Dirty Harry 07 - Massacre at Russian River (6 page)

“I’ll make you the Earl Gray. You look like you need the sleep too much.” As she went about doing this she asked Harry if Turk had sent him. “He likes to check up on me. He calls me three or four times a day from the hospital. It’s like he’s jealous or something.”

“That seems strange to you?”

She gave Harry a questioning look. “He should know better.”

“No, Turk didn’t send me. He might be upset if he knew I came as a matter of fact.”

“Then it must be that clown he’s got working for him, Davenport. Am I right? Don’t answer. I know I’m right. Davenport suspects me of giving away all of Turk’s secrets. Do I look to you like a femme fatale? Mata Hari of Russian River? Believe it or not I am an innocent. I really am.”

“What do you do for a living?”

She gestured to the potholders she had hanging over the kitchen sink. “I make those. I do macramé. I do pottery. There’s a kiln I use not far from here. You want to see it, I’ll show you some time. I do a lot of things. Artsy-craftsy most of them. But all legal.”

“No drugs?”

“A couple of joints now and then, no big deal. Generally I’m a good girl. Nothing stronger than Thundercloud.”

“I thought it was Earl Gray.”

“For you, Earl Gray. For me, Thundercloud. I suffer from narcolepsy. Fall asleep at the drop of a hat.”

“Narcolepsy and not narcotics?” Harry realized that he didn’t believe a word Elsie Cranston was telling him and, further, that he didn’t mind.

She found this amusing and laughed. “That’s right. Each to his own.”

“What do you and Turk talk about then?”

“Is that in the nature of a professional inquiry, sir?”

“Absolutely.”

“We talk about what all young lovers talk about. Plans for the future that will never reach fruition, what he’ll do when he’s laid waste to all the marijuana fields, a beautiful life for the two of us in Washington. He hasn’t gotten it through his head that I am not going to Washington with him. I am not marrying him. On the other hand, he’s never going to lay waste to the marijuana fields either.”

She leaned forward to pour out another cup of tea for Harry, but with such a pronounced motion that she succeeded in separating the opening of her shirt more than it already was. There was no break in her tan, it was even down to the rounded surfaces of her breasts.

“You know that for a fact?”

“Let’s just say that I know Turk well enough to have an idea of his limitations. He’s crazy, that one.”

“Then why do you stay with him?”

“You have it wrong. I don’t
stay
with him. He comes to see me, he calls me, he carries around this fantasy of me. But it’s not what you’d call tight. Not on my end anyway. When it gets too cumbersome then—” She made a snipping motion with her fingers. “Then I cut him off.”

“You’re fairly ruthless for someone who says she’s an innocent.”

“That’s me. A ruthless innocent. How do you like my pie?”

“Excellent. I’m impressed.”

“What did I tell you? I am a woman of a thousand skills.”

One of those skills might be deception Harry considered, upon leaving Elsie Cranston. But she was so ingenuous, so self-assured, that it was difficult to decipher the precise nature of the deception. He could see why Turk liked her. He could see why a great many men would like her. He could even see why he would like her if he allowed himself to.

He was walking. The town of Russian River could be traversed in half an hour. His car was parked back in front of the county courthouse.

In fact, walking, at least on the narrow side-streets, was the primary form of locomotion. A car, particularly one going in excess of fifty miles an hour, could excite some attention in these parts.

A dented pale green Chrysler that had one side window missing and fitted with cardboard to keep out the elements sputtered as it passed Harry, at the same time stirring up dust and pebbles from the potted roadbed.

It drew to a sudden stop directly in front of Elsie Cranston’s house. Harry turned and watched. The driver of the Chrysler shortly emerged. Without looking in either direction, he advanced up the stairs to the porch and went right in.

Now what was he doing there? Harry wondered. Because Elsie Cranston’s guest was none other than Mike Kilborn.

Kilborn wasn’t at home. Home for Kilborn was a trailer van situated in a park designed expressly for such homes. His was a white bulbous-shaped thing crowned by a domelike formation with two symmetrical triangular windows up front; from a distance they looked like the eyes of some prehistoric creature that, had it wings, would long ago have taken to the air.

