Dirty Harry 06 - City of Blood (12 page)

Owens, however, had no intention of waiting around for that. He maintained a steady pace backward so that the distance between the two of them never grew too small. “Stop right there or I’ll fire again,” he declared.

But Death kept coming. Owens did as he promised, firing into what he thought must be the man’s stomach. Death grunted, but that was all. His momentum was not hampered the least bit. And again Owens fired and again.

At least Owens had the satisfaction of seeing that his bullets had hit their mark each time, for now there were four patches of blood on the folds of the black robe, two at chest level, one in the abdomen, the last in the thigh. Soon the blood stains began to merge until half the front of Death was covered. It looked as though someone had painted him with crimson paint just to contrast with the black background.

Owens was astonished, and not a little horrified, to see that though he’d been successful in hitting the man, he had failed to bring him down. Death again lunged, bringing down his instrument hard, but this time Owens was more agile and leaped out of its way altogether, firing once more, this time in the direction of the head. But because of his sudden movement the trajectory the bullet took brought it into the upper chest. Again Death emitted a sound that Owens construed to be a cry of pain, but that was all. The blood from this, the highest wound on his body, trickled slowly down his robe.

But he kept right on coming.

There would be no time to insert another clip into his gun, Owens realized, and unless the cumulative effect from these five wounds soon took hold and Death collapsed, he might not escape after all.

Moreover, the injury he’d sustained was agonizing him, though it probably wasn’t very serious. While Death might be able to endure so much pain and loss of blood, he doubted that he could.

He began to run, but still backward because he did not want to risk turning away from his assailant. But running backward in the dark is no easy thing to do. Suddenly, Owens stumbled over a branch that had broken off from a tree directly overhead. Though he struggled to regain his balance, it wasn’t possible, and he fell awkwardly, sprawling in a plot of ivy. For a moment his gun loosened from his hand, but he was able to keep hold of it finally, not that it necessarily was going to do him very much good. For Death, more hideous than ever with blood dripping off him, was now looming over him, his scythe raised high before he brought it down on Owens.

Owens fired again, hitting him this time in the face, but while a part of the skeletal mask fell away, replaced by a big bloody hole, it was hardly the fatal wound Owens had hoped it would be. He realized that the bullet had probably penetrated the cheek, gone in one side and right out the other. When Death turned his head and Owens could glimpse the whole of it he saw that he was correct in his assessment: the bloody hole on one side of the mask was matched by a corresponding hole on the other.

This only caused this creature to appear more grotesque than before. What was he dealing with here, Superman? Owens wondered, rolling away from the scythe as it came down, slicing out a swath of ivy in the process.

But his reprieve was sure to be temporary. Death still commanded all the power in this situation. Could be he lacked all feeling, which was why none of the pain registered. Whatever explanation there was, it scarcely mattered to Owens who strained to get himself off the ground.

Death was slowing down somewhat, not much but enough so that when he swung again, the scythe failed to hit Owens and only struck the sole of his shoe as he scrambled to get up. A slice of the sole went flying into the air.

All at once Death, frustrated in his efforts to dispose of Owens, caught up with him and clasping him by the shoulders threw him back down to the ground. The pain that resulted from the gloved hand wrapped about his slashed shoulder more than the force his assailant applied was what disabled Owens.

Now it seemed it was all over, that he had come to the end, and that he now had no choice but to resign himself to his fate.

C H A P T E R
E i g h t

H
arry, peering into the distance, beheld two figures, one a bloody spectacle clad in some kind of black garment, the other a blur of cloth and flesh supine on the ground. Of one thing he was certain—the man in the black robe was readying to kill his victim with a scythe.

It must be Owens, he reasoned. Hearing gunshots, he’d rushed as fast as he could in their direction. Now, without taking the trouble to aim carefully, there being no time, he fired his .44. He did not bring down the black-robed monster—for Harry recognized even from this distance that the size of this man was incredible—but he did distract him from his objective.

