Psych: A Mind is a Terrible Thing to Read

by William Rabkin

  “If it makes you feel any better, we’re rooting for him to get it wrong, too,” Lassiter said.

  “Bert Coules came to Santa Barbara, settled into the community, and began a yearlong search for the money. He’d break into the impound lot after hours and search the cars, one by one.”

  “He was even searching for the loot while you all were staring at a corpse in the shack. Remember the oil stains on his slacks? If you crawl around on the ground here, you’ll end up with spots just like that,” Gus said.

  “So he kept on searching,” Shawn said. “Until one night he broke in and found someone there. He must have recognized young Marichal—and no doubt Marichal recognized him. There was a fight, and Marichal ended up permanently staring backward.”

  “Like I could take on a giant like that,” Coules protested.

  “You’re the one who said that someone as small as Tara Larison could break his neck with the proper technique,” Gus said.

  “A technique I’m sure you learned during your time in the Special Forces,” Shawn said. “You stole the office’s computer in hopes that Herman had kept a record of where he hid the money. But it didn’t help.”

  “Maybe it was in Herman’s private code,” Gus suggested. “Or maybe it wasn’t in there at all. Something drove you to see Betty Walinski and try to force the truth out of her. You snapped her neck, which not only kept her quiet about you, but also helped convince the police that Tara Larison was a mad dog who needed to be killed on sight.”

  “And if I may say, that might be the worst crime of all,” Shawn said.

  “What do you mean by that, Shawn?” Gus said.

  “To depend on our Victorian stereotypes of the mad-woman in the attic, to play on our prejudices about women as unstable and vengeful, is to reduce countless individuals to gender-based cartoons whose entire selfhood is determined solely by their reproductive organs. It diminishes me as a man simply to hear such canards recited.”

  Henry, Lassiter, Coules, and the other men in the shack stared at Shawn baffled. But Detective O’Hara and Chief Vick regarded him warmly for the first time since Tara had tried to forcibly exchange saliva with Juliet, apparently on Shawn’s psychic orders.

  “Do you mean that, Shawn?” Detective O’Hara said, finally treating him to one of her warm smiles.

  “I always have,” Shawn said. And it was actually true, if by “always” he meant since this morning when he’d memorized the passage from a Web site of feminist literary theory.

  Coules waited for them to go on. When they didn’t, he broke out into a smile. “So aside from sisterhood being powerful, is that it?”

  “I think so. Gus?”

  “Sounds about right?”

  “You don’t have anything,” Coules said.“It’s all supposition and theory. You don’t have one shred of proof.”

  Shawn turned to Gus, suddenly troubled. “You know, I think he’s right.”

  “Definitely. We’ve got no proof at all.”

  Coules tried to push past the detectives. They didn’t move out of his way.

  “They don’t need proof, Mr. Coules,” Chief Vick said. “They’re not police. We’re the ones who need to show proof. And if you’ll be so good as to accompany us back to the station, we’ll make a couple of calls and find out if you ever handled a case involving Mr. Marichal Senior. That should be enough to hold you while we start checking some of these cars for your prints. Mr. Spencer, you say we should start with the Florida plates?”

  “It’s still all ridiculous speculation!” Coules shouted. “It’s all based on the idea that Walinsky and Marichal were involved in the race track robbery. And there’s no evidence of that.”

  Chief Vick turned to Shawn. “He does have a point there. Do you have any evidence that Herman Walinsky had anything to do with the Calder Race Course robbery besides catching its perpetrators?”

  “None at all,” Shawn said.

  “Unless you count the three million dollars,” Gus added.

  “We can’t count it if we can’t find it,” Lassiter said.

  “Then you should check out a yellow nineteen sixty-five Ford Thunderbird with Florida plates about three hundred yards west of here,” Shawn said.

  “If you’d be so good as to lead us, Mr. Spencer,” Chief Vick said.

  “Yes, do,” Coules said. His smile had turned into a smirk.

  Shawn and Gus led the group through the maze of cars until they came to the rusting T-Bird.

  “This is your brilliant idea?” Coules said. “If half of what you said was true, this is one of the first cars Marichal would have checked.”

  “You, too,” Gus said.

  “Fine. Whatever. Go ahead and check it.”

  Shawn rapped sharply on the trunk. With a groan of hinges, the lid began to lift slowly. The others crowded around to see what was inside.

  “It’s empty!” Mindy said.

  “Just like this clown’s head,” Coules said. “Can I go home and start preparing my defamation suit now?”

  Shawn stared into the empty trunk. “Dad?”

  Henry Spencer sighed wearily. “Yes, son?”

  “What was the name of Herman Walinsky’s legendary lure?”

  “I really don’t think that fishing tackle is going to do you much good right now.”

