Dirty Harry 03 - The Long Death

by Dane Hartman

  DIRTY HARRY—THE COP

  MORE SAVAGE THAN

  ANY CRIMINAL ALIVE!

  Someone is grabbing young women from the bars, campuses, and streets of San Francisco and doing unspeakable things to their minds and bodies. Someone is setting up cops against black nationalists in a violent inter-city war, playing both sides for bloody fools. Someone is looking for deadly trouble when a gorgeous policewoman baits “Dirty Harry” Callahan into a showdown that can only be settled by bare fists and Magnum lead!

  Harry Feels The Heat!

  The flames seemed to roar out of the window in anger after Harry as he plummeted sixteen feet to a side incline. He slammed against that, rolled down, hit another inclined roof right below that, and fell into a pile of sand that had collected against the side of the house. Harry didn’t know the extent of his injuries, but he did know he wasn’t dead.

  Hands plucked at him. They rolled him over. Harry saw figures in blue and yellow uniforms. The cavalry had arrived. He was carried out to the safety of some ambulances across the street. He felt tired. He didn’t feel good. The last thing he saw that day was the face of Captain Avery looking down at him with concern.

  Harry laughed himself into unconsciousness . . .

  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 © 1981 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: 0-446-90848-7

  First Printing: December, 1981

  DEDICATION

  To Robert Bishop, who doesn’t have to draw a picture to really know the ropes.

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  Ed Breslin

  Art Bourgeau of the Whodunit Bookstore, Philadelphia, Pa.

  Mitch Schultz of Hansen & Company Gunsmiths, Southport, Ct.

  The Zen Oriental Book Store, West 57th Street, New York, N.Y.

  DIRTY HARRY #3

  THE

  LONG

  DEATH

  C H A P T E R

  O n e

  She had always been proud of her feet. Many beautiful girls had reason to be pleased with their bright eyes, their aristocratic noses, their full lips, their handsome lungs, their smooth ivory hips, their long legs, or their lustrous hair, but Barbara had been proudest of her feet. She had been proud because quite often it was the feet that threw off the perfection of an otherwise gorgeous girl.

  As curvaceous and striking as a girl might think herself, very few appreciated their feet. Either there were too many veins along the top or their soles were too rough or their nails weren’t right or, as in most cases, the toes would have the wrong symmetry. Either the second toe was longer than the big toe or the middle toes were too bumpy or the little toe was all scrunched up.

  Not Barbara though. Barbara’s feet had been perfect. They were small, delicately shaped, and the toes lined up like the King Family children—all blond, pearly, and in perfectly diminishing height. Barbara had rarely been more excited than when she placed her terrific feet into a pair of strong hands for a massage. She hadn’t done it for a while, of course. There were very few strong hands she would trust with her feet at the University of California at Berkeley. It seemed as if all the summer courses were being taken by either wimps or fairies. All the good hands were sunning themselves at the beach.

  Barbara had promised herself and her feet a little sojourn by the bay. She had told herself that the very next weekend would be spent socializing. There was no reason she’d have to bury her pert little nose in the books all the time. She would pack her tight, sleek form into a bright maillot and do a little advertising, she decided. Yes, the very next weekend

  But now it was too late.

  Her feet were slashed and bleeding. Their shapely form was warped by swelling. Each tortured step marked a lightning rod of pain up both her slim legs. Her feet were not the only things she had been proud of, and they were not the only things that had suffered.

  Her breath came in tortured gasps through lips that used to be rosy smooth. Her eyes, which had been the clearest blue, were now bloodshot, wild, and watery. She could hardly see where she was stumbling. At least her hair was not in her eyes. It used to be that she would constantly shrug or push her long blond hair out of her way. But now her hair was almost gone. There was just a close-cropped yellow halo around her head. She didn’t look like Barbara Steinbrunner, the nineteen-year-old “Snow Queen” of Berkeley. With all the welts across her body and the rude haircut, she looked positively punkish.

  The outfit didn’t improve the image. Her tight jeans, the Frye fashion boots, and the black turtleneck sweater which had shrunk, exposing some of her midriff, were gone. They had been ripped off long ago. Instead she wore a hospital gown. One of the embarrassing ones that tied in the back and was too short. She looked like a missing member of the Sex Pistols

  Finally, the rain didn’t help. It was a San Francisco summer shower—pelting her with cold, liquid gravel at 1:40 in the morning. Naturally Barbara didn’t know what time it was. Her time had stopped. Ever since the two figures had emerged from the bushes near a campus utility shed in what seemed like eons ago.

  She hadn’t seen the men, but she did notice the thick, dark foliage around the small shack. It didn’t register immediately, but she also saw an unusual shadow near the usually locked shed door. It made the doorway look wider. Only afterward did she realize that it only looked wider because the door was ajar.

