A Fatal Frame of Mind p-4

by William Rabkin

  Gus ignored him and focused all his attention on his old professor. “If Rossetti refused to allow this painting to be shown in public, there had to be a reason,” Kitteredge said. “And it clearly wasn’t an aesthetic issue. We’ve all had a chance to look at the work now, and we’ve seen that it might be his masterpiece. So the only reason it’s been hidden away from sight for one hundred and fifty years is because it contains a truth so powerful, so dangerous, he couldn’t afford to let anyone see it outside a select few.”

  Even if Kitteredge’s right hand hadn’t been plunging into his coat pocket, Gus would have known this was the moment they’d all been waiting for. He jabbed Shawn in the side with his elbow. “This is it,” he said. “This is the moment where it all comes together.”

  Shawn roused himself sleepily. “As long as it doesn’t involve talking, I’m in,” he said.

  “Just listen for one more minute and I promise you we’ll learn something important about this murder,” Gus said.

  “I can’t listen for one more minute,” Shawn said. “Because that would require that I’d listened to any of the rest of it.”

  “Then listen for the first time,” Gus said. “Because something big is about to happen.”

  Reluctantly, Shawn turned his attention to the professor. If there was about to be a breakthrough in the case, the momentousness of the moment was escaping Lassiter, too, who was using his index fingers to prop his eyelids open.

  “I have been working up to this slowly and cautiously, Detective, so that when I reached the incredible truth you would have no choice but to believe. Because that truth is the key to a conspiracy that reaches across the seas, across the centuries, and that is without a doubt behind the murder of poor Clay Filkins.” Having delivered this final, determinate statement, Kitteredge proudly pulled his hand out of his jacket pocket.

  But when he held his lighter to his meerschaum, his thumb couldn’t find the trigger. It slid down the sticky, wet handle. Kitteredge thumbed it again, then realized something was wrong.

  If Lassiter hadn’t been using his eyes to count the holes in the acoustical ceiling tiles, he might have been faster to notice what Kitteredge was holding.

  Gus did see, but it took him a moment to understand what he was looking at. He expected to see that flame-jet pipe lighter sparking as if it had been newly forged, the same way it had so many times in class. Instead, the professor was holding what looked like a metal tube that had been sloppily dripped in wet paint.

  Then Kitteredge’s thumb found a button, and a long, thin blade shot out of the handle with a snik sound so loud that even Shawn had to look up.

  Look up and see that Professor Kitteredge wasn’t holding his lighter. Instead, he was holding a switchblade knife covered in blood.

  “What’s that?” Gus said, even though he recognized the thing in the professor’s hand. His mind simply refused to accept what his eyes were seeing.

  “I’ve got to give it to you,” Shawn said. “I didn’t think he could make it happen, but when he got to the end, he really did tie up the entire murder.”

  Chapter Nine

  “Shoot him!”

  Carlton Lassiter tensed his muscles and waited for the lead to slam into his flesh. If he was going to die, let it be at the hands of his fellow officers.

  Because he was going to die. There was no way around it. This was the kind of situation no one walked away from. Professor Langston Kitteredge had him pinned against his body with one of his massive arms; the other was pressing the bloody switchblade against his neck. Facing them was a line of guns, each in the hands of a member of the Santa Barbara Police Department. Either Lassiter was going to be brought down in a storm of police bullets or the knife at his throat was going to slit him open.

  “Hold your fire!”

  Lassiter tried to turn his head to see who was speaking, but the blade dug into his flesh, stopping him. It didn’t matter-he’d know that voice anywhere. It belonged to his partner.

  “Don’t listen to her!” Lassiter shouted at the assembled police. “Take him down!”

  “Hold your fire!” O’Hara commanded again. “We are going to end this with no bloodshed.”

  Not a chance, Lassiter thought. There was going to be blood, and lots of it. His and his captor’s.

