more Third Law - part four
Previous Chapter
Saturday dawned bright and breezy, all hint of cloud cover driven from the overly blue sky. Lassiter pulled into the St. Francis visitor's lot and sat for a few minutes, the engine turned off. Santa Barbara citizens (or Barbarians, as he'd heard Spencer refer to them on occasion) trickled in and out of the glass-fronted entrance. Most of them seemed fairly happy, he saw. There was the occasional limp, a cast or two, a large bandage covering who-knew-what - but they were ordinary folk, calm and without fear.
Lassiter glanced around the parking lot as he exited the car. An undercover car was stashed away between two giant SUVs a couple of rows from his space. It was always easy to tell an SBPD car from the normal beater, what with the small forests of antennae sprouting from their bodies. He wondered briefly who would be spending police time visiting Spencer, but the list of names was too long to contemplate.
As he made his way to the rear of the hospital, where the head trauma victims stayed for observation, he took the time to straighten his tie, smoothing his hair over his brow. It had been a very long night. After going over Spencer’s statement (an experience he wouldn’t care to repeat, to say the least), he’d driven across town to Lompoc to speak with Bill McKinney. Even three hours later, Lassiter couldn’t rid himself of the overwhelming eeriness of the man’s presence. McKinney was Lassiter’s height, but more muscular with it; that, combined with an eye-watering tendency not to blink, made him more imposing than his mild manners would indicate.
That was the thing that bothered Lassiter. McKinney was so oppressively normal - even with a massive contusion blooming across his skull from Lassiter’s own gun, he smiled in reflex when the detective entered his hospital room. He was perfectly polite. Though Lassiter had witnessed the tail end of the event, McKinney hadn’t confessed to raping Spencer. This, admittedly, wasn’t that surprising: it was almost impossible to prove that the sex hadn’t been role-play, with Spencer gagged. McKinney claimed, too, that Spencer’s statement declaring the intercourse rape was untrue - something which couldn’t technically be proven, either. The debacle with that girl and Kobe Bryant was evidence enough that what a victim claimed to a court was not necessarily so. When Lassiter questioned the man further, mentioning the assault and murder of the four girls, he appeared completely bewildered. The performance was so good that Lassiter almost had second thoughts, himself.
Almost, he considered, turning the corner, was the key word.
“What do you mean I’m not allowed to see him?”
“Mr. Spencer will be released in a few minutes. The doctor is just giving him his care instructions before he can leave.”
With all that had happened, Lassiter wasn't surprised that he forgot about Spencer's father. Henry seemed like such a remote part of his son's life; even during their brief fishing partnership, Henry never asked about Shawn. Even here, in the antiseptic gray waiting area at the hospital anticipating his son’s release, Henry looked more disgruntled at the early hour than worried. Lassiter wondered who had called him. Maybe it had been Shawn. Lassiter doubted it.
“Detective Lassiter,” the older man said as he came up to the nurse’s station. It didn’t sound exactly like a greeting.
“Good morning, Mr. Spencer.” Lassiter didn’t let himself flinch at the look Henry gave him, but it was a near thing.
“I don’t see what’s good about it, Carlton.” Henry wandered a few steps away, apparently examining the large posters on the waiting room wall. His flip-flops were loud on the linoleum.
Lassiter debated about whether to follow. Buying himself some time, he asked the nurse how long Shawn would be. “A few more minutes,” she replied, looking bored. He had to do a double-take, but it wasn’t the nurse from the night before. Apparently the women of this hospital were uniformly affected by ennui with other people’s problems.
He turned and, with measured steps, made his way across the room to stand a few paces away from Spencer's father. With his stiff carriage and hands clasped firmly behind his back, Lassiter reflected that he probably looked not a little like a fresh cadet to the older, though retired, detective. Henry glanced at him only once, though - his attention seemed captured by the cheery green poster before him advertising some new blood pressure medication from Central Coast Pharmaceuticals.
After a few moments, Henry said, "When did it happen?"
His voice sounded as unconcerned as his posture. "Around midnight, this morning."
