Dirty Harry 12 - The Dealer of Death (10 page)

As soon as one brings a pretty girl into the situation, even a dumb pretty girl, Harry thought, one’s security goes all to hell.

It stood to reason there’d be an underground connection between this house and the shelter. You never know, they might drop the bomb in the middle of the night, thought Harry. Turner would want to be able to scramble out of bed and down to his underground digs without exposing himself to a miliaria of radioactivity. But the house, now that he was inside it, was larger than he’d imagined. It required several minutes before he discovered the door leading to the tunnel that would take him to the shelter.

He moved stealthily. Surely, he believed, somebody would be standing guard even if it meant missing the entertainment. But he got all the way to the end of the tunnel without seeing anybody. A door faced him. At its base was an electrified mat and as soon as Harry placed a foot on it the door automatically drew open. But as it did so it set off a loud buzzer and a red light overhead that blinked frantically to register the new arrival.

“Must be Turner,” he heard someone say.

He heard someone else correct him.

A round smashed into the cinderblock wall behind him. He dropped to the cement floor. It was very cold down there. A second round sped over his head and into the metal door he’d just come through. When it closed, the buzzer and the blinking light had both shut off. Not that it mattered, they’d already done their mischief.

Harry stayed where he was for several moments, listening to the commotion that his intrusion provoked. Men were shouting orders at each other. Harry had the feeling no one quite knew how to handle the situation in the absence of their commander.

Harry plunged ahead, capitalizing on the lack of organized opposition. He suddenly found himself in a room unlike any he’d ever seen outside of a museum. Though there, there wouldn’t have been so much clutter. There were antiques of all kinds surrounding him: silver sauce tureens, Heeplewhite dining chairs, Queen Anne side chairs, cherrywood reverse-serpentine chests, Chippendale walnut clocks, Sheffield tea urns, Regency walnut bombe commodes, silver julep cups and wastebowls dating back to the Eighteenth Century, Delft vases and plates and Chinese Trade porcelain tea sets, and even a portrait of a Miss Tillie Mead, painted in 1831. Smack in the middle of these collectibles was a canopied bed on which lay a nude woman, her legs spread wide apart. Her thighs were pummeled bright red and the tips of her breasts were moist with saliva. Her eyes were heavily lidded—it seemed she could barely keep them open—and her lips were parted. She was mumbling something Harry could not hear. There was no indication she was aware of Harry’s presence until suddenly she raised her head slightly and said in a soft hoarse voice, “Hi, I’m Sugar, what’s your name?” before lapsing back into unconsciousness.

There was no sign of her attackers. Harry could still hear them though. They were hastening away, presumably toward another exit farther into the shelter.

Ignoring the lavish display of antiques, memorabilia, and paintings that were exhibited in every one of the several rooms that constituted this strange shelter, Harry forged ahead, determined to apprehend at least a couple of these fuckers for his trouble.

Not all of them had fled. An elegant vase burst just to his right and he threw himself to the floor once again. Although he couldn’t spot his assailant, he was able to get a fair idea of his location by looking into an ornate gilt-framed mirror that hung on the opposite wall.

There, in the unusually dark surface of the glass, he could distinguish the reflection of a man’s shoulders. Harry had only to make a few simple calculations to pinpoint his position behind an Eighteenth Century Dutch crib which resembled an armoire. Harry sighted his Magnum on the crib and fired. Between the crib’s front and back wall there was nothing but space. The bullet easily penetrated both, scattering a multitude of expensive mahogany fragments, some of which struck the man using the crib as a cover. He cried out with pain and involuntarily shifted his stance. Harry now held a better view of him in the mirror. He saw the man had let down his guard to inspect the cuts he’d sustained and to pluck out a couple of splinters from his arms and neck.

Harry rushed forward before the man had the opportunity to prepare for him. While he managed to retrieve his gun, the shot he fired went awry, smashing a Delft plate and something crystal. Harry lurched to the left to avoid the fire and let off a single shot. The man was lifted off his feet and crashed into the already bullet-riddled crib, demolishing it entirely. It wasn’t the .44 that gave him his fatal wound but a long razor-sharp splinter of wood on which he was impaled. When Harry approached him, he saw the splinter had pierced his bowels at such an angle that it had driven out his stomach just below the sternum. He wasn’t quite dead, but in writhing about in a futile attempt to extricate the wood, he quickly died.