He fired again just as the black-robed figure turned to discover where this latest irritation was coming from. What astonished Harry was that this man did not do what anyone else would have done—bolted or ducked and taken cover. No, he just stood where he was, observing Harry’s progress across the landscape with what might have been mild curiosity.

Then, abandoning Owens, he abruptly broke into a trot, evidently deciding that he would rather take on Harry instead. His speed was surprising. Behind him he left a zigzagging trail of blood on the grass.

For a moment Harry was too stunned to do anything. He could not believe that anyone so bloodied could remain ambulatory. But the fact was that it looked worse than it actually was, for many of the bullets Owens had fired had failed to penetrate to vital organs, and instead had been absorbed by the fat and muscle that lay in the way.

With surprising speed, the scythe-wielding madman was upon Harry, flailing his weapon. Up close, he was a more grotesque sight than from across the field. The whole lower half of his mask was smeared with blood, which bubbled continuously from the slit that allowed his lips to show through.

Harry fired again from a crouch, calmly aiming at the man’s chest. The blast did manage to slow the madman’s momentum, sending him staggering back, his hands clutching at the latest wound. But much to Harry’s astonishment it did not stop him. Redoubling his efforts, with a tenacity that was little short of miraculous, he came again at Harry and, just as Harry fired, whipped the scythe through the air, catching the gun with a sharp whack and with such force that it knocked the .44 out of Harry’s hands.

Still, he had not been quick enough to forestall yet another wound, this time above the heart. He was lurching about like a drunk, barely capable of taking advantage of his triumph in relieving Harry of his weapon. Anger, sheer overwhelming anger, was all that was fueling him now. That and a determination to take somebody with him before he succumbed to all these wounds, which inevitably he would.

The .44 hadn’t flown very far. Harry could glimpse it out of the corner of his eye: a gleaming object a yard or so over to his right. But there was no way he could retrieve it without risking his life.

So instead he assumed the stance of a quarterback and rammed right into the frenzied creature, something he obviously had not expected, for he tumbled over onto the ground, still gripping his scythe but finding it a clumsy thing to use effectively from such an awkward posture.

Nonetheless, Harry could feel its sting as the madman attempted to stab him with it. The point of it, however, never dug more than a fraction of an inch into Harry’s skin since the man had not enough purchase to deliver any reasonably fatal blow.

Worse than the shots of pain that the tip of the scythe produced was the smell of blood that clung to every inch of the man. Harry was half-bathed in it, too, and he imagined that by now his antagonist probably had more blood outside him than in.

The madman clutched hold of him, as in an embrace, and it was difficult for Harry to extricate himself. Then, with a surge of energy, the madman somehow managed to roll over to his side, and Harry lost his advantage. With an arduous effort that betrayed his draining energy and blood, the madman raised himself to a vertical position. As he did he sustained two rounds in his back—both from Owens, who came racing in their direction, a new clip in his Smith and Wesson.

The first round caught Death in the hollow between the shoulder blades. The second lodged higher up in the neck, simultaneously severing the spinal cord and eliminating all sensation in his body—not that he seemed to have much to begin with.

These wounds appeared to have made some impact—the man could no longer move. His knees buckled and threatened to give way, but, maybe out of sheer obstinacy, he remained standing, swaying back and forth.

Harry, just now rising from his prone position, seized hold of Death’s hand, tearing the scythe from his loosened fingers. Death hadn’t the strength to resist any longer. Then Harry struck out with the scythe that his assailant would have preferred to impale him with, embedding it to halfway down the blade in the monster’s chest, enough so that the tip of the instrument protruded out his back, which meant that a prodigious amount of flesh, muscle, fat, and inner organs had had to be gone through.

Death sagged, his legs finally did give way, but not before Owens, not more than six feet away, discharged his .356 straight into his head from the back. There was not enough tissue to protect the skull, and the rounds traveled through it without meeting much resistance, shattering the bone, opening up the brain, tearing it into bloody pulp-like shreds before emerging out through the face. All at once there was no longer anything to be seen of the mask, for an abundance of blood and gray matter and bone fragments came pouring out, obscuring what the bullets had not obliterated.

