Dirty Harry 12 - The Dealer of Death (2 page)

The stench from the vagrant was bad before, he thought, but now it was worse.

Gallant was consoled by the fact that it would all be over soon. Breathing through his mouth, he drew the lifeless man up close to him. He changed clothes with him although this meant that he smelled every bit as badly as his victim. When this was done, he started the ignition and drove the car he’d stolen that morning north in the direction of Fisherman’s Wharf. His purpose was to find a patrol car and crash into it.

Under ordinary circumstances—though it was questionable whether James William Gallant had ever in his life encountered such a thing as ordinary circumstances—smashing into a patrol car was not something he would have elected to do. Better just to drive around San Francisco until he was cited for going through a stop sign or a speeding violation, anything that would precipitate a chase. But with the fog mounting, it was unlikely he could draw attention to himself. That was all right. The fog would help him in any case.

In the North Beach area, where the lights of Broadway and Columbus were sufficiently garish to dispel the encroaching mist, Gallant spied a black and white. He looked to his right to make certain that the vagrant’s body was well below windshield level; then he began to weave through traffic, provoking a furious outburst of blaring horns. Eliciting just the reaction he had hoped for.

The patrolmen couldn’t help notice him. Gallant assumed that while they gave chase, they would be checking out his license plate number. Naturally they would learn that the car belonged to one of Soledad Prison’s wardens and that it had been stolen by an escaped prisoner named James W. Gallant. He’d be grievously disappointed if they proved inefficient.

While it had been several years since he’d last been behind the wheel of a car, he had lost none of his driving skill. It was true what they said, it came right back to one.

Directing his car toward the shoreline, he delighted in the plaintive whine behind him. He was a little drunk himself, and he scarcely paid any attention as to where he was going. It was enough that he was headed in the general direction of Golden Gate Park and the Pacific Ocean. He wanted to make a spectacular exit from the world.

From the sound of it, other patrol cars had joined the chase. He kept glancing up at the rear view mirror so he neglected to see what was happening on the road in front of him. But out of the corner of his eye he saw that someone—a man or a woman he couldn’t tell—was in his path, making an effort to get out of his way. But not fast enough. There was a solid thud followed by a strangled cry. To Gallant’s vast surprise, the person he’d hit—an elderly woman he saw now—had been knocked up onto the hood and there for an instant she remained: a vision of blood in a hairnet and furcoat. If there was any life left in her, it was surely crushed by the tires as they ran over her.

All Gallant could think about was getting this whole business over with. He didn’t know how much longer he would be able to tolerate the smell of death and decay surrounding him on all sides. The windows were wide open, but even the San Francisco night air seemed stale.

Somehow he had driven up onto a sidewalk. Ashcans clattered and toppled as the car barreled ahead. The fog had thickened along the shore. Fisherman’s Wharf, if that was what it was, looked like something one might see in a dream: ghostly shadows with strange bright lights emerging every now and again from the murk.

His left fender made a horrible wrenching noise as it came apart. He saw he’d sideswiped a red Buick, though he hadn’t the faintest notion how he’d done that. He didn’t remember the Buick being there. Well, he guessed he was drunker than he’d thought. He had rarely got hold of booze in prison, so his system was more susceptible to it than it had been in the old days.

Where the hell was he? No landmark presented itself. Up ahead, there was a large clump of trees. Golden Gate Park? No idea. The sirens were beginning to annoy him. Have to put an end to this, he decided.

A bough sheared off and came to rest on top of his hood, the leaves turned bright crimson in the blood of the lady he’d killed some miles back.

He heard the roar of the ocean pounding against the rocks before he glimpsed it. He had to shake himself in order to act. I should never have gotten this drunk, he muttered. I should’ve left the drinking to this asshole. The dead vagrant seemed to watch him with open glassy eyes.

The patrol cars were gaining on him, but they were still some distance back. He could resort to short cuts, run over old women and tear through wooded terrain. It wouldn’t do to smash up city property as whimsically as he had his stolen vehicle.

