by Dane Hartman
“I’m sorry, Inspector, but he left a couple of hours ago to get some sleep,” the officer responded.
“I brought a man in last night. Tom Morrisson. Do you know what happened to him?”
“Hold on,” said the sergeant, then put Harry on hold. And with no music, either. Harry waited three minutes, then he hung up and left the room.
A taxi was no problem. A few were lining up in front of the hotel. The way his sense of déjà vu was going Harry promised himself not to be surprised if his driver was the same one who had tried to bilk the foreigners at the airport. Thankfully for his sense of equilibrium, it wasn’t. The ride was mercifully quick; just having to shoot down Charles, take a left at Mount Vernon, then another left. The cabbie dropped Harry off at number 96 without a single traffic light getting in the way. Callahan gave him a handsome tip. Think of it, he mused, an honest taxi driver. The cab drove off, and Harry was alone.
He didn’t like it. He was on another narrow Back Bay street at the base of Beacon Hill. He was facing a four-storied rectangular building with thick opaque windows only on the second and fourth floors. There were two doors in the front. Across the street was a brick wall. He looked to the right. A block down was Shanna’s building. He looked to the left. A block down was Beacon Street. He could see a section of the Gardens across it.
Christine was not outside. In fact, the area seemed deserted. No, he didn’t like it at all. But like it or not, he still approached the left-hand door. He gave it a tug. It opened. He slipped inside, desperately wishing that he still had his Magnum.
The thin, hallway-like foyer was slightly calming. It had all the accoutrements of a college facility. There were flyers about upcoming dances, concerts, and other social events taped to the window of the inside door. To the left was a bigger bulletin board with more information; school plays, blood banks, report due announcements, and the like. To the right was a glassed-in display case full of footballs, pictures, papers, and trophies.
Although it certainly was a school building or a brilliant facsimile thereof, it lacked the one vital ingredient that would make the establishment work. Namely, students and/or teachers.
There was a hallway to Harry’s right, lined with junk-food machines on one side and lavatory doors on the other. One was marked “Men,” another “Women,” and a third was marked “Faculty” whom, as every student knows, fit in neither of the previous two categories.
There was a stairway to Harry’s left and on the first platform, some swinging doors to a classroom. Harry stepped up and looked through the glass section of the doors. The large, wood, high-ceilinged room was empty of everything save dozens of desk-winged chairs. About thirty were spread out in front of a blackboard, but the rest were piled up near the windows.
Harry looked up the rest of the stairs. He saw little and heard nothing but his own breathing. He thought about calling for Christine but choked back the name. He had been a cop too long. If, for any reason at all, someone was waiting to do him harm, his yell would tip them off. And if no one was waiting and it was just his paranoia raging, then there was no harm in not calling. In other words, only shouting could cause woe. Not shouting would harm no one.
Harry silently walked up the rest of the stairs. They emptied out onto a dance studio. The big, multimirrored room covered the entire floor. There was no place to hide and, sadly, no Christine present either. Harry wouldn’t have minded finding the girl decked out in a leotard practicing. But the only thing he saw was a circular metal stairway across the room, rising to the fourth floor.
He saw light from the final story’s windows splashing on the top rungs of the steps. He moved until he could place both hands on the banister. He stopped and listened for several minutes; there was absolutely no sound of human activity up there. Callahan spent several more seconds considering his situation. Could he have the wrong building? No, it was the only college building down the street from Shanna’s apartment. Could Christine have taken off of her own free will? Why not? Harry didn’t know her at all. She could’ve gotten bored waiting or had another class.
Callahan caught himself. He was doing the same thing he thought Linda was doing. Taking a possibly minor situation and blowing it up into a major affair. That sort of thing must run in the family, he thought with a stab of mental pain. Then he remembered what Christine had said. Tom had called her. There was absolutely no way Tom could have contacted her unless he had used his one phone-call right to talk to her. But that still didn’t explain how Tom or she had known where he was.
