Dawn Patrol - Don Winslow [38]
“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