"Really." Lassiter gave the man a sidelong look. He'd crossed his arms over his chest, becoming surprisingly intimidating in a pink flowered shirt. "I got the call about half an hour ago."
It was going on seven in the morning. That made almost six hours since his only child had been assaulted and raped. Lassiter wondered if he should have called Henry personally. It was against procedure, but - hell, he'd gone fishing with the man.
"Lassiter," Henry said. The detective startled at the abruptness of it, at how normal his voice sounded. "You've got this guy in custody. You know who it is."
It sounded like a question, but it wasn't. "We have a suspect, yes."
Henry looked at him, finally. "I don't make it a practice to interfere with investigations. I know how irritating it is to have outsiders butting in." Henry took a step closer, fixing Lassiter with pale blue eyes.
"Shawn won't ask for anything, but I am. Bury this guy. Get rid of the bastard."
Lassiter's eyes narrowed. "What are you suggesting, Henry?"
"Don't be cute with me, Carlton," the other man retorted. "I know all the tricks. Pin everything you can on him, whoever he is. Put him away for life." He looked away, his jaw visibly flexing, then turned back to Lassiter. "This is my kid."
The rattle of one of the hospital's crappy wheelchairs interrupted Lassiter's bewilderment. "Look, if I have to ride in this thing, you could at least let me do it side-saddle."
"Sorry, Mr. Spencer. I'm pretty sure hospital regs say your feet have to go on the footrests."
Lassiter turned around to see a still-cheerful Shawn Spencer argue good-naturedly with the nurse pushing him into the waiting room. He still didn't have any of his own clothes - it looked like the nurses had raided the hospital gift shop. At least, that was where he hoped the bright yellow "Bee Well" t-shirt had come from.
"Only pretty sure? So you're not positive?"
"Shawn," Henry said, his voice perfectly exasperated. "Don’t torture the nurses."
Lassiter watched as Spencer's head snapped around, his eyes widening in genuine surprise. "Dad?" It only took him about two seconds to cover it, his face - though battered - reverting to its usual expression of general cheeriness. "You came to see me?"
"After the Chief called me." Lassiter glanced between the two of them. It was clear where Shawn had learned his poker face. Henry's façade of irritation never wavered. "Why the hell aren't I on your emergency contacts list?"
"Um, hello, Dad - you told me to take you off of it, remember? After the bike incident?" Spencer looked appalled that his father even needed to ask the question. He planted his elbows on the wheelchair's armrests, folding his hands in front of his chest. "Anyway, they're only supposed to call the family if the patient's knocked out."
"You were," Lassiter put in.
Spencer rolled his eyes. "That was before, Lassie. And now I'm fine."
The nurse cut in. "I'm sorry, I have to take Mr. Spencer to the front doors now. It's regulations."
"Well, we wouldn't want to break regulations, would we, Shawn? We'll walk with you," said Henry. He practically elbowed the nurse aside, grasping the chair's handles himself. "Won't we, Detective?"
Lassiter fell into step a pace behind the Spencer men. Shawn prattled on at the nurse, doing his level best to elicit a phone number. At the same time, Henry was doing his utmost to ruin Shawn's chances - pointing out obvious untruths, sucking the humor out of every wisecrack. Walking in silence in their wake, Lassiter wondered at the steel-fronted personalities the Spencer household had somehow forged.
No hint of sympathy colored Henry's demeanor as he pushed Shawn through the hospital. Lassiter couldn’t decide if the man didn't want to be seen coddling his offspring or truly didn't believe special treatment was called for. Neither would have surprised him.
On the other hand, Shawn's behavior seemed even more unusual than Henry's - not only unusual, but somehow wrong. Lassiter knew different people reacted differently to crimes upon their person, be they assault or rape. The handful of times Lassiter had been the principal detective on rape cases, the women acted in utterly disparate ways. One had burst into tears in his arms; one had seemed frighteningly numb; others fought, shying from his male presence or antagonized by it.