  Lassiter didn’t mind dying. Well, that wasn’t exactly true. In fact, he had lots of things to live for. First up, he had tickets to see the newly re-re-reformed Journey in a week, and he was hugely curious to see if new lead singer, Angel Pineda, could fill the shoes of Jeff Scott Soto, who had failed to fill the shoes of Steve Augeri, who had in turn failed to fill the enormous vocal shoes of Steve Perry.

  But though he yearned for life, Lassiter knew that death was preferable to the alternative-that a murderer go free because of him.

  This was entirely his fault. There was no other way to look at it. He’d had Langston Kitteredge in his custody. He should have cuffed him to the table and forced the truth out of him. But he’d been lazy. Weak. Foolish. He’d ignored the first law of the homicide detective-to treat everyone as a suspect until proven innocent. Instead, he’d assumed that Kitteredge was a friendly witness, and failed to notice the warning signs until it was too late.

  How could he have been so blind? The way Kitteredge had droned on and on, avoiding the slightest trace of useful information while drowning him in a sea of historical trivia-in retrospect, it was so obvious that this was the professor’s way of lulling him into complacency, or even into a coma. But Lassiter had treated it as if it were nothing more than an irritating tic. Now he was paying the price.

  He’d had his chance to act. There was that one second when Kitteredge pulled the bloody knife out of his pocket and flicked open the blade. Lassiter hadn’t been wearing his gun in the interview room, of course-that would have been an unforgivable breach of protocol. But he was trained in hand-to-hand combat, and he had no doubt that if he’d acted swiftly enough he could have disarmed the professor. Especially since Kitteredge had spent the first couple of seconds staring down at the blade in feigned surprise, as if he’d originally hoped to convince the police that he had no idea how it had ended up in his pocket.

  But before Lassiter could leap into action, the professor did. He grabbed the detective and jammed the knife’s blade against his throat.

  “You did this to me!” Kitteredge whispered savagely into his ear.

  “Drop the knife!” Lassiter commanded, but the professor didn’t seem to hear him.

  “I know who’s behind this,” Kitteredge said. “You’re just a pawn. It’s Polidori. It’s the Cabal!”

  Before Lassiter could come up with an answer, the door to the interrogation room flew open. For one brief second Lassiter’s heart leaped at the thought that SWAT was coming to take Kitteredge out. Then those idiots, Spencer and Guster, burst in.

  “Professor Kitteredge, what are you doing?” Gus said.

  “He’s part of it!” Kitteredge shouted.

  “If you mean part of the reason American policemen have such a bad reputation, I can’t argue with you,” Shawn said. “Beyond that, I don’t think he’s part of anything.”

  “He’s part of the conspiracy,” Kitteredge said. “They killed Clay Filkins and now they’re framing me for it. And he knows who’s behind it.”

  “Lassie?” Shawn said. “He doesn’t know who’s behind anything. The music. The green door. The Valley of the Dolls.”

  “I think that last one is beyond,” Gus said.

  “He doesn’t know any beyonds, either,” Shawn said. “In fact, he really doesn’t know much of anything. Which he’ll be happy to demonstrate if you’ll let him go.”

  “I can’t!” Kitteredge said. “I’ve gotten too close to them, and they’ll do anything to stop me. But I won’t let them.” Kitteredge’s blade dug deeper into Lassiter’s throat. “I don’t want to hurt him, but I will if I have to.”

  “Get out of here, Spencer,” Lassiter said, feeling the air press
ing back against the knife as it struggled up through his constricted throat. “I can handle this.”

  “Yes, I can see you’re right on top of things,” Shawn said. “Sorry we interrupted.”

  Shawn turned back toward the door. Gus grabbed his arm. “We can’t just leave them here.”

  “You heard what Lassie said,” Shawn said. “He’s got it under control.”

  “But this is all a terrible mistake,” Gus said. “Professor K thinks Lassie framed him, Lassie thinks the professor is a murderer, and unless we can convince them they’re both wrong, somebody is going to get hurt. Or killed.”

  “That’s why I said we should have gone to the C. Thomas Howell Film Festival instead of the museum,” Shawn said. While he was talking he started to move around the edges of the room. “Very few people have ever died watching CyberMaster, and those who have all worked on the film and realized only while they were watching the credits that they forgot to request to be listed by their pseudonyms. Whereas everyone knows that nine-tenths of the murders in the free world happen in art museums.”

