Dawn Patrol

29

Rain Sweeny was six years old when she disappeared from the front yard of her house.

Just like that.

Gone.

Her mother had been out there with her, heard the phone ring, and went in to answer it. She was only gone a minute, she'd say between sobs at the inevitable press conferences later. A beautiful summer day, a little girl playing out in her yard in a nice middle-class neighborhood in Mira Mesa, and then Tragedy.

It didn't take long for the cops to get a lead on who did it. Russ Rasmussen, a two-time loser with a “short eyes” sheet, was renting a room in a house just down the street. When the detectives went to interview him, he was gone, and the neighbors said that they hadn't seen his green '86 Corolla parked on the street since the afternoon that Rain went missing.

Coincidence, maybe, but no one believes in that kind of coincidence.

An APB went out on Russ Rasmussen.

Boone had been on the force for three years. He loved his job; he loved it. It was just perfect for him-active, physical, something new happening every night. He'd come off his shift and go straight to the beach in time for The Dawn Patrol, then get some breakfast at The Sundowner and go home to his little apartment to grab some sleep.

Then get up and do it all over again.

It was perfection.

He had his job, he had Sunny, and he had the ocean.

Never turn your back on the ocean.

That's what Boone's dad always taught him: Never get relaxed and turn your back on the ocean, because the second you do, that big wave is going to come out of nowhere and smack you down.

A week after Rain Sweeny was kidnapped, Boone was cruising one night with his partner, Steve Harrington, who had just tested out and was headed to the Detective Division. It had been a quiet night, and they were taking a spin down through the east part of the Gaslamp District, over near the warehouses that the tweekers liked to break into, when they spotted a green '86 Corolla parked in an alley.

“Did you see that?” Boone asked Harrington.

“See what?”

Boone pointed it out.

Harrington pulled over to the entrance to the alley and flashed a lamp on the car's license plate.

“Holy shit,” Harrington said.

It was Rasmussen's car.

The man was sound asleep in the front seat.

“I'd have thought he'd be far away by now,” Harrington said.

“Should I call it in?” Boone asked.

“Fuck that,” Harrington said. He got out of the cruiser, pulled his weapon, and approached the car. Boone got out on the passenger side and walked behind him and to the side, covering him. Harrington holstered his weapon, jerked the Corolla door open, and yanked Rasmussen out of the car. Before Rasmussen could wake up and start screaming, Harrington dropped a knee on his neck, twisted his arm behind his back, and cuffed him.

Boone slipped his revolver back into its holster as Harrington hauled Rasmussen to his feet and pushed him against the car. Rasmussen was a big man, over two and a half bills, but Harrington lifted him like he weighed nothing. The cop's adrenaline was screeching.

So was Boone's as he walked back to the cruiser.

“Stay off that fucking radio,” Harrington snapped.

Boone stopped in his tracks.

“Help me get him in the car,” Harrington said.

Boone grabbed one of Rasmussen's elbows and helped Harrington drag him to the black-and-white, then held Rasmussen's head down as Harrington pushed him into the seat. Harrington slammed the door shut and looked at Boone.

“What?” Harrington asked.

“Nothing,” Boone said. “Let's just get him to the house.”

“We're not going to the house.”

“The orders are-”

“Yeah, I know what the orders are,” Harrington said. “And I know what the orders mean. The orders mean under no circumstances do you bring him in until he's told you what he did with the girl.”

“I don't know, Steve.”

“I do,” Harrington said. “Look, Boone, if we take him to the house, he'll lawyer up and we'll never find out where that little girl is.”

“So-”

“So we take him down to the water,” Harrington said. “We hold his head under until he decides to tell us what he did with the girl. No bruises, no marks, no nothing.”

“You can't just torture a man.”

“Maybe you can't,” Harrington said. “I can. Watch me.”

“Jesus, Steve.”

“Jesus nothing, Boone,” Harrington said. “What if the girl is still alive? What if the sick fuck has her buried somewhere and the air is running out? You really want to wait to go through ‘the process,’ Boone? I don't think the kid has the time for your moral scruples. Now get in the fucking car; we're going to the beach.”

Boone got in.

Sat there in silence while Harrington headed the car toward Ocean Beach and started in on Rasmussen. “You want to save yourself some pain, short eyes, you'll tell us right now what you did with that little girl.”

“I don't know what you're talking about.”

“Keep it up,” Harrington said. “Go ahead, make us madder.”

“I don't know anything about any little girl,” Rasmussen said. Boone turned to look at him. The man was terrified-sweating, his eyes popping out of his head.

“You know what we have in mind for you?” Harrington asked, peeking into the rearview mirror. “You know what it's like to drown? When we pull you out after a couple of minutes breathing water, you'll be begging to tell us. What did you do with her? Is she alive? Did you kill her?”

“I don't know-”

“Okay,” Harrington said, pushing down on the gas pedal. “We're going to the submarine races!”

Rasmussen started to shake. His knees knocked together involuntarily.

