by Dane Hartman
Linda broke down into tears. “No matter what she’s done,” she wailed. “She’s still our daughter.”
“I say no!” There were more crashes from within. Callahan’s feeling of déjà vu returned. This was how the case had started, only then he had been listening to Morrisson, Sherman, and the Donovans’ daughter, the one Peter seemed so vicious about disowning. Harry lowered his fist. He would listen a bit more.
“She’s your daughter,” the man seethed at his sobbing wife. “You’re all alike, sucking up to other men, wiggling your goddamn asses at other men. Shoving your goddamn tits in other men’s faces!”
Linda’s voice was like a crushed little girl’s. “How can you say that?” she barely managed to get out. “When it was you . . . When it was you . . .”
“I don’t want to hear it!” Peter absolutely screamed.
“You’ll have to hear it,” Linda came back, her voice growing strength once she realized she had hit a pain center. “You’ll have to admit the truth! Shanna . . . our daughter went to that man because you . . . !”
Harry heard the table go crashing over and Linda’s scream just before he identified the sound of flesh hitting flesh. He heard Peter shrieking “I’ll kill you! I’ll kill you, you goddamn cunt!”
Then Harry kicked down the door.
C H A P T E R
N i n e
The partition disappeared around Harry’s flying foot. It was hardly strong enough to stand up against a hard rain, let alone a kick from the seasoned inspector. Instead of breaking the lock and the door swinging in, Harry’s leg went right through the cheap material. It was an awkward and painful position. Harry threw his torso forward to smash through the rest of the way. The door frame stayed shut, just a hole the size of Callahan’s body opened up.
Peter Donovan hardly noticed the interruption. He had one meaty hand around Linda’s neck, and he was slapping her back and forth with the other. She was trying to tear at his hair while beating at the arm around her throat.
“That’s enough!” Harry shouted, moving into the combination kitchen, living, and dining room.
Harry’s voice brought Peter back to reality. But it was not the reality of a quiet, gentle husband taking care of his wife and daughter. It was the reality of a frustrated, failed, violent man who wanted to lash out at anything that got in his way. He stopped hitting Linda and looked up at Callahan with an evil, expectant grin.
“Well, well, well,” he said. “Look who we have here. If it isn’t the women’s knight in shining armor.” Callously, casually, Peter threw his wife aside. She slammed against the wall and sunk to the floor, crying and rubbing her bruised neck. “You’re just what the doctors ordered, ‘Dirty’ Harry. Come on, let’s see who can really fight dirty around here.”
Donovan hunched over like a charging bull and made circular “come on” motions with both hands.
“Forget it,” Harry said, standing up straight in the two-foot hallway behind the broken door. But while he said it, he checked out the room. The kitchenette was on the other side of the wall from him. The kitchen table was lying on its side next to Linda. The rug started there and stretched twenty feet across the way to a sliding door out onto the patio. Between the two points were a card table, a TV, a sofa, and a rectangular dining table.
“What are you going to do to stop me?” Peter barked. “Shoot me with your big .44 Magnum?” He laughed. “Come on, little man, let’s see what you can do without your cannon.” Peter charged with all the delighted abandon of an experienced streetfighter.
Harry moved into the room at the same time. They met right next to the stove.
Callahan’s initial instinct was to drive the flat of his hand between Peter’s clutching fingers and crush the man’s nose back into his face, but at the last minute he restrained himself. No matter how big a bastard Donovan was, Harry didn’t think Linda wanted to be a widow. There was a possibility of driving the nose bone right into the brain.
Instead, Peter slammed his head into Harry’s torso, and Harry slammed both fists against the big Mick’s ears.
Roaring with pain, Peter tried to bring his head up under Callahan’s chin. Harry put both hands on the top of Donovan’s head, jammed his leg between both of Peter’s, and pushed. Donovan’s upward momentum was channeled into a backward force. His arms flailed out, and he fell back, smashing off two of the upset kitchen table’s legs.