  It took Gus a moment to figure out what Shawn was doing, but then he realized. He was trying to get behind Kitteredge.

  “What are you talking about?” Gus said. If there was any chance for Shawn’s plan to work, Gus had to keep the professor’s eyes on him. “This isn’t about museum crime. This is about a global conspiracy-one that’s already claimed one victory tonight and is about to take two more. We can’t let that happen.”

  Kitteredge turned to Gus with gratitude in his eyes. For a moment, the hand holding the knife seemed to relax.

  “Now!” Gus shouted. Which might have been exactly the right thing to say if Shawn had been the only one in the room planning to make a move. Because at Gus’ command, Shawn leaped across the room to tackle Kitteredge.

  Unfortunately, Shawn wasn’t the only one in the room planning to make a move. Lassiter was, too. And as he felt the knife slacken away from his throat, he drove an elbow straight back into Kitteredge’s stomach. The professor doubled at the point of impact-and Shawn flew right over him, crashing onto the table, then sliding off and landing hard on the floor.

  Lassiter struggled to free himself, but even as he gasped for breath the professor wouldn’t let go. He jammed the knife back against the detective’s throat as he pulled himself upright again.

  Kitteredge dragged Lassiter to the interrogation room door. “We’re getting out of here,” he said. Then he turned a baleful eye on Gus. “You don’t understand the forces you’re dealing with.”

  Kitteredge shoved Lassiter to the door, pulled it open, and dragged him through, making sure it closed behind them. From inside, Lassiter could hear Gus, and then Shawn and Gus, pounding to be let out.

  The squad room was still only about half full as the night shift filtered out and the day watch began to check in. But there were at least twenty police officers and detectives between Kitteredge and the front door. And there was no way Lassiter was going to allow him to get away. Not even if it cost him his life. “He’s got a knife!” Lassiter shouted.

  From across the squad room, guns flew out of holsters, of drawers, of lockers. They were all pointed directly at Kitteredge-and at him.

  “Put down your weapons,” Kitteredge said. “No one needs to get hurt.”

  “Don’t listen to him!” Lassiter commanded, bracing himself for the sweet sting of lead. “Shoot!”

  “Hold your fire,” O’Hara said.

  She stepped into Lassiter’s line of sight. She wouldn’t look at his face, though. No doubt she was as ashamed of what he’d allowed to happen as he was. She stared directly over Lassiter’s shoulder into Kitteredge’s eyes.

  “Professor Kitteredge,” she said as calmly as if she were going to offer him a stick of gum, “I need you to drop the weapon.”

  “I can’t do that,” Kitteredge said. “They’re coming for me.”

  “And we can protect you,” O’Hara said.

  “Like you protected Filkins?” Kitteredge said. “He was killed right under your noses.”

  “We didn’t know about the conspiracy before,” O’Hara said. “Now we do, thanks to you. And with your help, we can shut it down for good.”

  “Stop talking to him,” Lassiter barked. “Move away and shoot him.”

  “You’re not helping, Carlton,” O’Hara said. “Besides, Professor Kitteredge needs you alive, because you have special knowledge about the conspiracy. If you die, it dies with you.”

  “There is no conspiracy,” Lassiter nearly shrieked with frustration. “There’s just a lunatic with a knife at my throat-and you can’t let him get away!”

  O’Hara shot him a brief, chiding look, then turned her attention back to Kitteredge. “We can help you, Professor,” she said. “We can work together to figure out who killed Filkins, and who put that bloody knife in your pocket.”

  For a moment, Lassiter felt the blade’s pressure ease on his throat. Then it was jammed back into place.

  “I can’t trust anybody,” Kitteredge said. “You might have planted the knife.”

  “But I didn’t,” O’Hara said. “What can I do to convince you of that?”

  “Don’t convince him,” Lassiter said. “Shoot him.”