He opened the door on his side, careful to keep one hand on the wheel. The ocean must be just below him. The stretch of land barely visible in front of him came to a point, then stopped. Beyond that, Gallant figured, there’d be a drop of several hundred feet.

A massive tree was in the way. He hadn’t noticed it and was astonished when it snapped the open door off. The car was hurtling toward the abyss at eighty miles an hour. Even when he thought to remove his foot from the gas, it failed to slow the car significantly. Momentum and gravity were carrying it forward.

Better get the hell out of here, he decided, reaching over to move the dead man into position. It had to be done in one deft, and miraculously quick motion.

Everything was happening much faster than he’d anticipated. A wire mesh fence came into view at the land’s end, but there was no question it would do nothing to forestall the Camaro’s progress. He hesitated for a moment, gazing wide-eyed at the ground flashing by, then leapt . . .

God, it hurt. His legs in particular. He only hoped nothing was broken. Propping himself up on his hands, he managed to get a glimpse of the speeding car as it broke through the mesh and soared for an instant into the air before disappearing. It was a wonderful sight.

A moment or two later, there was a resounding crash which echoed from rock to rock as the battered machine went clattering down the slope. Even before it got to the bottom, the engine exploded, igniting the darkness with a bright orange ball of flame.

Gallant succeeded in getting to his feet. He could barely walk, but he felt certain nothing was broken. In time, the torn muscles would mend. Hiding himself in the underbrush, he watched as first one, then a second patrol car drew to a halt just before the damaged fence. More sirens could be heard in the background.

The four officers got out of their black and whites and ambled over to the edge and looked down. The Camaro was by now a blackened hulk, silhouetted by the bright golden fire.

“Nobody could live through that,” one officer remarked.

“Well, that should put an end to the murderous son of a bitch,” another said with evident satisfaction.

“What do you think makes somebody like that tick?” the first asked.

No one seemed to have an answer to the question. Even the man hiding in the bushes didn’t know. But the diagnosis of his psychological state was something he left to others. He had achieved two objectives he’d set for the day: he’d escaped from jail in the morning and managed to convince the police he had killed himself in the evening. Now he intended to get on with his third objective: killing the man who’d put him in jail in the first place—Harry Callahan.

C H A P T E R
O n e

T
he front page was what Sheila Richmond generally got to last. She started in back with the features, barely paid attention to the economic news—though it was something she thought she should know—ignored the sports section completely, and only then did she peruse the headlines. While she seldom found the paper enlightening, and never encouraging, she enjoyed the leisure that went with reading it. Bathed in the sunlight poring through her kitchen window, it was the one hour she had to herself, squeezed in between getting her six-year-old off to school and starting out to work herself.

Unless it was a major fire on Polk Street, just a block away from where she lived, or a hike in her utility bills, the news stories rarely had a personal impact.

This morning, however, was an exception.

This morning she could feel her heart hammering mercilessly in her chest; her temples throbbed, and she felt the blood drain from her face. This morning, a man’s name was on the front page which she had hoped never to hear of ever again.

The man’s name was James William Gallant.

His photograph was there under the headline: ESCAPED CON KILLS SELF AFTER WILD SPREE. The photograph was six years old, taken when he was booked and indicted for the murder of a police officer on the East Basin of Pier 45. The police officer was no longer on duty, he wasn’t wearing a uniform, but he had his gun with him. He’d never gotten to use the gun though; the murderer was just a fraction of a second too fast for him. Five shots had been fired. One, she would have thought, would have been sufficient. But he had to pump five shots into him even as he lay there, twitching convulsively in response. She remembered the scene vividly, although she hadn’t been there. It had been described so many times, she had relived it in her mind so many times, it was as though she’d been an eyewitness. That man had been her husband, Sam Richmond. He was twenty-eight years old when he died. Two years a husband, two months a father, and dead.

