Dirty Harry 03 - The Long Death (9 page)

They followed directions downstairs into a long hallway with little windows near the top of the walls. They entered Room 27B. Inside was a cork-lined passage dotted by windows that revealed radio and video station setups. The only door open was one all the way down and to the left. Out of it was coming the weirdest noises. Harry and Fatso heard heavy breathing, tinkling sounds like a glass wind chime, and a light, feminine voice singing “La-la-la-la-la.” That was followed by the sound of a small crowd giggling.

The pair approached the doorway and looked inside. Dozens of students were staring to the left in a dark room with a bluish glow all over them. Harry stuck his head farther into the room. To the left was a small screen. The kids were watching a strange movie. The glimpse Harry got was some huge close-ups of an eye, some piano keys, and the moving spools of a tape recorder.

“Where’s Roy Hinkle?” he asked the first student in front of him, a sandy-haired, vacuous-looking thin guy. The sandy-haired, vacuous-looking thin guy pointed back at the projector without taking his eyes from the screen. He was smiling all the while.

Harry rejoined his partner in the hall.

“What’s going on?” Devlin asked.

“You got me,” Callahan admitted. “Why don’t you sit down and find out while I talk to Hinkle?”

“Oh, jeez, Harry,” Fatso complained. “I can’t stand this pseudo-intellectual modern age crap.”

“Siddown,” Harry repeated. “Broaden your horizons.”

His fat partner found a seat near the front as Harry made his way to the projector. A hush had fallen on the audience as the film displayed a huge close-up of a phone. Harry wound up next to a blond man with full mustache and beard who was standing behind the 16mm projector, staring as intently at the screen as any of the students.

“Roy Hinkle?” Harry asked.

“Yes,” the man said quietly. “Of course.”

Harry ignored the tacked-on remark and pulled out his badge. “Inspector Callahan, Homicide department.” He held his star near the side light of the projector.

“Oh!” Hinkle said in surprise. “Inspector. The police. Of course.” He looked at the screen with regret. “And just at the good part, too,” he clucked. “Well, no matter. Follow me, Inspector. We’ll talk next door.”

Hinkle left the film running and moved out into the hall. He led Harry to an office to the right of the 27B entrance. It was fairly small, with two typewriters, two phones, two desks, and a door between the pairs of everything. Hinkle pulled back one rolling chair and sat down as Harry pushed the mystery door open. Inside was a hall that connected every room on the right side. He stared down through the darkened video and radio spaces. Having relieved his curiosity, he returned his attention to Hinkle.

“Quite a place,” he remarked to break the ice.

Hinkle didn’t need the ice broken. His ice was permanently cracked. He liked to talk. “Oh yes,” he said. “We have one of the finest collegiate facilities. The academic freedom it affords one is unparalleled.”

“Unparalleled? Really?” Harry said lightly.

“Oh yes,” Hinkle rattled on. “Take this course for instance. Independent Filmmakers’ Spectrum. Every week a new film by a vastly underrated producer. Wes Craven, George Romero, and this week we have the Dario Argento film festival.”

“Wes what?” Harry asked. “Dario who?”

“Argento, Argento,” Hinkle lectured, his hands momentarily fluttering over his knees. “He’s an Italian contemporary of Hitchcock whose stylized murder movies mask a satiric statement on the nature of politics in Italy today. He relates the psychological angst of the average Italian citizen in cinematic terms.”

“What is he,” Harry followed through in spite of himself, “a snuff film maker?”

“Inspector, Inspector,” Hinkle admonished. “Where have you been? The big movie successes of the eighties have been murder movies.
Halloween, Friday the 13th, Mother’s Day.
They’ve all been movies that existed only to kill off as many young people as possible in the most stylish way manageable.”

Harry recalled seeing the commercials for these films now. He didn’t remember individual spots, just a jumbled melange of screaming women, running women, crying women, tortured women, knifed women, choked women, axed women, shot women, and raped women. The only other thing he recalled were a lot of bloody kitchen utensils.

“And you’re showing those?” Harry asked incredulously. “Here? For college credit?”

“Well, of course!” Hinkle utilized the phrase for the third time. “You must understand, Inspector, that these films are probably the most accurate and anarchistic mirrors we have for today’s society! They represent a release of frustration and a vicarious thrill. They’re harmless . . . and they’re funny.”

