by Dane Hartman
“It’s like he doesn’t know you at all,” she said quietly. “You are whoever you want to be with him. He doesn’t remember your past so he doesn’t have any preconceptions of you. You can look at yourself objectively because of that.”
Callahan heard and understood. “How long does that take?”
“Dr. Gerrold keeps his schedule loose. Sometimes we talk for a couple of minutes, sometimes the session takes hours. I don’t have my first class until three, so we can take our time.”
It was what Harry had wanted to know. He needed Shanna out of the way so he could confront Browne without interruption. He left her at the door of the doctor’s office. Newbury Street was a Bohemian section of the city. Each side of the street was lined with cafés and art galleries. Gerrold’s office was in between a record store and a cheese shop.
She was safe there, Harry thought. At least for a while. He looked back at her from across the street. She had been waiting for him to do that. She was half-in and half-out the doctor’s door, looking at Harry’s retreating figure. When he turned, she waved and smiled brightly.
Harry waved back, then turned to go after her boyfriend, Jeff Browne.
C H A P T E R
S i x
While Shanna Donovan was getting her head together, Cathy Bryant was getting murdered. She wasn’t an Emerson student. She wasn’t a Unitarian. She was a cocktail waitress in Brookline, a quiet suburb of Boston. Her only crime was being too good-looking and parking her car in the same place every day.
She was supposed to check in at about four so she could eat and set up before the restaurant opened at five. The restaurant was just one of several establishments in the little suburban plaza. It nestled amid a ski shop, a bank, and an investment firm, all held together by a large concrete shell.
Underneath these establishments was a two-story underground garage. Cathy had fallen into the habit of parking her Volvo in the third space to the right in front of the elevators.
It was still an hour before the other places closed. It was still an hour before the restaurant opened. It was the quietest time of the business day. Cathy pulled into the usually deserted parking facility and tooled over to her spot. There was a big, dark car in the second space in front of the elevators. Seeing no reason to be concerned, she pulled in. Turning off the engine, she checked her appearance in the rearview mirror.
Long blonde hair. Blue eyes. About five-five. Wearing a dark suit with slit skirt, high heels, and a tight, silky shirt. A thin band of gold around her neck. Pearl earrings the size of BB shots. While Cathy was checking, so was her killer.
She picked up her bag, which matched the color of her shirt, pulled back the door handle, and slid out. She closed the door. She was grabbed from behind by her breasts and slammed headfirst onto the roof of her car.
The pain in her chest and her head mingled and exploded numbly across her body. She felt herself falling. She felt something reach in under her skirt and between her legs. Something else wrapped around her neck.
Dimly, she saw the door of the other car open in front of her. She felt herself being propelled into the back seat. She fell forward heavily onto the richly padded seat. Her mind started to clear as she felt the clutching, spasmodically clawing fingers on her breasts again. She felt a weight on her back and wheezing breath on the back of her neck. She regained control of her muscles just as she became aware of the knife.
Cathy fought back. She threw up her right arm, feeling it connect with flesh. She heard a sudden, hissing exhalation as the weight atop her yielded somewhat. She twisted her torso, then managed to turn all the way over onto her back.
Her murderer was sitting on her hips in the back seat of the car. She saw the killer’s face and the knife in the killer’s hand. She couldn’t put the two together. It didn’t make sense. The shock interrupted her escape attempt, and by the time she tried moving again, it was too late.
The killer was taking no chances. The knife was at the girl’s throat, and the slit in her skirt was torn all the way to the waist. Everything beneath was ripped off. Then the ripping hand pressed tightly over Cathy’s mouth. The killer leaned in. Cathy began to hyperventilate. She was going into shock. Her eyelids fluttered, and then she fainted.
She never regained consciousness. Through the rear window of the dark car, a knife could be seen rising and falling, rising and falling.