The paranoia returned. Something messy was going on, and Harry was in the middle of it. He moved up the spiral staircase smoothly and quickly.
Another studio stretched out in front of him. But this looked to be for an acting class, illuminated by the magnified light coming through the thick, square windowpanes. There were risers and props and curtains hanging everywhere on the ceiling. It looked like a class where at least four scenes were going on at once for four different teachers in four curtained-off sections of the room.
Of all the sights Harry had seen that morning, he liked this the least. There were four places someone could be hiding. He looked around the room. Lying under one of the windows was a metal-tipped wood pole, the kind teachers use to pull down shades that are too high to reach.
It was just what the doctor ordered. Not only would it make his long arm of the law longer, it would serve well as a weapon. It didn’t have the range or power of a Magnum but it would have to do. Harry pushed aside the first set of curtains with it. There was nothing there. He moved on to the second.
Christine Sherman was lying face down on the floor behind them.
As soon as he saw her form, he heard the screeching yell behind him. He tried to turn, but it was too late. A thundering pressure slammed against the back of his head. He felt the pole leave his grip and heard it clatter to the ground beside him. He landed on his face.
The bastard had come in behind him. He had been waiting for Harry and had snuck into the building after him, knowing that it was empty for the day.
Even though the pain blossomed from his skull to his brain like a rapidly growing weed, Callahan tried to hold on, if for no one else’s sake but Christine’s. He couldn’t leave her alone with Morrisson. In his state, there was no telling what the kid might do.
With incredible effort, Harry pushed out with his right arm. At the same time he tried to clear his vision of the bulbous red and orange globes with the thick black streaks. He managed to roll over and clear his vision just as a deeper, darker black fell on top of him.
He had cut the curtains. The bastard had chopped the black curtains down on top of him. Harry couldn’t see anything and he couldn’t crawl out. He tried, but the cloth acted like a net, and the bastard started hitting him again.
In the recesses of his pain-riddled mind, Harry recognized the sounds of the sweeping arcs of air. The bastard was beating him with the window-shade pole. Distantly, he heard the sound of the thick wood wacking into him. Seemingly seconds after each blow had fallen, he felt the pain. He managed to crawl a few inches on his hands and knees. Then the pole cracked into the top of his head. He stopped, his head bouncing. Again the club came down. It drove him back to the floor this time.
Stupid, was the last thing Harry said to himself before he lost consciousness. You should have played possum. You could have saved yourself a concussion that way.
Callahan woke up. His head felt like a peanut in the trunk of an elephant. He still couldn’t see. He raised his hand to lift the black material off him. He wasn’t ready for a shroud yet. He kept pushing and pulling until he saw the school’s ceiling above him. It was in terrible shape. It looked about as bad as he felt.
He remembered Christine’s form on the floor. He looked over to where she had lain. She was no longer there. He gingerly got up to his knees. Although pain centers were playing. “Tubular Bells” in his brain, he managed to go from there to his feet.
He looked al
l the way around the room. Christine wasn’t there. Tom Morrisson was.
He lay face up in a spotlight of blood. Judging by the many slits in his torso, Callahan assumed the blood was Tom’s own.
It hurt Harry’s head to consider the ramifications of this new situation. He left the corpse there and went downstairs to find a phone.
C H A P T E R
F i v e
“I feel compelled to say, Inspector Callahan, that you are the closest thing to a living Frankenstein’s monster I have come across in my thirty years of medical service.”
The squat, wispy-haired doctor marveled at the big, rugged man in the hospital bed.
“As chief of staff of this hospital,” the doctor went on, “I was brought in on this case. You should feel honored, Inspector. You are very important to the city of Boston.”
“I’ll try to live up to that,” Harry promised sardonically. But the addled, almost senile hospital head was not through yet.
