Dawn Patrol

102

Tammy Roddick is stone.

That's what Johnny Banzai thinks.

“Angela had your credit cards,” he says. “Why?”

Tammy shrugs.

“Did you give them to her?”

She stares at the wall.

“Or did you check into the motel with her?” Johnny asks.

She checks her fingernails.

The interview room is nice. Small but clean, with the walls painted in a soothing light yellow. A metal table and two metal chairs. The classic one-way mirror. A video camera with microphone bolted to the ceiling.

So, as much as Harrington would like to bust into the room, call her a stupid fucking twat, and bounce her off the walls, he can't do it without making a guest appearance on America's Worst Police Videos. All he can do is watch, through a swollen eye, as Johnny takes another tack.

“Hey, Tammy,” Johnny says, “you saw her get killed, didn't you? You were there. You got away. You could give us the guy who did it.”

She finds an interesting stain on the table, wets her finger, and rubs it out.

“That's the good-parts version,” Johnny says. “You want to hear the bad version?”

She goes back to the shrug.

“The bad version,” Johnny says, “is that you set her up. You both saw Danny set the fire, but you made a deal and she wouldn't, so you got her in that room to be killed. Try to follow along here, Tammy, because I'm presenting you with a very important choice. It's a one-time offer. It goes off the table in five seconds, but right now you get to choose which you want to be-witness or suspect. We're talking first-degree homicide, premeditated, and I'll bet I can get ‘special circumstances’ tossed in. So you'd be looking at… I don't know. Let me get my calculator.”

“I want a lawyer,” Tammy says.

Which is some sort of progress, Johnny thinks. At least we've gone verbal now. The problem is, she's verbalized the magic words that will stop the interview.

“Are you sure about that?” Johnny says, playing the standard card because he's not holding any better ones. “Because once you ask for a lawyer, you choose suspect.”

“Twice,” she says.

“Excuse me?”

“This is twice I'm asking for a lawyer,” she says.

Johnny pushes his luck. “Who was the kid, Tammy?”

“What kid? I want a lawyer.”

“The kid in the room with Angela, a little girl, pink toothbrush?”

“I don't know. I want a lawyer.”

But she knows. Johnny sees it in her eyes. Dead as stone until he mentioned the kid, and then there was something in there.

Fear.

You're a cop for more than a few weeks, you know fear when you see it. He leans over the table and says real quietly, “For the kid's sake, Tammy, tell me the truth. I can help. Let me help you. Let me help her. ”

She's at the tipping point.

Again, he knows it when he sees it. She could go either way. She's going toward Johnny's when There's a commotion in the hall.

“I'm her attorney! I demand access!”

“Get out of here,” Harrington says.

“Has she asked for a lawyer? She has, hasn't she?”

Tammy sets her jaw and looks at the ceiling. Johnny gets up, opens the door, and sees Todd the Rod standing in the hallway. The lawyer looks over his shoulder at Tammy.

“It's okay now,” he says. “I'm here. Not… one… more.. . word.”

He has her out of there in thirty minutes.