Harry saw as he continued through the rooms, that clothes were strewn about the floor. By interrupting the orgy, he hadn’t allowed its participants time to get themselves altogether dressed again.

He reconnoitered the remaining rooms, coming at last to the exit; the door was still swinging open, attesting to the speed with which the rapists had fled. Harry could hear the sound of motors revving up. Mounting a series of stairs that led back to ground level, he saw he was only a short distance from the parking lot.

The first car he looked for was the pink MG. It was hard to miss even in the dark. Already it was starting its bumpy way in the direction of the rutted road that would take its passengers to safety.

Though his energy was flagging, Harry drove himself as hard as he could, until he was within range of the MG. He fired first at the front left tire, then at the back one. For a moment, he wondered whether he’d succeeded in puncturing either. He was rewarded with a satisfying bang as the tires exploded, an event followed immediately by the car listing sharply to the right. By momentum alone, it kept bouncing ahead, but it must have been as clear to the driver as it was to Harry it was not going to get far.

With the MG crippled, Harry had little difficulty in catching up to it. Then, ignoring the brambles, he skirted the edge of the woods, along the road until he could get in front of the slowly advancing vehicle. It looked rather ridiculous as it lurched noisily ahead, like a drunk staggering down the street.

Shielding his eyes with his free hand from the glare of the headlights, he took up a position in the road and sighted his .44 directly on the driver. Should the driver be so foolish as to try to run him down—not an easy thing to accomplish with a car he could barely control—Harry could easily leap back off the road.

But the driver realized the odds were very much against him. The MG shuddered to a halt.

“Out of there,” Harry called.

The driver, who had a mop of tossled blond hair and the air of a slightly dissolute beach-boy, promptly complied with the order. Not so his passenger, who while not black, was very swarthy.

He lingered a few seconds too long for Harry’s liking. When he finally did get out of the car, he held his hands in back of him. Harry knew he had a gun. A blink of the eye, and he might have missed it. It was possible he may have fired even before the man brought it into view.

In any case, while his friend watched in horror, the man was hit and went down instantly, shrieking in agony. A bloody hand grasped hold of the front left wheel fender as though he meant to raise himself upright, but the effort failed. He collapsed, blood pouring from his chest into the ruts of the road. He struggled against death, but death wanted him now, and took him.

“You killed Dan, you killed Dan,” the man said over and over again, incredulity in his voice. He stooped down to examine the body, but there was no question that Dan had expired.

Just then another car came into sight. Its headlights put the pink MG, its terrified driver and its dead passenger, into a brutal relief.

The driver of this second car stopped suddenly when he saw what lay up ahead. Harry heard voices, then the slam of car doors. Evidently, whoever the occupants of this car were, they’d decided on making a run for it. Harry spotted two figures clambering up an embankment as they sought to lose themselves in the woods.

Harry could see clearly because the men had neglected to kill their car lights. As a result, the high-intensity beams kept a wide swath of land and roadbed wonderfully illuminated. Aiming his Magnum at a cluster of pines toward which the pair was headed, he called out for them to halt.

One did, the other hesitated, then broke into a run. Harry fired at the man’s feet, spewing rocks and earth.

“Over here, assholes, slowly, with your arms up.”

They came, with baleful expressions and a mournful step, till they were within a couple of yards of Harry. In the meantime the blond was so overcome by his friend’s death he was incapable of any action whatsoever.

“Give me your names.”

The blond identified himself as Sandy Lyman. The old distinguished looking fellow said he was Doctor Jonas Pine. He placed a great deal of emphasis on the word doctor. Moreover, he sounded deeply affronted he had been placed in such a humiliating predicament. Harry wasn’t interested. He turned to the man who’d been with the doctor, the one who’d seemed so anxious to escape.

“And who might you be?”

