Psych: A Mind is a Terrible Thing to Read p-1

by William Rabkin

  “Did the police find out anything?”

  “The police?” Shawn said. “What do they have to do with anything?”

  “Didn’t you call them to say he’d tried to kill us?”

  “So they could bungle the case the way they did with Veronica Mason’s?” Shawn asked. “This guy is ours, and we’re going to make sure he pays for what he did. We’re going to spend every minute of every day uncovering his criminal conspiracy. We’re never going to stop until-Hey!” Shawn shoved the newspaper at Gus, pointing at a small boxed headline in the bottom right corner. “Look at that.”

  Gus focused on a small headline that read “Local Businessman to Invest in Area, details page six.”

  “Way to focus, Captain Attention Span,” Gus said.

  “Just look,” Shawn said.

  Gus managed to stretch his arms far enough apart to open the paper to the correct page. At least it was the page indicated by the tease. All Gus saw was a large ad promising that the junior partner in a major mattress company would commit suicide if he were forced to sell his stock at the insanely low prices his senior colleague had promised.

  “‘You’re killing me, Larry?’” Gus read.

  “Oh, we’re killing him all right-but Larry’s got nothing to do with it.” Shawn pointed to a small article running directly under the mattress chain’s generous delivery policy.

  “‘A venture capitalist has pledged to invest several billion dollars in the Santa Barbara economy, helping local companies compete on a national playing field,’” Gus read.

  “Keep reading.”

  “‘Santa Barbara native Dallas Steele, who spent the last ten years as the managing partner of a New York investment bank-’” Gus stopped. “Dallas Steele? From high school?”

  “Check the photo,” Shawn said.

  Gus peered down at the tiny article. There was nothing but type. “There is no photo.”

  “Exactly!”

  Lost, Gus dropped the paper and stared at Shawn’s beaming face. Tara beamed beside him. “I don’t get it,” he said.

  “No, he didn’t get it and we did,” Shawn said. “That jerk Dallas Steele comes swaggering back into town-”

  “I don’t remember him being a jerk.”

  “That’s the brain damage talking,” Shawn said.

  “You said there was no brain da-”

  “He was the biggest phony at Santa Barbara High,” Shawn said. “With his perfect hair and perfect GPA and perfect football season and perfect girlfriend.”

  Tara looked confused. “He doesn’t sound phony to me. He sounds like the real thing.”

  “That’s the worst kind of phony. The genuine kind.”

  “You’re right,” Tara said. “No wonder you hated him.”

  “He was always nice to me,” Gus said. “I mean, when you tried to rent me to the football team as a tackling dummy, he talked me out of it.”

  “Depriving you of badly needed income, to say nothing of extra PE credit,” Shawn said. “And all so he could say he’d helped out some geeky loser.”

  “He never called me a loser.”

  “Everyone called you a loser, Gus,” Shawn said. “It was the parachute pants. Anyway, there’s only one loser now, and that’s international phony Dallas Steele.”

  “It says here he’s a multibillionaire.”

  “And he’s still not happy,” Shawn said. “He’s got to come back to Santa Barbara and lord it over us all. And that might have worked, if it wasn’t for us meddling kids. We knocked him right off the front page. He’s probably sitting in some palatial estate right now, leafing forlornly through today’s paper, wondering exactly how his high school nemeses Shawn Spenser and Burton Guster bested him.”

  Shawn held up his hand for a high five. Gus tried to reach up for it, but his arm wouldn’t rise above his rib cage. He didn’t really understand why he was supposed to be fiving, anyway. Dallas Steele was a billionaire investor, and Gus had spent the last day in a near-vegetative state because he couldn’t scrape up the cash to ransom his company car.

  “And just think how he’ll feel when he reads that we’ve crushed a criminal conspiracy that reaches into the highest levels of Santa Barbara society,” Shawn said triumphantly. “We may even take out some of his neighbors.”

  Gus wasn’t sure that people in Steele’s economic bracket actually had neighbors, except in the way astronomers discuss neighboring galaxies. But that didn’t seem as important as the other question banging against his skull. “What conspiracy is that?”