Harry slammed his fist in the tail’s face like a piston. Turning the tables on the man following him had been no problem. From Newbury Street, Harry had walked back to Beacon Hill. He had kept going until he had passed Government Center and was amid the Italian North End, which seemed to have the same design as the rest of Back Bay, only its buildings were more rundown, more closed in. And there was the smell of tomato gravy everywhere—even in the garbage.
Harry’s tail had not been a pro. All Callahan had had to do was move ahead a little faster, slip into the mouth of an alley, then wait for the guy to come trotting by. Packing all his frustration behind his right elbow, he had waited until the follower realized his mistake and turned toward him. Then Harry had released all his aggression in a straight-arm shot.
The tail’s head snapped back as Harry’s other hand wrapped around his shirt front. As the man tried to fall back, Harry jerked him forward into the alley. The street was empty of witnesses, but even if there had been someone there, Callahan doubted if anything would be done. In almost any major Italian section of any major city, this sort of thing had come to be expected.
The young man fell into the alley on his face. But he was resilient. His mind cleared as soon as he hit the ground, and he rolled over onto his back, preparing to leap up. Foreseeing this, Harry had dropped as the man was falling. When he had rolled over onto his back, Harry had put one knee on his chest and the Magnum in his nose.
“I’m looking for Jeff Browne. Could you give me directions?”
If the tail had considered arguing before, the big opening at the end of the .44 barrel changed his mind. He gave Harry Browne’s address and agreed to lead the cop there. Harry put the gun away and helped the tail to his feet.
They walked down to the end of the winding North End street and came out on the water’s edge. They were in a particularly wealthy section of Boston Harbor, which the city and private industry had been renovating for the past half-decade. “What’s your name?” Harry asked as they moved west, back toward the main part of town.
“You’re doing a terrible thing, you know,” was the tail’s answer. “You have no right to persecute the Order of the Orenda. We do only good. We’re not a cult. We’re not like the Scientologists. We don’t stand around on street corners begging.”
“No, you just skulk around in alleys, following people.”
“Jeff was just worried about Shanna, that’s all!” the young man complained. “He didn’t like the way things were going. He thought the police were trying to pin those Beacon Hill Murders on us. Just because Judy worked at the Unitarian Church.”
“How did you find me?” Harry asked. He figured it was an easier question. The tail could come back to remembering his name when he was ready.
“After Shanna’s folks were told you were in the hospital, they told Shanna. Shanna told Jeff.”
“And Jeff told you,” Harry finished for him. He nodded. It made sense. It may not have been the truth, but it made sense. There was still the question of how Christine had known where to find him before.
“Man, you must be made of steel,” the tail commented. “We heard you had the crap beaten out of you, but I had just gotten to the hospital when you came out.”
That was him, all right, Harry acknowledged, the man of steel. He might have been faster than a speeding bullet, but it wasn’t doing him a hell of a lot of good.
They passed through Boston’s Chinatown and into the one-block-long German section of the city. The tail moved down a street to their left. Harry looked down the street to their right. He saw the infamous “Combat Zone.” Somehow
, the politicians, porn merchants, and the fates had combined to localize the X-rated shops and clubs on a two block radius of the city—sandwiched between the main shopping district and Chinatown.
Every porno store, theater, bar, and whorehouse was located along this one small stretch. It officially ended on one side at the corner Harry was standing on and on the other side at the closed-down Paramount Theater. Harry looked away and followed the tail down the opposite street. They stopped at the entrance to a pedestrian apartment house. It was the least appealing dwelling Harry had run into since his arrival.
“Jeff comes from New York,” the tail said, seeing the look on Callahan’s face. “He likes this place. It reminds him of home.”
“Which apartment is he in?” Harry asked.
“Cellar room,” the man replied. “B-2.”
“It figures,” Harry muttered, pulling open the door and motioning the tail to enter.
The tiny foyer cut off all the Boston sunlight from outside. The space was illuminated by a single naked bulb as was the hallway inside. The entryway was classic, even in so rundown a building. There were a bunch of mailboxes along one wall and a bunch of buttons along the other. Usually there were name tags identifying the apartment dwellers next to the buttons. Not in this building.
