Dirty Harry 09 - The Killing Connection (16 page)

“Where were the others?” McConnell asked in empathy.

McKay whirled around and snarled at her. “She was gagged, wasn’t she? Stop your damn interruptions!”

“No,” Byrnes said quickly, looking at the captain. “It’s all right. I want to help all I can.” She concentrated once more on the far wall. “I didn’t see any others. It was just him going in and out, beating me . . . in and out . . .”

That phrase brought her back to the torture seat. “After awhile,” she said as if in a trance, “he seemed to get tired of that too. Then he came in carrying something . . .” She shook her head minutely, like she was trying to get something loose. “And all the time,” she continued in a small voice. “And all the time, he was talking to me . . .”

McKay was on it like a shot. “What did he say?”

“First, he swore at me and told me to cry or scream. I wanted to, but nothing came out. Then he kept saying that it was my fault. My fault . . .” She closed her mouth and swallowed. McKay and Bressler leaned in. “When he came in the last time, he said he had a big surprise for me.” The sexual allusion was clear to everyone present, Harry thought.

“Then,” she continued, “when he was fixing it, he said that I had been a bad girl and had to be punished. He said that it was my fault that he was a homosexual. He said that if I hadn’t been gay, he’d be able to love me instead of all the boys. He said he hated the boys too, but it wasn’t their fault. They didn’t have a choice, he said, but I did.

“Then, when it was all set up, he started hitting me again, saying ‘Isn’t that nice? Doesn’t that feel good . . . ?’ ” Her voice started to waver and crack. Detective Wu moved in quickly.

“That’s enough, Kim,” he said gently, reaching across Bressler to put his hand on her arm. “That’s all we need to know for now.”

That seemed to snap her out of it. She looked up at Wu with glistening eyes. “Did it help? Did I do all right?”

“Fine,” he assured her. “You did great.”

McKay slowly got up, moving behind Wu and stretching. “Well, I think that’s all we need to know, period. Lieutenant, Inspector, Sergeant, would you join me in the hall, please?”

Kim looked over imploringly. “Does Harry have to go? I’d like to talk with him if I can.”

McKay looked over at the inspector with an expression that combined doubt, dislike, and what could only be termed as envy. But his face was solicitous when he again returned his gaze to Kim. “He’ll be back in just a few minutes, all right?”

Bressler followed McKay out tamely, but as Harry let McConnell go in front of him, she presented him with a look of skepticism. Whether it was about McKay’s assurance or Byrne’s selfless heroism, he didn’t know. All four huddled in the bright hospital hall.

“I think that does it, all right,” McKay said briskly, rubbing his hands together. “I want a warrant and an APB out on Steele immediately.”

Callahan spoke strongly. “We don’t have a clear cut motive.”

“You heard her, Inspector,” McKay said with exaggerated patience. “He blames lesbians for his homosexuality. It probably goes way back to his childhood.”

Harry looked to the others for confirmation. McConnell put the last nail in Steele’s coffin. “It has its precedents,” she mused. “He said it wasn’t the boy’s ‘fault.’ That’s a rather classic example of a gay placing the blame for his condition anywhere but on himself. It’s also a classic example of seeing women as things, rather than people. According to Steele, boys can’t control themselves, but women can.”

“We don’t have much proof . . .” Bressler said doubtfully.

“Are you kidding?” McConnell replied. “Just get that girl up on the stand and there won’t be a dry eye in the courtroom. She could convince a jury the Pope did it.”

McKay pinned the vice cop with a critical eye. “Sergeant,” he said coldly. “We are not railroading anybody, so do not give the impression in either word or deed that we are. Michael Peter Steele killed all those women and he nearly claimed another victim. Only I’m going to make sure it’s his last.”

“What about his men?” Harry asked. Everyone looked up in surprise as if they had forgotten he was there.

“What men?” the captain asked in return.

“The members of SAFE.”

“What about them?” McKay sniffed.

“Were they in on it? Did they help him?”

Their superior thought about it. “They probably thought they were protecting him from police killers. And when you came charging into the theater, they were sure SAFE’s Public Enemy Number One was out to get their leader. It hardly makes any difference in the long run anyway. Steele could’ve killed the lesbians on his own, and even if he got some help, the charges will be minor. No, Inspector, I’m after the big fish on this one. The head man!”