After Gallant’s conviction, after he’d been locked up for two concurrent sentences of ninety-nine years, Sheila had resolved to begin her life anew. Her therapist had counseled her to vanquish her husband’s murderer from her mind, to put aside all thoughts of revenge—which wasn’t hers to exact in any case—and rejoin the human race. It had taken many months to accomplish this mental feat, but she had gotten so that she barely thought of Gallant. All he did was taint Sam’s memory.

She could barely bring herself to regard the photograph of the monster. His face was less an oval than a square, emphasized by the taut lines of his jaw: his eyes were small, inquisitive, and vacant—at least in this picture—and his hair was cut severely short even before the prison barbers could get to it. But what was most disconcerting was the way his lips had formed. It wasn’t exactly a smile, but there was a malevolent twist to them that suggested a peculiar smugness. It was as though he were trying to give the impression that neither the threat of a lifelong incarceration nor the electric chair—should that penalty ever be enforced in the State of California—distressed him. Every account of the court proceedings Sheila had read, confirmed that impression. He was a man for whom two of the most human attributes had somehow never been allowed to develop: conscience and fear.

There was another photograph that all but dominated the front page. It depicted the burning Camaro in which Gallant met his bourbon-soaked death.

Sheila knew his demise should make her happy, that she should be relieved. But she was neither happy nor relieved. For one thing, no one’s death pleased her, not even that of her husband’s killer. But there was something else. She had a sense that the danger Gallant posed—to her, to society—was not over. There was no rationale for this feeling. It was instinctive, but it was very real all the same.

It was strange how life had worked. Though her friends were discreet enough not to mention it, she was well aware that they said she had a “thing” for cops. Whether they meant passion or an occasional fancy or the sort of interest a hobbiest might take in his model trains, she was never quite sure. She was sure that were it not for this “thing” she would never have accepted an invitation to dinner from a traffic patrolman right after he stopped her for going through a red light.

She was a striking woman with an air of refinement. She came from a wealthy background, wealthy enough so she could have had a chauffeur drive through the red light in her stead, if she’d wanted. Her father would never understand why his daughter wasn’t married to a man of suitable wealth and consummate taste. A man like himself. Nor did he understand why, following her husband’s death, she declined the money he was willing to provide her and went to work instead, turning a talent for graphics into a career that supported her—though not in a style to which her father had hoped she’d have accustomed herself. The only money she ever accepted from him was for her daughter and most of that had been put into a trust fund.

So there was no way her father could cut her off and disinherit her—as in bursts of temper he was apt to do—should she start seeing yet another cop. It wasn’t that he disliked cops—he really didn’t have much of an opinion one way or the other—it was only because he did not want to see his daughter’s heart and his granddaughter’s—broken again.

But Sheila Richmond seemed continuously to be putting her heart in the same peril she had seven years before when at two in the morning Sam Richmond had ripped up the ticket he’d been writing because she’d said yes, she’d be delighted to have dinner with him on his next day off.

The cop this time had not stopped her for a traffic violation. That was not his job. The first time she’d met him was in the courtroom where her husband’s murderer was being tried. At that point in her life she was too distraught to pay much attention to anyone aside from her daughter. But she remembered him and noted his name whenever it appeared in the papers in connection with one case or the other, without quite knowing why.

They encountered each other again at a special memorial service given by the force for those men slain in action. Harry did not recollect who she was until she went over and introduced herself. She thanked him for hunting down Gallant and making the arrest.

“I should have told you this before,” was what she’d said.

“It wasn’t necessary then,” he told her, “and it isn’t now.”

But she felt in some way still obligated to him. She asked him to dinner. Seven years had changed her. She no longer ran red lights and she didn’t wait for a man to invite her to dinner if she was interested in him.

It was ironic that she didn’t fully realize she was interested in Harry until much later. Well, she thought, that was what a “thing” for cops did to you.