Dirty Harry 06 - City of Blood Read Online Free Page A

women, never beheaded anybody.”
    Bressler did not seem disconcerted by this. He had expected Harry to raise the point. “What you’re saying is on the one hand, we have a middle-class, maybe upper-class, mutilator who goes in big for chopping hands and heads off. Now our lower-class mutilator, he goes in big for hearts and genitals. A difference in class, and I suppose you’d say a difference in anatomical preference. People don’t worry about your lower-class mutilator, no sex appeal to offing winos and junkies nodded out by the tracks. Pretty girls aren’t likely to be his victims. Well, suppose our demented friend just decided to confuse the issue, change his M.O.?”
    “I don’t buy it,” Harry said simply. “There are two different people involved.”
    Bressler sighed. As much as he wished he could disagree with Harry he recognized that only by a great deal of tortured reasoning could one arrive at the conclusion that the Mission Street Knifer was the same man as the one who had struck at the Tocador.
    “Yeah, well, to tell you the truth, I don’t buy it either. But you’re going to find me the Mission Street Knifer anyhow because that’s the only option I’ve got right now. Otherwise what do I have? Two stiffs, no prints, no dental plates, fake I.D.s. And no murder weapon, no witnesses, no nothing. About all we’ve really got is some shreds of clothing the stiffs were wearing. People expect action, I’m going to give them action.”
    This sounded like sheer madness to Harry. “You’ve already got half a dozen men on the Knifer, Collins and Bonfiglio, what good is adding me going to do?”
    “Just bring me the Knifer, Harry. Let me worry about the assignments.” Bressler stepped to the door, opened it, and called out, “Would you show Officer Owens in please?”
    What was this about? Harry sat gloomily, waiting to see who this Owens was and what part Bressler intended him to play in this affair. He doubted very much he’d care for it, no matter what it was.
    Drake Owens looked like an actor, not a lead actor, not somebody whose name you’d see up on a marquee, but more like a character actor, the handsome, perennially boyish type who’s always holding his hat in his hands in Westerns, saying, “Yes ma’am,” almost apologetically because he is so attractive to women. He was slender, of solid build but not strapping. His hair was an unruly mop of dirty blondness, his eyes were as blue as San Francisco Bay on the sunniest of days. He gave Harry a polite, almost sheepish smile as if to say, I don’t know what I’m doing here either, don’t blame me for any of this.
    “Harry, Drake Owens.”
    “Pleased to meet you, I’ve heard a great deal about you,” Owens said.
    “Not much of it good, I suppose.”
    “You said it, not me,” Bressler interjected.
    “Oh, I don’t know about that,” said Owens, whose voice was as smooth and calming as his appearance. “I’ve seen you at the shooting range. I’ve watched what you can do with a .44.”
    “I’d like to see what he could do with a mind,” Bressler said, apparently incapable of resisting the dig. “Not that he doesn’t have one understand, it’s just that he seems only occasionally inclined to use it. Stay, Harry, I’m not finished.” So as not to allow Harry a chance to argue he continued, “Officer Owens will be your partner on this case. That is, he will aid you in capturing the Mission Street Knifer.”
    “Do you know what has happened to my partners?” Harry was speaking to Owens now, hoping to discourage him from undertaking this assignment.
    Owens matter-of-factly answered: “Gerrard Fanducci, deceased. Deitzick, wounded. Gonsales, wounded. Smith, deceased. DiGeorgio, wounded. Moore, deceased.”
    Harry regarded him with astonishment. Not only had he known it all, but he’d gotten the names, the order, and their fates precisely. “And you still want to work with me?”
    “I try not to go by precedent. Human beings