Dirty Harry 07 - Massacre at Russian River (5 page)

But there was something he could do for Turk, who lay prostrate across the shattered floor of the downed craft. Aside from blood smearing his face, no other external injuries were in evidence. But it was possible that something vital had come apart inside. And it was also possible that Turk was suffering from shock.

Harry applied what strength remained to him to pull the narcotics officer out of the helicopter. Turk wouldn’t move on his own. Nor could Harry communicate with him. Turk’s eyes were open, his mouth seemed to move in mimicry of speech, but he gave no indication that he had any idea of what his predicament was.

Harry hoisted him erect and maintained him that way with his arm as he steered him away from the helicopter. Watching them both was the trapped detective from San Jose. His agonized scream followed them like a curse.

The scream was lost in a roar of flames that suddenly shot into the sky from which the helicopter had just come. No more than five seconds passed before the fuel was ignited. The explosion had been a dress rehearsal for the apocalypse. It sounded very much as though the world had come to an end, this part of the world anyhow. Fiery shards of metal were jettisoned over the landscape. They came raining down on the forest, carrying the fire with them.

The blast put the air into motion, shock waves rode out into the woods and underbrush. Flaming debris kept coming out of the sky as though there were no end to it. Harry and Turk remained flattened out on the moss-strewn earth, waiting for the cataclysm to come to an end.

It did finally. Harry got up again. To his surprise, Turk showed signs of life. He no longer appeared to require Harry’s aid. Using the trunk of a nearby pine to prop himself up, he brushed his trousers. But the dirt and pine needles and the blood, his own and other people’s, wouldn’t come off. His expression was one of great disgust. He was not a man to take indignities lightly, particularly when it meant getting shot down out of the sky.

Harry still couldn’t decide how much pain he was suffering, and just what all this pain represented. He had an enormous headache and a feeling that something was about to become unplugged in his stomach and open up real soon. His legs harbored more pain, though only when he walked.

“Your tour has been a real education,” he said to Turk.

Turk grimaced, whether at Harry’s comment or at the pain he himself was feeling. Harry couldn’t say.

“Where do you suppose we are?” Turk was looking around him, studying charred stumps of trees that the Sikorsky’s crash had been responsible for.

“I thought geography was your department.”

“It was from up there,” Turk said ruefully, gesturing to the sky.

They began walking south which, Turk said, was the direction most likely to take them back to Russian River. And in fact, they could hear the river itself, cascading through a gorge below, although they had not gotten to a point where they could actually see it.

It was a difficult trek, made worse because of the two men’s injuries. From time to time, Turk would halt and apologetically explain that he had to rest for a minute. He’d then slump down in whatever convenient place he found and remain there for a while, breathing heavily from his exertions. The blood had ceased flowing from the gash in his head, which was now a raw caking slit across his brow.

“You have any idea who would want to shoot us down?”

Turk shrugged. “Lots of people.”

“But no one in particular?”

Turk didn’t answer directly. All he said was: “As soon as I get back to town I am going to collect as many John Doe warrants that I can lay my hands on and assemble as many men as I can find and I am coming back here, this time to blow everything wide open. Now, you see, I have an excuse. Armed assault like this, the murder of four men, that’s something people can understand. We’re not talking about trafficking in illicit drugs, we’re talking murder.”

“You think an operation of the scale you’re talking about is feasible?”

“Hell, I know it’s feasible. I’ve been yearning to do something like this ever since I came to Russian River. Before today I never had the opportunity.”

Harry sensed that, apart from the terror of being shot out of the sky and the peril to his life, Turk welcomed the incident; it gave him publicity, it gave him his opening.

As Harry started to say something else to the nark, something caught his eye and he raised his head.

Turk noticed the fixity of his gaze. “What is it?” He looked up too. And quickly saw what it was.

Way high up in one of the trees, hung the outstretched body of Henry Beller, his chest speared by a long sharp branch that had stopped his fall.

C H A P T E R
F o u r

“T
hen you don’t look at it the way Turk does?”