In a decade, the SBPD had handled only two cases of rape in which the victim was male. Due to circumstances now forgotten, Lassiter hadn't handled either. Despite the lack of hard evidence, however, he was prepared to make a substantial bet that the average man's reaction was not nothing.
That was it. 'Every action has an equal and opposite reaction.' Little wonder he was so bothered by the other man's behavior. Spencer had had no discernible reaction.
Lassiter watched the two men in front of him. Henry walked with the casual, powerful swagger of a long-time cop. He was the sort of person who didn't glance at people he passed because he knew they weren't a) a threat, or b) all that important. Henry was entirely focused on the matter at hand, in this instance propelling his son through the hospital without major collisions.
Whereas Shawn - even now - looked at everything and everyone. He tried to strike up conversations with people they passed, though Henry never stopped long enough to allow much charming. Lassiter looked back to Henry and knew where he'd recognized the walk. It was much like Shawn's - Spencer strolled just as casually through life, an appalling level of confidence informing his strut.
Something should have changed. Spencer shouldn't have been able to flirt and joke quite so easily. If he were faking being 'just fine', there should have been some hesitation. Even the indefatigable Shawn Spencer ought to take pause after enduring assault, particularly one at the level Lassiter had witnessed. Something should have changed, and it hadn't.
The group made it to the front doors, where the nurse made Spencer sign a few papers. Henry waited with impatience, foot tapping. For a moment, Lassiter wondered what Spencer's mother was like. Henry's genes on their own could never have produced a creature like Shawn Spencer. The relentlessly practical and controlled ex-cop did not match his entirely impractical and uncontrollable son, who was currently wasting everyone's time by trying to get the nurse to admit she had a thing for Ralph Macchio in the first Karate Kid movie.
"Shawn? Could you get a move on, please?"
Spencer gave him an exasperated look. "Sure, Dad." He turned back to the nurse, who dimpled. "Bye, Charlene." She giggled like a ten-year-old at his wink. Lassiter sighed. It was entirely unsurprising that Spencer was the only person who could elicit personality from the staff at St. Francis.
Once outside, Spencer finally stood. He was wearing a pair of grey sweatpants and some flip-flops from God-knew-where. Lassiter hoped they, too, were from the hospital gift shop, not wanting to dwell on where else Spencer could have found them.
"You coming back to my house, kid?" asked Henry. His tone was still that of the exasperated, tired parent.
Spencer shrugged, then winced. Lassiter had almost forgotten the cuts on his shoulders and back. He didn't miss the way Henry's eyes tightened oh-so-slightly when Shawn wasn't looking.
"Actually, I was planning on going bar-hopping," Spencer rejoined, looking between the two older men. "Interested?"
Lassiter could only imagine what his own expression was like, though if it was anything like the one on Henry's face he didn't blame Spencer for the diabolical grin stretching his overly clever mouth.
"Don't worry, guys," Spencer grinned. Lassiter actually heard Henry's sigh. Shawn scratched under the bandage on his wrist for a moment, looking up at the sky. "I was just going to go home and sleep for, like, a week."
"Oh?" Henry's voice was like acid. "And just how were you going to get home, Shawn?"
Spencer didn't hesitate, opening his eyes wide and pushing out his lower lip in a perfect five-year-old pout. "Won't Detective Lassiter give me a ride?" he asked, voice pathetic. "Pretty please?"
Henry threw his hands in the air. "Whatever, Shawn. Just come over sometime this week. We need to talk."
Lassiter looked between them, thrown. "Hang on, I never -"
Spencer interrupted him. "Will do, Dad." Henry had already started walking away; Spencer pushed his hands into his pockets, turning a self-satisfied smile on Lassiter. The detective set his jaw, wondering how many times the other man would ambush him before he'd be able to anticipate and prevent it.
"Ready, Lassie-face?"
It took Lassiter a moment to reply, having to quash a number of unsavory comments. "Why am I not surprised? And why do I have to take you back to your crappy apartment?"