Harry moved farther into the long room as Peter grabbed one of the broken wooden stumps and charged with it over his head. Callahan’s mind went back to the Police Academy’s first year of self-defense training. Peter brought the makeshift club down. Harry caught his wrist in his left hand, grabbed the same arm’s elbow with his right, pivoted, turned, and pulled.
The shoulder flip still worked like a charm after all these years. Donovan somersaulted over Harry’s head and landed back-first on the card table. The whole room shook with his fall. The air was knocked out of him as the second table’s spindly legs all broke at once. The heavy chair leg skittered out of Peter’s hand and under the couch as he bounced on the hard floor and rolled, groaning, onto his side.
Normally, Harry would have kicked him in the back of the head to make sure he stayed down. Unfortunately, this wasn’t a pimp, pusher, rapist, robber, or killer. It was just an incredible asshole who happened to be a relation. Harry was glad all his close family were dead. They wouldn’t want to see what Linda had come to.
Harry turned his back on the dazed, cringing man and went to see how Linda was. She was in even a worse way than she had been in the orange Pinto. Not only couldn’t she talk between tears, she wouldn’t even look at Harry. She just kept waving him away with her head turned toward the wall.
Callahan felt Peter’s second attack before he saw it. The floor under his feet vibrated. He smelled alcohol. He swung round to see Peter attempting a roundhouse right. Harry ducked under it. It sunk right into the plaster of the wall. Harry jerked his elbow forward into Donovan’s chin. The man’s head snapped back, and he stumbled against the sink.
Harry made the mistake of giving the man room again. Peter immediately dug his hand into a kitchen drawer and came out with a carving knife. Callahan turned around and ran to the couch. Playtime was over. Donovan was getting seriously stupid. When he saw Harry run back, a smug smile grew across the bottom of his face. The look winked out when Harry stood his ground and pointed the Magnum barrel right between Peter’s eyes.
“Now I know what you’re thinking,” Harry said, the words feeling comfortable and familiar. “You’re thinking, ‘He won’t shoot me. I’m family.’ Well, being that this is a .44 Magnum and could blow you hand clean off, you’ve got to ask yourself one question. Do I feel lucky?” Harry paused a beat. “Well? Do you, asshole?”
Harry was afraid the Mick would be too stubborn to back down. He was right. The look in Peter’s eye said he didn’t care what Harry said, the cop wouldn’t shoot him. Donovan brought the knife in low and charged for the third time. Harry immediately pulled the trigger.
The Magnum’s concussion in the cheap condo room was equal to that of a thunderclap. The flash and shell shaving stung Peter’s face. It was such a monumental sound right in front of him that he was sure he was hit. He practically felt the shock wave of the lead smashing into him.
Only the bullet went over his right shoulder and into the refrigerator. It was Donovan’s expectations that stopped his charge and threw him back in shock. Linda’s frightened scream could only be heard after the .44’s reverberation faded, and then it was too late to do anything about it.
Harry tossed the gun behind him onto the couch. He moved forward and slapped the knife out of Peter’s hand. Then he punched the man across the jaw as hard as he could.
Donovan’s feet left the floor as he twisted around in midair from the force of the blow. He landed unsteadily on his feet just as Harry buried his other fist into Peter’s stomach. The man doubled over with a painful whoosh. Harry grabbed him by the ear an
d the nose. With a skin-tearing tug he hurled the big man over the sofa. Peter smashed hard into the rug. He rolled over to the picture window.
Harry calmly walked around the couch, grabbed Peter by the shirt front, and brought him to his feet.
“Never pull a knife on me,” Callahan said, both as a warning and as an explanation. Then he slammed a final fist right in the center of Donovan’s face. The Mick shot back and through the patio picture window.
The glass blew out like cannon shot. It, too, was the cheapest grade. Peter crashed down with it, half-in and half-out of the room. Harry turned his back on the unconscious man, retrieved his gun, and went back to Linda.
The woman was on her feet, pointing in astonishment at the motionless body of her husband and screeching in short gasps. Harry swept her pointing finger out of the way and slapped her hard across the face. She suddenly stopped yelling and looked at Harry, blinking.