The man had his face half-averted from Harry.

Harry said, “Look at me and tell me your name.” He was tired and growing impatient. He wondered how he was going to keep these three prisoners from getting away while simultaneously tending to the traumatized woman still in the shelter.

The man muttered something.

“I don’t have all day, asshole, what is your name?”

“Andrew Dardis.”

Harry proceeded to handcuff the man who called himself Dardis, sensing he was the most dangerous. He then herded the three into his car and called in on his radio for help.

But as he sat in the car, waiting, Sugar materialized from the shelter, still disoriented and naked, moving from side to side, and occasionally tripping as she made her way in their direction.

“Will you look at that!” said Sandy, momentarily distracted by this astonishing sight. “She is fucking out of it, man.”

That was an understatement. He motioned to her, but there was no indication that she was aware of anything outside her own bewildered mind.

The doctor was shaking his head and saying, “What she needs is a controlled environment.”

Dardis wasn’t talking at all. He didn’t even appear interested in Sugar or her nakedness. A more melancholy man Harry had never seen.

If he went out to help the woman, he risked losing his prisoners. As Sugar seemed completely unresponsive, there was no question somebody would have to assist her. She might very well wander into the woods and hurt herself. Harry didn’t want to lose Sugar. She was his star witness, after all. Actually, she was the only witness.

To Dr. Jonas Pine he said, “Go out there and bring her in. I am going to keep a careful eye on you so don’t get any notions of skipping out on me. Is that understood?”

The doctor straightened himself, and said, with as much dignity as he could muster, that such an idea would never enter his mind. “My chief concern has always been my patients,” he declared.

C H A P T E R
E i g h t

W
hen Harry left Santa Rosa, it was with the sense that something positive had been accomplished. Sugar was being treated in the ER of the local hospital. Three of the men who’d drugged and raped her were waiting to be booked in a holding cell.

Three hours after returning to San Francisco, Harry was back at his office in the Justice Building. It was late at night, and there were few people about. For some reason, the damn phone kept ringing.

Hoping to finish some obligatory paperwork, the constant interruptions had him greatly irritated. In any case, usually the caller wanted to speak to someone else.

But the fifth call was somewhat more important.

“This is Brevoort,” the man on the other end said.

“Brevoort?” Then he remembered. He was the county sheriff who’d taken custody of the suspects. “Oh yes, what can I do for you?”

“I am afraid I have some news you’re not going to like.”

Harry’s heart sank. He had a feeling he knew what was coming.

“You’re not unique in that respect,” he said. “Tell me.”

“The D.A. got here around an hour ago and after consulting with the Superior Court Judge, felt he had no choice but to release the three suspects you brought in.”

“What the hell?”

“There were certain problems, you see,” Brevoort said, trying to sound sympathetic.

“Problems?”

“Well, the absence of a warrant for one thing and the fact that we had no proof linking any of the three to the alleged molestation and rape of this woman, what’s her name?—ah, yes, Lucille Finehurst, nicknamed Sugar.”

Harry struggled to restrain himself from cursing out the son of a bitch. “A warrant has nothing to do with this. I was stopping a crime in progress . . .”

“Yes, I am sure you were. But unfortunately, we have no corroboration of that.”

“No corroboration? And what about Miss Lucille Finehurst, nicknamed Sugar? There’s your fucking cooperation!”

Brevoort hesitated for a moment. “That, I am afraid, is another problem. Your Sugar, soon as she recovered consciousness, took a walk. Said there was nothing the matter with her and split A.M.F.”

“A.M.F?”

“Adios motherfucker, an expression I understand some doctors use when a patient leaves without their authorization. There was nothing they could do to prevent her from leaving.”

“You could have kept her there, she’s a principal witness. She’s the fucking victim, for Chrissakes . . .”

“Please, Inspector Callahan, I know how difficult this must be for you, but really there was nothing we could do. It seems Sugar, Miss Finehurst, declined to press charges. Says she went on her own volition and the whole thing’s her fault. She says that, what can we do? So the D.A. determined there was really no case, and it would only be a waste of the county’s money to seek an indictment.”