Davenport vigorously shook his head. “Not at all. See, the problem with Turk is that he is so fanatic about wiping out the marijuana gardens that he can’t see the forest for the trees. In this case. I mean that literally. He isn’t particularly worried about who in hell shot down the chopper. Just like he told you, he’s searching for a pretext. Now he’s got one. I get the dirty work.” He sighed. “I always get the dirty work.”

Harry and Davenport were walking along Butterworth Street, which trailed off of Van Buren. The houses on this route were shabbier than those in the middle of town, attesting to advanced age and falling real-estate values. Some, however, were being restored, as Davenport was quick to point out. “Refugees from San Francisco and Eugene, places like that, come here, looking for peace and quiet.”

“And dope.”

“Of course, and dope.”

But as the street narrowed and became rutted, less and less evidence of any kind of restoration, civic or private, could be seen. There were more tenements and structures that looked like they’d been fashioned entirely of corrugated tin and cardboard.

“This,” declared Davenport, almost with perverse pride, “is Russian River’s slum.”

The street gave way altogether, becoming something less than a street but not quite a lot in which were clustered several miserable crammed structures. The sun glared harshly off their insubstantial metal roofs.

“And why have you taken me here?” Harry inquired.

“This is where most of our snitches live. I figured that one of them might have an idea who it was that shot down that chopper. You see, there are a great many people who rely on us, they pass us some information, we give them a few bucks, it helps them feed their habits. We know what they’re doing. So does the sheriff’s office. But there’s just too much shit around to try and bust every single one of them. Our jail isn’t that big, in case you hadn’t noticed.”

“What does Turk think of this?”

“Turk’s got his eyes on those hills. He doesn’t give a goddamn about what goes on here in town.”

“I imagine people don’t take kindly to being seen with you even so.”

Those few people Harry had observed in the vicinity in fact did not appear pleased to see either of them encroaching on what they believed was their turf. They had the depleted looks and the pallor of those who have dropped one tab of acid too many along the way.

“Well, ordinarily, that’s the case,” Davenport admitted. “But in something like this, with the helicopter, they know that we’re not fooling around. Four counts of murder, destruction of government property, nobody does that kind of shit unless they’re willing to take on the Feds. These people here, they’re not up to a scam like that.”

“So you’re convinced they’ll cooperate?”

“Convinced? Hell, I’m not convinced of shit, Callahan. But I think there’s a reasonable chance we might pick up a few leads.”

Two days had passed since the Sikorsky was downed over Rain Mountain. Turk was still laid up in the hospital where he was supposed to be undergoing further tests, specifically a CAT scan of the brain to determine whether he had sustained serious injury to his head. The D-Day invasion of marijuana country was going to have to be delayed a bit. Not that Turk wouldn’t abandon his hospital bed if he could, but Wardell Marsh had sent someone to watch him, ostensibly to protect him in the event that those parties interested in his demise struck again. Marsh, of course, didn’t like the way things were developing at all.

Davenport said, “Marsh realizes that as soon as Turk is back to normal, he’ll take the whole case out of his hands and deal with it himself. You watch, he’ll pull it off. It might not be successful, this little blitzkrieg of his, but hell, he’ll make it happen. That’s how Turk is.”

In spite of Davenport’s assessment of the slum dopers’ mood, none of them proved particularly forthcoming. Davenport may have had an inflated idea of his capacity to acquire information.

Nobody knew a thing. They could not imagine who would have been so idiotic as to try to shoot down a helicopter carrying three detectives and a federal narcotics officer, they said. They were fearful of a giant bust in retaliation; accordingly, they were far more interested in obtaining Davenport’s assurance that this wouldn’t happen than in providing him with any useful leads.

They wanted Davenport to think that they could be counted on, however.

“You know me, Frank,” they’d say, “you know how I’ve helped you in the past.”

But Davenport was disheartened. “Either there’s something going on that they truly don’t know about, or else they are too scared to say what they do know.”

As they were proceeding back toward Van Buren, Davenport stopped. He said, “You remember I told you that Turk had a girl?”

