Dirty Harry 09 - The Killing Connection (3 page)

To make the remainder of her trip easier, Lisa thought about the girl she had left behind and that lightened her mood considerably. Kim was ridiculously attractive. Between her almost strawberry blonde locks, her big blue eyes, her sweet features, her long legs, small waist and large, strong breasts, she was the kind of woman men would kill for.

Lisa knew that Kim was all too aware of her effect on men. She had been petitely attractive at thirteen, but when her chest began to blossom three years later, the male population of her town and school could hardly contain itself. Kim got lust, desire, need, longing, yearning, coveting, jealousy, envy, infatuation, ardor, and hate—everything but consideration and respect. Even her own family confused love with overprotection. To counter this, they gave her everything she wanted. They did everything she wanted except treat her like a human being.

Coming to her high school for a lecture on theatrical design, Lisa couldn’t help but notice her in the third row. Their eyes met and the two immediately felt a kinship even though Lisa was six years older. At that point, there had been no way for Kim to have known that Lisa Patterson had been a lesbian since her own high school graduation.

After Kim had approached her after the talk, expressing an interest in the theater, the two had corresponded, their loving relationship growing from that beginning. Lisa could tell from her letters what Kim needed and practically ached with the desire to give her that tenderness. So when the teenager graduated from high school, Lisa jumped at the chance to offer her a job and schooling while Kim jumped at the chance to take it.

Things proceeded smoothly from there. Lisa did not need to force her—Kim seemed to slip into homosexuality naturally, as if she had been waiting her whole life for it. Their mutual affection blossomed naturally. Neither seemed to have anyplace else to turn for the love they both so desperately wanted.

So now, for almost two years, their lives were almost idyllic. Each had their freedom, but neither wanted anyone or anything else.

Refreshed by her memories, Lisa looked up from the path, and stepped forward into the body of a huge man.

She reared back, unable to stifle the small shriek of surprise and alarm. Her shoes slipped on the mist-slickened asphalt, knocking her off-balance. Her arms wide, she fell back on the path, all but helpless before the muscular man.

Looking up in dread, she saw the solid form of a mustachioed man in a police uniform. “Are you all right, Miss?” the cop asked.

Lisa exhaled deeply in relief, the breath ending in an embarrassed laugh. “Yes,” she finally said. “Thank you, officer.”

He held his hand out and she took it. As he picked her up off the path, he continued, “Sorry. Didn’t mean to startle you.” As she rose, she saw his night stick, handcuffs, and gun firmly holstered in his belt.

“That’s all right,” she said, brushing the dirt from her pants. “My mind was elsewhere.”

“Better get it back here,” he suggested. “It’s best not to do too much savoring of nature at night.”

Lisa looked at his smooth, young face. She could feel it already. By his tone, his stance, his manner. He was coming on to her. And why not, she thought. She might not have been a Kim Byrnes, but she was no piker either. She might not have had a thirty-six inch bust on a five-three frame but thirty-four on a five-seven body was nothing to sneeze at either.

Only she wasn’t interested. Men wanted her, sure, but they wanted Kim more. But she had for herself what they all wanted. And what would all those poor saps do if they knew she could satisfy the girl much better than all of them put together?

“Just walking home, officer,” she told him. “I’ve done it many times before.”

“Trouble only has to happen once,” he told her. “You’ve got to be careful after dark.”

Lisa laughed, deciding to take the cop for a little tease ride. “Are you trying to tell me that San Francisco’s finest can’t even keep the streets safe for women at night?”

The cop smiled back. “We can’t be everywhere at once,” he said. Looking around, he continued, “There’s a lot of queers around here at this time of night. Let me walk you to where you’re going.”

Whatever slim chance the cop had of accompanying Lisa to her door was shattered by his last, callous remark. Her eyes narrowing, Lisa told herself not to let her defensiveness show too clearly. “Thanks, but no thanks,” she said lyrically. “I can take care of myself.”

Hearing the right tone, but not the right words, the cop was taken a bit aback. “I don’t doubt that,” he recovered smoothly. “I just thought you might like the company.”