“Incredible,” he muttered. “Absolutely incredible. I’ve never seen so much scar tissue on one human being. Living human being, that is. There are signs of recent serious wounds to your thigh, your shoulder, and your hands. And you suffered many other wounds before that. Incredible. Truly incredible. How do you walk?”
“I manage,” Harry answered. “How’s my head?”
“Oh yes, your most recent wound,” the doctor commented. “Well, you’ll continue walking. It is an incredibly strong cranial bone. Some slight contusions here and there but no concussion, and no fracture, thank God. That was what worried me the most. With a fracture you might have seen stars, suffered paralysis, seen things. With a concussion, you might have suffered blackouts occasionally. With a fracture, I doubt if there would be any question about it. Frequent blackouts. Oh yes, quite definitely.”
“But I have neither,” Harry said.
“Neither what?” said the doctor.
“Concussion or fracture,” said Harry.
“Of course not!” said the doctor. “What are you worrying about? I would have told you if you had those.”
The nurse poked her head in the room, saving Callahan from any more Boston medical torture. “You have guests, Mr. Callahan.”
“Very good,” the doctor said as if the nurse had been speaking to him. “I’ll be off then. Take care of yourself, Inspector.” The little man got up, walked over, but stopped by the door. “Oh, and Inspector?” Harry looked at him. “If, by any chance, things get worse for you, don’t bother donating your organs to science. In their condition, they wouldn’t do us any good!”
Callahan laughed out loud as the little medico’s head disappared after the rest of his body. The hospital head wasn’t as pixilated as he seemed. As he left, Mr. and Mrs. Peter Donovan came in.
Linda looked the same, albeit even more worried. It was Peter who had done all the changing for the family. Harry remembered the happy, sandy-haired, square-jawed Mick he had met at his cousin’s wedding. The man who came in with that girl now was a different man. The square jaw had sagged along with his belly. The sandy hair had risen across his skull and turned almost white. He kept it in a crew cut.
And the face was anything but happy. It was the face of a man beaten by life. Harry had had his share of bouts with reality as well, but his face showed that he had fought back. Peter looked like he had stood and taken it, fists by his side. He was still a proud Irishman, his biceps thick and his forearms strong, but he also seemed a stubborn, ignorant one.
“Harry, are you all right?” Linda asked, rushing to the chair the doctor had vacated.
“I’m fine, Linda. Just had a little accident.” He was still sitting up in bed, having accommodated the doctor’s checkup. The ugly bruises on his chest could be seen by all. Linda’s mouth shaped itself into a silent “Oh,” when she saw the black-and-blue welts. She touched one with her finger. Harry didn’t like the expression on Peter’s face when she did. It was one of barely controlled jealousy. A look of possession and anger at the same time.
It disappeared when Peter joined his wife by the side of the bed. His body language spoke for him then. He placed both hands on her shoulders, practically pulling her to his side.
“We were worried about you,” he said without much conviction.
Harry began to put himself in Peter’s place. His business was failing. His daughter was getting out of hand. His wife was getting desperate. And all along he had considered himself the champion of the world; the one guy who was going to make it. And now his wife had even called for a distant cousin over him. He must’ve felt like living shit.
“Fine. No problem,” said Harry.
“Did you see Shanna?” Linda asked. Harry saw Peter’s hands tighten on her shoulders. He thought he saw the man grimace slightly. Linda looked up at him for a split second, then looked back at Harry imploringly.
“Yes,” he told her. “We talked.”
“You see?” said Peter. “I told you she’d talk to her old ‘Uncle Harry.’ You see, there’s no problem, really.” The man was forcing his casualness just a bit stridently. “I told her, Harry, I really did. I said, ‘This is just your imagination, Lin.’ You know what I mean, don’t you, Harry? A daughter goes out on her own for the first time, and the mother starts imagining all sorts of crazy things.”
Harry smiled without humor. Tom Morrisson’s corpse was not part of his imagination.
“She called,” Linda told him. “Last night . . . after you left her. She called to say that she was all right.”
