by Dane Hartman
Gerrold was a power-mad, egocentric, perverted madman who was dangerous because he was so capable. He was the ultimate cult leader—a person who had discovered precise control over the most attractive subjects possible.
“It’s a matter of selection,” Gerrold mused, trying to stem the flow of blood from his mangled shoulder. “Both in the subject and in the timing. You can’t control any one person all the time. You have to eliminate the hard cases and pick just the right moment to follow through on the initial treatments. This college position helped enormously.”
“How did you get it?” Harry wanted to know.
“I had the credentials,” Gerrold said pompously. “That’s what I mean about timing. The majority of my career has been spent diagnosing real problems. Only when that special subject appears do I take advantage of the situation.”
Callahan stood up. “All right, that’s enough. Let’s go.”
Gerrold looked up innocently. “Where to?”
“You can tell the rest of the story at Police Headquarters.”
Gerrold laughed anew. “But my dear man,” he chortled. “You attacked me. You ransacked my office, then shot me in cold blood.”
Harry ignored the line as wishful thinking. “Come on, no more games.”
“You don’t seem to understand, Inspector,” the blond man explained patiently. “I’ve told you all this because I had to tell someone. But those chemicals and those files aren’t enough in themselves to make an airtight case. You need corroborating witnesses. You need the victims to give evidence. And there are none. They’re all dead.”
Callahan’s face and manner became very still. “What are you talking about?”
“Don’t you understand? I didn’t do anything. All the girls that I raped don’t remember it, and there’s no way they’ll be able to say for sure that it happened. And they were far from being virgins . . .”
“What about Halliwell?” Callahan asked quickly, wanting to know but dreading to hear.
“I’m telling you, Inspector. I didn’t do anything.”
“Then who did?” Harry exploded. “Morrisson? Browne? Monahan?”
“None of them.” Gerrold confessed. “Monahan just happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time. He witnessed Halliwell’s murder, but he was not an active part of it. Browne was hard to control. If he hadn’t been weakened by your shooting him, I would not have been able to arrange that little Indian ceremonial scene on Beacon Hill.”
No wonder the man had been shaking and sweating, Harry recalled. He had been fighting something—fighting a predirected order. He had wanted to defend himself, but he couldn’t shoot. Gerrold needed him dead. “And Morrisson?”
“Tom was impossible to control. He had to be killed immediately. He was the only one who seemed able to get through to Christine.”
Callahan could have shot him then. But he needed to know more. “Christine,” he breathed, dumbfounded.
“Yes,” said Gerrold, “beautiful Christine. The prize of the bunch. She loved men. Any man. She felt other women were competition. She was willing, with the proper encouragement, to do anything. To anyone.”
“Where is she?” Harry shouted in Gerrold’s face.
“Not at home,” the doctor said roguishly.
Harry ground his fist against the doctor’s mashed shoulder. “Where is she?” he repeated.
Gerrold gasped in pain, and tears rolled out of his tightly closed eyes. “That’s all right,” he managed to grunt between clenched teeth. “I don’t mind.”
“Where is Christine?” Harry demanded, grinding the bone even harder.
“Use . . . your . . . head!” the slight man screamed. Callahan eased up immediately. “Where would she be? I told you that there will be no one left to testify against me. Think about it.”
Harry did. He grabbed Gerrold under his arms and dragged him down the stairs. When they got to the bottom, Harry slammed him against the door and went through his pockets. He found the car keys on the second try. He recognized the shape of the key and the emblem on the key chain immediately.
“A BMW,” Harry cursed. “Naturally you would drive a fucking BMW.” He carried Gerrold out the door to the only BMW at the curb. He pushed the doctor against the roof of the car while he unlocked the door. “What in hell did you come back to the office for?”
Gerrold giggled grimly again. “I left a yogurt I wanted for dessert in the office fridge.”
Harry couldn’t help laughing himself this time, but it was a desperate laugh pushed out of his chest cavity by disbelieving pain. He practically threw Gerrold onto the seat. He slid over the hood and got in on the driver’s side.
He jammed the car into gear, twisted the engine into life and burned rubber. Where would Linda bring Shanna for safety, Harry asked himself furiously. The only place he could think of was back at the condominium. Maybe in Mrs. O’Neill’s apartment. Harry began to retrace his earlier drive to Linda’s but at even greater speeds.
The rest of the story came out along the way. Every time Gerrold weakened and blacked out, Harry woke him. The doctor just couldn’t seem to stop talking about it once he had started. Halliwell had been a thrill kill. He had asked Christine who she most wanted to stick it to. Under the treatment, she had said Judy.
“It made her sick, she said,” Gerrold elaborated. “Judy was a beautiful girl, but she didn’t do anything about it. That drove Christine crazier than if she had been a tease. She couldn’t stand Judy’s oblivious, unconcerned sexuality.”
So Gerrold had sent Christine after her. Monahan had just happened by and had to die as a witness. Then the first problems began to arise. Morrisson had begun to break through the defenses Gerrold had set up in Christine’s mind.