It was night, past ten but still prime time, and Harry could hear coming from the nearly two dozen vans sequestered in this place the sound of televisions in operation. What light there was originated mostly from various van windows. In providing this park, the town of Russian River seemed to have skimped on expenses for public illumination.

Kilborn had left the door open. Either he was coming right back or else he was a more trusting person than Harry had any reason to expect. Lights blazed in the interior. A Clash record was revolving endlessly on the turntable, stuck somewhere in the last cut. The sound system Kilborn possessed, Harry noted, was expensive. He even had a machine that measured the quality of the sound. He should take better care of his records, Harry thought, with all that good equipment.

The television was on too, although the audio was off. The screen projected a faltering image, one that kept going out of focus. The mountains interferred with the signal, Harry guessed. Hundreds of dollars for a good set and there were still the mountains to deal with.

By Kilborn’s bedside was a clutter of porn magazines, as sleazy as the man who’d purchased them. There was nothing socially redeeming about any of them. The bed was unmade. An uncorked half-gallon jug of Gallo was on the floor within reach of the bed. To complete the impression of disarray, ashes and cigarette butts had been strewn about and then trampled on.

But the one thing that Harry would have expected was missing. There was no evidence of dope. No pipes, no bongs, no roach clips. If there was a stash somewhere, Kilborn kept it well hidden. Not that Harry would necessarily do anything should he discover a stash, it was just that it might go far to substantiate Davenport’s allegations. And he was hoping not for half an ounce of grass but something sizable and more felonious: cocaine or heroin, something that would indicate Kilborn was deeply involved in the business.

What Harry wanted was solid proof. It wasn’t important that that proof implicate Kilborn or Davenport or Elsie Cranston or Turk. But it was important that it implicate someone. Up until now all he had to go on were contradictory stories with nothing to back them up.

The bullet came through the square window over Harry’s right shoulder. It left nothing more than a few jagged fragments sitting in the frame; the rest of the glass was scattered about the room. The bullet created a hole over the bed and deposited a certain amount of chalklike debris on the unmade sheets.

Harry dropped down to the floor and waited. He heard nothing more. Very quickly, keeping low and well out of range of the windows, he proceeded toward the front of the van, which Kilborn had given over to functional purposes, situating the closets, head, and kitchen there.

It was possible that Kilborn himself had fired, preferring to take the intruder by surprise even if it meant destroying his own property. But it was equally possible that it was someone else who mistook Harry for the van’s owner.

Maybe, Harry reasoned, this will all come clear if I open the front door and step out.

On the other hand, doing that could get him killed.

First, he doused all the lights in the front part of the van so that they wouldn’t put him into relief when he stepped into the darkness outside. Then, extending his leg, he applied enough pressure on the door to get it open.

That was the easy part. What came next he wasn’t particularly looking forward to.

C H A P T E R
F i v e

F
ive small steps led up to the entrance of the van. Harry took those steps, going in the opposite direction, rolling down them. Then he stretched himself out, his Magnum gripped in both hands as he awaited an attack that, for the moment, failed to materialize.

He maneuvered himself to his knees, then drew fully erect. He listened but all he could hear were a dozen T.V. sets going and a restless chorus of crickets entertaining in the thicket.

Suddenly he was bathed in light. It was so intense that for an instant he could scarcely see.

“Raise your hands, mister!” someone cried. “This is the police.”

The police, Harry was thinking, what a time for the police!

He hesitated, not altogether convinced that it was in fact the police. From his experience so far in Russian River, they were never so prompt to respond to an emergency call.

But within moments two uniformed men appeared, .38s drawn, their flashlights converging on Harry. Once again the order: “Drop it, mister, and raise those hands.”

Harry saw no other choice but to comply.

The two cops approached Harry cautiously. One was young and obviously new to the job. Harry could tell just from the way he held his weapon. He didn’t seem to know exactly what to do with it and might very well run in the opposite direction rather than have to fire at anybody.