“It was a good talk,” Peter interjected over his wife’s words. “You really did the trick, Harry. You made her think about how concerned we were about her. So everybody really communicated.”
Harry concentrated on Peter again. He had a smile on his face, but the rest of his expression was strained. Those weren’t his words he was saying. He was as uncomfortable expressing them as Harry was hearing them.
“She says she’s really ‘getting her act together,’ ” the father went on. “She says her boyfriend really helps. She says she really feels necessary for the first time in her life.”
Linda looked up between her husband’s gripping hands. “She didn’t say that to me.”
Peter tightened his grip, speaking to Linda while looking apologetically at Harry. “I guess you were off the phone then, dear.”
Linda wouldn’t leave it at that. “She won’t let us meet her boyfriend,” she told Harry conspiratorially.
“Now, Linda . . . ,” Peter mocked, looking up at the ceiling.
“Well, she won’t, Peter!” she said to him. She leaned over toward Harry. “We’ve never seen him. She won’t bring him over. He won’t call while she is with us. I don’t like it, Harry. I don’t like it at all.”
Harry didn’t like it either. Not that Shanna’s boyfriend was a stranger, but that he was brought up at this point at all. The play Harry felt he was in kept having its author changed. First it was Harold Pinter, then it was Samuel Beckett, now it was Edward Albee and “Who’s Afraid of Harry Callahan?”
“She just hasn’t had the chance yet, honey,” Peter patiently explained. “You know how kids are, Harry. They get so wrapped up in schoolwork and everything.”
“And everything,” Harry seemed to agree. “Well, at least you know the boy’s name, right?”
“We practically had to drag it out of her . . . !” Linda began.
“Jeff Browne,” Peter interceded. “A real nice guy.”
“How would you know?” Linda spat. “We’ve never met him.”
Peter looked patiently down. “Because Shanna told me, that’s why. And I, for one, believe what my own daughter says.”
It was a verbal slap that hit its mark. Linda looked at her husband, then at Harry. She bit her lower lip, her eyes misted, and she quickly looked at the floor.
“I’m glad you’re all right, Harry,” she said in a small voice. “Thanks for all your help.” She couldn’t go on. She pulled out from under her husband’s grip a
nd ran out of the room.
Harry’s face was an expressionless mask. Peter watched her go, then stared at the empty doorway for several seconds. When he turned back to the cop, his grin was a sheepish one.
“Jesus, women,” he said by way of explanation. Rubbing the back of his crew-cut head, he sat down in the vacated chair to try verbally to figure it out. “Well, she’s so wrapped up and all. This whole thing has gotten her worked up.”
“What whole thing?” Harry asked quietly.
“Well, that Beacon Hill murder and all,” Peter answered. “You know, because Shanna knew the dead girl. But she says it’s OK. I mean, a lot of people get murdered, and all their friends don’t fall apart, do they?”
“Yeah,” Harry agreed slowly. “A lot of people get murdered.”
“Well, everything’s getting better now,” Donovan concluded. “We’re all getting over it. Just a few more days and everything’ll be back to normal.” He put a calloused hand reluctantly on Harry’s shoulder. “I really want to thank you for all your help. You really did the trick.”
It was the big kiss-off, Harry realized. Both Linda and Peter were trying to tell him good-bye, bon voyage, be sure to write. They didn’t know about the Morrisson murder yet. No one knew except Harry, the police, and the murderer. Unless . . .
Harry was suddenly very sorry he came. He really didn’t need to know that Shanna was involved with an Indian cult. He really didn’t want to suspect that Shanna was involved with murder. He could have very happily stayed in San Francisco, up to his neck in other people’s blood.
He returned Peter’s smile. His was as lifeless and as fake as Donovan’s. “That’s all right,” he murmured. “Least I could do.”
“We have your luggage here,” Peter spoke up quickly, “It’s out in the hall. You want me to put it in the closet here?” He motioned at the little cupboard in the private room.
