Psych: A Mind is a Terrible Thing to Read

by William Rabkin

  “So? Lots of crazy people listen to Artie Pine. In fact, I think it’s required.”

  “Don’t you see?” Gus said. “She was already interested in psychic phenomena before she met you.”

  “Because she was hearing voices in her head.”

  “So maybe you weren’t the first psychic she decided was giving her orders.”

  “You’re making me feel cheap,” Shawn said.

  Gus typed the words “Larison plus psychic” into the search engine. The screen that popped up listed hundreds of newspaper articles and Web sites referencing someone named Fred Larison who lived somewhere outside St. Louis. Gus clicked on the third listing, which appeared to be Larison’s Web site.

  Spooky music started playing out of the computer’s speakers as the page loaded. Red text flashed over a black background: Fred Larison, Psychic Detective. The glowing ENTER HERE button was surrounded by pulsating skeleton hands.

  “At least I don’t feel that cheap,” Shawn said.

  Gus clicked the ENTER button, and the opening screen wiped away to reveal a black-and-white photo of a thin, balding man with a pencil mustache and a pronounced overbite staring directly into the camera. Underneath, more red type exclaimed that master psychic Fred Larison was available to solve the deepest mysteries of life, rates quoted on application.

  “Sure, I’m going to trust him to solve the deepest mysteries of life when he can’t tackle the basic mystery of finding a decent Web site designer,” Shawn said.

  Gus picked up the phone and dialed the number at the bottom of the page. After two rings, a recorded voice informed him that the number he’d dialed had been disconnected or was no longer in service.

  “He also can’t solve the mystery of how to pay his phone bill,” Gus said. He hung up and keystroked back to the search engine. The next entry down was a news article titled “Psychic Solves Mystery.”

  “Does it mention if it was one of the deepest mysteries of life?” Shawn said.

  “Let’s find out.” Gus hit the link, and a page popped up from the Jefferson City Gazette, “Central Missouri’s News and Classifieds Leader.” A picture showed the same man, still wearing the mustache but this time adding a cape to the look. He was holding an open jeweler’s box with what appeared to be a large diamond inside.

  “‘Renowned local psychic Fred Larison solved one of Jeff City’s most perplexing mysteries yesterday when he used his mental prowess to find a two-carat diamond that had been lost since the days of the Civil War,’” Gus read. “‘The owners, Misses Bonnie and Eugenia Frakes, twin sisters, eighty-three years young, had searched their entire lives for the gemstone their late grandmother Prudence Winsocket had hidden from marauding raiders during the Civil War. But Prudence, living up to her name, went to her grave without ever telling a living soul where she had hidden the jewel. Larison’s answer? Forget about talking to the living. He contacted Prudence directly at her address in the afterlife and asked her what she had done with the precious stone.’”

  “I can’t believe this,” Shawn said.

  “What? That there are other psychics working the same scams as you?”

  “That anyone gets paid for writing this badly,” Shawn said. “And this guy Peter Jones calls himself a reporter. I’ve never met Fred Larison, and I can tell from two thousand miles away that he’s a fraud.”

  “Not everyone has your sharp eyes,” Gus said. He pointed to the photo. Next to Larison, two old ladies stared at him with a look that would be considered indecent if the faces sharing it had even one unwrinkled square inch between them.

  “Can you make that bigger?” Shawn said.

  “Really? You want to see him better?”

  “Not him. The person standing behind his left shoulder.”

  Shawn tapped the screen to show Gus what he was talking about. There was a hint of a face peeking out of the shadows. Gus centered the cursor on the face and clicked his mouse. The small section of photo enlarged. What had been a small blur of white was now a big blur of white.

  “Okay, now focus in on that face,” Shawn said.

  “Okay,” Gus said. “No, wait. I just remembered. This is reality, not Mission: Impossible. And this computer just shows me what’s on a Web site. It can’t make faces out of mush.”

  “Not much of a computer, is it?” Shawn said. “Let’s see what else they say about Larison.”

  Gus clicked back to the search page and scrolled through the list of links. Many of them were references to the Gazette’s article on various sites devoted to psychic phenomena. At the bottom of the page, there was another Gazette article: “Local Psychic Wows Tough Critics.”

  “Let’s see that one,” Shawn said.

  This story was also written by Peter Jones, and if anything it was even more breathless in its prose.

  “They say that hardened cynics make the toughest audiences, but harder still are those minds that don’t know enough to doubt what they believe. Such a crowd was faced by local psychic celebrity Fred Larison when he brought his bag of mental tricks to Suzie McKee’s first-grade class at Harry S Truman Elementary School last Friday. By the end they were all won over by Larison’s psychic stylings. Some had even decided to give up dreams of growing up to be policemen, astronauts, or nurses to follow him into the realms of worlds unknown.

  “And they say public schools don’t educate children,” Shawn said.

  “I don’t remember my first-grade teacher being that hot,” Gus said, looking at a woman who was partially hidden behind Larison’s cape. “And I certainly don’t remember her wearing hot pants to school.”