  “Humor me.”

  “Please humor him,” Mindy said. “’Cause he can stand here and keep talking if he wants. Believe me, I know.”

  Henry took the scrapbook back from Shawn and flipped it open to a page with a photo of a fishing lure fastened securely in its center. He held the book open so everyone could see. “It was called the YTBL3.”

  “Did he ever say what that stood for?”

  “No,” Henry said. “I always assumed it came after the YTBL2 and before the YTBL4.”

  “Good thought,” Shawn said. “Here’s a better one. Y—Yellow. TB—Thunderbird. L—Left.” He turned theatrically to his left. “Three—well, three.” He walked down three rows of cars and stopped next to a decaying nineteen sixty-one Olds Cutlass. “Does anyone happen to have a crowbar?”

  Gus bent down and picked one up from off the ground. “Look, Shawn, it seems that someone has graciously left one for us right here.”

  “Then let’s accept their generous gesture.” Shawn took the crowbar and used it to pry open the Cutlass’ trunk. Inside were a dozen fraying canvas bags. Shawn lifted one out of the trunk. With a sound of ripping cloth, the bottom tore out and bundles of cash poured out on the ground.

  Coules stared at the money. “So close. All this time, it was right there.”

  O’Hara pulled out her cuffs and snapped them on his wrists. “And this is as close as you’re getting to it.”

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Gus cranked down the window and let the wind blast him in his face. This was what life was all about: speed, freedom, and the open road.

  Veronica Mason had finally come through with the reward she’d promised, and the first six thousand dollars had ransomed the Echo. The rest of it would let Shawn and Gus live safely and securely no matter how much profit the Psych agency was generating.

  At least it would if Shawn managed to persuade the rest of the nation to drink Blāk. Although Gus had begged him to put the money into T-bills, Shawn had insisted on investing the entire post-Echo sum in a new Bulgarian Blāk bottling company. Odds were, they’d never see a penny of it again. But they were young, they were free, and for the first time in ages, they didn’t have the prospect of execution in their near future.

  Gus tapped the brakes to let a BMW slip in ahead of him. There was an anguished scream from the seat next to him.

  “What are you doing?” Shawn forced the words out through a throat choked with frustration.

  “Thought we’d draft for a bit.”

  “Draft? You thought we’d draft?”

  “What I said.”

  “As in ease out of the headwind and take advantage of the Beemer’s slipstream?”
>
  “That’s what it means.”

  Shawn chose his words with extreme care, as if fearing that the wrong ones were lurking in his mouth and threatening to leap out and pummel Gus over the head.

  “We’ve been in this drive-through line for twenty-three minutes,” he said. “We haven’t moved in twenty-two. The only headwind is coming from that kid blowing straw wrappers at us.”

  Gus cranked down the window another notch and let the warm breeze fill the car. “You drive your way, and I’ll drive mine.”

  Shawn reached for the door handle. “I’m going to go inside, place my order, receive my food, eat my delicious BurgerZone burger, place my refuse in the receptacle, and when I come back out, you’ll still be sitting in exactly this place.”

  “Quite possibly true, except for one thing.”

  “What’s that?”

  “Remember this?” Gus reached into the glove box and pulled out the xeroxed flyer. Across the top it read: Attention All BurgerZone Employees. On the bottom it warned in stern letters: Do Not Serve. And in the middle, a police artist’s sketch of Tara. And another one of Shawn.

  “If you even want to sniff the aroma of those delicious BurgerZone burgers, you’ll do it my way.”

  Shawn crumpled up the flyer.

  “You’re going to sit here forever because you’re so happy to be back behind the wheel of this car.”

  “Yup.”

  “And you’re going to make me sit here because you don’t like to be alone.”

  “Uh-huh.”

  “Don’t you think you’re taking advantage of the fact that I’ve been banned from BurgerZone? That you’re taking advantage of my own personal weakness?”

  “Don’t think of it as me taking advantage of you,” Gus said, patting Shawn on the knee. “Think of it as a win-win.”

  Acknowledgments

  Many thanks to Steve Franks for the loan of these wonderful characters and to Kelly Kulchak and Chris Henze for making sure that my versions of Shawn, Gus, and all the rest stayed true to Steve’s vision. Thanks as well to Kristen Weber and Jeff Gerecke for their faith, support, and encouragement.

  And even if Lee Goldberg had not been my friend and partner for a quarter of a century, and even if he had not helped to make this possible, I’d still owe him the same debt that all tie-in writers do, for setting the bar so high and raising it higher with every book.

  About the Author

  William Rabkin is a two-time Edgar-nominated television writer and producer. He has written for numerous mystery shows, including Psych and Monk, and served as showrunner on Diagnosis Murder and Martial Law.