Dirty Harry 05 - Family Skeletons

FOR “DIRTY HARRY” IT’S
A HOMECOMING IN HELL
AS HE BLAZES THROUGH
BOSTON’S COMBAT ZONE!

“Dirty Harry” Callahan stalks a mass murderer through Boston’s infamous underworld where crooked cops are usually looking the other way. Once it was the Boston Strangler—now the killer’s got a knife and is carving up college girls. Dirty Harry will slice through the slime to find him.

JUDY HALLIWELL
WASN’T DEAD YET.

She was very cold, on her back, her hands lying useless at her side, her mouth opening and closing like a fish out of water with the rain beating down on her. Then, she felt hands on her breasts stroking in a circular motion, a slight pressure at her waist; then she heard her zipper being pulled down. She felt hands tugging at her waistband, wrestling down the wet denim around her hips, taking her underwear with it.

She couldn’t talk, but she could still think. She couldn’t believe it—

SHE WAS GOING TO BE
RAPED WHILE SHE DIED!

Books by Dane Hartman

Dirty Harry #1: Duel For Cannons
Dirty Harry #2: Death on the Docks
Dirty Harry #3: The Long Death
Dirty Harry #4: The Mexico Kill
Dirty Harry #5: Family Skeletons
Dirty Harry #6: City of Blood
Dirty Harry #7: Massacre at Russian River
Dirty Harry #8: Hatchet Men
Dirty Harry #9: The Killing Connection
Dirty Harry #10: The Blood of Strangers
Dirty Harry #11: Death in the Air
Dirty Harry #12: The Dealer of Death

Published by
WARNER BOOKS

WARNER BOOKS EDITION

Copyright © 1982 by Warner Books, Inc.
All rights reserved.

Warner Books, Inc., 75 Rockefeller Plaza, New York, N.Y. 10019

A Warner Communications Company

Printed in the United States of America

ISBN: 0-446-90857-6
First Printing: April, 1982

DEDICATION

For John Fullmer, who likes nothing better than slipping a .357 among the .38 rounds. May your Magnum never buck.

DIRTY HARRY  #5
FAMILY
SKELETONS

C H A P T E R
O n e

J
udy’s parents had always thought it would be Arlene who got into trouble. If it had to be either of their daughters, Mr. and Mrs. Halliwell of Carlisle, Massachusetts, were afraid it would be the older one that they would get a police call about late one night.

Judy had always been the good girl. As often happens with the second-born of two children, Judy had always been the angelic one. Even when Arlene had sat on her and hit her about the head because she didn’t want to share her toys, Judy had always borne out the blows in stoic consideration.

Even then, the younger child honestly seemed to understand what was fueling her sister’s jealousy and sibling rivalry. As Judy got older, it got worse—or better, depending on one’s point of view. All the area boys thought Arlene was getting better. The Halliwell parents thought Judy was getting better.

Somehow the younger daughter found equal time for athletic and scholastic pursuits. Her marks were always near the top of the class, and her folks never had to ask where at least one of their children were. While Arlene was out chasing and getting chased, Judy was always upstairs poring over her books. Her rewards were high school honors, and a pair of round wire-rim glasses.

The spectacles did nothing to diminish Judy’s petite attractiveness, however. At sixteen she had developed as well as her sister in every dimension except height. But the boys did not clamor at her feet. Judy was not interested, and therefore was unapproachable. She made it clear that she found the whole high school mating ritual ridiculous. Arlene more than made up for Judy in that department.

While the elder girl pursued her peer-pressure obligations, Judy pursued other interests. While Arlene became a baton twirler and a cheerleader, Judy learned the flute and spent all her spare time doing volunteer charity work. She participated with the Pilgrim Fellowship at the family’s church, and that is where she discovered her first true love. Only instead of a boy, it was the concepts of Unitarianism.

Judy loved the idea of a religion that used the whole realm of science, literature, art, and life as the field for its thought and inspiration. Arlene loved almost anything in a tight pair of Levis.

Judy worked selflessly in the name of the church: sending out brochures to interested citizens, contributing at the social events, candy-striping at the retirement home, and appearing to worship, come rain or shine, every Sunday. Arlene couldn’t be bothered. She played pinball, went to movies, ate a lot of pizza, and made out.

