Dirty Harry 09 - The Killing Connection (17 page)

“On my way,” said Harry.

“Meet you there,” said Bressler.

They both hung up.

“What is it?” Brynes asked.

“Another case,” Harry lied, pulling his pants on.

“Is it that important?” she complained, stretching like a satisfied kitten.

Harry stood, buttoning his shirt. “Every murder is important.”

“ ‘A man may work from sun to sun,’ ” she quoted agreeably. “ ‘But a detective’s work is never done?’ ”

“You got it,” said Harry, pulling on his shoulder holster and then his corduroy jacket. “Do you want to stay here?”

“I want to stay with you,” she replied yearningly.

Harry was moved. He didn’t want to leave her alone, but he certainly didn’t want to bring her along either. “You can’t,” he finally said. “Not on this trip.”

She bit her lower lip. “I guess I better go home then,” she decided.

“Will you be all right?” Harry asked solicitously. “I could take you back to the hospital.”

“No,” she said with conviction. “I’ll be fine. I can handle it.” She looked at the rumpled bedsheets with knowing pleasure. “Now.”

Harry would not be tempted. “Get dressed then.”

She went to his closet and pulled out his raincoat. She wrapped it around herself, its length covering her. “All set,” she reported.

He dropped her off at her apartment, insisting on walking her to the door. When she unlocked it, he entered first, checking all the rooms and turning on the lights. After she had entered, he moved out into the hall again, leaving her in the doorway.

“Keep it locked,” he said. “I’ll be back.”

“I’ll be waiting,” she said.

Harry pushed the corners of his mouth up and then jumped down the stairs four at a time by swinging on the bannisters like an athlete on the parallel bars. He got back into his car, pulling up the radio mike as he turned over the engine and slammed it into gear.

“Inspector Seventy-one reporting. Any word from the lab for me?”

“Nothing, sir,” the radio woman answered.

“Devlin report in yet?” he pressed.

“Not yet, Inspector.”

Harry slammed the receiver back onto its hook without so much as a “ten-four.” He broke all the Highway Patrol’s laws by speeding across the Central and James Lick Freeways to the junction of the Southern. He hardly slowed down on the Silver Avenue exit ramp, only barely braking at the stop signs. He got to the scene of the crime in record time.

It was like an instant replay of the murder excavation forty-eight hours ago even up to and including the rain. Harry had seen droplets hitting his windshield but by the time he braked his car at the roadblock, it was coming down again in a regular torrent.

Even so, he pulled himself out of the car before it had come to a full stop and flashed his badge to the cop on duty there. “Lieutenant Bressler arrive yet?” he shouted over the noise of the wind and other car engines.

“Yes, sir,” the patrolman answered, pointing to a plateau some hundred feet up the Mount. “He’s at the Front Line.”

Callahan nodded. Trust McKay to treat the operation as an all-out war. Harry climbed up the side of the hill toward the ring of searchlights, S.W.A.T. trucks, police cars, and darkly dressed men with M-16s and sniper’s rifles. He found Bressler standing beside his car on the plateau’s blacktop. All around the vehicles were tipped and broken picnic benches, barbecue pits, and garbage cans. The wind caught the refuse and blew it whirlpool fashion above the site.

“What took you so long?” was the first thing the lieutenant shouted as Harry approached. He was wearing his regulation raincoat and a collapsible rainhat.

“Don’t start with me,” Harry warned, his own coat dry and warm back at Brynes’ apartment. “What is that idiot doing?”

“He gave Steele five minutes to come out.” He checked his watch. “Four minutes ago.”

“Where is he?” Harry asked in exasperation.

“Come on,” said the lieutenant, leading him to the end of the plateau, which was lined with cars parallel to the edge. Behind them were kneeling S.W.A.T. members aiming their weapons and Captain McKay holding a megaphone.

Harry saw that the trailer park was just below the plateau, nestled on the flat summit of a hill lower than the one they were on. Trailer Twenty-two was unlucky enough to be right on the northwest edge of the park, directly beneath the heavy guns. Looking over McKay’s shoulders, he saw that many other flak-jacketed gunmen were inside the park, their weapons bristling from behind every corner and every window.

The only area that wasn’t covered was the open field behind the trailer which led to the hill where the women’s bodies had been uncovered.

“Looks bad,” Bressler said.

