Psych: Mind Over Magic p-2

by William Rabkin

  The body didn’t offer any more clues to its identity. Its former occupant was a forty-year-old white male, five foot six inches tall, 195 pounds. He was in good health, and there were no drugs or alcohol in his system. Cause of death was drowning. Analysis of the contents of his lungs confirmed that it was the same water that filled the tank, matched to a sample that had soaked into Lassiter’s slacks when he had knelt by the corpse.

  And that was making Lassiter’s head hurt, too, because he couldn’t figure out how the death had happened. This guy was young and relatively fit. He wasn’t drunk or drugged. So how did he end up drowning in a water-filled telephone booth? How did he get in there, and why couldn’t he get out? And how did he drown so quickly?

  Lassiter knew there was only one cure for his headache. He needed to see that tank. If he could only figure out how it worked, he was certain the rest of the answers would fall into place. Unfortunately, it was in a locked room in his least favorite place on Earth, sequestered behind crime scene tape and protected by a court order.

  He’d spent most of the morning on the phone, searching for a judge willing to overturn the order forbidding him to examine the tank. Many of them sounded sympathetic at first, but when they heard it was Albert Moore they were being asked to reverse, they backed off. Apparently Moore had a reputation as a street fighter, and few were willing to risk his anger. A couple of jurists didn’t seem to mind that challenge, but when Lassiter mentioned that it was Benny Fleck who’d requested the sanction, they all suddenly found new reasons to refuse his request.

  Lassiter had learned many valuable lessons during his years on the force. He had studied the Reid Technique to master the three components of interrogation. He had taught himself how to maneuver his way through an uncooperative bureaucracy. He had even figured out how to get the mechanics at the SBPD to make sure the air conditioner in his unmarked sedan would keep working through the worst of the Santa Barbara summer. But the most important thing he’d learned was that if a murder isn’t solved within the first forty-eight hours, the odds of the case ever being closed plummeted to almost nothing.

  The man in the tank had been dead for thirty-six of those forty-eight hours and Lassiter was no closer to finding his killer. The clock was ticking and its hands were dripping blood.

  When Lassiter left the station in his unmarked sedan-the air conditioner blowing a stream of cool into his face-he told himself he was just going for a drive to clear his head. When he pulled up in the parking lot down the hill from the Fortress of Magic, he pretended there were some rooms he might not have checked out thoroughly the night of the drowning.

  But now that he was standing outside the closed showroom, the blade trembling over the paper seal, there was no way he could hide from what he had really intended all along. He was going to violate the principles that had driven him his entire life. He was going to flout that court order, slash through the seal, and find out what trick the missing magician had used to make his escape.

  Lassiter pressed the tip of the blade into the crack between door and jamb, just above the top edge of the seal. One swift move and it would be done-the same motion as shaking someone’s hand, that was all. And if the hand he was shaking belonged to chaos, anarchy, and the destruction of the rule of law, he was willing to do it as long as that would keep a killer from walking free.

  Lassiter’s mind sent an order through his neural pathways down to his arm. Time to move. If it were done when ’tis done, then ’twere well it were done quickly, he quoted to himself. Lassiter couldn’t remember where that phrase came from, but he was pretty sure that whoever said it had some unpleasant job to complete and felt much better when he’d gotten it all over with. His mind repeated its order. But his unconscious seemed to be blocking it. His hand trembled, but no more. Irritated at himself, the detective placed his other hand on top of the one holding the knife and pressed down.

  The knife hand pressed back up.

  This was unacceptable. Lassiter had made the decision to break the commandments he lived by for the greater good. How dare one of his body parts rebel like this? Did his hand really believe it was better than the rest of him? He pressed down harder on the knife hand. The paper at the top of the seal began to crinkle down. Another second and it would be done.

  “Carlton, stop!”