“You piss your pants in my cruiser,” Harrington told him, “I'm going to get really mad, Russ. I'm going to hurt you even worse.”

Rasmussen started screaming and kicking his feet against the door.

Harrington laughed. It didn't matter-Rasmussen wasn't going anywhere and nobody was going to hear him. After a couple of minutes, he stopped screaming, sat back in the seat, and just whimpered.

Boone felt like he was going to throw up.

“Easy, surfer boy,” Harrington said.

“This isn't right.”

“There's a kid involved,” Harrington said. “Suck it up.”

It didn't take long to get to Ocean Beach. Harrington pulled the car over by the pier, turned around, looked at Rasmussen, and said, “Last chance.”

Rasmussen shook his head.

“All right,” Harrington said. He opened the car door and started to get out.

Boone reached for the radio. “Unit 9152. We have suspect Russell Rasmussen. We're coming in.”

“You cunt,” Harrington said. “You weak fucking cunt.”

Rasmussen never told what he did with the girl.

The SDPD held him for as long as they could, but without evidence they couldn't do anything and had to kick him. Every cop on the force looked for the girl's body for weeks, but they finally gave up.

Rasmussen, he went off the radar.

And life got bad for Boone.

He became a pariah on the force.

Harrington moved to Detective Division, and it was hard to find another uniform who wanted to ride with Boone Daniels. The ones who would were bottom-of-the-barrel types, cops whom other cops didn't want to ride with-the drunks, the losers, the guys with one foot out the door anyway-and none of the pairings lasted longer than a couple of weeks.

When Boone would call for backup, the other cops would be a little slow in responding; when he went into the locker room, no one spoke to him and backs were turned; when he'd go to leave, he'd pick up mumbled comments-“weak unit,” “child killer,” “traitor.”

He had one friend on the force-Johnny Banzai.

“You shouldn't be seen with me,” Boone told him one day. “I'm poison.”

“Knock off the self-pity,” Johnny told him.

“Seriously,” Boone said. “They won't like you being friends with me.”

“I don't give a shit what they like,” Johnny said. “My friends are my friends.”

And that was that.

One day, Boone was leaving the locker room when he heard a cop named Kocera mutter, “Fucking pussy.”

Boone came back in, grabbed him, and put his brother cop into a wall. Punches were thrown, and Boone ended up with a month's unpaid suspension and mandatory appointments with a department counselor who talked to him about anger management.

The subject of Rain Sweeny didn't come up.

Boone spent most of the month on Sunny's couch.

He'd get up by eleven in the morning, drain a couple of beers, and lie there watching television, looking out the window, or just sleeping. It drove Sunny nuts. This was a Boone she'd never seen-passive, morose, angry.

One day when she gently suggested that he might want to go out for a surf session, he replied, “Don't handle me, okay, Sunny? I don't need handling. ”

“I wasn't handling you.”

“Fuck.”

He got up off the couch and went back to bed.

She was hoping things would get better when he went back to work.

They didn't. They got worse.

The department took him off the street altogether and put him behind a desk, filing arrest reports. It was a prescription to drive an active, outdoor man crazy, and it did the trick. Eight to five, five days a week, he sat alone in a cubicle, entering data. He'd come home bored, edgy, and angry.

He was miserable.

“Quit,” Dave the Love God told him.

“I'm not a quitter,” Boone replied.

But three months into this bullshit, he did quit. Pulled his papers, turned in his badge and gun, and walked away. No one tried to talk him out of it. The only word he heard was from Harrington, who literally opened the door for him on the way out.

The word was “Good.”

Two hours later, Boone was back on Sunny's couch.

Surfing was out. Boone went AWOL from The Dawn Patrol. He never showed up anymore. He didn't go out at all.

One night, Sunny came home from a long shift at The Sundowner, found him stretched out on the sofa in the sweatpants and T-shirt that he'd had on for a week, and said, “We have to talk about this.”

“Which really means you have to talk about this.”

“You're clinically depressed.”

“‘Clinically depressed’?” Boone asked. “You're a shrink now?”

“I talked to one.”

“Fuck, Sunny.”

It got him off the couch anyway. He went out to her little porch and plopped down on one of the folding beach chairs. She followed him out there.

“I know you're angry,” she said. “I don't blame you.”

“I do.”

“What?”

“I do,” Boone repeated, staring out toward the ocean. She could see tears running down his face as he said, “I should have done what Harrington said. I should have helped him hold that guy under the water… beat him… hurt him… whatever it took to make him give up what he did with Rain Sweeny. I was wrong, and that girl is dead because of me.”

Sunny thought that this was a cathartic moment, that he'd start to heal after this, that things would get better.

She was wrong.

He just sank deeper into his depression, slowly drowning in his guilt and shame.

Johnny Banzai tried to talk to him. Came over one day and said, “You know that girl was almost certainly dead before you picked up Rasmussen. All the data show that-”

“Sunny ask you to come over?”