  “Mrs. Wilson had her charms,” Shawn said, peering at the screen. “And since she was built like a cement mixer, not wearing hot pants was definitely one of them. But that’s not Suzie McKee.”

  Gus craned his head to the screen to study the image. “How do you know?”

  “I’ve spent a lot of time studying those legs,” Shawn said. “That is definitely Tara. The question is, what’s she doing there?”

  “Maybe she was held back in first grade fifteen times,” Gus said.

  “Wait—here.” Shawn scrolled down the page. “‘Larison was as always ably assisted by his lovely assistant.’”

  “Tara was Fred Larison’s assistant?”

  “More than that,” Shawn said. “It says here that Larison never needed to give her instructions. ‘When asked how they worked together, the lovely helper, who chose not to give her name, said that she took her orders from Larison psychically.’”

  “How does it feel to learn you weren’t the first?”

  “I’m devastated,” Shawn said. “Let’s find out why she left him.”

  Gus went back to the search engine and hit the button for a second page of hits. Shawn pointed to a listing halfway down the page. “I think I figured it out.”

  Gus clicked the link, which led to a page of funeral listings provided by a mortuary in central Missouri. “‘Memorial services will be held today for Fred Larison, noted local entertainer.’”

  “Entertainer, ha!” Shawn said. “At least someone there wasn’t fooled by that fraud.”

  Gus continued reading. “‘Mr. Larison died in St. Joseph’s Hospital Tuesday night after suffering a broken neck in a freak accident.’ Blah blah blah.”

  “No dependants.” Shawn pointed to the end of the article. “I guess Tara took his last name without his permission.”

  “At least we know why she left him,” Gus said. “He’d have to be a pretty good psychic to keep sending her orders even after he died.”

  “We know more than that,” Shawn said. “We know that I was wrong. Dead wrong.”

  Gus noticed that Shawn’s face had gone pale.

  “When you say wrong, you mean about something unimportant, right?” Gus said. “Like pickles are really good on a burger, or Gremlins 2 wasn’t really better than the original.”

  “I mean I was wrong about everything,” Shawn said. “I looked at Tara and saw innocence.
I missed every sign. How could that be?”

  “How could what be?”

  Shawn waved weakly at the monitor.“How did Larison die?”

  Gus glanced back at the screen. “In an accident. He broke his neck.”

  “Uh-huh. How did Enid Blalock die?”

  “Didn’t she fall down the stairs in an empty house?”

  “And?”

  Gus began to see the pattern that Shawn had already recognized.

  “And John Marichal at the impound yard. His neck was broken, too.”

  Shawn and Gus stared at each other across the office. “She’s not just a killer,” Shawn said. “She’s a serial killer.”

  Chapter Eighteen

  “‘Bad to the bone!Ba-ba-ba bad to the bone!’” Kent Shambling pounded the padded dash and wailed along with the stuttering scream of permanent rebellion. He was bad to the bone, damn it, and he was finally getting his chance to prove it.

  Not that Nancy ever understood. She called him boring. Ungrateful bitch. Like he wanted to spend his prime years in an endless loop of office, home, Rotary, church, club, office. Like he didn’t yearn to strap on a helmet, climb on a hawg, and live free or die trying. He did it for her. He gave up his youth and the opening chunk of his middle age to provide her with the security he knew she needed. And after all those years of sacrifice, she announced that because he was boring, she was leaving him for the barista at the local Starbucks. They were going to find a life of truth and commitment together in some hippie commune in the hills outside Ojai. And of course, because the barista barely made enough to cover his monthly weed bill, Kent would be expected to shoulder all her expenses.

  If Kent were as boring as she claimed, that was exactly what he would have done. But Nancy’s leaving revived the real Kent—the rogue, the rebel, the crazy cat who didn’t play by anyone’s rules. Instead of writing her that first check, he cashed out his 401(k) and put the bulk into a private account she’d never track down. He used the rest to buy the fastest, hottest, reddest car he could find with decent gas mileage and an above-average safety-and-repair rating from Consumer Reports.

  That’s right, baby. Ba-ba-ba-bad to the bone. Kent was blasting out of Moorpark, and he was never looking back. He didn’t know where he was going, and he didn’t care. A podiatrist with his mad skills could make a buck anywhere in this big country.

  He was starting a new life. And this time he was going to do it right. No more rules for Kent Shambling. He was going to do what he wanted when he wanted, whatever it was. If anyone else got hurt, that was their problem.

  Kent slammed out a one-handed drum solo on the Mustang’s padded dash and peered out at the two lanes of freedom looming in front of him. He was saying goodbye to the dried brush and dripping eucalyptus trees of this dismal valley. In a few miles he’d hit the 101 and the coast. From there he’d go north or south; he’d make that call when he saw the sparkling blue of the Pacific.

  As the song climaxed, Kent spotted a woman standing on the side of the road. She was wearing some kind of loose-fitting cutoff coverall, and even from a hundred yards away, she was the sexiest thing Kent had ever seen. He couldn’t tell what she was doing besides watching the cars go by. But as Kent got closer, she stepped out to the shoulder and waved her tanned, bare arms at him.

