Dirty Harry 01 - Duel For Cannons Read Online Free PDF Page A

particularly offensive slug. “You’re crazy,” he told him flatly.
    “Harry,” Williamson interceded, “Tucker was under a lot of pressure. Dotty herself corroborated this. He was getting old. He was near retirement time. And everybody in the park agreed that he started shooting. We have a dozen eyewitnesses who saw him shoot that tree and wave his gun around.”
    “Yeah,” echoed Baker, “the ballistic boys have already collected lead from everywhere. All the shells were .44 specials.” Suddenly Baker’s face became the picture of innocence. “Like the gun you use,” he continued sweetly “You didn’t happen to be in the area, did you, Callahan?”
    “That’s enough!” Williamson snapped. “I’m sorry, Harry, but it looks real bad. At the very least Tucker was breaking the law by carrying his weapon over state lines. That’s a bad sign.”
    “Come on, Fritz,” Harry growled. “No good cop leaves his piece behind.”
    “The law says—” Baker began.
    “The law says Boris Tucker shot two kids and killed himself,” Harry interrupted. “The law says a lot of stupid things.”
    “Yeah, the law says you’re also out of your jurisdiction, Stilt!” Baker yelled. “So get lost!”
    “Shut up, Sergeant!” Williamson barked. “Get back to Mrs. Tucker and see that she’s all right.”
    Baker clamped his mouth shut, looked to the lieutenant and then to Harry, then abruptly turned heel and walked away.
    “That guy doesn’t need a leash,” Harry noted, “he needs a muzzle.”
    “Come on, Harry,” Williamson complained. “It’s tough enough already.”
    “Yeah,” Harry muttered. “Can I look upstairs, Fritz?”
    “Sure, Harry, sure. Our guys have gone over it already. Go ahead.”
    Harry Callahan wearily marched up the back steps of the Funhouse. He felt the comforting weight of his own .44 Magnum against his side, while thinking about the individuality of each weapon. A bullet fired from his gun would look entirely different from the same sort of round fired from Tucker’s Bulldog. But only under a microscope. And the way the Fullerton force was playing it, Harry doubted the investigation would go that far.
    An aging cop under a lot of pressure goes beserk, then kills himself. It’s happened before. Neat and tidy. Only Harry knew Tucker didn’t do it. He was the kind of man who might kill himself all right, but he wouldn’t have taken anybody with him.
    Harry stopped in front of the third floor door with the ragged hole in it. Shot from the outside, Harry realized. He put his hand on the doorknob, then took it off again. Instead of walking through to the Hall of Mirrors, Harry kneeled down on the metal staircase. He looked carefully at the steel slats. Suddenly he rose and checked the wall behind him. It was flat, unscarred by holes.
    Starting from the wall, Harry traced the length of each steel slat with his eyes. He had traced six when he found what he was looking for. Wedged in between two of the flat metal lengths was a squashed slug. It was the bullet that had punched the hole in the wooden door. Its velocity must have been slowed down enough by that so the lead didn’t sink into the wall but got caught by the metal. And it wouldn’t have been found if someone wasn’t looking specifically for it.
    Harry slipped the slug into his jacket pocket and went to check the Hall of Mirrors. The place, not surprisingly, was a wreck. Most of the mirrors were destroyed so that the hall was made up of a maze of bullet-ridden Plexiglas sheets. Harry walked amid them, looking at his shoes. Halfway around the right side, he saw something amid the shattered mirror shards. He reached down and picked it up. It was a button. A square, light-green button.
    He checked out the rest of the area. He found eleven cents worth of change, two cigarette stubs, and six entry ticket stubs Harry kept the change and the tickets. They joined the slug and the button in his pocket. Then he retraced his steps and