  “The phony impound man,” Shawn said. “We know he’s a criminal. We know he’s hiding something.”

  “That doesn’t mean there’s a conspiracy reaching into the highest levels of Santa Barbara society,” Gus said. “Maybe he’s a loner. Or maybe his partners are even lower down than he is.”

  “You can’t have the ultimate bad guy being some poor schmuck,” Shawn said. “Your really good villains are the wealthy elite.”

  “You were watching another Law and Order marathon when I was unconscious, weren’t you?”

  “That has nothing to do with it,” Shawn said. “You want your hero to go up against the entrenched power structure, a lone knight in dented armor tilting at the windmills of wealth and influence in what’s supposed to be a class-free America.”

  “Didn’t we just free the widow of a multimillionaire by scamming a confession out of a woman wearing Wal-Mart’s bargain line?”

  “Is that a trick question?”

  Gus was spared answering by the arrival of a nurse, who shooed Shawn and Tara out of the room. After a moment she was joined by a doctor, who gave Gus a quick once-over and approved his release. Gus spent the next fifteen minutes filling out insurance paperwork and the following forty-five coaxing his fingers into bending sufficiently to button his shirt. At least it was a fresh shirt. Sometime in the night Shawn must have stopped by Gus’ place and picked up a change of clothes for him.

  When an orderly wheeled him to the hospital’s front door, Shawn and Tara were waiting by her red Mercedes. They kept waiting as he made his way across the sidewalk. Each step was an agonizing ordeal, as he forced stiffened and bruised muscles to contract and relax. After what felt like another hour, he made it over to them.

  “Tara’s offered to take you home, bud,” Shawn said.

  “It’s the least I can do. If there’s anything else, please let me know.”

  “Thanks, but you don’t have to,” Gus said. “You’ve already done so much.”

  “Anyone would have done the same thing.”

  “For a complete stranger? I don’t think so.”

  “Well, we’re not strangers anymore,” Tara said. “I’d like you to think of me as your friend.”

  “Works for me,” Shawn said.

  “In that case, there is one thing I’d like to do before I go home,” Gus said, gritting his teeth against the pain. “If you wouldn’t mind driving back up that hill, I want to see the man who really is responsible. And put an end to his criminal enterprise, no matter how high or low it reaches.”

  Shawn looked like he was going to argue; then he relaxed into a grin. He turned to Tara. “Do you mind making one quick stop?”

  Gus sprawled out across the red leather of the backseat as Tara piloted them back to where she’d first seen him. Normally he would have used the travel time to work out an action plan with Shawn. But no matter how helpful Tara was being, it didn’t feel right to discuss their process in front of her. So Gus used the trip to experience every minor bump in the road as a wave of pain coursed through his entire body.

  Which turned out to be just as beneficial a use of time as planning would have been. Because when the Mercedes pulled up across the street from the impound office, he heard Shawn mutter a confused expletive. Pulling himself up in the seat, Gus looked out the window.

  The area in front of the shack was surrounded by police cars. Uniformed officers and plainclothes detectives stood outside the front door. T
wo EMTs loitered by their open, empty ambulance.

  “What’s going on?” Gus said.

  Shawn surveyed the scene. “I’d say you’re not the only victim of the criminal conspiracy. Looks like they’ve taken out one of their own. Or as they say in Law and Order-chung chung. ”

  Chapter Five

  In cooking, no procedure is simpler or more foolproof than roasting a chicken. You turn the oven on to 350 degrees, slap the bird in a roasting pan, and pull it out after an hour or so. Of course there are plenty of ways to improve this basic recipe, but as long as you follow these easy steps, you’ll end up with a tasty dinner.

  Even with a dish this basic, there are ways to destroy it. Let’s say you set the oven to something like 120 degrees and leave the bird in for a couple of days. You might think of it as slow roasting. But you won’t be cooking the chicken so much as speeding up its decomposition. And if you’ve forgotten to remove all those quick-to-spoil innards from the cavity, you’ll end up with a dish that’s almost as toxic as it is disgusting.