  Lassiter cursed under his breath. It was bad enough his arm was trying to reverse his decision. Now his conscience was speaking to him like Jiminy Cricket. Well, he’d spent his entire life following the orders of his extremely controlling conscience, and this time it could get out of his way-even if it did speak in a melodious, oddly familiar female voice.

  “Yo, Lassie, give it up!”

  Lassiter froze. He was willing to accept the concept that his conscience would actually speak to him in words. But there was no way his own personal conscience, a resident of his own personal brain, would ever speak in that voice. He turned to see that Detective Juliet O’Hara had come up behind him, and she was followed by Shawn and Gus. For some reason Gus was carrying a dinged-up scuba tank.

  “You have to leave this area, Detective,” Lassiter said with all the sternness he could muster. “For the sake of your career, you must not be a part of this.”

  “That’s very generous, Carlton-”

  “Generous?” Lassiter interrupted. “I am about to violate every precept to which we swore loyalty when we donned the proud blue of the Santa Barbara Police Department. When this case is over, I will have to turn myself over to Internal Affairs. They will strip me of my badge, my gun, and my honor, and I will spend the rest of my unhappy life working as a security guard at malls and multiplexes.”

  “That could be pretty sweet,” Shawn said. “Just think, if we bought a ticket to one movie, you could let us sneak in to all the others.”

  “Only on weekdays, though,” Gus said. “We don’t want to get you in trouble if there are sell-outs.”

  Lassiter was so used to Shawn’s and Gus’ callous disregard for anyone but themselves that their obvious pleasure at the tragic consequences of his noble self-sacrifice didn’t surprise him. But he was shocked to his core when he noticed his partner stifling a smile.

  “Is this funny to you?” Lassiter said. “I am one knife stroke away from ending my career to further justice.”

  “It’s okay, Carlton,” O’Hara said. “We’ve come to help you.”

  “You can’t. This is my task alone. Like the poor Hob-bit carrying that ring through Mordor to the Crack of Doom, I must bear my burden and do-”

  Shawn reached past Lassiter, and the detective saw a quick glint of metal. Shawn stepped back. Lassiter looked at the door. To his horror, there was a deep slash all the way through the seal.

  “Oops,” Shawn said.

  “If you think that’s going to make any difference, it won’t,” Lassiter said. “If I use this act of vandalism to further my investigation, I am still guilty. In fact, unless I arrest these two and see them prosecuted for their crime, I’m as guilty as they are.”

  As he said the words, Lassiter had to admit he felt a slight temptation to do just that-to say to hell with the murder and use this defacement of the entire judicial system to put these two delinquents in jail once and for all. But he knew that just as he was willing to sacrifice his own career to catch a killer, he’d have to be willing to sacrifice this pleasure.

  “No one’s guilty of anything, Carlton,” O’Hara said soothingly.

  “There was a court order-”

  “Which we have followed to the letter,” O’Hara said.

  “And not just any letter,” Shawn added. “This letter.”

  Shawn turned to Gus, who reached into his shirt pocket, pulled out a much-folded piece of paper, and slapped it into Shawn’s outstretched hand like an OR nurse handing the surgeon a scalpel. Shawn unfolded the paper and held it up for Lassiter to see.

  “The letter states that we have been employed by Benny Fleck to find his missing client,” Shawn said. “T
hat makes us his duly authorized agents.”

  “And the court order written by the Honorable Albert Moore of the California Superior Court for Santa Barbara County prohibits you from examining the device without the express permission of P’tol P’kah or his duly authorized agents,” Gus said.

  “And we’re even better than that, because we’re duly authorized agents of a duly authorized agent,” Shawn said. “That makes us dually duly authorized. You don’t get more authorized than that. Or more duly.”

  Lassiter stared at them suspiciously, then turned to O’Hara. “Is this true?”

  “All the papers seem to be in order,” O’Hara said. “And we witnessed Fleck hiring these two ourselves.”

  She was right. They did. It all seemed to make sense. Even if there was a court challenge later, Lassiter knew he’d be on firm ground. He could see justice done without sentencing himself to a life of inhaling popcorn fumes. It was everything he’d hoped for.

