callahan with an evil, expectant grin.

“Well, well, well,” he said. “Look who we have here. If it isn’t the women’s knight in shining armor.” Callously, casually, Peter threw his wife aside. She slammed against the wall and sunk to the floor, crying and rubbing her bruised neck. “You’re just what the doctors ordered, ‘Dirty’ Harry. Come on, let’s see who can really fight dirty around here.”

Donovan hunched over like a charging bull and made circular “come on” motions with both hands.

“Forget it,” Harry said, standing up straight in the two-foot hallway behind the broken door. But while he said it, he checked out the room. The kitchenette was on the other side of the wall from him. The kitchen table was lying on its side next to Linda. The rug started there and stretched twenty feet across the way to a sliding door out onto the patio. Between the two points were a card table, a TV, a sofa, and a rectangular dining table.

“What are you going to do to stop me?” Peter barked. “Shoot me with your big .44 Magnum?” He laughed. “Come on, little man, let’s see what you can do without your cannon.” Peter charged with all the delighted abandon of an experienced streetfighter.