"Oh, come on, Detective," Spencer returned, his smile turning coy. "You know wish you could take more chances to spend time with me. This is a great opportunity for both of us." The mock-serious tone and the too-obvious flirtation didn't come off nearly as well when the clever mouth was cracked at the corners, where Lassiter knew the gag had collected saliva and sweat. "Anyway, I was just going to ask for a ride back to the station. I left my bike - oh." He interrupted himself, a tiny burn of color appearing on his face.
"What?"
The reply seemed to take an extra beat. "That not-so-sexy doctor told me not to ride my bike for a few days, just to make sure."
Lassiter felt his jaw clench. Overly bright images clouded his vision for a second, obliterating the colorful Santa Barbara morning with white, and black, and tanned limbs tangled and spotted with red. He tried to cover the awkward moment - never his forte.
"I have to go back inside before we leave. I forgot to pick up the results of the, uh -" Spencer raised his eyebrows, smiling a little at his sudden discomfiture.
"The rape kit?" he asked, all innocence.
So much for trying to spare the other man's sensibilities. "Yes." Spencer's grin flickered - it looked almost like he was trying to keep it from widening at Lassiter's forced calm. "Don't start, Spencer," Lassiter warned. If he couldn't be solicitous, then the least he could do was treat the man the same as he always did.
"Go wait by the car, and try not to break anything. I'll be out in five minutes."
-----
McKinney then used the sexual accessory to penetrate Spencer and simulate anal intercourse; the item was lubricated. At this point on the recording (6:20) McKinney resumed vocal abuse, using the Smith & Wesson revolver (#3) to keep Spencer in the aforementioned position…
Lassiter stared at his computer. After dropping Spencer at his undoubtedly ratty apartment on Victoria Street (he'd refused, as he had the previous time, to come up for a 'nightcap'), he'd returned to the station to work on his report. At that point, the Chief dropped the bombshell that Lassiter would have the primary responsibility of watching the tapes the forensics crew had recovered from McKinney's cameras. He'd thought about protesting, but at the look on the Chief's face the words died on his lips. Lassiter had been there, seen what was happening first hand. It made perfect, logical sense for him to be the one to dissect the full footage, as well. Another detective had to watch the tapes and look over his report for accuracy - Lassiter didn't know how he'd managed to farm out that little assignment - after which Spencer would need to come in, read over the finalized documents and sign that everything in them was true.
Meanwhile, O'Hara had been trying to get a confession out of McKinney. She was moving down the rap sheet under Lassiter's directions in absentia: he didn't think it wise to be in the room with McKinney after having assaulted the man. Polite he might have been, but the bastard was proving impossible to crack. O'Hara had been trying the whole "sweet cop, pissed cop" routine, working with Officer Jackson, but nothing seemed to work. Weirdly, McKinney had actually waived his right to counsel, something that one of Lassiter's suspects had never tried before. O'Hara informed him that McKinney would be pleading not guilty to anything the district attorney tried to pin on him - therefore, as an innocent person, he felt he didn't need to "waste the government's money" on his defense.
Now it was what Lassiter thought of as Day 3 P.I. (Post "Incident"). The DA's office was in almost constant contact with the Chief, who was keeping an amazingly cool head about it all. The mood around the station was still subdued - Spencer was a favorite, after all, and gossip (both worried and shocked) about what had happened flew between nearly every officer. Spencer was scheduled to come in the next day for the confirmation of the report’s accuracy; Lassiter found himself hoping, quite desperately, that nothing untoward would happen. He didn't think he could handle it.
He typed a few more atrocious paragraphs on his report. It was while he was musing that he wouldn't give this one to O'Hara for spell-checking that he began to get the creeping, scalp-prickling sensation that he was being watched. He looked up - and there was Guster.
Lassiter hadn't thought about Spencer's best friend and partner for one moment of the preceding seventy-two hours. With the look he was currently receiving - a mix between determination and anger - he wondered what else he should be feeling guilty about.
"Can we talk?" said Guster. He was, as always, impeccably dressed - though Lassiter did note that the pressed lavender shirt was a touch messy around the tuck.
"Now isn't exactly the best time," Lassiter started, going for the sarcastically annoyed tone he used any time the CEO and Head Gopher of Psych invaded his presence.