“Looks terrible,” Harry countered.

Worse than that. As he finished speaking, McKay started. “All right, Steele,” he began. “This is your last chance. Come out with your hands up.”

While he had been shouting through the bullhorn, Harry had moved up just behind him. “Been taking elocution lessons from Jack Webb, Captain?”

McKay whirled around, rain spinning off from his captain’s hat. Harry could see under his raingear that he was wearing his best uniform. “Callahan! What are you doing here?”

“No offense, Captain,” Harry replied. “But you’re really fast with the clichés tonight.”

McKay never learned. He insisted on being insulted by Harry’s most innocent jibes, but he couldn’t bring himself to bring up charges because he knew Harry just didn’t care.

“Oh no, Callahan,” he vowed. “Not tonight. I’ve got a wanted, dangerous criminal down there and not you or anybody is going to stop me from bringing him in.” He turned back to the trailer, bringing up his megaphone.

“Dead or alive?” Harry asked.

McKay turned again, feeling the sting of Harry’s words. “That man down there,” he said slowly for the benefit of all those gathered, “has murdered more than a half-dozen women . . .”

“You think,” Harry interrupted.

“What?” McKay said, confused, his train of thought interrupted.

“You think he murdered those women.”

“We have the sworn testimony of an eyewitness!” the Captain yelled, looking at Harry as if he had lost his mind.

“We have the word of a woman who admitted that she was unconscious or delirious most of the time,” Callahan reminded him. “He never admitted anything and she never actually saw him murder anyone.”

Both the captain and the lieutenant were stunned by the words. For a few seconds, silence covered the plateau save for the pounding of the rain before McKay sputtered, “It doesn’t make any difference. It doesn’t make any difference. Steele is inside that trailer ready to shoot anyone that comes close. If he gives up, no one will be hurt. But if he resists, what would you suggest? Let him shoot us? He’s got a bunch of his followers down there with him and they’re all armed to the teeth!”

“Let me talk to him,” Harry said.

“Not on your life!” McKay immediately retorted.

Callahan sighed, his hands at his side. “Either let me talk to him now, or explain why later.”

“I don’t have to explain myself to anyone!”

“Not if everything goes the way you want it,” Harry agreed, but then, smiling, added, “but how many times in your life has that happened?”

McKay was cunning enough to consider it. And once he did, he had to admit the painful truth in the inspector’s words. Abruptly, he pushed the bullhorn at Harry. Callahan quickly took it.

“Steele!” his voice boomed, echoing over the rolling park hills. “This is Inspector Harry Callahan. Sidney Melchior . . . introduced . . . us at a SAFE meeting.”

That was all it took. Through the sheets of rain, came the strong authoritative voice of the gay rights leader. “So you came to gloat, did you?” Steele surmised with the tone of a disgraced man who knew he was right all along. “Oh, we know you, Inspector. We know you very well. Now that your little plot has succeeded, you’ve come to watch the culmination, have you?”

“No!” Callahan replied, the word rolling over the area. “I have not plotted against you. But there is a conspiracy!”

McKay grabbed the top of the megaphone and pulled it down. “What the hell do you think you’re doing, Callahan?” he seethed. “Do you know what you’re saying?”

Bressler put his hand on the captain’s arm. “Negotiating tactic,” he explained. “You tell them anything just to get them out.”

“No,” Harry told them both. “No tactic. This is the truth.” He wrenched the bullhorn from beneath McKay’s grip and continued. “Only the police aren’t behind it. But the only way we can prove it is together. You have to help us.”

“Help you?” Steele called. “You must think we’re crazy!”

“No,” Harry answered. “Not crazy . . . but drugged.”

McKay looked at Bressler for some sort of explanation. The lieutenant just shrugged.

“Think about it, Steele,” Harry continued. “How long have you been taking that stuff? How long have you been giving it to your members?”

“Shut up!” Steele screamed. “I’m not imagining this! Angela Mayer was not part of my imagination!”

“No, she wasn’t,” Harry agreed. “She was really murdered, but by someone who knew about your Angel Dust habit. Someone who knew what it could do.”

“I didn’t kill her, I tell you!” Steele’s voice had become rough and high-pitched. Harry could practically smell the sweat from the trailer. “PCP only adversely affects those already violent.”

“It can also make you depressed and paranoid,” Harry added. “It could make you think that we—I—killed Angela.”

