Dirty Harry 09 - The Killing Connection (20 page)

The uniformed cop and the girl’s cunning, triumphant expressions began to melt.

“Motherfucking bitch!” Byrnes yelled. The patrolman looked stupefied.

“You take one step out of this apartment and you’re dead,” Harry warned.

“Then I’m going to take you and this cunt with me!” Byrnes screamed, pushing the .357 forward.

She pulled the trigger as Harry jumped back out of the doorway. The bullet just missed his head and plowed into the hallway’s plaster wall. Harry slammed awkwardly against the bannister, his wounds from the trailer episode groaned in paralyzing pain. His knees began to give way as he grabbed onto the thick bannister with all his might.

Looking over his shoulder, he saw Byrnes running toward him, the shiny revolver still held out in front of her. He pulled himself up and vaulted over the stairway. He dropped onto the middle of the steps, his legs too weak to hold him. He tumbled head first the rest of the way, hearing Byrnes fire the gun at him.

He stopped in a dazed heap on the first floor landing, the inside of his head feeling like a whirpool. He tried to force his eyes to focus. By the time he had attained just a slim level of coherence, Byrnes was halfway down the stairs, waiting until she could get a clear bead on the cop. Behind her, Sullivan was holding the .44 against McConnell’s head.

Harry twisted to the side just as Kim fired again. The ballet hit the wall and Harry rolled to the middle of the landing.

Byrnes, growling obscenities, got to the landing and turned the corner just as Fatso Devlin kicked open the cellar door.

Harry was between the two. Byrnes pulled her revolver up, shooting Devlin in the stomach just as his first shot shattered the front door window behind her. Both Harry and she heard the cop fall back down the stairs where the bugging equipment was secreted.

“All right, you motherfucker,” Byrnes told the still groggy Callahan, lining up the shot, “there’s no escape this time.” She pulled the trigger. “Die, you bastard!”

The hammer clicked on an empty chamber.

Harry rose from the floor like a bear coming out of hibernation. With a maddened shriek, she threw the empty gun into his face and ran toward the front door.

The .357 tore across Harry’s temple as he turned away. He fell against the wall, blinded. Byrnes looked out to see three patrol cars screeching to the curb.

“Give me the Magnum!” she shouted up at Sullivan. “I’m going to kill him if it’s the last thing I do!”

“Come on, Kim!” he answered. “We’ll hold the girl hostage.”

“Fuck the girl,” she spat, running toward him. “We’ll get out the back way.”

Harry had just steadied himself, wiping away the curtain of blood that drooled from his new wound, as Bressler charged in the front door.

“They’re trying to get out the back,” Harry said quickly. “They’ve got my gun. Fatso’s downstairs and he’s hit.”

“Back up the others,” Bressler told his men. “Block all surrounding streets.” The men followed orders instantly, some going back the way they had come, others pounding up the stairs.

Bressler took Harry gingerly under the arm. Callahan shook the helping hand off. “Thanks,” he said tightly. “But not yet.”

One of the attacking officers stuck his head over the bannister on the second floor. “They broke into another apartment. They got out on the fire escape!”

“So where the hell are they now?” Bressler shouted back.

In answer, a squeal of tires came from the street. Harry was out of the door first, in spite of his wounds. He saw Sullivan’s patrol car screeching out of the alley, sending the cops there scattering in all directions. He took a right down the street, only to be blocked—on both sides—by other cars. All the men were firing pointblank at him.

The auto’s tires exploded and the vehicle took off. It seemed to soar like a plane, then its right front fender caught the tail of a perpendicularly parked car. It spun, sliding onto the opposite sidewalk, careened off the park fence and smashed head on into another patrol vehicle. The car flipped up, landing on its roof across the other auto’s top.

It had hardly come to a smoking halt when Harry was limping toward it. Ignoring all the others, he pushed his way to the sandwiched vehicles. Wiping the blood from his eyes again, Harry peered through the crushed metal and shattered glass.

Only Sullivan was inside, hanging upside down. His eyes and mouth were open, but his entire face was crushed against the steering wheel. Blood poured out of his mouth and cracks in his skull.