Guster interrupted before Lassiter could begin any sort of sarcastic diatribe. "I need to talk to you now."
Lassiter stilled. Glancing around, he didn't see any suitable candidates for rescue: O'Hara was away for lunch and a well-deserved break from McKinney, the Chief was mid-call to the DA, and all of the junior detectives and officers had started leaving a wide circle of semi-respectful, semi-terrified space around his desk - he hadn't been the easiest person to work with for the last couple of days. While he was failing to flee, Guster took the opportunity to steal a chair from the unoccupied desk next door.
"Look, Lassiter, I wouldn't normally come to you, but I'm in some dire-ass straits," Guster began. "I need to know what happened to Shawn."
"Oh."
Guster's expression was too fixed. It occurred to Lassiter that the anger was fake - that, especially since he worked so closely with the Paragon of Insincerity, the anger was in fact a mask for something else.
"Spencer didn't tell you anything?" he managed. Guster raised both eyebrows, as if to say Of course not, you idiot. That was probably fair, Lassiter thought - though it was still surprising that Spencer hadn't shared with his best friend.
"I doubt it's my place," said Lassiter.
Guster simply stared at him for a moment and then looked down, blowing out a sigh that would have been ostentatious if the emotion wasn't warranted. "Look - just come with me, all right?"
He stood and walked a few paces from Lassiter's desk, turning to wait. The detective wondered where Guster had found the balls to be so demanding and confident that he could get Lassiter to do what he wanted. Then he remembered the bandaging on Spencer's shoulders, the way his eyes went flat and fake-happy. Getting up and following Guster down the stairs to interrogation, he supposed having one's best friend suddenly go even more false on one would give even the weakest courage.
Looking around to see that they were alone, Guster led him into Interrogation Room A and shut the door. Neither of them sat, standing an uneasy five feet apart.
"Shawn's dad called me in Utah, said I had to come back right away. That something bad had happened."
Lassiter took in this evidence of Henry's emotional attachment to his son without changing expression. Guster sighed again, crossing his arms. "Look, I know he - got in a fight, or got attacked, or something. But he won't talk about it. Or he makes up ridiculous stories about rodeo training." He looked away for a moment. "But I stopped by the office this morning to pick up something and Shawn was there." He met Lassiter's eyes. "He was asleep on the couch, and the bandages on his wrists were off. I saw the bruises, okay? You don't get bruises that deep in a fight. Or rodeo training."
Lassiter considered the other man for a moment. It had always been clear to him that Guster possessed some sort of strange attachment to Spencer, though he'd never understand why. Guster was everything Spencer was not: responsible, sober, well-dressed, relatively sane. The exasperation with his best friend was tempered by affection, and Guster usually took Spencer's side against the detectives during a case - but now Lassiter could see a deeper emotion than simple affection. Seeing the pain which flickered behind his seriousness, it was obvious that Guster was deeply concerned about his friend. Sensitive to the first honest emotion he'd seen during this entire debacle, Lassiter finally nodded.
"You heard about the murders from the past month?"
-----
This part was a little shorter, but had very very important scenes. Gus and Henry, oh boy!
What did y'all think? Was Gus a little too assertive? Did Henry come off well? Are you at all interested in the next part?
Next Chapter
Saturday dawned bright and breezy, all hint of cloud cover driven from the overly blue sky. Lassiter pulled into the St. Francis visitor's lot and sat for a few minutes, the engine turned off. Santa Barbara citizens (or Barbarians, as he'd heard Spencer refer to them on occasion) trickled in and out of the glass-fronted entrance. Most of them seemed fairly happy, he saw. There was the occasional limp, a cast or two, a large bandage covering who-knew-what - but they were ordinary folk, calm and without fear.
Lassiter glanced around the parking lot as he exited the car. An undercover car was stashed away between two giant SUVs a couple of rows from his space. It was always easy to tell an SBPD car from the normal beater, what with the small forests of antennae sprouting from their bodies. He wondered briefly who would be spending police time visiting Spencer, but the list of names was too long to contemplate.