McKay turned to Bressler. “An APB on Steele and a warrant for his arrest, Lieutenant. Now.” Then he turned briskly and walked away.

Bressler looked helplessly at the other two, shrugged, and followed the captain like an obedient dog. That left Harry and McConnell alone amidst the crush of doctors, nurses, patients, and interns.

“Looks like it’s all over but the shouting,” McConnell said, smiling.

Harry did not mirror the expression. “Looks that way,” he said distantly.

McConnell misread his meaning. Thinking his mind was on Byrnes, she turned a little defensive. “Don’t let me keep you, Inspector. I’m sure you have plenty of important things to do besides talking with a sergeant from Vice. Just let me say that it was a pleasure and an honor working with you again and the last thing I’d want to do is to keep your bait waiting.”

Callahan looked at her blankly. She seemed to have more to say, but she turned heel abruptly and marched away. Harry watched her go, expressionless, then slowly moved toward the private room door. Wu and the girl were where they had left them. Byrnes was leaning over, talking conspiratorially to the rape squad detective, who was holding her hand in both of his.

When the inspector entered the room, Wu quickly rose, said a few soothing words to the girl and approached him. “She is very excited and very vulnerable right now, Inspector,” he said quietly as Kim laid back and looked out the opposite window. “She has blanked most of the details out of her mind already, although she shows signs of blaming herself for everything that happened.”

“What do you mean?”

“It may be why she is so eager to please,” Wu explained. “She perhaps feels that if she can satisfy everyone, no one will have any reason to hurt her.”

“Is that common?” Harry marveled.

“No, not common,” Wu replied, looking at the bed, then back to Callahan again. “This is a very uncommon girl, Inspector. She has survived what could turn others into paranoid schizophrenics or manic depressives. And it seems that she has come to grips with her experiences in spite of repressing the most painful things.

“So be careful, Inspector,” the detective warned. “She will need constant support to believe in herself and not believe that it was her fault. I have suggested a variety of counseling programs, but the final decision rests with her.”

The Oriental had made it clear that he thought Harry could do some good or else he wouldn’t have confided in him. Harry nodded, putting out his hand. “Thank you,” he said. “I’ll do what I can.”

The detective took his hand and nodded in return before leaving. As the door closed behind him, Harry surveyed the scene with a policeman’s eye. The room was dark in the early evening dusk. The sunset had come suddenly, bathing the room in a golden glow. The light had been turned off during the interview, so the streaks of color reflected off the clouds was the only illumination in the room.

Kim had turned down the sheets on her bed, leaving her beaten body exposed. She wore only her underwear, which she had begged Detective Wu to bring in addition to some outer clothes. The lingerie was light, silky cream, its lace v-neck held on her breasts by spaghetti thin straps. Her right hand was by her head on the pillow. Her left across her stomach.

As her chest rose and fell slowly in the sunset-colored room, the air thickened in Harry’s nostrils. And when she turned her head to pinion Harry with her one blue eye, the effect was devastatingly sexy.

“They tell me you saved my life,” she said softly. “I wanted to thank you.”

Harry approached the bed. “You were my responsibility,” he said in way of explanation.

“Is that all?” she asked.

Harry stood next to the bed, across from the window—the light from the sunset coloring his features. “I don’t like innocent people hurt,” he said simply.

She smiled, reached out and took his hand. They remained like that for some time, both looking out the window at the sky.

When the colors faded she finally looked back at the tall, standing man.

“Harry,” she said. “Take me home.”

She was quiet all the way to his apartment. She stood outside his third floor door like a shy child on the first day of school. Only her body betrayed her. Once they had cleared her discharge with the hospital and Dr. Steve Rogers removed all superfluous bandages, she pulled a green wraparound skirt from her small bag, tied it around her, and slipped on a pair of black T-strap heels.

She stood in his doorway now and even her bruised face couldn’t remove the sensuality she exuded. She remained there longer than was necessary, as if she were afraid to take that last step. Harry pulled a beer out of his fridge and pulled a chair over to his couch to offer her a seat.