  Whoever killed the attendant at the impound yard apparently didn’t know the rules for successful roasting. He had left his victim’s body in the 110-degree metal shack overnight, and he definitely hadn’t done any cleaning beforehand.

  Which is why seven of the eight members of the Santa Barbara Police Department called to the scene were still standing outside the shack’s door, their faces covered with handkerchiefs, paper bags, or take-out coffee cups when Tara’s red Mercedes pulled up across the street. And why the eighth, one of the techs from the crime lab, blasted out onto the tarmac, fell onto his knees, and heaved just moments after he’d gone in.

  Shawn leaned back over the front seat. “I guess our work here is done. Want to go home?”

  “What do you mean our work is done? We haven’t done anything.”

  “The guy who tried to kill us isn’t going to be trying again anytime soon. And it’s not like we can wreak any good vengeance on him now.”

  Shawn was right. They could go home. For a moment, Gus imagined what it would be like to ease his aching muscles into a warm bath. And to stay there for a month. But then he remembered why his muscles hurt in the first place.

  “We’re detectives, not rubber duckies,” Gus said.

  “Duckies?” Shawn said.

  “Never mind,” Gus said. “Let’s break this thing open.”

  Shawn beamed at him. Those were exactly the words he wanted to hear. He threw open his door and marched across the street.

  “Isn’t he amazing?” Tara said.

  “Yeah, amazing,” Gus said, struggling to pull the door handle all the way back. “Would you mind helping me out of here?”

  Tara slid out of the driver’s side and opened the back door for Gus. He grabbed the handle over the window and hauled himself to the doorway, then realized he was stuck. His top half was already leaning out toward the pavement, but his legs were trapped in the well behind the front seat, and he couldn’t lift them over the threshold. In about two seconds, he was going to tip over and fall face-first onto the asphalt.

  “Little help here,” he called.

  Tara grabbed his shoulders just as he was beginning to topple. Gently, she eased his trunk back into the car, then lifted his feet over the threshold. She held out a hand to help him get up, but he waved it off.

  “I’m okay now,” he said. “Thanks.”

  “Would you like me to help you across the street?”

  Gus looked at the gaggle of police officers standing outside the shack. The open ambulance waiting for a body. He remembered how he had felt when he saw his first corpse. There was no need to put this poor woman through that.

  “You’ve done enough,” Gus said. “In fact, you might as well go home. We can get a ride with one of the detectives.”

  “I can’t do that,” she said, taking his arm.

  Despite the apparent fact that his neck had lost the ability to swivel, Gus scanned the road in both directions, making sure there was no car within a quarter of a mile before he headed toward the impound lot.

  “Sure, you can. I’m sorry I dragged you all the way out here.”

  Tara looked puzzled. “You didn’t drag me here. Shawn did.”

  He felt like the Tin Woodsman-his muscles seemed to be rusted solid, but once he started moving they eased up considerably. “It was really both of us who-”

  “No.” There was an edge of steel in her voice that Gus hadn’t heard before. He didn’t understand where it was coming from. “Shawn dragged me here. That’s why I was here to see you fall. I was answering his call.”

  “How could he call you? His phone was in my car, and my car was impounded,” Gus said.

  Her ice blue eyes bored into his. “Shawn doesn’t need a phone to call me. He’s a psychic. He beams his thoughts directly into my mind.”

  Gus stopped dead in the middle of the street. He would have, anyway, if his body hadn’t been experiencing a sense memory of his last journey over this particular stretch of road and propelling his legs forward without any input from his brain. “He does?”

  “No matter where I am or what I’m doing.”

  Gus realized he had made it to the other end of the street. So why did it feel like he had just stepped into quicksand? “Does Shawn know about this?”

  “He’s the one beaming me his thoughts,” she said in a tone that suggested Gus had just come out of a short yellow bus, not a red Mercedes.

  “But have you discussed this with him?”

  “Did you talk to your feet before you sent them the mental order to cross the street?” she said.