  “Quiet, Carlton,” O’Hara said. “Professor Kitteredge, I swear to you that I am no part of any conspiracy, and neither is my partner. I will do whatever it takes to make you see that as long as you don’t hurt him. So tell me now, before things get ugly-what is it you want?”

  “I’ve got to get out of here,” Kitteredge said. “You’ve got to let me go.”

  “Don’t do it!” Lassiter shouted.

  “You won’t get far,” O’Hara said. “Every police officer in this city will be looking for you.”

  “At least this way I have a chance to find out the truth before they get me,” Kitteredge said.

  Lassiter stared at O’Hara, mentally sending the order for her to shoot. Astonishingly, she managed to ignore it. Instead, she did the one thing Lassiter dreaded more than anything else in the world. She nodded.

  Then she held up a hand to the officers. “Weapons down,” she commanded. Some of the officers complied immediately. Others just stared at her, keeping their guns leveled at Kitteredge. “I said weapons down!” she said. “Now!”

  This time there was no questioning her intent. The other officers stood down.

  “Let him go and run,” O’Hara said.

  “Other way around,” Kitteredge said. “I take him with me, and I leave him in a safe place once I know I’m not being followed.”

  “Don’t do this, Detective,” Lassiter said.

  She thought it over for a moment, then nodded again. “If anything happens to him-”

  “Then you’d better find the moles in your own department,” Kitteredge said. “Because I don’t want to hurt anyone.”

  He took a step toward the front door, then stopped, waiting to see if anyone was going to come for him. But the police officers were frozen in place. He took another step, dragging Lassiter with him, then moved swiftly toward the front door. He kicked it open and disappeared through it.

  Chapter Ten

  “Okay,”Shawn said as Gus piloted the Echo back to the Psych office. “From now on, we’re going to have a few rules. To start with, I choose the evening’s entertainment.”

  “We didn’t go to the museum for fun,” Gus said automatically. He had no interest in the conversation, but he knew if Shawn didn’t receive a response he’d keep repeating his original statement until he did, or until they were both dead. “We went on a case.”

  “That’s rule number two,” Shawn said. “I choose our clients, too.”

  A dozen different arguments flashed through Gus’ brain. He could, for instance, have pointed out the times Shawn had agreed to take on a client who turned out to be guilty. Or the instances when Gus had brought in a case that turned into a great success for the agency.

  But Gus didn’t hav
e any strength left for arguing. He barely had any strength left at all. If it hadn’t been for the Echo’s power-assisted steering he might have simply kept going straight down Santa Barbara Street until he’d driven into the ocean.

  It wasn’t just the fact that they’d been up for more than twenty-four hours that had sucked all the energy out of him. Although it wasn’t as easy as it had been when they were teens, Gus and Shawn still routinely pulled all-nighters when they were working on a case. And it wasn’t the grueling interrogation they’d received from Detective O’Hara after she’d allowed Kitteredge to escape with her partner as a hostage, or even the huge sense of relief when Lassiter had been found half an hour later locked in the trunk of a stolen patrol car, furious but unharmed and definitely alive.

  What had worn Gus out so completely was his sense of utter failure. Professor Kitteredge had reached out to him, reached out to the one person he had thought could help him, even though they barely knew each other. And not only had Gus been unable to help; he had stood by as things had gotten immeasurably worse for his old professor. Gus didn’t know exactly what Kitteredge had wanted help with, but whatever it was it couldn’t have been as bad as his current problem. He was a wanted fugitive, hunted not only for a cold-blooded murder but for taking hostage a Santa Barbara police detective. His career was ruined, his life changed forever-that is, if he managed to survive this day. Santa Barbara’s police were professional above all else, but when they were chasing a criminal who’d dared hold a knife to one of their own, Gus knew that following the letter of the law would not seem as important as bringing down the felon.

  “Rule number three is a no-brainer,” Shawn said after checking to make sure that Gus was actually awake to hear him. “No cases that require formal wear.”

  Gus briefly considered responding to that, but he decided to allocate all his available strength to turning the steering wheel sufficiently to execute the right turn that would head them in the general direction of their office.