Callahan examined the buttons. He could hardly see the identifying numbers etched in a thin metal strip attached to the wall. He looked at the tail. The young man was leaning against the second door, hands in his pockets, looking miserable. “Hey, you,” Harry said.
The tail looked up, pointed at himself in surprise, and said, “Me?”
“No, Mahatma Gandhi. Who do you think I’m talking to? Give me something to call you. It doesn’t have to be a name, I don’t care.”
The tail thought about it. “Tim,” he decided.
“Tim, get over here,” Harry instructed. “Press Jeff’s buzzer. Don’t fuck around. I’m not here to crucify anybody. I just want to get some answers.”
The tail moved his finger around the rows of buttons, then pressed the second one up along the first column. There was no answer. Tim pressed it again. Still no response. Tim looked up at Callahan and shrugged.
Harry pulled a credit card out of his pocket. “We’ll wait for him,” he said. “Inside.” With a simple push and a sudden twist, the locked entry door popped open.
“Why didn’t you do that in the first place?” Tim asked, exasperated.
“I wanted to see if Browne was home,” Harry answered, pulling the tail in front of him and lightly pushing him toward the stairs.
The interior of the place was worse than the outside. The smells of pulpy wood, kitty litter, and urine combined to create an aroma unsurpassed anywhere else in Boston. The cellar stairs had a pronounced starboard list, and the basement hall looked like a subway tunnel.
The two went over to the door marked 2. Only a pale shadow of the “B” remained. Harry leaned up against one side of the door. Tim took a post on the other side. Callahan checked the area for possible exits. It was an incredible rattrap. Paint was peeling everywhere, and the lighting was so bad, Harry could hardly make out his feet at the ends of his legs.
At the end of the hall was an emergency exit. Harry pointed it out to Tim and put up a finger to mean “just a second.” He went over and tried the latch. It wouldn’t budge. It was locked. Great, Harry thought. Not only a rattrap, but a fire trap. He returned to Tim, secure in the knowledge that no one was getting in or out that way.
Tim couldn’t take the gloom or the silence for long. “I don’t get it,” he suddenly said. “Why us? Why pick on the Order of the Orenda?”
“Bad luck,” said Harry, keeping the death of Morrison to himself. “Bad timing.” The thought of the tall, intense Orenda shaman reminded Callahan of something that had been bothering him. Something Morrisson had said. Perhaps Tim could clear up that mystery. “How do you see the wolf?” Harry asked nonchalantly.
The tail looked over in surprise. “No lip,” Harry warned him.
“It’s a method of enlightenment,” Tim reported. “You fast and meditate until the spirit of the wolf comes to you. The wolf is the Indian’s friend. To be visited by the wolf is a white man’s greatest honor.”
Callahan listened patiently in the dank, decrepit hallway. “Isn’t that a little ridiculous?” he asked.
Tim looked the other way. “Fat lot you know,” he muttered. “You probably never even got high.”
Callahan snorted in amusement. He glimpsed something on the floor. He looked closer. The wood was darker around his shoes than it had been. He knelt down. The floor around his feet was covered with blood.
It was drooling out from under the door of apartment B-2.
Harry pulled out the Magnum and kicked in the door at the same time. The bolt split open and the wood partition swung in, hit something, and moved back. Callahan was already moving forward. He met the door with his shoulder. It swung in again.
A table laden with stuff was smashed to the side. As it was thrown out of the door’s path, Callahan took in the rest of the room like a camera’s eye. It was a small, dark, cramped, and cluttered room. Everywhere there was Indian paraphernalia. Masks with bulging eyes and thick dark lips covered the walls. A pair of snowshoes hung on a doorknob. Beadwork and stitchings were lying on the floor, on tables, and on almost every other surface. Harry saw animal skins, pottery, carved bowls, arrowheads, a chart of Indian symbols, and a small totem pole in the corner.