“I want this whole block searched inch by inch,” Harry demanded. “She’s holding a cop hostage, but I don’t want that girl to get away. Do whatever you have to, but stop her.”

“Harry,” Bressler interrupted. “McConnell . . .”

“Byrnes was responsible for killing more than twenty members of SAFE,” Harry said quickly back. “If we hadn’t uncovered the McLaren graveyard, she would have gone on without us even knowing it. If we don’t stop her here, she’ll go on killing someplace else. So get going, Al. Get her.”

Bressler nodded. “Are you sure you’ll be OK?”

“Fuck that,” Harry answered angrily. “Get her!”

Bressler moved away quickly, following his men. Harry slowly, and not quite steadily, made his way among the cops still stationed around the apartment house. He borrowed a handkerchief from one to stem the still flowing blood.

He reached the front steps just as Devlin was being carried out on a stretcher by a medical team. Callahan followed the procession of paramedics until they reached the ambulance. When Devlin saw him, he laughed painfully.

“Now I’ll just be another on the long list of Callahan casualties,” he grimaced as the medicos slipped him inside.

“How is he?” Harry asked one of the men as they closed the door behind him.

“Gut wound,” the man considered. “Banged up pretty bad, but he’ll live, I guess.” Then he noticed Harry. “You don’t look too good yourself. Better come along. You can sit in back with your friend.”

“I have to wait,” Harry said flatly, walking away. He picked up McConnell’s empty revolver in the main hall, then made a casual search of the building until he wound up in a dead end alley out back.

It was empty and dark, the cops having searched it completely. Looking up at the fire escape, Harry stumbled. He looked down and saw the cover of a manhole.

His mind cleared instantly. He shoved the gun into his belt and reached down, letting the blood smeared handkerchief fall from his forehead. With a strength he couldn’t find minutes ago, he pulled the cover up and laid it aside.

Blackness yawned beneath him, accompanied by the sound of rushing water. In the distance, he could see the glimmer of yellow light. Without thinking twice, he lowered himself into the hole.

Harry climbed down the ladder until his feet rested on concrete. The sewage tunnel was lit by a string of low watt, naked bulbs hung on the wall. The walk was about five feet wide. Beside it was the high, rushing water the rain had dumped onto the city. It was flowing so fast that it lapped onto the walk itself.

Harry was at one end of a forty foot length. At the other end, where the tunnel forked, was Kim Byrnes, holding the drugged Lynne McConnell in front of her. The .44 Magnum was still clutched in her hand.

“You’re just in time, Harry,” Byrnes called. “I was deciding which way to go. But first, throw the gun away.”

Harry lifted the empty .357 from his waistband and tossed it into the rushing water. In spite of its weight, he could see it being dragged along with the current.

“Looks like I get to kill you and your girlfriend after all,” she said pleasantly after the gun had swept by her. “Lucky me.”

“Yeah,” Harry agreed. “It was Lucky You all along. Everybody danced to your tune. But what for? Why all the death?”

“Why not?” Byrnes said lightly, shrugging. “When I came to San Francisco, Lisa was kind enough to show me everything, including Steele’s organization. He hated himself, you know. What I said in the hospital was true. He hated homosexuals, hated being homosexual, and took it out on those around him. One of them was Art Sullivan.

“So I made a deal with Steele’s whipping boy. We had a plan to get back at all of them. And it worked, perfectly, too, until the graveyard was uncovered.”

“Then you had to get a Mortician Murderer,” Harry surmised.

“You got it, stupid,” she taunted. “Sullivan got to prove himself a man by raping all the others while I got off on putting them in their place. Six feet under.”

Harry could see it clearly. Byrnes was used to getting anything she wanted. She had the body and mind for it. With looks like hers, he could see her trying everything, and not just once.

What she found was homosexuality. She must’ve really gotten off on manipulating everyone while hating them at the same time. Getting bored of that, she finally saw a way to attain the ultimate thrill. The ultimate power. Harry could now understand why Steele killed himself. At the last minute he saw who and what Kim was. He saw how stupid he had been. He had seen something in her that he couldn’t fully believe. Finally, he knew that if her evil lived on, there would be no hope for the world of brotherhood and peace he envisioned.