He grabbed her upper arms and shook her. “Six people are dead, Linda,” he said in her face. “What should you have told me?”
She just stared at his face uncomprehendingly for a few more seconds. Then she started to cry again.
Harry shook her again, harder this time. “Don’t cry,” he demanded. “Tell me now. What you should have said.”
They both heard a noise from the door. Harry turned to see three or four neighbors standing in the wreckage of the door.
“Uh, Linda,” said an old woman in the lead. “Is there any trouble here? Anything we can do?”
“No, thank you, Mrs. O’Neill,” Harry heard Linda say. He turned to see that the woman had collected herself. The interest of the neighbors did the trick. She could act the simpering fool in front of loved ones, but she had to put up a good front for the neighbors. “My husband and my cousin just had a little disagreement, that’s all.”
The old woman nodded with understanding, even amid the broken furniture, glass, and spreadeagled Peter. She turned to shoo the others back into the hall. Before she left herself, she turned to Harry.
“Good for you,” she told him.
The old lady’s calm had given Linda strength. But it wouldn’t hold up if they stayed in the apartment. She got her coat out of the closet and walked toward the door.
“Come on, Harry,” she said. “We have to get to town.”
Within minutes, they were back in the Pinto, heading toward Boston. Tears were pouring down Linda’s cheeks, but she was in control. They were the empty, bitter tears spilled over a wasted life. They were the remorseful drops of self-pity and self-loathing. She was crying over what could have been but never would be. She wasn’t going to waste her breath over it.
“I wrote you without Peter knowing,” she began, her knuckles white on the steering wheel. “It was before the Halliwell girl was killed, but our lives were already falling apart. I . . . I needed somebody to talk to. Someone who could protect me from Peter’s violent rages.”
“So he’s beaten you before.”
Linda felt she didn’t have to answer that. Instead, she tried to explain the love she felt for him. “He doesn’t hate me, Harry. He’s burning up with self-hate. He just can’t express it in any other way but rage.”
“Don’t defend him to me,” Harry said flatly. “Go on.”
“He had an affair,” Linda intoned as if that sentence was the most important four words in the English language. “He was eating himself up with guilt about it. When Shanna found out, she went a little crazy. She started experimenting with all sorts of things and tried to find men she knew would punish her father . . .”
Harry was beginning to lose her. Why would Shanna react so badly to her father’s affair? There was no great bond between the two beforehand, and the girl was old enough to understand and handle her father’s indiscretions . . .
Then it hit him. The whole twisted chain of events locked into Harry’s mind. “Pull over!” he shouted.
“What?” Linda blurted, surprised.
“Stop the car. Pull over.” Harry checked the traffic situation around them, then grabbed the wheel himself and jerked it to the right. Linda hadn’t even braked the vehicle all the way when Harry was out of the passenger’s side and running toward the driver’s seat through the kicked-up dust. “Move over,” Harry commanded, pulling open the door and dropping down behind the steering wheel. He revved the engine and lurched back onto the road.
Callahan drove, thought, and talked furiously. “Shanna used to drop over a lot more often. She’d sometimes bring her friends along with her, wouldn’t she? And being so beautiful, it wasn’t unusual that her friends would be beautiful.”
Linda didn’t say anything. She just watched and held onto the armrest as the truth poured out of Harry’s mouth. “He had an affair with Christine. So Shanna found a man she knew would drive Peter crazy. A man who would drive any bigoted Southie crazy. But it couldn’t be just anyone. Even for revenge, Shanna’s standards were too high to pick just anyone. It had to be an educated, entertaining, handsome man. An educated, entertaining, handsome black man.”
Harry roared across the South Boston bridge into the heavily congested North End. The tires steamed and squealed as he sped onto Route 80 and into the tunnel under South Station.
“How long has Collins been coaching you?” he asked as the tunnel’s yellow lights whipped by, creating a strobe effect inside the car.
“Since Judy Halliwell died,” Linda admitted. “Peter and he had called a truce to fight a common enemy, the Orenda cult. Shanna had dropped Christopher by then for Jeff Browne.”