  “So let’s go,” Shawn said. “That tank isn’t going to investigate itself.”

  Shawn reached past Lassiter and pushed the door open. Lassiter took one step toward the threshold, then stopped. This was too good to be true.

  “Wait one minute,” Lassiter said. “Why are you doing this? What’s the catch?”

  “Don’t be so suspicious, Lassie,” Shawn said. “All we want is a little interagency cooperation. And Jules said it was okay.”

  “We’re pooling our resources,” O’Hara said quickly before Lassiter could object. “They needed a little help with their investigation; we needed a little help with ours. So we made a deal.”

  “What kind of deal?”

  Gus lifted the scuba tank and tossed it to Lassiter, who staggered back as he caught it. “You need our authorization. We need your lab to analyze the contents of this tank.”

  “What is it?” Lassiter said suspiciously.

  “If we knew, we wouldn’t need to have it analyzed,” Shawn said.

  “But we think it’s Martian air,” Gus said. “Or not. Either way, it would be really useful to know.”

  Lassiter thought it through carefully. On the one hand, he hated the idea of donating precious police resources to these two frauds. On the other hand, if he agreed, he’d have a good chance to solve a murder, find a missing person, and salvage his career.

  “On one condition,” Lassiter said after due consideration.

  “What’s that?” Shawn said.

  Lassiter heaved the scuba tank back at Gus, who managed to snatch it out of the air before it crashed on the floor. “You carry it.”

  Lassiter didn’t wait for a response. He turned and marched into the showroom.

  The tank was just as they had left it. The lid stood open, and there were small pools of water on the ground where the body had lain. The enormous boots still sat under the weight of the column of water.

  Lassiter moved slowly toward the tank. Deep down he wanted to run to it like a child after a departing ice cream truck, but his training told him to use the approach to assess the situation carefully.

  Shawn and Gus clearly had no such training. They blasted past him, and Gus was pushing the airplane stairs back against the side of the tank before Lassiter was halfway across the room.

  “This is an official police investigation,” Lassiter commanded. “Stand back from the tank.”

  “Or at least you make sure you share everything you find with us,” O’Hara said. Lassiter glared at her. She shrugged. “They got us in here, Carlton. It’s their investigation, too.”

  Lassiter sighed. He hated having anyone else interfere in his work, but he knew she was right. There was nothing he could do to stop them. But at least he could keep them from despoiling his crime scene before he could see exactly what they were doing. He quickened his pace to a half run and got to the tank just as Shawn was beginning to climb the stairs.

  “What are you planning to do?” Lassiter said as O’Hara caught up with him.

  “I figured I’d jump in the water, dissolve into a zillion tiny pieces, and see where I end up reintegrating,” Shawn said. “Then I’ll come back and tell you where I went.”

  “Do you know how to do that?” O’Hara asked.

  “How hard can it be?” Shawn reached the top of the stairs and stuck a toe of his running shoe into the water. “I just need one favor.”

  “What’s that?” Lassiter said.

  “If any of my molecules don’t reintegrate with me, I need you to fish them out so I can stick them back on later.”

  “Are you sure you know what you’re doing?” Gus hissed up at him.

  “Do I ever?”

  Shawn reached down and touched the water with his hand, then shivered. It hadn’t gotten any warmer in the hours since the Martian vanished. He stood up and was about to step in when the doors to the showroom crashed open.

  “Step away from that tank!”

  The speaker was a tall woman in a dark suit. Even from across the room, she exuded authority. She carried her black purse as if it contained a small arsenal, and her posture suggested she wouldn’t hesitate to use it.

  “It’s okay,” Gus said. “We’re duly authorized agents of Benny Fleck, and we’ve authorized these two fine police detectives to be here.”

  “I don’t know who this Fleck is,” the woman said. “But I am ordering you away from that tank as a duly authorized agent of the United States government.”

