Read Dirty Harry 07 - Massacre at Russian River for Free Online

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