She finally came in and sat hesitatingly down, closing the door behind her.

“Would you like something?” he asked, holding up the beer.

She shook her head no.

Harry let it lie. With McKay pounding the bushes for Steele, Bressler back at headquarters taking everyone’s heat, McConnell stewing over their adieu, and Devlin taking care of the inevitable loose ends, Callahan finally had some time to himself.

They sat in Harry’s dark apartment in silence, the only light coming from the streetlamps outside and the last vestiges of the autumn sun.

“Harry?” she finally asked, her voice cracking. “Am I still pretty?”

He looked to see her framed in the light of the windows, her face in shadow.

“The only reason I ask,” she continued apologetically, her voice getting hoarser, “is that I thought maybe those men were trying to stop me from being pretty so that . . . so that . . .”

She was crying again, her head in her hands by the time Harry got to her. She clung to him, crying herself out. Finally, the wave of emotion passed and she drooped against him, her eyes heavy. He lifted her easily and laid her on his bed. Her eyes closed as soon as her head hit the pillow.

Harry looked down at her, feeling very old. He didn’t think there was a position in which she wouldn’t look beautiful. Her youth, her lushness, even her wounds added vulnerability to her attraction. But Harry was no longer a loadstone. Beauty and love was not something he could have anymore. Everything that he had ever loved had been murdered.

He had loved a woman until she was killed by a drunk driver. He had loved the law until he saw it destroyed by liberals and idealists who gave the power to the criminal. A dead victim could not have rights. A victim could not plea bargain for a lesser sentence than death. A victim did not have the possibility of parole. The dead women in McLaren Park couldn’t be reconstructed.

The only reason Harry came back to the police force after throwing his badge away was the realization that there were too few who remembered. Everyone was so busy protecting their pensions, covering their asses, and looking out for Number One that they had no thought of justice. Wrong was wrong; and if Dirty Harry Callahan was going to be the only person who believed that, then so be it.

He went back to the kitchen, picked up another beer, sat on the couch, and stared at the floor, thinking. He thought about his partners, dead and alive. He thought about the people he had killed. He thought about the ones he had saved. And he thought about the dead women in McLaren Park. He thought about every single thing that had happened between the time he got the phone call from MacKenzie at the airport until now. He thought hard.

He looked up when he sensed a shadow in the darkness. There was a figure in his bedroom doorway. By that time, the streetlamps were the apartment’s only illumination. Kim Byrnes stepped into it, her form-fitting negligee off one shoulder so one breast was exposed. She seemed oblivious to it.

“Harry,” she called softly. “Please. Make love to me. I want to know what it’s really like.”

There were many tragedies in Harry’s life, but surprisingly little sadness he told himself. His life had become a numb series of ugly events that had about as much effect on him as numbers had on accountants. But as he sat in his dark apartment, he felt a strange choking feeling in his throat. It was pitiable and deeply sorrowful.

Harry stood, put his beer down, and followed her into the bedroom with profound sadness.

C H A P T E R
T w e l v e

T
he phone woke him from a dreamless sleep. Sleep was the only place he could retreat from the horrors of his life, so he didn’t dream often.

He pushed himself up, seeing Kim sitting next to him with the sheets bunched about her neck, looking at the phone like it was a bomb.

Harry rolled over, got up and answered it.

“Yeah?” he croaked.

“Harry,” said Al Bressler. “That you?”

“No,” he said aridly. “It’s not me.”

“Christ, I know it’s late Harry, but we’ve found him.”

Callahan didn’t have to ask who. “How?” he said instead, completely awake.

“A tip,” the lieutenant revealed. “He said that we could find Steele in Trailer Twenty-two at that mobile home park on the hill beyond Mount Douglas.”

“McKay get wind of it yet?”

“Hell, that’s who the tipster called!” Bressler wailed. “He’s marching on the park now with most of the Ninetieth Panzergrenadier Division!”

The lieutenant’s angry sarcasm was easy to understand. McKay saw a way to shower glory on himself, so he cut off all the real investigators to lead the shock troops himself. And if Harry knew the captain, there wasn’t a seasoned uniform or detective in the lot. He’d probably surrounded himself with nothing but S.W.A.T.