Opening her handbag, Lisa showed him what she had inside. Nestled among the other stuff was a whistle on a chain and a flask of Mace. “This is all the company I need,” she said pointedly, slipping the whistle around her neck. “If I need you, I’ll just blow.” She snapped the pocketbook shut and walked by him. “Now why don’t you do the same?”

The cop watched her stride off in amazement before his features set in an expression that mixed anger with disappointment. “Ball buster,” he muttered under his breath, walking away and scratching his head.

Lisa was proud of herself. She walked with a new spring in her step, having struck a blow for gay rights. She glanced over her shoulder every few steps to see how the cop had reacted. She kept looking until she saw his figure turn the far corner.

As soon as he had disappeared, she slowed, finally stopping near the side of the path. As she thought about it, she decided his punishment was enough. What was just a minor rebuttal when he had labeled as “queers” all those pitiful young hustlers desperately looking for some sort of honest affection? Queers, were they? Well, she would show him just how queer she could be. The young bastard in uniform deserved whatever he got. And Lisa Patterson was just the kind of girl to give it to him.

She decided to blow her little whistle and disappear. That way he’d come running, only not to find her. And if that worked well enough, Lisa would think about signaling him again, simply so she could repeat the process until he was sufficiently winded. Patterson smiled to herself. It wasn’t the best or the most fitting retribution, but it would do quite nicely.

She kept smiling and looking at the spot where the cop had turned the corner in the mist while reaching for the whistle which lay on her chest. Her hand touched the spot where it had lain, only to feel the metal tube slip out of her fingers. That surprise was not as great as the one that tightened her throat. She could feel the unmistakable sensation of the whistle’s chain tightening around her neck. She initially thought that the thin but strong links had caught on a branch lining the edge of the path where a tall row of foliage served as a natural fence.

She moved back and reached up, expecting the chain to loosen. Only as she moved, the chain tightened and bit into her skin even more, sending a bolt of constricting pain up into her brain. Her shock was complete when her hand raised to touch on something human. A fist had snapped the chain whistle up so it made a noose around her neck.

Her mouth opened as the chain grew tighter. The words she wanted to yell were cut off by the sudden backwards jerk of the assaulting fingers. The abrupt jerk was enough to knock her off-balance so she fell into the line of bushes behind her. Her weight was enough to widen the hole her attacker had stuck his hand through.

As she fell, her subconscious hoped for a crash of breaking branches to signal her distress, but the plants only served as a muffling curtain. There was hardly any noise as she was pulled through. The only real noise she could have made was cut off at her neck by the band of metal that was sinking deeper and deeper into her throat.

The panic was complete as Lisa’s mouth opened and closed soundlessly and her fingers dug at the chain. Dimly, she remembered what the salesgirl had said about the whistle, necklace combination when she bought it.

“Especially made for the city woman,” she had proudly proclaimed. “We have a whole line of break-resistant jewelry for the urban working woman. Guaranteed not to fall apart no matter how hard the tug. The only way to break these chains is with a hammer and chisel.”

Lisa prayed desperately that the salesgirl had been exaggerating. The adornment she was wearing for protection was now killing her. No matter how she tugged at it, the necklace was still impossibly tight against her windpipe. To her own breathless panic, she could feel the strong steel sink down and start to cut through her flesh.

There was a sudden and temporary reprieve when her body fell to the ground on the other side of the foliage fence. The chain loosened, but only for a second. In that second, Lisa managed to breath deeply and tried to get up. Her legs kicked but she couldn’t get her arms to stop trying to pull the necklace away from her throat.

A moment later and her chance was lost. With an even more brutal tug, the chain was slicing away at her again and the assaulter’s other hand wrapped itself in the coils of Patterson’s long, thick dark hair. To her continued astonishment, her assaulter was now dragging her across the grass by her mane and neck.

She twisted, kicked, and struggled breathlessly, feeling as if she was being dragged behind a mule by a noose. All her life systems were sending panic signals into her brain. But while her interior broiled and screamed, the park remained deathly quiet save for the gentle murmurings of the city around it.