Death collapsed completely, falling on the scythe so that he pushed even more of the blade through his ravaged body. He didn’t fall all the way, but rather remained partly suspended on it, just a few inches above the ground. Weirdly, he wasn’t completely dead, though he was about as close as you could get without being there. Or maybe death just hadn’t registered in some of the extremities because for a few moments a limb would twitch, a hand would reach tentatively out, then drop back again.

And then there was no more motion. Blood dripped noisily into the viscous pool that had already formed.

Death was at last truly dead.

For several seconds neither Harry nor Owens exchanged a word. What, after all, could they say?

Such was the awesomeness of this experience that both men had temporarily forgotten about their pain. Owens, who’d staunched the bleeding of one of his assailants the night before, now had to do the same for himself, tying a shred of coat over his shoulder which continued to bleed, though less profusely. The back of Harry’s jacket had been ripped in several spots, and here and there blood could be seen in those places where the scythe had cut into the skin.

At last Owens spoke, “I don’t know as to whether I’ve ever seen anything like this. I didn’t think the son of a bitch was going to die. One out of a million people could take what he did and still be walking.”

“Try one out of a billion. This must have been what it was like bringing down Rasputin.” Rasputin’s assassins had variously tried to poison him, shoot him, drown him and leave him to die of exposure—all in the course of the same night. He just hadn’t wanted to go out easily.

Now Harry reached forward and, ignoring the blood and disgorged tissue as best he could, drew away what was left of the mask. But that didn’t do much good at all. There was so little remaining of the face that they would never know what he looked like.

“You think this is the Mission Street Knifer?” Owens asked.

“I don’t know about that, but he’s the leading contender for the role. Whatever he is, or was, the world’s better off now that he’s not around.”

“Amen,” said Owens with the reverence of a man who has witnessed a miracle. A perverse and horrible miracle but a miracle all the same.

C H A P T E R
N i n e

T
he establishment that Teddy was taking Martha to was located on Folsom. Though it was open twenty-four hours a day and did not require any reservations, non-members were admitted only on Tuesday and Sunday evenings. This qualification made no difference to Teddy who was a dues-paying member and was, in any case, well known by the management from previous visits.

Friday nights had become known in this place as “hot and nasty nights,” but even though it was still Thursday much of that hotness and nastiness was already present. Of course, the fact that it was Halloween occasioned a certain libertine spirit in excess of the usual.

And what went on here was practically anything. In front, there was a large public area where several people were immersed in a hot tub equipped like most hot tubs in town with a Jacuzzi. To the rear there were any number of saunas, but the hot tubs and saunas were not what one came here for.

The facilities were advertised as the most extensive in the city, though no doubt other entrepreneurs were busy running around trying to establish clubs more elaborate still. At any rate, an explorer, who was single-minded enough not to get distracted before completing his odyssey (and there was plenty to get distracted by), would also find a pinball room, with some of the latest video games installed, a snack bar, a porno-movie lounge, and for those with a longing for a good roast beef sandwich between excitements, even a delicatessen.

But again, all these features were just so much icing on the proverbial cake, for in addition to such public rooms there were thirty-six private rooms and three private “party” areas. And that was where the true business of the club went on. Whatever one’s proclivity and taste, whether one was straight or gay or merely straddling the fence, one was almost certain to find someone suitable to provide satisfaction, at least for the duration of an hour, an hour being as long as you could rent a room.

As soon as Martha and Teddy entered the club, Martha understood at once just what kind of place it was. Because she had spent most of her time in the L.A. area, she had scant knowledge of San Francisco’s nightspots, allowing Teddy and Jim and other members of the cast and crew to escort her around town. So she had no idea in advance of what she was getting into, and while she did not regard herself as the least bit prudish, she was not at all sure she wished to indulge herself in the public eye.