  Actually, today he had. But he knew what she meant. He needed to talk to Shawn about this right away.

  “Are you getting any beams from Shawn right now?”

  She thought it over, cocking her head like a puppy to aid her reception. “Nothing.”

  “That’s what I was afraid of,” Gus said. “All those police radios are interfering with the signals.”

  “I didn’t know they could do that,” Tara said. “It’s never been a problem before.”

  “It’s a new invention,” Gus said. “With all the bandwidth going to cell carriers, the cops have switched to psychic frequencies for their radios.”

  “I’d better get closer to him then.”

  “No!” Gus said. “I mean, he’s asked me to relay a request-an order-to you.”

  “I didn’t hear him do that.”

  “Exactly,” Gus said. “That’s why I have to tell you that Shawn wants you to-Shawn orders you-to wait by the car.”

  He waited for a moment for her to process this. Then she smiled and went back across the street. Forcing his legs to go faster, Gus walked over to the shack’s front door, where seven of the police were still standing frozen as the crime scene tech finally managed to get up off his knees.

  “Good to see your new cologne’s going over as well as the old one, Lassie,” Shawn said.

  “I thought he was responding to one of your jokes,” Lassiter said. “It’s how they make me feel.”

  Gus stepped up before Shawn could respond. “There’s something we need to talk about.”

  “Not just yet, Gus,” Shawn said. “Detective Lassiter was just going to demonstrate what makes him Santa Barbara’s finest.”

  “You really think I won’t go in that shack?” Lassiter said.

  “I will if you will,” Shawn said.

  “You most certainly will not,” Lassiter said.

  “Shawn,” Gus whispered fiercely, “there’s something you need to know. Now.”

  “The Santa Barbara Police Department doesn’t need your help on this one,” Lassiter said. “Which you might have been able to figure out by the simple fact that nobody asked for it.”

  The other police detective pulled the handkerchief away from her face, revealing the bright eyes and easy smile of Juliet O’Hara. Except that right now her eyes were slightly dimmed by tears, and her smile was anything but easy-the st
ench was proving stronger even than her own fierce will. And her will rarely lost a test of strength. The youngest detective on the squad, O’Hara was almost always underestimated by men who saw her pretty face and assumed she was soft. It annoyed her, but she’d learned how to use their assumptions against them. “Yes, Carlton, somebody did.” She turned to Shawn. “You could have returned one of my calls.”

  “Sorry. I’ve been away from my phones.”

  “Then how did you know to come here?” she said.

  “Jules, Jules, Jules,” Shawn said, “do you really need to ask?”

  Lassiter looked at her as if she’d gotten up before she’d finished her time in the naughty spot. “You called him?”

  “I did.”

  “You don’t have the authority to authorize an unauthorized consultant. You need to have that cleared by Chief Vick.”

  “Her exact words were, ‘Do whatever you want as long as you don’t make me come to that hellhole,’” O’Hara said.

  “And what is it you want to do, Juliet?” Shawn said. “I mean, deep down.”

  “I want to clear this case so I never have to smell this smell again,” she said.

  “You heard the lady, Lassie,” Shawn said. “Let’s solve us a murder. What do we hear from the CSI boys?”

  District Attorney Bert Coules stepped out from around the side of the shack. “Mostly retching,” Coules said. “Occasional vomiting. A lot of moans.”

  Shawn listened for a moment. “Yes, I see what you mean. But before they lost focus, what were they saying?”

  Gus pulled Shawn aside. Or he tried to. He couldn’t quite get up the strength to actually exert a force, but Shawn noticed him brushing at his shirtsleeve.

  “There’s something you need to know,” Gus said.

  “And I’m about to learn it from the lovely detective.”

  “I sure hope not,” Gus said, as Shawn stepped away from him.

  “It’s a mess in there,” Coules said.

  “You’re not looking so good yourself,” Shawn said. “Got a little spot on your suit there.”

  Actually, there were several spots on the DA’s suit. His knee was stained with grease. His jacket was flecked with a goo whose origin Gus hoped he’d never learn.