Dirty Harry 11 - Death in the Air by Dane Hartman

met at the hospital today.”
    After a long pause, the door buzzer sounded, and he was let in. He walked up the long and winding carpeted staircase, to find Patterson waiting for him in the doorway of her apartment. Hers was the second of only two apartments on that floor.
    D. Patterson was wearing faded jeans and a V-necked sweater. There was no shirt under the sweater, and only thick socks on her feet. Harry was extremely impressed with his own taste. Had she not been part of the case, he would have faked evidence to make her a part.
    “Inspector Callahan?” she said skeptically. “I wasn’t expecting to see you again.”
    “Our talk was interrupted,” Harry reminded her.
    “Even so,” she countered, “I thought you might at least wait until business hours.”
    “We couldn’t find your place of business,” Harry said honestly. As much as DiGeorgio had tried, he had come up with zilch. “Besides, I thought it would be best if we talked when I wasn’t smelling of bad hooch.”
    “Yes,” she agreed, taking in the brown wool slacks, maroon sweater, and tweed jacket he had changed into after waking. “That’s much better. Won’t you come in, Inspector?”
    “Don’t mind if I do,” Harry answered, following her lead.
    The apartment immediately opened up on a combination living and dining room with a three-paned bay window across the far wall. Harry could see three more doors to his left. He assumed one led to a kitchen, the next to the lav, and the last to a bedroom.
    The living room proper was handsomely appointed, with thick Oriental rugs on the shiny hardwood floor, a decorator couch, a large color television, an impressive stereo system in its own free-standing cabinet, a fine dining room set, and a border of flowering plants hung around the bay window. Whatever Patterson did for a living, she made more than the average secretary or teacher.
    “Make yourself at home, Inspector,” she said breezily, heading for the far-left door. “Can I get you anything? Coffee? Tea?”
    “No thanks,” Harry said, standing amid the tasteful splendor of her place. “But it won’t be easy for me to make myself at home. What do you do for a living? Rob banks?”
    There was silence from where Harry had correctly guessed the kitchen to be, until Patterson replied with sweet suspicion. “Is that your clever way of sugarcoating a third degree, Inspector?”
    “Not especially clever,” Harry countered, sitting down on the beige couch. “What do you do for a living, Ms. Patterson?”
    Patterson laughed as she came out of the kitchen with a large, steaming mug of coffee. “Why, ‘Ms.’, is it?” she exclaimed. “You must be one of these new liberated policemen, Inspector.” She sat at the head of the dining table on the other side of the television. She looked at him with calculating but inviting eyes from over the cup’s rim as she sipped.
    Harry sighed and leaned forward. “I’m investigating the death of a high-school girl,” he said plainly. “Now, she might have fallen on the subway tracks, or she might have been pushed. Now, you might be adjusting to the shock of her death, or you might be trying to avoid answering my questions. So, again. What do you do for a living?”
    She didn’t have a chance to answer.
    Harry was considering standing up and walking toward her, but he decided against it. That decision saved his life. It was someone’s bad aim that saved hers.
    Callahan saw the glint and heard the click at the same time. He could have ignored one or the other, but not both at the same time. His Magnum was magically out of its holster and in his already pointing hand when one of the panes of the bay window cracked, and Patterson’s coffee mug shattered into dozens of pieces.

C H A P T E R

S i x
    T he Magnum .44 roared with deadly rage.
    The center pane of the bay window exploded outward, revealing what the blinding reflection of the living-room lights had covered before. There was a man in a