“What difference-”

“Fuck your ‘data,’ Johnny. Fuck you.”

The whole Dawn Patrol tried to work him out of it. No good. Even Red Eddie came by.

“I have all my people out,” Eddie said, “looking for your girl, looking for that sick bastard. If he raises his head anywhere, Boone, I'll have him.”

“Thanks, Eddie,”

“Anything for you, bruddah, ” Eddie said. “Anything in this world.”

But it didn't happen. Even Eddie's soldiers couldn't find Russ Rasmussen, couldn't find Rain Sweeny. And Boone sank deeper and deeper into his depression.

A month later, Sunny gave him an ultimatum. “I can't live like this,” she said. “I can't live with you like this. Either you go get some help or…”

“Or what? Come on, say it, Sunny.”

“Or find another place to live.”

He took the “or.”

She knew he would.

You don't give a guy like Boone an ultimatum and expect any other result. The truth was, she was relieved to see him go. She was ashamed of it, but she was glad to be alone in her place. Alone was better.

Better for him, too.

He knew that he was just taking her down with him.

If you're going to sink, he told himself, at least have the decency to sink alone. Go down with your own ship.

Alone.

So he left the police force, he left Sunny, he left his friends, The Dawn Patrol, and he left surfing.

Never turn your back on the ocean.

You may think you can walk away from it, but you can't. The pull of the tide brings you back; the water in your blood yearns for its home-coming. And one morning, after two more months of lying around his apartment, Boone picked up his board and paddled out alone. He didn't think about it, had no intention of going out that morning; he just went.

The ocean healed him-slowly and not completely, but it healed him. He went out in the roughest, baddest surf he could find; he wandered from break to break like Odysseus trying to navigate his way home. At Tourmaline, Rockslide, Black's, D Street, Swami's, Boone sought the pounding he felt that he deserved, and the ocean gave it to him.

It beat him, battered him, scrubbed his skin with salt and sand. He'd trudge home exhausted and sleep the sleep of the dead. Get up with the sun and do it again. And again and again, until one morning he reappeared at The Dawn Patrol.

It was nothing dramatic-there was no moment of decision-it was just that he was there in the lineup when the rest of them paddled out. Johnny, High Tide, Dave, and Sunny. Nobody said anything to him about it; they just picked up where they'd left off, as if he'd never been gone.

On the beach at the end of that session, Johnny asked him, “What are you going to do now?”

“You're looking at it.”

“Just surf?”

Boone shrugged.

“Did you win the lottery?” Johnny asked. “You need to make a living, don't you?”

“Yeah.”

Dave offered to get Boone on as a lifeguard. He'd need to take a couple of courses, Dave said, but it should only take about six months. Boone declined; he figured he wasn't that good at guarding people's lives.

It was Johnny's idea for Boone to get his PI's license.

“All kinds of work for ex-cops,” Johnny said. “Insurance investigations, security, bond jumpers, matrimonial stuff.”

Boone went with it.

He wasn't thrilled about it, but that was the point. He didn't want a job that he loved. You love something, it hurts when you lose it.

Which is what worried Sunny. To the rest of his world, Boone was back, same as he ever was-laid-back, joking, refining the List of Things That Are Good, grilling fish on the beach at night, making supper for his friends, wrapping everything in a tortilla. Among The Dawn Patrol, Sunny was the only one who knew that Boone wasn't back, not fully. She suspected that he now inhabited a world of diminished expectations, both of himself and of other people, of life itself. That Boone only wanted to work enough to support his surfing jones might have seemed hip, but she understood it as the disappointment that it was.

Disappointment in life.

In himself.

They stayed close; they stayed tight. They even slept together now and then for old times' sake or out of loneliness. But they both knew it wasn't going anywhere and they both knew why-Sunny knew that Boone was still missing a piece of himself, and neither she nor he was willing to settle for anything less than the whole man.

The ironic thing was that it was Boone who pushed her to be everything she could be. Boone who did for her what she couldn't do for herself, and what she couldn't do for him. It was Boone who told her that she couldn't settle for anything less than her dream. When she was discouraged and ready to sell out, get a real job, it was Boone who told her to hang in, keep waiting tables so that she could surf, that success was riding the next wave her way.

Boone wouldn't let her quit.

The way he quit on himself.

What Sunny doesn't know is that Boone's still trying to find Russ Rasmussen. In those soulful hours of the morning, he sits at his computer at home, tracking him down. Trying to find a trail-a Social Security number showing up on a job, a rental application, a gas bill, anything. When he runs into skells, he asks them if they've heard anything about Rasmussen, but none of them have.

When the man disappeared, he disappeared.

Maybe he's dead, taking the truth with him.

But Boone doesn't give up. Boone Daniels, one of the most peaceful creatures in the universe, keeps a. 38 in his apartment. He never takes it out, never carries it. He just saves it for the day when he finds Russ Rasmussen. Then he's going to walk the man to a quiet place, make him talk, and then put a bullet in his head.