  If Kent had one inviolable rule of life, it was never pick up hitchhikers. You never knew what kind of psycho might be on the other side of that thumb.

  But that was the old Kent. The new Kent lived to violate the inviolable. Ba-ba-ba-bad to the bone, baby. He flipped on his flashers and glided to the shoulder, where she stood. Reached over and opened the passenger door without even rolling down the window to ask where she was going.

  The woman leapt into the car and slammed the door, then smiled up at him. Ice blue eyes burned out from under jet-black bangs. What Kent had thought was a cutoff coverall was actually torn off—she seemed to have ripped the sleeves and legs off a jumpsuit, uncovering yards of sleek golden flesh.

  “I’m Kent,” he said, putting out a friendly hand. She took it in hers and held it warmly for a second. “I’m in trouble.”

  Kent’s heart pounded. This was every one of his teenage fantasies coming true. Why had he wasted so many years with Nancy?

  He gave her his most seductive smile. “Cops on your trail?”

  Her seductive smile put his to shame. “Worse,” she said. “Oprah.” She pointed at a sign up ahead: Road Maintenance Sponsored by Oprah Winfrey. “I can’t pick up one more Coke can or Big Mac wrapper, and I’ve got to get out of here before my shift supervisor comes back.”

  “Then let’s find you a safe place to hide.” Kent smoothly slid the gearshift into drive and, flipping on his blinkers, merged into traffic.

  They rode in comfortable silence as Kent tried to think of something suitably cool to say. She didn’t seem to mind the lack of conversation, staring tensely ahead at the road.

  “So, Oprah,” Kent finally said, “she must have some pretty tough enforcers.”

  The woman slid down in her seat, hiding her face with her left hand. At first Kent thought he’d said the wrong thing. Then he glanced across the divider and saw there was an accident on the other side of the road. A small gray bus had flown off the roadway and slammed into a eucalyptus. The driver, who was wearing some kind of uniform, dangled out his window, obviously killed in the collision.

  “That must have been some crash,” Kent said. “It looks like that guy’s head is dangling by a thread.”

  The woman sank down farther in her seat. Poor, sensitive soul, Kent thought. Can’t even bear to look. He tapped the gas, and the Mustang sped on toward his glorious future.

  Chapter Nineteen

  “My arms are getting tired.” Gus’ voice echoed out of the empty grave. “Why don’t you climb down here and do some digging?”

  “And get my cassock dirty?” Shawn peered down into the grave, his face gleaming in the light bouncing off his priest’s collar. “Besides, you’re doing great. You’re a natural-born gravedigger.”

  Gus threw down the shovel and climbed out of the hole. “No, the bulldozer that dug this grave yesterday is a natural-born gravedigger. They haven’t used shovels here in fifty years.”

  “Which is why your disguise is so brilliant. You don’t have to worry about running into the real guy.”

  “I just want to run into the real woman so we can get out of here.”

  “Dude, it’s all going to plan.”

  Which was true, although the fact that they were still only halfway through step one suggested there was still plenty that could go wrong. That and the gaping hole where step two of the three-step plan was supposed to go.

  The fraction of a plan they had grew out of Shawn’s realization that Tara was a serial neck breaker. While Gus was busy thinking back on things he’d said that might have inspired her to snap his spine like a twig, Shawn was furiously castigating himself. If only he’d read the signs, if only he’d noticed what must have been obvious. Now people were dead, and it was his fault. The only good thing was that Tara hadn’t wanted Henry dead, so she had only tased him instead of snapping his neck, too. Because if Henry—

  Shawn stopped in midthought. Gus looked over at him, thinking that the idea of his father murdered was too much for Shawn to take. But Shawn was smiling.

  “What’s funny?” Gus said.

  “Animal House,” Shawn said. “On the other hand, if you want something that doesn’t have big laughs, but leaves you with a wry smile, a warm chuckle, and that nod of recognition that we’re all riders in the same cockeyed caravan of life, how about the fact that Tara didn’t kill Dallas Steele?”

  “You just said she did. You said she was a serial killer.”

  “And she may be. Which means she’s got a pattern. She makes a friend, gets close, and when the relationship is over, she snaps his neck and moves on.”

  “So she would have killed you and not me.”

  “Can you stop thinki
ng about yourself for one minute?” Shawn threw up his hands in exasperation. “She’s got this whole neck-snapping thing down to an art. So why would she choose to stab Dallas Steele in the heart?”

  “Variety?”

  “Because she didn’t do it. Which means we didn’t tell her to do it. Which means we’re off the hook.”

  Gus desperately wanted to believe Shawn. If only he could get past the one small flaw in his logic. “We saw her standing over him, holding the knife.”

  “Right,” Shawn said. “So we know it was a perfect frame. Now who had a motive to want Steele dead?”

  “Us?”

  Shawn thought long and hard. He scrunched his eyes shut as he mentally replayed every moment of the case. Then he jumped up out of his chair. “Reynaldo!”