“You did! You did! You had to!” Steele shrieked. But then his voice got small and distant. “Who else . . . if not you?”

“Why would I kill her?” Harry demanded. “Why would I kill any homosexual? You know my record. You know what I did to the Scorpio Sniper. And you know what he did to your people.”

Bressler remembered the case that brought Harry to prominence. He remembered that the Scorpio Sniper had held the city for ransom, threatening at one point to “kill a queer or a nigger.”

Steele remembered it too. “What do you want?” he wailed pitifully. “What do you want of me?”

“Come out,” Harry said calmly. “Just throw away your weapons and come out. I promise nothing will happen. You have my word as the killer of the Scorpio Sniper.”

It didn’t work. Steele regressed to his original position, putting aside all that had been said in the meantime. “No. You’ll kill me. You’ll shoot us down in cold blood!”

Harry bit his lip and swore. He glanced over to see McKay beaming in triumph. Callahan instantly brought the megaphone back to his lips. “Then let me come in.”

Bressler said it first. Then Steele’s faraway voice echoed the word. Even McKay looked like he would have said it if his mouth hadn’t dropped open.

“What?”

“Let me come in there,” Harry said reasonably. “I’ll come in with my hands up. You can keep me covered every second. All I want to do is talk.”

Again, the only immediate answer was the roar of the rain crashing into the woods and reservoir.

“No,” Steele said miserably. “It’s a trick. It’s got to be a trick. I won’t let you come in. You can’t make me!”

“That’s enough,” McKay announced, pulling the speaker away. “I hope you’re satisfied, Inspector,” he said directly up to Callahan’s face. “All you’ve proven to me is that Steele could have very easily killed all those women. He’s obviously as mad as a hatter.” With that, the man strode away to take up position at the far side of the plateau.

Bressler replaced the captain at Callahan’s side. “Tough luck, Harry. You almost had him.”

“He’s not completely around the bend yet,” Harry fumed. “I think I could still get him to see reason.”

“If you could’ve gotten to him,” Bressler commiserated.

“You don’t understand, Lieutenant,” Harry told him point blank. “I need Steele alive and I’m going to get to him whether he likes it or not.”

“You’ve got to be out of your fucking mind, Harry,” Bressler said, leaning over at the base of the hill and pulling at the grate covering with all his might. “Hell, what am I saying? I’ve got to be out of my fucking mind.”

“You’re not the one who’s going to be crawling through the drainpipe,” Harry reminded him, pulling alongside.

In the distance, both could hear McKay pontificating through the bullhorn. “This is my last warning. Either thrown down your arms and come out with your hands up or I can’t be responsible for the consequences.”

“Like hell you can’t,” Harry grunted, feeling the grate slip out.

“How can they come out with their hands up if they’ve thrown their arms down?” Bressler complained, tugging.

Harry ignored the joke and told him, “Keep pulling. We’re almost there.”

Harry had seen it at the last minute. As he stared at the trailer after McKay took the bullhorn back, he saw that the rain was draining through a grate just behind Trailer Twenty-two. It looked like a snug fit, but he was pretty sure he could navigate it. All he had to do was find where it emerged. Enlisting the lieutenant’s help, they found its mouth and started working to pull its teeth out.

Light brown, bubbling water swept by their hands as they put their backs into it. Then suddenly, the rusty metal gave and the rectangular opening was clear. Or at least it was clear of metal. The liquid still coursed out as if the pipe was a hose turned all the way up.

“Ah. forget it, Harry,” Bressler groaned. “It would be like swimming upstream in a toothpaste tube.”

Callahan was tempted to do as Bressler recommended, but then he thought about the theory he had in mind. “I’ve got to try,” he maintained, taking off his wet jacket.

“Why?” the lieutenant exploded. “What do you hope to gain? I heard your diatribe up there. It doesn’t make any sense. If Steele didn’t kill those women, why is he acting this way?”

“Because the ones who did kill them told him to.”

Bressler’s mouth closed. His police-trained mind took Harry’s sentence apart before he was able to fully understand it. Then his years on the force made him question the section of the sentence that didn’t quite fit. ‘Ones?’ More than one?”

“Two,” said Callahan, going through his coat’s pockets.

“Well, what the hell are you going scuba diving for? Tell McKay and let’s go get them!”