Read Online Dirty Harry 06 - City of Blood by Dane Hartman - Free Book Online Page A

into looked to be close to sixty, but a prematurely aged sixty. A beard straggled gray and limp from his chin, his eyes seemed rheumy, unfocused, his cheeks were ruddy as though from years and years of alcohol consumption, his lips were gray and chapped, his brow was gnarled. To complete the effect, he wore a hairpiece that sprawled wildly, tangled and dirty, on his scalp, sending loose strands over his ears where already graying tufts stuck out.
    And his walk had altered; he shambled, a bit hunched over, dragging one leg slightly behind the other as though he’d never quite recovered from an old wound in that limb. Saying nothing, he extracted a pack of cigarettes from his shirt pocket, dug out the last remaining cigarette, which was bent in the middle, and parked it between his lips. No sooner had he managed to light it than he started a dreadful hacking cough that persisted long enough to nearly double him up.
    Harry watched all this with astonishment. The cough itself was incredible. He nearly believed that the real-life Owens was suffering from some terrible bronchial disorder, TB maybe. But no, suddenly Owens stopped his coughing, smiling broadly under his unruly mustache. “Well, what do you think?”
    Harry shook his head in wonder. “I’m impressed.”
    Mary Beth stood alongside Owens, proud at how well he had mastered the art of deception.
    “You should see me when I play the Creature from the Black Lagoon.”
    “This will do fine. Jesus, you make a better bum than the bums do themselves.”
    “Comes with practice,” Owens laughed, consulting his watch, a Seiko well hidden under his shirtsleeve, then checking his .38 which was tucked safely out of sight beneath the waistband of his coveralls. “Everything where it should be,” he declared.
    Mary Beth kissed him—on the cheek so that she would not ruin the lipstick he’d employed to make his lips look so pallid. “You take good care of him, you hear,” she told Harry.
    “I certainly will do my best.”
    “And any time you feel like a home cooked meal, you know where to come.”
    “You don’t know what you’re saying,” Harry told her, “you’ll never see the end of me.”

C H A P T E R

F o u r
    I n the past five and a half months the Mission Street Knifer had struck at several locations in the vicinity of the Greyhound Bus Station, on Market and Seventh, on Sixth and Mission, on Fourth, proximate to the Santa Fe and Western Pacific Depot, on the corner of Fulton, and farther south on Howard. The last time he had attacked was the fourth of October at quarter past two in the morning. His victim had been an elderly black of indeterminate age; he could have been anywhere from sixty to eighty-five. He was evidently sleeping on a bench inside the Greyhound terminal itself. The Knifer ended his life quickly enough, gouging out his throat immediately below the Adam’s apple, but in keeping with his notorious reputation, he had not stopped there but had proceeded to slash open the man’s chest possibly with the intention of tearing out the heart—a favorite habit of his—but had failed to do this, perhaps because he feared interruption. The results had been messy enough regardless, and the supervisory staff of the terminal was thankful that if this sort of mayhem had had to occur it was done at an hour when no one else was around to suffer the spectacle or, worse, the knife thrusts of the psychopath who regularly stalked those who were most helpless and beaten down.
    The Mission Street Knifer was talented, if that’s the word for it. He left no clues behind. Moreover, the victims he chose, even if they survived his deadly assaults, were often drunks, people whose minds were so generally befuddled or riddled with holes that they made for the most unreliable witnesses conceivable.
    With nothing to go on, lacking first-person reports of what their knifer might possibly look like, Harry had no special strategy to implement in apprehending him. He