  They had come at her from two sides. The first grabbed both her arms just above the elbow and pulled. She fell back into him, but he kept pulling. Any initial cry she might have made was knocked out of her by the force with which her back hit his rock-hard torso. She was quickly collecting her breath to scream when the shadow of a second assailant loomed in front of her. She saw his arm move, then felt a horrible pressure across her stomach. What would have been her second cry came out of her mouth as a scraping wheeze.

  She doubled over in pain, her mouth wide open and her arms straining forward. The grip above her elbows remained tight, so all her arms could do was wave weakly from side to side. Before the horror clamped over her head, she felt her fingers fluttering helplessly, like the dying wings of a butterfly caught in a spider’s web.

  Then the figure in front of her moved again. Next thing Barbara knew, a thick plastic sheet was covering her face. Before she could turn away, she heard a click, and the unctuous black goo attached itself to her head. It sucked onto her face like a leech, fastening her expression into place. She couldn’t open her eyes, she couldn’t close her mouth. Worst of all, she couldn’t breathe.

  As hard as she inhaled, no air could pass through the black plastic. She violently shook her head, but it was stuck to her face like a vise. She was then thrown forward so her arms were free. But before she could raise them to rip the thing from her face, another pair of arms wrapped around her torso, pinning her limbs to her sides.

&nb
sp; She was lifted, carried a few steps, and dropped. She fell on her side, her arms out in front of her. The pain of her fall was inconsequential—all sensation had fled, replaced by the panic-ridden void of asphyxiation. She was suffocating, and she had to get the horrible clinging thing off her face.

  Her hands moved unerringly toward her head. They were just about to touch the plastic when two other rough hands gripped her wrists. With a socket-wrenching jerk, her arms were pinned behind her back. She slammed over on her stomach. A knee nailed her there. She felt something soft and satiny slip over her hands. They felt like the softest of leather gloves. Then there was a tight, momentarily painful stricture at her wrists. Another sudden tug and her hands were together, palm to palm, and her arms making a tight “V” straight down her back.

  It was a strange floating sensation. In just a few seconds her entire upper body was immobilized. It was as if she had been paralyzed from the waist up. She felt like she was floating. She was just about to enjoy the feeling when she realized it was because she was dying. She suddenly remembered reading about the death euphoria in psychology class with crystalline clarity. When air to the brain ran out, cells started to die, creating a feeling of dizzying rapture. Like when she was high.

  Life had suddenly taken on an extra dimension, a sharpness it hadn’t had before. She could feel every individual blond hair that was caught between her face and the tight plastic mask. She could feel the rocks and ground along her front. She could practically feel the men’s fingerprints as they worked on her arms. She had a quick, last coherent thought. She was going to die with her mouth open.

  As the thought ended, she was whirled over and sat up. She felt a centralized sensation between her legs and heard a moisture-ridden sucking sound. Then the rubber mask fell away. Air slapped her like the hand of an angry suitor. She closed her mouth to gasp, blinked, then opened her lips to get as much oxygen as she could. As she tried, another rubbery wad was rammed into her mouth. She felt something move down her tongue and spread out, pushing open her jaws until they would go no farther. Then she was spun over onto her front again. For the first time she heard one of her attackers speak.

  “Get her fucking hair out of the way,” he hissed.

  Barbara’s proud blond mane was bunched up in a man’s hand, like spaghetti being twisted up in a fork, then pulled over to the side of her head. She felt a buckle being tightly secured on the back of her head, sinking two straps into her cheeks. She tried biting down. The thing in her mouth wouldn’t give. She tried spitting it out, but the straps on her cheeks were attached to the buckle as well as to the gag. She screamed. It emerged from what space it could as a choked gurgle.

  She was flipped over onto her back again. The night was finally given some delineation by her eyes. She could only just make out the silhouettes of her attackers toiling over her waist, but she could see herself. First she saw a hose attached to a squeeze-bulb coming out of her opened mouth. She saw her black, thin sweater stretched over the sturdy mounds of her breasts. She saw a thin, coiled leather rope stretched from between her legs to her belly button and tied around her waist.

  She tried moving her arms. It pulled the rope along her pelvis even tighter. It started a heat inside her already tight jeans. As soon as she felt it she moaned, and the indignity, the humiliation, and the fear hit her like a battering ram. She had been attacked. She was in the darkened, deserted shed. She was helpless.

  She fought back as best she could. Her legs were not yet tied so she kicked with all her might. Bound as she was she couldn’t get enough leverage to collect any power. The attackers had placed her in the middle of the floor, so she couldn’t make noise by hitting the walls. The men moved back so she couldn’t do any damage there.

  Instead she writhed, kicked, and moaned. She made pitifully little sound in the small enclosed area. Anyone outside wouldn’t have heard a thing.

  “I’ll get the van,” she heard one of the men mutter. “You like this sort of thing more than I do.”

  “Yeah,” said the other.

