Dawn Patrol

63

Johnny Banzai hears the shot.

You don't hear a lot of gunshots in Encinitas, especially not west of the PCH, and certainly not in the proximity of The Institute of Self Awareness, where people do not tend to “find themselves” at the wrong end of a gun. No, the guns around Shrink's tend to be surfboards, not firearms.

Gunshots are going to grab any cop's attention, but these shots really reach out and grab Johnny's head, because they're coming from the direction of his destination, the aforementioned ISA, and Johnny's aware that he's getting there in the wake of Boone Daniels.

Boone caught this wave first and Johnny jumped in, and now they're both pumping it to get to the real Tammy Roddick first. Johnny has some very pointed questions to ask her, he has some equally sharp queries for Boone, and he wants to know from both of them what they have to do with the Jane Doe lying beside the motel pool.

It didn't take all that long to find out that the Jane Doe wasn't Tammy. Then he went to Roddick's place of employment, Totally Nude Girls, and found out that (a) Tammy's boyfriend had been Mick Penner; (b) she dumped him for Teddy D-Cup; and (c) Boone was a step ahead of him. A quick visit to Teddy's La Jolla office and the flash of a badge got Teddy's receptionist to give up that the good doctor was on his way to make a house call at Shrink's after getting a phone call from a man who claimed that he was Tammy Roddick.

Classic Boone.

Goddamn him.

Except now Johnny hears shots, and he hopes to hell that he gets to arrest Boone and not do an investigation on his killing.

He opens his window, attaches the flasher unit to the roof of the car, and hits the siren. Then he gets on the radio and calls for uniformed backup. “Shots fired. Plainclothes officer approaching the scene.” It's dark and rainy out and he doesn't want to be standing there with a gun in his hand when nervous uniforms show up. They might see the gun before they see the badge.

Then he pushes the pedal to the floor.

Banzai.