His older companion, however, showed none of his insecurity. He was his opposite, big and corpulent. His walk was a swagger. He looked very much like a farmboy who’d grown up with animals he’d screw first before slaughtering. Harry guessed that he might transfer this behavioral pattern to human beings.

The older cop raised his flashlight so that the beam was directly in Harry’s eyes. He scratched his double-chin and asked Harry what he was doing inside of Mike Kilborn’s trailor.

“I am a police officer,” said Harry patiently, knowing that this would not make the slightest impression on the man facing him. “Brought up from San Francisco to investigate the killings of Jud Harris and Bonnie Nutting. You can ask your sheriff, Wardell Marsh, he’ll verify that for you.”

The fat cop slowly shook his head. “You haven’t answered my question.”

Harry tried to accommodate the man. “I was in the van conducting a search that was part of that investigation. If I may say so, I think you’d be better off trying to find out who took a shot at me in there.”

His interrogator didn’t appear interested in that aspect of the case. “You have a warrant?”

Harry owned that he did not.

“You should have had a warrant. This is the U.S. of A. You can’t go breaking into people’s homes with no warrant. We’re going to have to take you in.”

He said it as though that were something he deeply regretted, but Harry was not convinced.

The cop stooped over to recover Harry’s Magnum. He groaned. His vast weight made such movement a strain.

He liked the looks of the Magnum. “Some piece you’ve got here,” he said. He showed it to his nervous colleague. “Some piece, isn’t it? You grow up, son, you gonna have a piece like this.” He laughed. He thought maybe he’d cracked some kind of joke.

All the way back into the heart of Russian River, the cop kept talking. There was no way to shut him up. It was as though he’d hidden away millions of words in all his monstrous flesh and was trying to get rid of them as quickly as possible in hope of reducing weight.

But there was a focus to his rambling and it soon became very apparent.

“You cops coming from out of town, you think you can do the job better than us,” he was saying. “I’m telling you you’re full of shit. You don’t know the area, you don’t know the people. What the hell you going to accomplish anyway? You are fucking things up, son. You think because we’re homegrown boys we don’t know diddly-shit. You think you’re real clever. Well, let me tell you something, we’re going to show you how it is and send you back to the big city with buckshot in your tail, if you don’t watch out.”

So much, Harry thought, for the promises of cooperation that had been issued from Sheriff Marsh’s office.

Once the two cops reached the courthouse with their suspect, they began to debate whether they should wake up the town’s solitary judge and have him come down to arraign Harry. The fat one wanted to lock up Harry and let him stew in one of Russian River’s four jail cells overnight while the younger one felt that something like professional courtesy ought to do—Harry was a detective on loan, after all—and that the judge could do with a little less sleep. As Harry suspected, the fat cop prevailed. The outcome had never really been in doubt.

Russian River’s jail cells weren’t terrible. They were relatively clean, with walls of white cinder blocks. But they were only intended as holding cells and, given the nature of the town’s drug problem and the number of suspects arraigned and convicted, they had become hopelessly inadequate. While each was only supposed to accommodate one person, as many as four were crammed into them now. Two bunkbeds had replaced the single cot that had been there previously.

The cell Harry was assigned to, however, was home to only one other person, a young man with unruly hair and the dreamy look of someone who was only intermittently aware of his predicament.

The more sympathetic of the two arresting officers brought Harry a Styrofoam cup of coffee and a bologna sandwich wrapped in cellophane.

“It was the best that I could do,” he said sheepishly. “Tomorrow someone will get you out of here, you’ll see.”

Harry said that he wasn’t worried, that he could survive all right.

As soon as the young man in the cell realized that someone had joined him he immediately stirred, sitting up on his bunk. Harry had hoped he’d go right on sleeping, not being especially anxious to engage in conversation tonight.

“Hey, what did they get you for?” The young man was tapping his feet nervously, as if in time to music only he could hear. “You haven’t got a cigarette, have you?”

When Harry said he didn’t, the young man nodded as though he expected to be disappointed at every turn. “So what did you do, man?”