“What did Collins say? How did he describe the situation?”
“He said Shanna’s life was in danger. He said that the Indian cult was a blood cult. That they were working up to a human sacrifice. He said that Judy’s death proved that.”
“Oh my God,” Harry literally groaned. A plot had pieced together in his mind. A nearly unbelievable plot. But the frightening thing was that it held together. It held together better than the whole virgin-sacrifice concept.
“We’re going to Shanna’s apartment,” he told his cousin. “No matter what happens, get her out of there. Take the car and bring her someplace safe. Drag her out by force if you have to, but get her the hell out of the line of fire!”
Harry wrenched the car over to the Copley Square exit, the Pinto’s tires squealing in anguish. He turned sharply down Tremont Street, soared past the Public Gardens to Charles, swerved left, then sped to Mount Vernon Street. A left there, then another right, and they were in front of Shanna’s corner building. Harry was out before the car had completely skidded to a stop. And before anyone inside could react to the rubber screeching, he had the Magnum in his hand and his foot up.
Without faltering, Harry kicked open the cellar apartment door. Two figures sat up in bed. He pointed the .44 at the first one—Christopher Collins.
“Is this the celebration you wanted to take me to?” Harry asked coldly.
The black detective was speechless until Linda came running in. “You talked!” Collins cried accusingly.
“Mother,” Shanna spat, sitting up half-naked in the bed. “You told him!”
“Get your clothes on,” Harry interrupted. Shanna just stared at him as if he were a dancing bear. He reached over and grabbed her wrist. “I said get your clothes on!” Harry pulled her right up and over the black man. She grabbed the sheet as she went, pulling it right off the bed. Harry threw the redhead at her mother, Shanna trying to wrap the sheet around her nudity.
Collins was only wearing his boxer shorts.
“Yeah,” spat Harry. “She told me all right. You made this case, Collins. You had yourself assigned to the Halliwell murder just so you could get back with your lady love. Judy Halliwell wasn’t even a member of the Order of the Orenda, for God’s sake! But you played on everyone’s fear of cults to blow it into a full-scale sect conspiracy.”
“Now, wait a minute, Harry,” the detective said nervously. “You’ve got no proof of that.”
&n
bsp; “No,” Harry agreed distastefully. “What I have proof of is how you used the Donovans to control me. You told them that you had to handle everything if Shanna was going to get out alive. You told them not to give me any details if they wanted things to come out right. You wanted her, didn’t you? You wanted this special white woman bad, didn’t you? She’d give you respectability, wouldn’t she? And the hierarchy would have to accept you then because she was one of them. A Southie.”
“Callahan, you’re raving. You’re going crazy, Callahan,” Collins babbled.
“So what did you do to get her, Collins? You sure kept everyone informed about the progress of the case, huh?”
“Chris didn’t tell me anything!” Shanna spoke up, still clutching the sheet around her form.
Harry glanced at her, careful to keep the Magnum steadily aiming at Collins’ chest. “You didn’t hear me right the last time we talked, Shanna,” he reminded her. “I said a Brookline waitress had died. You called her a blonde waitress. There were only two ways you could have known that. First, the murderer told you. At the time, I thought that was Jeff Browne. I thought Browne was coming to visit you that time.
“But then I got to thinking. Browne had a .44 slug in his shoulder. How the hell could he fool around with you? You were undressed to kill, Shanna. Nobody makes themselves up to be that attractive just to skip around the house. So there was one other person in one piece who could’ve told you that.”
Harry stared pointedly at Collins.
“All right!” the detective shouted. “OK, so I told everybody a few things. So things worked out for the best, didn’t they? We got the killer, didn’t we?”
Callahan stepped toward him. Collins jumped back to huddle against the wall.
“You followed me after that first night,” he seethed.
“No!”
“You told Christine where to find me.”
“No. Harry, I swear . . .”
“What else did you do, Collins? How far would you go to get ahead? Kidnap and drug a girl after killing her boyfriend?”