  The first man moved over to the door, opened it slightly, and slipped out. Barbara twisted around to see him leave. The moonlight that came in during those few seconds was enough to expose the shed’s interior. There was nothing inside she could use to get free. Just an empty cardboard box or two beneath the shack’s one small window.

  Barbara squirmed toward them. If she could just lean up against them or the wall, maybe she could gather her wits. She struggled up to her knees. She had put one booted foot flat on the floor when the other attacker moved over, put a hand on her shoulder and pushed her onto the floor again

  “Uh, uh,” he said with quiet relish, “none of that.”

  She twisted onto her side, raised her head, and looked at him. The blue moonlight coming in the window revealed his face. If not for the high cheekbones, it would have been a totally gentle, boyish face. The eyes were brown, the hair was thick and brown, and he was clean shaven. His skin looked almost soft. But his thick neck and strong cheekbones gave him away. There was muscle under that smooth, placid surface.

  There was also perversion. Looking away for a moment, Barbara glanced at the window. When she looked back, he was motioning at the glass with his head.

  “Go ahead,” he said, “I won’t stop you.”

  She stared at him, her eyes widening with frightened confusion. What could they want? The wad filling her mouth and the mucous filling her throat made it hard to breathe. And the minimized air made it hard to think. She wasn’t rich. She made just enough with her free-lance word-processing jobs to pay for tuition, rent, and food. Her parents weren’t wealthy. Besides, they had all but disowned her after she went away to college. She hadn’t written or talked to them in about a year and a half.

  She couldn’t understand it, and her confusion wasn’t helped when the second man motioned at the window again.

  “Go ahead,” he said more as an instruction than a suggestion.

  Her head was beginning to hurt. Moaning, she rolled over onto her stomach, brought both knees up under her and sat up. She was about to stand when the man behind her moved up, pulled off his belt, wrapped it around her thighs, just above her knees, buckled it tight and pushed her on her face a second time.

  She cried out, only to hear a sodden sob as she painfully hit the ground. Her arms were useless to her—it was her breasts that took the brunt of the fall. She rolled over to see that his belt was a perforated kind that was popular in the sixties, one that could be buckled anywhere along its length. She looked up to see his smiling face.

  “Now,” he said soothingly, “go ahead.”

  She tried to plead with her eyes. They filled with tears and her breath came in sobbing bursts. His expression didn’t change. Slowly, she rolled onto her stomach and crawled toward the window. He walked around her and watched her progress from the side. Twice she caught the squeeze-bulb hanging out of her mouth between the floor and her chest. And twice the pressure made the wad in her mouth spread even more. It was a hand pump, she realized. She had seen it in a doctor’s hands when she was taking the blood pressure part of her yearly physical.

  Through the red-flecked haze in her head, she thought about all the captive heroines she had seen on television. For them, a scarf over the mouth or between the teeth were enough. At the very worst, their lips would be taped shut. But here the object was not to keep her mouth closed, but wide open. The pain and the effectiveness of the device was nearly overwhelming.

  Finally her forehead touched the hewn wall of the shed. She was right below the window. She raised her aching head and looked up at it. It was a regular setup with four glass panes interrupted by two crossing pieces of wood. It could not be opened. She tried standing up. The belt binding her knees made it impossible. The bottom of her legs simply kicked out forward and back. Her ankle joint was no help since her fashionable, high-heeled boots didn’t have much give.

  “Good. Very good,” whispered the man behind her. “
You did that really, really well.”

  He walked behind her, pulled a box close to the window and sat above her. He then cupped a hand under, her jaw and wrapped his other arm around her waist. He spread his fingers so his thumb went under her turtleneck and his pinky slipped under the waist of her jeans. He lifted her up onto his lap.

  She sat on something hard and jutting. She tried to pull herself upward, but his hand tightened around her jaw, spreading to her neck. He slowly, strongly, eased her back down to his lap.

  “There now,” he said. “There, there now.”

  Barbara’s terror was mingled with anger. He was talking to her like a baby or a pet dog. Always the most soothing, yet authoritative of tones. And the most caressing of hands. She could feel the strength of his fingers on her, but she could also feel the smoothness of his flesh. It stroked her face and warmly rubbed her stomach. She sat on his lap, her heels a few inches off the floor and her hair a few inches from the top of his head. She felt small and powerless in his clutches.

  He enhanced that feeling by directing her gaze out the dirty glass pane. His fingers gripped her chin and twisted her chin in that direction. She could see the exit of the Science Building from the window as well as the entrance to the Student Union where she had been heading when she was attacked. And from where she was sitting she could see one or two other students going about their late-night campus business.

  She started as she saw them. And just as she jerked forward, the attacker calmly placed one of his legs in front of the two of hers. She couldn’t kick the wall, his leg was in the way. She couldn’t butt the glass with her head, his hand was holding her back. She couldn’t scream, the inflatable gag filled her mouth. She couldn’t fight, the leather wrapping her hands which was bound to her waist by a leather thong kept them nestled against her rear end.