In the middle of the room was a dead blonde girl.
Callahan moved forward. He felt a push at his back. He lost his balance just as a tomahawk thudded into the wall behind him. He landed on top of the woman’s corpse. He glanced behind him. Tim had his hands out and was hunched over. He had pushed Harry out of the way. He stared in bewilderment at the dead girl, then started to throw up.
Harry looked back to where the tomahawk had come from. He saw a man with a full beard push through a swinging door on the other side of the room. He jumped up and went after him.
“Watch it,” Tim managed to choke out. “He’s great with those things.”
“Those things” turned out to be knives. Harry kicked open the door. It led to the kitchen. He dove in just as a heavy ceremonial blade chunked into the wood of the doorjamb.
There was a window at the end of the dirty kitchen. Cockroaches scurried away as the bearded man threw open the metal grate in front of the glass and Harry dragged his gun up from under him.
The bearded man threw himself right through the pane as he pushed the grate closed behind him. Harry pulled the Magnum’s trigger at the same time. The .44’s massive boom reverberated through the tile and rattled some dishes. They fell as the bullet tore through one of the grate’s metal slats, sending off thick sparks.
Harry pulled himself up as Tim stumbled in. “What the hell is going on?” he screamed in confusion and panic.
Callahan ignored him as he tore open the grate and looked outside. The bearded man was vaulting a fence on the other side of a garbage-strewn yard. Harry pulled off another shot which punched a hole in the wooden fence in between the man’s legs.
“Who is that girl?” Tim screeched in the cop’s ear.
Harry whirled toward him. “Don’t you know her?”
“No!”
Harry leaped out the window. “Call the police. Get them over here.”
“But what’s going on?” came Tim’s frightened, plaintive cry from behind him as he ran for the fence. “What is happening? I don’t understand what could have happened!”
Callahan vaulted over the wooden partition in one leap. He landed on his feet in a back alleyway between blocks. He saw the bearded man speeding toward the street. Harry anchored his feet on the asphalt and held his Magnum out in front of his face with two hands. He pointed the barrel right in the middle of the bearded man’s back just as the runner was getting to the mouth of the alley. His finger tightened on the trigger.
A car turned the corner int
o the alley. Both the bearded man and Harry were taken by surprise. The Magnum boomed and bucked in his hand.
The bearded man fell over onto the hood of the car. The bullet sped over his head and tore through the center of the windshield. It smashed out the rear window as the bearded man got up and scrambled across the car’s roof.
For one of the few times in his life, Harry felt a cold helplessness. Even in the worst situations, he had always kept faith in his abilities. But now, here, he may have shot an innocent bystander. The chill that coursed through him did not freeze him out of action, however. As he felt the numb rage of a mistake inside him, his legs were already throwing him forward after the bearded man. If he had hurt anyone who didn’t deserve it, he wanted to be damn sure he got the one who did.
He saw the bearded man fall off the trunk of the car and scramble around the alley corner at the same time he saw the middle-aged couple in the car blink, look around, and generally act unhurt. Harry paused for a split second in front of the stalled auto.
“Are you all right?” he shouted.
“You fucking maniac!” said the pot-bellied driver. “You could have killed someone!”
Harry had jumped onto the hood even before the man had formed the obscenity. He wouldn’t be raging if he or a loved one was hurt. As the man finished his curse, Callahan was in the street twenty feet behind the bearded man.
The bearded man was in the traffic, where there were too many other innocent bystanders. Harry kept the gun out to keep them out of his way and ran into the street. He held his free hand out in a stop signal and kept the .44 up in case he got a clear shot at the bearded man.
The bearded man made it across the street to the accompanying wail of car horns and tire screeches. He disappeared around the corner into the Combat Zone. Harry smiled grimly. It was going to be a hell of a hunt. He poured on the steam and crossed the same distance in three long steps. He was on the sidewalk, at the wall, then around the corner in time to see the bearded man duck into a bookstore three doors down.