“That first day,” the doctor said. “When you appeared? Thomas was trying to take the knife away from her, not stab her with it. In his agitated state, when he saw you barreling toward him, he ran. He couldn’t believe his girl was a killer so he kept silent until it was too late.”
“You followed me,” Harry realized. “You gave Christine my number!”
“It wasn’t easy. We had to check every police station in town. But we finally lucked out, and there you were. Detective Collins was kind enough to drop you off in the neighborhood, so shadowing you from then on was child’s play.”
“And you were the one who knocked me out in the Emerson building.”
“That was the one thing I did do.”
But not before more trouble cropped up. Killing Morrisson had been a major trauma for the girl, treatment or no treatment. Gerrold couldn’t get her to attack Harry, so he had to knock her out and do the dirty work himself.
“After that I kept her at my house until she was needed,” Gerrold elaborated. “It was wonderful!” he said with conviction. “You don’t know real power, Inspector, until you have a beautiful woman mewling and struggling at your feet in complete helplessness.”
Collins had done all the rest. When Gerrold saw the “blood cult” pattern emerging, it fit right in with his victims and plans. When he needed another “sacrifice” to frame Browne in his apartment, he delved into Christine’s subconscious again. The Sherman girl had only visited that Brookline bar once, but she didn’t like the waitress because her blonde hair had stood out more in the dark bar interior. That was the reason Cathy had died in such shock. She could not comprehend that another woman was raping her.
“With Shanna gone, it will all be over,” Gerrold said sadly. “The circle will be complete. No victims left. All gone.”
“What about Christine?” Callahan interjected, speeding into Southie.
“But that’s what makes it perfect, don’t you see? She won’t remember. And even if someone is able to break through the intense blocks I created while she was captive, it is she who conceived and executed the murders. She picked the victims, and she killed them!” Gerrold looked slyly up at Harry. “You know Peter Sellers’ last great movie, Being There? It was about a man who essent
ially became someone else. His name was Chauncey Gardner, and he was right. It is more fun to watch.”
Harry turned the corner onto the street where the Donovans lived. The entire road was crawling with police cars. By the time Harry rammed through the roadblock, it was too late to stop. Cops on all sides started pouring into the street, pulling out their weapons as they came. Harry swerved the responsive Bavarian-made sports car up onto the left sidewalk, near the beach wall.
If he could just turn onto the lawn and drive through the entrance, he might be able to get under cover before the police blasted him.
It was wishful thinking. He saw the gun flashes. He heard the bullets careen across the car body. He was just about to duck under the dashboard when two side tires blew.
The BMW was a great car and Harry was an experienced chase driver, but no one could have controlled it in that situation. Harry felt the vehicle slam against the sea wall sideways at high speed. He saw a wave of sparks sear off from the door next to him. He heard the grinding, rending tear of metal being ripped off the driver’s side of the body.
He wrenched the wheel back and forth while slamming the brakes to the floor. The car began to slew sideways. Harry released the brake and spun the wheel. The one good front tire held on and the car turned all the way around. He slammed the accelerator down again. The rubber sent up gouts of smoke as the four-wheel drive tried to counter-effect the backward momentum. Harry’s action was the only thing that saved both men’s lives when the car crashed into a bend in the stone sea wall.
The headrests saved them from whiplash or a broken neck. The car was going slow enough so they weren’t killed on impact and fast enough to propel the car up and lazily over the stone wall onto the beach. It crashed down on its side and then sluggishly turned upright again.
Harry’s head had slammed against the side window and the steering wheel. He could barely see the flames once the car caught fire. He tried to clear his head. He tried to move. He could do neither.
He was at least able to see. He found himself looking at Dr. Richard Gerrold, holding Harry’s Magnum in his good hand. “Now that we’ve talked,” Gerrold said affably, the engine flames flickering in back of his head, “I feel it might be a good idea if you were dead.”
At point-blank range, with Harry unable to do anything about it, the slight, blond doctor pulled the Magnum’s trigger with his left forefinger.
By that time his aim was already off. The .44 Magnum is a cannon. A great deal of strength is needed to shoot and control it. Gerrold didn’t have it.
By the time the hammer came down on the shell, the barrel was pointing two inches from Harry’s head. When the lead was blasted out, the resulting report nearly broke Gerrold’s wrist. The gun bucked up right into the doctor’s face, slashing one of his eyes.
The bullet shattered the cracked glass behind Harry’s head. It deafened and nearly blinded him. When he could hear again, he heard the crackle of the car flames getting stronger. He heard the wails of Gerrold as he tried to push his torn eye back into its socket.
Callahan groped forward like a blind man. He found the Magnum on the dashboard. With his other hand he felt for Gerrold’s face. His finger sunk into the ruined eye. Gerrold contorted in excruciating pain, his mouth wide open. Harry stuck his hand in the mouth. He pulled the writhing doctor back to the seat. By touch only he shoved the Magnum barrel deep into Gerrold’s mouth.
He pulled the trigger, only hearing the doctor’s perverted brains splashing onto the back seat.
Harry turned his head toward the sound of the ocean. Light was coming through. He crawled out of the broken window and onto the sand. He pulled himself up and ran for the sound of the waves. When the BMW’s gas tank exploded, he had run far enough away so he wasn’t killed.
