Dawn Patrol

20

Boone hustles Petra into the van.

The thing starts up first try and he drives for two blocks before he pulls over and asks, “What?”

“That's not Tammy Roddick,” Petra repeats.

“Are you sure?”

“Yes, I'm sure,” she says. “I interviewed her half a dozen times, for God's sake.”

“Okay.”

“And I didn't have to vomit,” she says. “I was just trying to get you away from the police officers so I could tell you.”

“Sorry, I didn't mean to imply that you were a flesh-and-blood human being,” he says. But she does look paler, if that's possible. “Look, you want my advice?”

“No.”

“We should go back right now and tell them they've got a wrong ID,” Boone says. “You're an officer of the court, and if you withhold information that's material to the investigation of an unattended death-”

“Hello?” she says, waving her hand. “ I'mthe attorney? Stanford Law? Top of my class?”

“And if I withhold information, they could yank my license.”

“Then forget I told you,” she says. “Look, I'll swear that I didn't tell you, all right?”

“How did you do in ethics class?” Boone asks.

“An A, ” she says. Like, What else?

“What, did you cheat on the final?”

“When did you become such a Goody Two-sandals?” she asks. “I thought you were so laid-back.”

“I need my PI license to eke out a meager living,” Boone says, realizing as it comes out of his mouth that it makes him sound totally lame. The rules were not made to be broken, but they were made to be bent, and any PI who doesn't bend them into pretzels isn't going to be in business for long.

Besides, Boone thinks, there's a solid reason for not telling the SDPD that the dead woman at the Crest Motel isn't Tammy Roddick. The deceased checked into the motel, pretending for some reason to be Tammy. It's possible that someone bought the act and killed her because of it. So the real Tammy, out there somewhere, is safe until the truth gets out.

The problem is to find her before the killer realizes his mistake.

Petra is saying something about “… could put her in danger.”

“I'm there already,” Boone says.

Which, to his surprise, shuts her up.

Must be the shock, he thinks. Seeing as how he's ahead of her in the wave, he decides to ride it out. “Then the first step is to find out, if the dead woman isn't Tammy-”

“She isn't.”

“I got that,” Boone says, thinking, Well, it was nice while it lasted. Then: “Who was she?”

“I don't know.”

Boone shakes his head to make sure he heard her say that she didn't know something, then he says, “We'd better find out.”

“How are we going to do that?”

“ We'renot,” Boone says. “ Iam.”

Because Boone knows:

You want to find out about physics, you go to Stephen Hawking; you want to learn about basketball, you go to Phil Jackson; you want to know about women who take their clothes off for a living, you go to