As he made his way to the rear of the hospital, where the head trauma victims stayed for observation, he took the time to straighten his tie, smoothing his hair over his brow. It had been a very long night. After going over Spencer’s statement (an experience he wouldn’t care to repeat, to say the least), he’d driven across town to Lompoc to speak with Bill McKinney. Even three hours later, Lassiter couldn’t rid himself of the overwhelming eeriness of the man’s presence. McKinney was Lassiter’s height, but more muscular with it; that, combined with an eye-watering tendency not to blink, made him more imposing than his mild manners would indicate.
That was the thing that bothered Lassiter. McKinney was so oppressively normal - even with a massive contusion blooming across his skull from Lassiter’s own gun, he smiled in reflex when the detective entered his hospital room. He was perfectly polite. Though Lassiter had witnessed the tail end of the event, McKinney hadn’t confessed to raping Spencer. This, admittedly, wasn’t that surprising: it was almost impossible to prove that the sex hadn’t been role-play, with Spencer gagged. McKinney claimed, too, that Spencer’s statement declaring the intercourse rape was untrue - something which couldn’t technically be proven, either. The debacle with that girl and Kobe Bryant was evidence enough that what a victim claimed to a court was not necessarily so. When Lassiter questioned the man further, mentioning the assault and murder of the four girls, he appeared completely bewildered. The performance was so good that Lassiter almost had second thoughts, himself.
Almost, he considered, turning the corner, was the key word.
“What do you mean I’m not allowed to see him?”
“Mr. Spencer will be released in a few minutes. The doctor is just giving him his care instructions before he can leave.”
With all that had happened, Lassiter wasn't surprised that he forgot about Spencer's father. Henry seemed like such a remote part of his son's life; even during their brief fishing partnership, Henry never asked about Shawn. Even here, in the antiseptic gray waiting area at the hospital anticipating his son’s release, Henry looked more disgruntled at the early hour than worried. Lassiter wondered who had called him. Maybe it had been Shawn. Lassiter doubted it.
“Detective Lassiter,” the older man said as he came up to the nurse’s station. It didn’t sound exactly like a greeting.
“Good morning, Mr. Spencer.” Lassiter didn’t let himself flinch at the look Henry gave him, but it was a near thing.
“I don’t see what’s good about it, Carlton.” Henry wandered a few steps away, apparently examining the large posters on the waiting room wall. His flip-flops were loud on the linoleum.
Lassiter debated about whether to follow. Buying himself some time, he asked the nurse how long Shawn would be. “A few more minutes,” she replied, looking bored. He had to do a double-take, but it wasn’t the nurse from the night before. Apparently the women of this hospital were uniformly affected by ennui with other people’s problems.
He turned and, with measured steps, made his way across the room to stand a few paces away from Spencer's father. With his stiff carriage and hands clasped firmly behind his back, Lassiter reflected that he probably looked not a little like a fresh cadet to the older, though retired, detective. Henry glanced at him only once, though - his attention seemed captured by the cheery green poster before him advertising some new blood pressure medication from Central Coast Pharmaceuticals.
After a few moments, Henry said, "When did it happen?"
His voice sounded as unconcerned as his posture. "Around midnight, this morning."
"Really." Lassiter gave the man a sidelong look. He'd crossed his arms over his chest, becoming surprisingly intimidating in a pink flowered shirt. "I got the call about half an hour ago."
It was going on seven in the morning. That made almost six hours since his only child had been assaulted and raped. Lassiter wondered if he should have called Henry personally. It was against procedure, but - hell, he'd gone fishing with the man.
"Lassiter," Henry said. The detective startled at the abruptness of it, at how normal his voice sounded. "You've got this guy in custody. You know who it is."
It sounded like a question, but it wasn't. "We have a suspect, yes."
Henry looked at him, finally. "I don't make it a practice to interfere with investigations. I know how irritating it is to have outsiders butting in." Henry took a step closer, fixing Lassiter with pale blue eyes.