But he was thrown forward by the shock wave. When he rose to his elbows again and opened his eyes, he could see clearly. He looked behind him to see the burning structure of the fancy car and a bunch of cops bearing down on him, led by Christopher Collins.
“Where’s Shanna?” he shouted angrily at Harry.
“Isn’t she here?” he asked, getting up.
“No,” Collins said, coming right up in front of the San Francisco inspector. “What the hell did you do with her?”
“Did you check all the apartments?” was Harry’s answer.
“Everyone,” Collins answered angrily. “Peter Donovan is in the hospital. He’ll live, but he won’t cooperate.” The black man’s anger left him. “Harry, what happened?” he said desperately. “Where is she?”
Callahan went through his mind as he had gone through the files of Gerrold’s office. He went back to his very first conversation with Linda in almost ten years.
“Almost finished an apartment house in Revere,” she had said.
Harry asked Collins. Collins knew. It was a retirement hotel that Donovan’s company had only been able to complete the shell of. Because the incoming residents were going to be on fixed incomes, it was constructed of the cheapest materials. Even so, the money had run out. It had floors and ceilings on most floors, but many of the walls were missing.
The black detective got there in record time, Harry explaining on the way. By the time they arrived at the locked outside gate, Collins was sick with remorseful grief.
“She’s dead,” he said bitterly. “I’ve killed her.” Harry ignored him. He leaned out the window of the car and blew the lock off the chain holding the gate closed. The gate swung out on its own accord. Collins drove right to the open-ended basement.
It was sunset. The red, purple, and yellow sky made up the structure’s walls with light. They illuminated the small, torn body of Linda Donovan among the rubble of the basement. She lay with her eyes open, staring at the unfinished basement ceiling as the blood from her knife wounds painted the concrete floor.
She had tried. She thought she had come up with a clever place to be safe. But it was the one place Christine knew all too well. She had met Peter here constantly during their affair.
Harry saw two staircases, one on each side of the building. He pointed Collins toward the far one. He moved up the steps closest to Linda’s body.
He found the two girls on the eighth floor. They were in a kitchen with the outside wall missing. Shanna was on her back on the floor. Christine was holding the hunting knife against Shanna’s freckled neck as she drove inside the Donovan girl again and again.
It was a mockery of sex. The artificial sexual organ was strapped around the waist of the big coat Christine was wearing. She felt nothing through it, so she just kept jamming it between Shanna’s legs with continuous thrusts of her hips. Shanna’s neck was already marked with cuts from the unsteady knife.
Linda had saved her daughter after all. Christine had spent all her homicidal fury on the mother. She was merely expending her sexual frustrations on Shanna.
The redhead saw Harry first. She said his name in a pained hush. Christine stopped at the sound of the voice. She got up slowly and turned around. Harry was never so sickened. He futilely wished that Gerrold was still alive so he could torture him for as long as he had tortured the brunette.
Christine looked through Harry at first, then she recognized him and smiled. “So you’ve come,” she said. She opened her arms and walked toward him.
Then she realized that she was not in her apartment. She looked around the room in bewilderment. Then she looked down at the blood-streaked dildo tied between her legs. She saw the stained knife in her hand. She looked back at Shanna, who was crying in a fetal position while a thin stream of blood ran across her thigh. That’s all it took. Gerrold’s mental blocks were weaker than the doctor had thought.
Christine’s mouth opened. She moved back, away from both Harry and Shanna. Her face tried for an expression, but she couldn’t find one. The disorientation had devastated all the Gerrold-built blocks. Suddenly, in her mind, the fantasy became reality again. The movie she had acted in for Director Gerrold was her real life. She had tor
tured. She had murdered. She had raped.
Her face was the most tragic Harry had ever seen. The beauty that had been there was ravaged, ruined, razed away.
“Kill me,” she begged.
Harry raised the Magnum.
He had only killed people in self-defense or people who deserved it. The problem was did Christine deserve it? She had done it, but she was not to blame. The murder was inside her, but someone had brought out that murder that is inside everyone.
Harry hesitated still. Collins came rushing into the room, his gun out.
“No!” Harry shouted. “Get out! I don’t want you here. I don’t want you anywhere near Shanna again. I don’t want to see you or hear about you. Get out and get the rest of the men.”
The black detective saw that Shanna was still alive, so he did what he was told.
Harry and Christine faced each other for a few moments longer. Both were desperately looking for a way out. She came up with the solution first.
“Kill me,” she said, “or I’ll kill this girl.” She said it softly, imploringly. She said it with peaceful conviction.
Harry pulled the trigger. Christine’s body was thrown back and out the open wall. There was no scream as she fell. She had no lungs left to scream with. She landed ten feet from Linda’s body.
Shanna got up and ran to Harry’s arms. She shook silently in his embrace. Harry looked out at the sunset.
He never knew if Collins tried to see Shanna again. All he knew is that Collins never saw him again. He never knew whether Peter and Shanna got together again. He never knew what kind of funeral Linda had.
Dirty Harry Callahan left Boston the next morning and never went back.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
DANE HARTMAN 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.