When high school graduation led to college, Judy had plenty of options. Her final grades had been outstanding, and her parents were wealthy enough to send her any place she wanted to go. Rather than heading for the Midwest or California, Judy chose a university near her two major loves, her home and her church. She chose Emerson College in Boston, a liberal arts facility that concentrated on communication studies. Better than that, it was located on Beacon Street, right across from the Boston Common, and best of all, right down the street from the National Headquarters of the Unitarian Church.

Arlene didn’t have much of a choice. She wanted to go to NYU or UCLA, but neither would accept her. She wound up having to go to the one East Coast school that would admit her: the University of Bridgeport in the armpit of Connecticut.

For her freshman and sophomore years Judy maintained her high scholastic average in a speech major while spending every free minute inside the church offices on the outskirts of Beacon Hill. The years only enhanced the girl’s growing beauty. She was extremely attractive in a perky way. She was still a bit short in comparison to other girls her age, but she was also nicely smooth and tightly shaped.

But no matter how good she looked, her social attitude did not change. Even the most patient of Unitarian reverends was disturbed by her increasingly intense devotion. But try as everyone might to arrange and send her out on dates, her main idea of a good time was her studies, her school, and her good Samaritanism.

Arlene more than made up for Judy socially, so their parents considered themselves blessed to have one daughter who was so popular and another who was so successful. As a reward for all her work, they moved Judy from the crowded, cramped Emerson dorm to a fourth-floor apartment of her very own on Beacon Hill’s Mount Vernon Street—right around the corner from the Unitarian HQ. It was a pleasant one-bedroom apartment, made more pleasant by the many plants Judy hung around the bay window that looked out onto the narrow, lamp-lit, cobblestone street.

Whenever Judy wasn’t at classes or the church, she was there, reading or cooking among her fauna, throw rugs, art prints, macramé, and cats. The big, bad city known as Beantown hadn’t changed Judy in the slightest. She was still the same kind, unassuming, and infuriatingly sweet girl she had been all her life.

“For God’s sake,” Arlene had said to her during the summer vacation, “ease up. Give everybody a break. Live a little! What are you afraid of? That God’ll get you for having a little fun?” Then the older girl sang snatches of “Good Girls Don’t,” and “Only the Good Die Young,” on her way out the door to visit a friend in the Big Apple.

Mr. and Mrs. Halliwell were worried. Arlene was living a little too fast. They had seen some horror movies on their pay-TV system and had seen the ads in the papers for all the others. And in each one, a wise-cracking, free-living, good-looking young woman just like their Arlene was stalked by a knife-wielding maniac. It scared them.

Subconsciously using the same guidelines for Judy didn’t bother them as much. Judy was a good girl. She didn’t smoke or drink or have sex. She was the solid, upstanding girl the movie murderers all missed. She was the one saved at the last minute.

In real life, things were different. They weren’t so well scripted, and they could get a lot uglier. Mr. and Mrs. Halliwell learned that the hard way on a rainy Boston night at the beginning of Judy’s third year at Emerson. It started with the scratching.

Judy, alone as usual except for her tank of tropical fish and her various pets, was reading a Doris Miles Disney novel while waiting for her homemade bread to rise in the oven. The rain hitting the bay windows was the only sound from outside until she became aware of a scratching noise rising above the sound of the bubbling of her aquarium.

It had to be a cat, she thought. It must’ve been one of her poor felines who accidentally got trapped on her apartment house rooftop. Judy closed the book and hurriedly counted the furry animals walking and resting around her living room. Ellery was missing. She had named him not for Ellery Queen, the great American detective hero, but for William Ellery Channing, the great Unitarian preacher and liberal reformer.

“Ellery,” Judy called. She got up and walked into her bedroom. The cat wasn’t there. “Ellery,” she called, poking her head into the bathroom. The last place she looked was at the food bowls in the kitchen. Sure enough, Ellery was missing.

Judy shook her head in amusement. She found it cute, the mischief her pets managed to get in. Resigning herself to the fact that she had to go out on this chilly, wet night to rescue her cat, Judy went into the bedroom to change.