Peter’s hands were so tight around his steering wheel, his knuckles were white. As she gazed pointedly at him, he closed his eyes and inhaled a long, slow, deep breath. “I do want to find her,” he said on his exhale, opening his eyes to look at her. “But I also really want to punch Schlossman in the face. If he used Maddie to get back at me…” He shook his head.
“The key word there, Lieutenant, isif,” Shayla pointed out. “Andifhe used Maddie that way, well, he’s going to have bigger problems, don’t you think? Why muddy it by giving him a reason to play the victim card?” She pretended to be a blubbering Schlossman.“Yeah, I know she’s only fifteen, Detective, but Lieutenant Greene punched me in the face!”
He actually laughed at that—good that he could still laugh—but then his phone rang. It was connected to the Bluetooth in his truck, and it was up so loud they both jumped. The nameZanellaappeared on the dash’s screen, and Peter said, “I’m gonna take this,” even as Shayla told him, “You should answer that.”
“Zanella, you’re on speaker. I’m in the truck with Shayla,” Peter curtly said as a greeting.
“Ah, you’re still with Shayla-the-neighbor.” Izzy Zanella’s voice was loaded withThat’s interestinginnuendo.
“Notstill.” Peter didn’t try to hide his annoyance.“Again.”
“We made a plan to go over to the high school early this morning,” Shay explained.
“Any luck?” Izzy asked.
“Not much,” Peter said. “A few leads—best is from Shayla’s son. We’re kind of in the middle of it. What’s up?”
“Drove the fam to the airport and on the way home, it occurred to me that I have this spacious rental van for another fifteen hours,” Izzy’s voice cheerfully said. “I thought I could bop on over to the storage space in Palm Springs, bring all that stuff back and stash it in your garage for you, save you the road trip. I just need the key or the combo to the padlock—oh yeah, and the storage unit number would be helpful, too, so I don’t have to wander the place, weeping as I try to open every lock.”
“Wow, that would be great,” Peter said. “Thanks, man, but…you really wanna do that drive all by yourself?”
“Noooo,” Izzy said. “No, no, no. I tried Lopez, but he’sbusy—” somehow he managed to make air quotes with only his voice “—but then I remembered da boyz in Boat Squad John have today off, and I figured, hey, they were prolly looking for something to do, am I right? And since those young’uns owe me a giant-ass favor in the vague shape of humping boxes into a van—”
Peter cut him off. “Boat Squad John is going to Palm Springs with you? Today?”
“Well, notallof ’em,” Izzy said. “Five more guys in the van would take up a lot of space and kinda defeat the purpose. But Seagull volunteered, bless him. The rest of the idiots drew straws and Hans won.” He paused. “Or maybe he lost. Nah, I’m gonna go withwon.”
“HansSchlossman?” Shayla asked and Peter looked at her sharply, shaking his head in a very clearSay nothing more.
“That’s right,” Izzy confirmed. “What? Wait, let me guess—Grunge has been regaling you with the timeless tale of the mighty, mighty Boat Squad John. Oh. And no wonder. Those tadpoles did us proud during Phase One, but the biggest surprise of all prolly had to be when Hans—”
Peter cut him off. “Where are they meeting you—or are they already there? Where the fuck are you?”
“Well,you’resure interested in the minute details, G. I’mthe fuckat the Grill—I just had breakfast. Timebomb Jackson’s gonna drop off Seagull and Hans in about ten, but we’ll need to get that unit number and key from you before we hit the road. Breakfast was delicious: blueberry pancakes with sides of scrambled eggs and—”
Peter did a U-turn right in the middle of the street even as he cut Izzy off again. “I’m five minutes from you, I’m bringing the key, don’t goanywhere.” He punched the end-call button and looked again at Shayla. “Good cop, bad copit is.”
“What, or maybe I should be askingwho, exactly, is Boat Squad John?”
Pete glanced over at Shayla as he grimly drove toward the Grill and his confrontation with Schlossman. “It’s a long story, and we’re almost there.”
“Give me the log line.” At his blank look, she added, “Describe it in a tweet.”
He shook his head.
“You’re not on Twitter—not a big surprise. Okay, remember back when you were a kid, did your grandma getTV Guide?”
“Neither Grandma norTV Guidemade it to the island,” he told her. “But yeah, pre-island.TV Guidewas on her coffee table.”
“Those little blurbs—a single short sentence—about a show or a movie are calledlog lines,” Shayla told him. “Friendly alien encounter turns ugly when a plan to enslave humanity is revealed.Man discovers his biological father is a notorious serial killer. Quirkily named boat squad of Navy SEAL candidates…what?”
“Surprise instructors with their grit and determination and unswerving loyalty to their misfit teammates,”he finished for her. “They started out as total underdogs, and finished up Hell Week at the very top of the class. It was…inspiring.”
“And Hans Schlossman was one of them?” she asked, but then answered her own question. “Hansis German for John. Were they really all named John?”
Pete nodded again. “Or a variation. The squad’s de facto leader was an enlisted kid named John Livingston. His nickname’s Seagull, for obvious reasons. His swim buddy was Jon Jackson—nicknamed Timebomb. There’s Q—John Pilkington. Doe—John Capano. And finally John Schlossman—his nickname’s Hans. He was the squad’s great big whining clod of dogshit stuck to their proverbial boots. He learned a lot that week, and, well, certainly impressedmethe most.”
“Ouch,” Shayla said, giving him that soft-eyed look of empathy that made his chest feel tight. “So if hedidmess with Maddie, that’s gotta hurt even worse, because you liked him so much. I’m so sorry.”