“I remember.”

“She doesn’t live so far from here. I was thinking you might go pay her a visit.”

“And what good would that do?”

“I have my reservations about the woman, you understand. Turk thinks the world of her, but there’s no telling how much he’s told her.”

“You’re saying that she might be the leak?”

“Just supposing he mentioned the outing a couple of days ago, maybe in passing? She might have passed word on to certain friends. I’m not saying it’s so. I’m saying maybe. Now for obvious reasons I can’t question her. She’ll only get right back to Turk on it, and it’s my ass. You, you’re from outside, you are working on an ongoing investigation. So what if she bitches to Turk. What’s he going to do? And anyhow, the way I see it you two aren’t exactly the best of friends. Am I right?”

Harry wasn’t certain how much good seeing this woman would do, but he was willing to take a gamble. At the very least his curiosity was peaked. He couldn’t imagine what Turk’s girlfriend looked like. He wasn’t expecting very much.

“What is her name and how do I find her?”

“Her name is Elsie Cranston and she lives right down that street over to your right, fourth house on the left.”

“Anything pertinent I should know about her besides the attraction she exerts on Turk?”

“Well . . . ,” Davenport wasn’t quite sure how to put it. “Well, she does lots of drugs. That seems to be her profession and avocation as it were. I know, it doesn’t make sense, what with Turk being a nark, but there it is. That’s how they met. She was busted once along with several others, released with a fine and a reprimand as I recall. She wasn’t carrying so they didn’t want to press charges against her. But she was consorting with known dealers who were carrying. Turk liked the looks of her. He figured he could straighten her out. You ask me, I honestly think that he believes he’s done just that, straighten her out I mean. But take it from me she’s not straight. I know straight, and she’s not it.”

This case is getting stranger by the minute, thought Harry as he began in the direction of Elsie Cranston’s home, a rambling structure with pink paint and crumbling plaster.

The wooden stairs rattled loudly as Harry ascended them to the capacious porch.

Only a screen door guarded the entrance. Harry knocked. Hearing no response, he opened the screen door and walked in.

“Elsie? Hello?”

There seemed to be a great many rooms, each with furnishings that you might expect to find at a Salvation Army store. He wondered if she lived by herself.

From somewhere in the rear of the house there came the steamy odors of food cooking. There was also the sound of music, which grew louder and more identifiable the farther back Harry went. Linda Rondstadt was belting out her version of “Heatwave.” An old song though not nearly as old as “Viper Mad.”

Her back was turned to him. Obviously, she’d not heard him with the music so loud. She was either putting a pie into the oven or removing it.

Elsie was wearing a man’s checkered shirt and jeans as faded as the walls of the kitchen. Her hair was concealed by a red kerchief. From Harry’s vantage point, by the doorway to the kitchen, there was no way of determining whether her face was as intriguing as her body. But she did move nicely.

Perhaps the intensity of his stare was what alerted her. In any case, she turned, started, then studied Harry long and hard as though she were trying to place him in her mind.

Not beautiful but pretty, and probably not more than twenty-five, not at all what Harry had anticipated. Moreover, her skin had the color and texture that intimated at a life of health and regular hours. No matter what Davenport had said, she did not give one the impression that she relied heavily on drugs. But then Harry was skeptical enough not to dismiss Davenport’s words out of hand.

“Who are you?”

He identified himself, displaying his credentials.

“Ah, you’re one of those,” Elsie said, making it sound like Harry had just emerged from a leper’s colony. “Turk told me they were bringing in cops from the south.” She held out the pie which she’d just finished baking. “Apple-peach, are you interested?”

It struck Harry as odd that she reacted so impassively to his presence.

“I don’t think so.”

“You don’t know what you want,” she said. “I’ll cut you a piece, and you can at least try it. Sit down. I’ll put on some tea. Earl Gray all right with you? Or Thundercloud? Lots of caffeine in Thundercloud so don’t take it if you’re planning on a siesta this afternoon.”

“Just water.”