Dawn Patrol

31

Boone heads south through Mission Beach.

“Why do they call this Mission Beach?” she asks. “Is there a mission here?”

“Sure,” Boone says. He knows what the mission is, too. Lie on the beach all day, pound beer, and get laid.

“Where is it?” Petra asks.

“Where's what?”

“The mission,” Petra says. “I'd like to see it.”

Oh, that kind of mission.

“They tore it down,” Boone tells her, lying. “To build that. ”

He points seaside-to Belmont Amusement Park, where the old wooden roller coaster looms over the landscape like a funky man-made wave. It's been there a long time and is one of the last of the old-style wooden coasters. There used to be a lot of them, all up and down the coast. Seemed like the first thing people did when they settled a beach town was to build a wooden roller coaster.

Of course, that was before the Hawaiians taught us to surf, Boone thinks. Speaking of missionaries… We sent people over there with Bibles, and they sent guys back with boards.

The Hawaiians sure got the shitty end of that stick.

Anyway, thank you, mahalo.

Boone heads to Ocean Beach.

Ocean Beach is not a place that time actually forgot. It's more like time got up to about 1975 and said fuck it.

OB, as the Obeachians call it, has old hippie shops where you can buy crystals and that shit, bars that still do black-light effects, and used-record stores that sell actual records, including ones by a staggering variety of obscure reggae bands. The only thing that ever roused the Obeachians from their usual “Peace, dude,” torpor was when Starbucks wanted to move into the neighborhood.

Then there was civil insurrection, or the Obeachian version of it anyway.

“The Frisbees will be flying tomorrow,” Johnny Banzai had correctly predicted, and, indeed, there was a mass Frisbee demonstration, a marathon Hacky Sack show of force, and a sit-in along Newport Avenue, which didn't really work because a bunch of people sitting on the sidewalk doing nothing looked pretty much like any other day. So corporate culture, in the personification of Starbucks, won out, but it's really there for tourists because the Obeachians won't go near the place. Neither will Boone.

“I respect all local taboos,” he says.

And you have to love a community that named one of its major streets after Voltaire, and that Voltaire Street leads to a beach set aside for dogs. Dog Beach occupies a prime piece of real estate that curls around from the floodway onto the open ocean, and you can see some of the best quadrupedal Frisbee athletes in the world there. Of course, they can't throw the disk, but they can sure as hell run and catch it, doing sometimes spectacular leaps and spins to bring it down. You also have surfing dogs at Dog Beach. Some of them ride in tandem in front of their masters, but others actually ride on their own, their masters setting them on the board just in front of the white water.

All of which inspired a conversation the day The Dawn Patrol went down to check out the Frisbee demonstration, got bored, and walked over to watch dogs surf.

“Have you ever pulled a dog out of the water?” Boone asked Dave.

“No. Dogs are generally smarter than people.”

“Plus, they have better traction,” Johnny observed. “Lower center of gravity and four feet on the board instead of two.”

“Paws,” Sunny said.

“Huh?”

“Not feet,” Sunny said. “Paws.”

“Right.”

“But they can't paddle,” Hang Twelve said, maybe a little jealous because prior to this conversation he held the “most toes on a board” honors.

“Dogs can't paddle?” High Tide asked.

“No,” Hang said.

“You ever heard of the ‘dog paddle’?” Tide said.

“That thing little kids do in swimming pools?” Hang asked.

“Yeah.”

“Yeah, I've heard of it.”

“Where did they get the name?” Tide asked.

Hang thought about this for a few seconds, then said, “But dogs can't paddle boards; that's what I meant. Dogs weren't meant to surf.”

“That thing that runs from the board to your ankle,” Tide said. “What's it called?”

“The leash,” Hang replied.

“End of story,” said Tide.

They eventually resolved that if dogs could paddle boards, they'd be the world champion surfers every year, because dogs never fall. They jump off at the end of the ride, shake the water out of their fur, and wait to go back out again.

“Kind of like you,” Dave said to Tide. “You jump off, shake your fur, and go back out again.”

Because Tide is one hairy guy.

“They've been looking for Bigfoot all over those remote forests,” Johnny chimed in. “They should have just come out to PB and looked into the water.”

“Surfing Sasquatch,” Sunny said. “Film at eleven.”

Anyway, they hung out for a while, watched dogs surf and chase Frisbees, then went back to Newport Street, to find that the protestors had gotten bored sitting around there and had gone to find another place to sit around and maybe get some coffee.

You gotta love Ocean Beach.

Now Boone turns inland onto Brighton Avenue, pulls up in front of Angela Hart's four-story apartment building, and tells Petra to “I know,” she says. “‘Wait in the van.’”

“You're an officer of the court,” Boone says, digging around the back of the van for his burglary tools. “Do you really want to witness breaking and entering? Stay here, be a lookout.”

