by Dane Hartman
“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
The 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.
“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 Seven
ty-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 w
ould 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.