  Chapter Thirteen

  In general, Shawn Spencer did not respond well to authority. When directly ordered to do anything, his first, instinctive response was to do precisely the opposite-which might explain why his career as a waiter didn’t last any longer than its first night.

  But there was something in this woman’s voice that made Shawn’s feet move back from the edge of the tank before he had a chance to refuse her command. Looking down, he saw that it had had a similar effect on Gus, who had moved several feet away from the stairs. And the two detectives, who were trained to follow orders, were all but standing at attention.

  Shawn took a deep breath and strolled casually down the steps, fighting off his own desire to salute. “United States government, eh?” he said with as much jauntiness as he could muster. “Think I’ve heard of them. Big outfit, works out of a swamp near Virginia?”

  The woman stalked toward them, her black eyes never leaving Shawn’s face as she came. As she approached, she seemed to be constructed entirely out of angles and edges. Her body was thin, sharp, and hard; her face a caricaturist’s delight of cheekbones and eyebrows, high and fierce.

  “Step away from the stairs, sir,” the woman ordered Shawn, and again he felt his body obeying before his instincts could object.

  “This is an official Santa Barbara police investigation,” O’Hara said.

  “Not anymore,” the woman snapped. “Now it’s a federal matter.”

  Gus noticed an odd look on Lassiter’s face. At first he thought the detective might be about to throw up. But he quickly figured out what it really meant, and the realization made him briefly consider throwing up. Lassiter was attracted to her.

  O’Hara clearly didn’t share her partner’s feelings. “Federal government’s a mighty big thing,” she said. “You want to narrow it down a little for us?”

  “It’s pretty obvious,” Lassiter whispered to her. “Look at this woman. Everything about her screams Homeland Security.”

  “If you mean she’s pushy, arrogant, and probably incompetent, I’m tempted to agree with you,” O’Hara said without lowering her voice. “But I’d still like to know who she is before I walk away from a murder case.”

  “Major Holly Voges, U.S. Army, retired,” the woman said.

  “You see?” Lassiter said. “She’s military.”

  “She’s retired,” O’Hara said.

  “Then why is she here?” Lassiter said.

  “I know,” Shawn said, jumping lightly down the last few steps. “This place looks just like a Veteran’s Center. She’s
looking for a cup of coffee and a game of checkers.”

  Major Voges turned the depthless black eyes back in his direction. “I am retired from the military,” she said. “I am here at the explicit direction of the federal department for which I now work.”

  “And what division would that be?” O’Hara said. “Or is it so classified it doesn’t even have a name?”

  “I bet that’s it,” Lassiter said. “This is one of those off-the-books, black-funding operations, isn’t it?”

  “If it were, I certainly could neither confirm nor deny it.”

  Lassiter turned excitedly to his partner. “Did you hear that?” he said. “She just neither confirmed nor denied what I said. What does that tell you?”

  “That I still haven’t seen any identification,” O’Hara said. “And until I do, she could be one of the stage magicians with a fake name and a clever schtick.”

  “It’s not all that clever,” Shawn said.

  “I don’t know,” Gus said. “Seems pretty clever to me. Claim you’re from the Federal Bureau of Magic, you’re here to search them, and then you keep pulling rabbits out from everywhere.”

  “That’s just a Harry Potter knockoff,” Shawn said. “J. K. Rowling clearly delineated an entire modern government ministry devoted to the dark arts, complete with an investigative division. So what could possibly be new about this gag?”

  Two men in dark suits and white earpieces stepped into the room and took positions on either side of the double doors. After a moment, a forklift rumbled in behind them and steered for the stage.

  “Well that, for one thing,” Gus said.

  “What is that doing in here?” O’Hara said.

  “This tank and everything in and around it are being seized under federal statute 99-245-876, section forty-eight, subparagraph nine,” Voges said coolly. “If you attempt to stop my men, you will be subject to prosecution.”