It all was going to end in the overflowing sewage tunnel beneath the city’s streets. Harry swore to it.

“That’s it then,” he told her.

“Yeah,” she concurred. “All over. For now.”

“No,” Harry disagreed, beginning to move forward. “All over, period.”

“Don’t be stupid, Harry,” she said. “You’re only making it easier for me to get a perfect shot.”

“No more victims,” Harry said, coming on. “It’s time to pay the piper.”

“You are nuts,” Byrnes laughed. “What do you think? I’m not going to shoot? Well, keep walking asshole, and find out.” She let go of McConnell, who fell forward onto the walk, then brought the Magnum up, holding it in both hands straight out from her face.

“You’re too clever,” Harry told her, walking forward slowly and deliberately. “You’re too beautiful . . .”

“Yeah, keep talking, smart guy,” Byrnes said with bravado. “First you go, then your bitch here.” She kicked McConnell’s prone body.

“But more than anything else . . .” Harry said, then he charged.

The move was sudden, the psychology sound. Callahan went from marching evenly to speeding forward, his head down. No matter how prepared Byrnes thought she was for such a move, Harry had cut off perfectly in the middle of a sentence. And she had never fired a .44 Magnum before.

The gun boomed, trying to wrench itself out of her hands like a panicked cat clawing up a tree. She just managed to hold onto the weapon as the first bullet went over Harry’s head.

She brought it down quickly, Callahan’s face filling her sights. He had enough time to duck because the .44 required more than the usual amount of finger pressure to pull the trigger. He saw her hand muscles tighten and the hammer go back before he rolled out of its way.

The gun bucked again, the bullet splattering on the walk, shards ricocheting off the wall and into the water. Panicking, she tried to pull the gun back down again just as Harry hit her in the stomach.

She doubled over and Callahan grabbed the Magnum’s cylinder. He stood, shoving the flat of his hand against Byrnes’ twisted, angry face. She fell back, letting all her weight pull on the trigger. But Harry’s grip was stronger.

Realizing this, she let go of the gun and toppled backward into the water.

Harry knew instantly what she was trying to do. There was a chance that she could still reach freedom. Without pausing, Harry flipped the gun around and fired.

Without a chance to aim, the bullet slashed into the raging water inches from her splashing body.

He pulled the gun forward, sighting at the rapidly diminishing body. The second shot hit her in the left thigh. Harry saw the gusher of blood rise out of her leg, but he knew it wasn’t enough to stop her. If she had a chance to disappear around the corner, it was possible that she would survive to murder again.

The third shot grazed her right shoulder, tearing off pieces of her shirt. The aim was getting more and more difficult. She was growing small in the dark, her body rolling in the broiling current. In a second, she would be gone.

Harry knew there was only one bullet left in the chamber as he tried to get her in his sights. The blood from his temple was streaming over his eyes, and his side was throbbing.

“But more than anything else . . . ,” Harry repeated under his breath. He pulled the trigger.

Kim Byrnes’ head erupted in an explosion of bone, blood, and brain which was instantly swallowed up by the water and swept away.

“. . . you were too lucky to live,” Harry finished.

D
ANE
H
ARTMAN
was a Warner Books imprint pseudonym used by two American novelists, Ric Meyers and Leslie Alan Horvitz. "Hartman" was credited as the author of the Dirty Harry action series based on the “Dirty” Harry Callahan character of the popular 1970’s and 1980’s films starring Clint Eastwood.

Following the release of the third Dirty Harry movie, The Enforcer, in 1976, Clint Eastwood made it clear that he did not intend to make any more Dirty Harry movies. In 1981, Warner Books (the publishing arm of Warner Bros., which made the films) began publishing a number of men's adventure series under its now-defunct "Men of Action" line. One such series features the further adventures of Inspector Harry Callahan. The series was brought to an end when Eastwood decided to direct, produce, and star in a fourth Dirty Harry movie, Sudden Impact, which was released in December 1983.