“Funny?” Harry said slowly, his lip curling.

“Certainly. Look.” Hinkle pivoted and switched on a small TV on the desk. Immediately a black and white picture of the screening room appeared with the audience watching the strange movie Harry had left Fatso with. “We hooked up a video camera at the back of the room so the receptionist could see what was going on in class,” Hinkle explained.

Harry leaned in to see a mature woman undressing for her bath. Her stripping was intercut with shots of a disguised figure, obviously the villain, creeping up to the house.

“Oh, this is the best part,” Hinkle exclaimed. “This is Argento’s
Deep Red,
the third in his series of truly masterful shock fests.
The Bird with the Crystal Plumage
was probably his most successful American film, but it had nothing on the likes of
Cat O’Nine Tails
and
Four Flies on Grey Velvet . . .”

“Mr. Hinkle,” Harry interrupted, “what about Barbara Steinbrunner?”

“Barbara Steinbrunner? There was no Barbara Steinbrunner in
Deep Red.
Let’s see, Suzy Kendall was in one, Mimsy Farmer was in another . . .”

“Not in the movie, Mr. Hinkle,” Harry said wearily. “In reality. Barbara Steinbrunner was one of your students who was found dead this morning.”

“Oh yes!” Hinkle exclaimed without a trace of embarrassment. “Barbara. Pretty Barbara. Wonderful face. Very vulnerable.”

“She’s gone a bit beyond vulnerability, Hinkle,” Harry said dangerously.

“Yes, of course, of course,” Hinkle waved Harry’s compassion away. “A very intriguing girl,” he mused. “Not cold, exactly, not standoffish in as much as one could tell, but somehow she wouldn’t let anyone get close to her. She kept even those who thought themselves her friends on a sort of ‘arm’s length intimacy.’ It’s like she already knew what she wanted and no one else fit in with her mental plan.”

Harry was far from interested in Hinkle’s psychological profile of the dead girl, so he tried to steer the foppish teacher onto more practical ground.

“Did she have any boyfriends? Anyone she went around with regularly?”

“Boyfriends? Barbara?” Hinkle responded, a disbelieving smirk on his face. “She had too many boyfriends and too few boyfriends, if you know what I mean.”

Harry swore Hinkle was all set to lean in and wink. “No,” Callahan answered. “I don’t know what the hell you’re talking about.”

Hinkle’s retort was interrupted by the moan of many voices coming from the little TV’s speaker. The teacher turned and saw the students’ heads turning around. The movie screen was blank. Harry spotted Devlin’s face also looking questionably back at the projector.

“Oh, excuse me!” Hinkle said as he popped up out of the chair. “The second reel is over. I’ll just put on the third and be right back.”

Before Harry could say a word, Hinkle had shot out the door and down the hall. Harry stood alone in the front office for a few seconds before shaking his head and sitting down in the chair Hinkle had vacated. Great, he thought, watching the teacher’s progress with the third reel on the tiny television set, his only contact with Steinbrunner’s college life was a classic San Fran fruit. One thing Harry would bet on was that Hinkle didn’t like Barbara for her body. Callahan hoped he didn’t find him more attractive. It was tough enough talking to the teacher without fending off propositions. The cop waited patiently as the reel was finally secured and the film rolled again.

The movie had stopped at the worse possible time. The Italian woman was walking around her house, trying to locate a noise which had disturbed her. Finding nothing, she had gone back to her bath only to have the villain, in a slick overcoat, leather gloves, and slouch hat, run up behind her. That’s where the second reel had stopped. The third reel took up where the villain smashed the woman’s head against the bathroom tile and pushed her face into the scalding hot water of the bath. The camera was under the water so the audience could get a good view of the victim’s face being scarred.

Harry turned away. If it wasn’t for his heightened sensibility to fictional death, he would have become a dead body in reality. He was just in time to see a huge black dude run in from the hall cradling a 4.85mm assault rifle. The cop’s eyes bulged in amazement as his legs kicked themselves out from under him. His knees bent, his feet slapped up against the wall, and his back hit the tile floor as the room splattered inward, sprouting holes in the plaster above Callahan like a face of wildly exploding acne.