Her vision was dimming, interrupted by bulbous, undulating multi-colored blobs, but still she tried to see her assaulter. All there was above her, however, was a dark, man-shaped thing dressed entirely in black, his face a shadow. Looking beyond his towering figure, she saw a few low hills and a bridge over a slight gulley. She felt herself dragged beneath it.

She tried to dig her heels into the ground, but as plush as the natural green carpeting was, it was not loose enough to let her heels sink into the dirt beneath. She bucked and pulled against the astonishingly painful grips about her neck and head, but it didn’t slow her assaulter. He continued to pull strongly, evenly, while Lisa flopped behind him like a fish on a hook.

Exhausted, horror-stricken, Lisa finally was forced to relax because of her body’s lack of oxygen. She drooped in her assaulter’s grip, the back of her barely conscious mind hoping that might get him to lighten up on his death grip. But even as she thought this, the man continued to haul her toward the darkness of the bridge’s underside.

Her eyes blinked, her fingers still at her throat, her legs straight out. As a haze drifted down over her eyesight, she could see off to the side where the tree line started. And coming from behind that tree fence was the young cop she had meant to torment.

The sight of him sent a wave of adrenalin smashing up against the shore of her mind, clearing away the encroaching unconsciousness. Accompanying that was a bone-shaking start that sent a last, furious shock throughout her entire body. To both her and her assaulter’s surprise, the necklace snapped open in his hand, dropping Lisa’s head to the ground.

Air seemed to fill her entire skull, the life-giving stuff refreshing her unlike any drug she ever tried. She felt a high, she had never experienced. A high of reprieved life. She looked back at the start of the tree line, fully expecting to see the cop come running to her aid. Instead, she saw that the officer wasn’t even looking her way. He was completely oblivious to her predicament.

Still weak, she rolled over onto her back, the oxygen collecting in her torn throat. She could feel it building up for a trumpeting shout that would rival even the bay’s foghorns. She started to sit up and shout just as her assaulter’s fist came coursing down out of the night.

It had the look and effect of a meteor. The dark round hunk of flesh, bone, and muscle smashed into the lower part of her face with a battering ram’s force. She felt a cracking burst and could have sworn she saw a flash in front of her eyes, as if the punch were captured in a comic book illustration.

Its effect amazed her. Beside the fact that her head snapped back, she was astonished that she could not scream. The shock and pain had paralyzed her. She found herself on her elbows, on her back, looking up at the sky, the bottom half of her face mashed, and the warm wet feel of liquid flowing from her mouth.

She blinked, her mouth working. Seconds later, she realized she could still talk and there was still a chance of escape. Her spent wind was collected again with a deep exhalation and again her mouth stayed open. Then the fist rocketed down again.

As she lay somewhere between consciousness and unconsciousness, the soft grass seemed to take on a firmer substance—each blade becoming as hard and annoying as a dull pin. This completed the aura of pain wafting across and through her. Dimly, she could understand that the assaulter was pulling her toward the bridge’s underside again. As she was dragged, the hard grass blades scraped across her back like picks. She was surprised that they didn’t send out a musical tone as she drifted across them like fingers on a harp.

The only measure of true consciousness she experienced again was when her assaulter dragged her by the chin and hair over the bridged bluff and dropped her in a tiny, shallow creek, made up of the mist that had fallen during the day. Her hair seemed to suck up the moisture like the roots of a plant, her vision clearing enough to show her that the fog had thickened like a roof and four walls around them. The only thing that could signal the distant cop now was her voice.

Valiantly, bravely, she collected breath to try one more time even though she told herself it was hopeless. She was fully expecting her assaulter to stop her by covering her mouth or hitting her again, but she was beyond caring. In fact, she expected anything but what he actually did.

As soon as she had been dragged into the bushes, she could only think of one thing: rape. She was totally convinced that she had been captured so her assaulter could abuse her in that way. She held no misconceptions of her own attractiveness. She was very pretty with a very good body. Something deep inside her ego told her that it would be ridiculous for this beast to waste that.