Dirty Harry 09 - The Killing Connection Read Online Free PDF

mud-dark brown.
    In addition, he labored up the cliff-like hill with something dark and chunky between his teeth. Good God, Samuels thought, the dumb dog put me through this hell for a bone. It had smelled the appetizing tid-bit from way off and went right for it like a heat-seeking missile. By God, he’d have the dog’s hide for this.
    Samuels expectantly waited for Oscar to appear before him, his hand already raised. He started in on him verbally the moment his head poked up above the hill’s lip,
    “Why, you miserable little . . .” He bent down to deliver the first slap when he froze.
    Once out of the sliding muck, the rain began to wash the mud away from both the dog and what it held in its teeth. As Samuels watched, the brown, gritty coating slid away to reveal a familiar bone structure.
    Oscar had a skull in his teeth. A skull minus the jaw bone and bottom teeth. A skull with pieces of flesh, muscle and hair still stuck to it. A human skull.

C H A P T E R

T h r e e
    I nspector Harry Callahan of the San Francisco Homicide Department didn’t like standing in torrential rain any more than Trevor Samuels did. But at least he was doing a job—his job, the kind of thing he knew how to do best.
    At times like this, however, he couldn’t help thinking that maybe he could learn another trade just as well, real fast. While it was always a great pleasure to get a piece of murdering scum off the street, it was never as easy as simply walking up and politely requesting it to leave the road right away. Harry had never met a murdering piece of scum who responded by saying, “Sure, why didn’t you ask sooner?”
    No, they didn’t get to be considered murdering scum by being nice and Callahan didn’t get the nickname “Dirty Harry” by being polite. He got it by being relentless, determined, and by leaving as little to the imagination as possible. When Harry waded into the fray, one could be sure of one thing. The fray was going to be faced with one big hunk of well-armed policeman who carried enough firepower to put down a Third World revolution.
    Take the Brown Bender investigation for example. The hulking, impeccably tailored black man had been spotted coming into town by Bill MacKenzie, the ex-cop who now ran the burger concession out at the airport. And even MacKenzie knew—especially MacKenzie—that when the Bender hit town, someone’s number was definitely up.
    The hamburger man specialized in chili and bloodcurdling stories; both strong enough to make your hair and your stomach roll over and play dead. In his repetoire of appetite suppressing yarns were several tales of gruesome woe that were attributed to the skills of master hitman Mister Brown Bender. Nothing could be proved, of course—Bender was too big and too slick, but the various arrests and trials had taken their monetary toll. He was now in need of some fast bread.
    And when somebody like the Bender needed cash fast, he might be setting himself up for a first mistake. So, before the big man got his luggage, MacKenzie had already called inspector number seventy-one, who collected his fat Irish partner, and was already filibustering his lieutenant for some immediate surveillance duty. So Harry Callahan and Patrick “Fatso” Devlin found themselves on the trail of Brown Bender.
    Up until then, Bender had prided himself at being able to shake any tail with his street-smart senses, but he hadn’t knocked thick heads with Harry before. Callahan wasn’t the kind to depend on tried and true methods as taught in the Police Academy. He let experience show the way.
    Having finally tracked the black hitman to his hotel—the Commodore International on Sutter Street—Callahan got some bugging equipment from the neighborhood electronics dealer, Sid Kleinman, and installed it while Bender was out and Devlin was eating lunch. That was why Paddy was called “Fatso” and Harry was called “Dirty.”
    “You can’t use anything you hear in a court of