In seconds the automatic rifle had turned the cork walls and glass partition over the desk into confetti. The dust hadn’t even begun to settle when the black monster jumped in through the open doorway. Harry had his Magnum out and shot him under the chin from his lying position on the floor. The guy’s brain erupted from the front of his head like ash from Mount St. Helens. The red and grey goo spread out like a halo to do the beige ceiling with nauseous color.

Harry had no time to enjoy the modern art. Two more black killers came shouldering through the entrance. Harry flattened his heels against what was left of the bottom of the wall and pushed back with his legs. He slid backward across the tile floor toward the other hallway door. A line of bullets bore into the flooring after him, getting increasingly closer as he skimmed away. He tucked in his legs as his head hit the swinging barrier, and the bullets went by his toes and opened up a few holes near the bottom doorjamb.

Callahan had tumbled to his feet in the opposite hallway just as Devlin showed himself outside the screening room. He pulled out his snubnose .32, got one glimpse of the attackers’ 4.85s as the black men turned toward him, shouted in surprise, and hurled himself backward as hard as he could. The entrance of the screening room spattered in every direction as Fatso slammed against a back row of students in folding chairs. His girth sent the first ten kids tumbling down like dominoes.

Harry moved into the next room in a crouch. It was the video center, filled with little orange TVs, movie cameras, and Betamaxes on black steel shelves. A bunch of installed television screens lined a window that opened into the hall where the black killers were. This glass partition seemed to become a TV as the black men moved in front of it with their outlandishly modern weapons. They didn’t wait to spot Harry, they just opened up on the room.

Glass shards and electrical wiring screamed in a steady shower all over the tiny cement enclosure as the assault rifles rasped out a low, steady grinding bark. Harry threw himself down, somersaulted, and came up against the wall between the video and the radio centers. As he tried to shield himself from the whirling glass and get a bead on the shooters, one black killer came racing around the corner from the office door Harry had escaped by.

The attacker let loose a stream of spinning lead just above Harry’s head. Harry stared up into the bullet brook without blinking. These guys were not trying to aim at all. They figured let the 600 rounds a second do the work. Callahan blasted one round into the black man’s face. He wasn’t going to take a chance that the killer was wearing a bulletproof vest. What his move lacked in later ease of identification, it made up for in security.

The .44 slug ripped through the stream of machine-gun bullets, sending out a few sparks and two ripping-steel noises. This deflection slowed the .44 bullet down but that only made it worse for the black man when it hit. The lead splashed into his face nearly broadside, entering just under his nose, grinding up through his membranes, and lodging in his mind. The black man fell down, twitching.

Harry fell on his back just in case the last attacker was trying to box him in. He looked to his left and saw the back of the bastard’s head through the glass of the radio station. He was bringing the assault rifle up to bear on Fatso and the room full of students.

The tall cop snapped off a shot from his prone position just to get the black’s attention. The radio glass sprung a spider’s web design, and the bullet cut off a tiny section of the man’s Afro. It was enough. He spun around, screaming, turning the radio window into powder. Devlin took the opportunity to shoot him in the back. That only got the big black man more upset. He screamed, whirling back to the glass room and falling against the wall, his head below the broken partition.

What Harry couldn’t see, he could rarely shoot. In addition, he couldn’t be sure that his slug could get through the wall where he thought the last black man was crouching. But he couldn’t let Devlin fight off the maddened, wounded killer alone. Harry needed another weapon in the split second he had before the killer opened up on the room full of students. From his position on the floor the only thing in reach that wasn’t bolted down was a large microphone on a multijointed metal stand. The stand was bent in such a way that it hung down near a disc jockey’s face and the disc jockey could pull it closer to his mouth. Harry kicked it over.

Normally the big mike would bounce off against the radio window, but the radio window was no more so the heavy microphone fell out and down. Harry heard the surprised yell of the black and saw the barking bullets of his 4.85mm tear a circle in the screening room ceiling. Before the last cartridge clattered on the hall tile, Callahan was on his feet. He pushed his Magnum barrel out the open partition, rammed it against the top of the black man’s head and pulled the trigger. This man’s mind came through his mouth.