He finds the thin metal jimmy.

“What should I do if I see something?” Petra asks.

“Warn me.” He gets out of the van.

“How?”

“Honk?”

“How many-”

“Just freaking honk, okay?”

He goes into the building and walks up to the third floor, ready to slip the lock, but someone already has. Boone listens for a few seconds but doesn't hear anyone moving around. Unless, he thinks, whoever's in there heard me coming up the stairs and is staying still, waiting behind the door to blast me when I come in.

Boone opens the door a little, then quickly shuts it again. Doesn't hear anything, so he kicks the door wide open and goes in hard, hands up and ready.

Nothing.

Whoever was here came and went. Which is really bad news, because whoever was here might have taken Tammy with him.

Boone has a sickening thought.

Killers usually kill the same way. They don't mix it up. A guy who fucked up and tossed the wrong woman off a balcony would probably try to redeem himself by tossing the right woman off a balcony.

Boone sees the slider that opens off the small living room. The slider is open; a slight breeze blows the curtain back.

He walks across the room, steps out onto the balcony, and looks down.

Nothing but the little garden.

No woman's body, splayed and broken.

Boone takes a deep breath and steps back inside. It's your typical one-bedroom San Diego apartment-a living room with a small kitchenette attached, separated by a breakfast bar. Furniture from Ikea. There are, as Boone might have noted in his cop days, no signs of a struggle. Everything looks tidy-magazines neatly arranged on the coffee table, no drag marks on the blue carpet.

If someone took her, she went without a fight. Which she would have done, Boone thinks, if they had a gun pointed at her.

The bad news is that whoever broke in didn't toss the place. Wasn't looking for clues to Tammy's whereabouts, maybe because he already had her.

He steps into the kitchenette. Most of a pot of coffee sits in the white Krups automatic maker. The little red light shows it's still on. A half-full cup sits on the counter. Cute little mug with smiling hippos holding red balloons. Coffee with milk in it. A half piece of wheat toast, no butter, on a small orange plate.

And a small jar of nail polish.

The lid on, but not tight.

She left, willingly or not, in a hurry.

He goes into the bedroom.

The bed's unmade.

And smells like a woman.

What is it Johnny B. calls me when he wants to bust my chops? “Sheet sniffer”? It's true. And the bed does smell like a woman slept in it recently. One woman, alone. It's a double bed, but the covers are only pulled back on the left side.

The room is very feminine. Frilly, girlie, pink. A teddy bear with a red ribbon around its neck sits on the right side of the bed, up against the headboard. Strippers, Boone thinks, and their stuffed animals.

He checks out the framed photos on top of the chest of drawers. Angela and what looks to be her mother. Angela and a sister. Angela and Tammy. It's weird, sad, to look at these pictures of a smiling woman with her family and friends and think of the body lying by the pool, her head in a halo of blood.

Boone studies the picture of Tammy-long red hair, a chiseled face with a long nose that totally works for her, thin lips.

But it's her eyes that get to you.

Cat-shaped green eyes that glow out of the photo.

Like a big dangerous cat staring at you from out of the dark. A lot of strength in those eyes, a lot of power. It surprises him. Her MySpace photo that he'd had Hang pull up had showed the typical dumb stripper. This picture shows something else, and he's not sure what that is.

She's smiling in this picture, her arms around Angela's shoulders. The picture looks like it was taken on some sort of outing-biking, maybe. Angela has a white ball cap jammed on her head, her red ponytail sticking out through the back. She's laughing, happy-Boone can understand why she framed this picture. A good memory of good times. He'd bet that he'd find the same picture at Tammy's place.

He opens the closet and flips through the clothes. They're all in Angela's size, not Tammy's, who's a good couple of inches taller, and also a little thinner. So if Tammy was here, she brought an overnight bag, didn't unpack it, and left with it. Which is a good sign, because kidnappers don't usually let their victim take along luggage. Unless they played her, told her she was just going on a vacation until things blew over, let her take her bag to reassure her.

Boone goes into the bathroom.

Opens the shower curtain. It's still wet on the inside, as are the shower walls. The toothbrush on the sink is still moist. So is the cap on the tube of facial cleanser.

She slept alone, Boone thinks, got up late, showered, cleaned up, made toast and coffee, and sat down on a stool at the kitchen counter to do her nails while she ate.

But she didn't finish.

Neither her nails nor the meal.

He opens the medicine cabinet. The usual array of girl stuff on the shelves. Only one prescription bottle for Biaxin, written for Angela-an antibiotic that she didn't finish taking. Some Tylenol, aspirin, makeup bottles… no birth-control pills, which he would have expected to find.

He walks out of the bedroom and heads out, stopping to take the bottle of nail polish and put it in his pocket. He also shuts the slider door.

Even in San Diego, you never know when it might rain.