"Shawn won't ask for anything, but I am. Bury this guy. Get rid of the bastard."
Lassiter's eyes narrowed. "What are you suggesting, Henry?"
"Don't be cute with me, Carlton," the other man retorted. "I know all the tricks. Pin everything you can on him, whoever he is. Put him away for life." He looked away, his jaw visibly flexing, then turned back to Lassiter. "This is my kid."
The rattle of one of the hospital's crappy wheelchairs interrupted Lassiter's bewilderment. "Look, if I have to ride in this thing, you could at least let me do it side-saddle."
"Sorry, Mr. Spencer. I'm pretty sure hospital regs say your feet have to go on the footrests."
Lassiter turned around to see a still-cheerful Shawn Spencer argue good-naturedly with the nurse pushing him into the waiting room. He still didn't have any of his own clothes - it looked like the nurses had raided the hospital gift shop. At least, that was where he hoped the bright yellow "Bee Well" t-shirt had come from.
"Only pretty sure? So you're not positive?"
"Shawn," Henry said, his voice perfectly exasperated. "Don’t torture the nurses."
Lassiter watched as Spencer's head snapped around, his eyes widening in genuine surprise. "Dad?" It only took him about two seconds to cover it, his face - though battered - reverting to its usual expression of general cheeriness. "You came to see me?"
"After the Chief called me." Lassiter glanced between the two of them. It was clear where Shawn had learned his poker face. Henry's façade of irritation never wavered. "Why the hell aren't I on your emergency contacts list?"
"Um, hello, Dad - you told me to take you off of it, remember? After the bike incident?" Spencer looked appalled that his father even needed to ask the question. He planted his elbows on the wheelchair's armrests, folding his hands in front of his chest. "Anyway, they're only supposed to call the family if the patient's knocked out."
"You were," Lassiter put in.
Spencer rolled his eyes. "That was before, Lassie. And now I'm fine."
The nurse cut in. "I'm sorry, I have to take Mr. Spencer to the front doors now. It's regulations."
"Well, we wouldn't want to break regulations, would we, Shawn? We'll walk with you," said Henry. He practically elbowed the nurse aside, grasping the chair's handles himself. "Won't we, Detective?"
Lassiter fell into step a pace behind the Spencer men. Shawn prattled on at the nurse, doing his level best to elicit a phone number. At the same time, Henry was doing his utmost to ruin Shawn's chances - pointing out obvious untruths, sucking the humor out of every wisecrack. Walking in silence in their wake, Lassiter wondered at the steel-fronted personalities the Spencer household had somehow forged.
No hint of sympathy colored Henry's demeanor as he pushed Shawn through the hospital. Lassiter couldn’t decide if the man didn't want to be seen coddling his offspring or truly didn't believe special treatment was called for. Neither would have surprised him.
On the other hand, Shawn's behavior seemed even more unusual than Henry's - not only unusual, but somehow wrong. Lassiter knew different people reacted differently to crimes upon their person, be they assault or rape. The handful of times Lassiter had been the principal detective on rape cases, the women acted in utterly disparate ways. One had burst into tears in his arms; one had seemed frighteningly numb; others fought, shying from his male presence or antagonized by it.
In a decade, the SBPD had handled only two cases of rape in which the victim was male. Due to circumstances now forgotten, Lassiter hadn't handled either. Despite the lack of hard evidence, however, he was prepared to make a substantial bet that the average man's reaction was not nothing.
That was it. 'Every action has an equal and opposite reaction.' Little wonder he was so bothered by the other man's behavior. Spencer had had no discernible reaction.
Lassiter watched the two men in front of him. Henry walked with the casual, powerful swagger of a long-time cop. He was the sort of person who didn't glance at people he passed because he knew they weren't a) a threat, or b) all that important. Henry was entirely focused on the matter at hand, in this instance propelling his son through the hospital without major collisions.
Whereas Shawn - even now - looked at everything and everyone. He tried to strike up conversations with people they passed, though Henry never stopped long enough to allow much charming. Lassiter looked back to Henry and knew where he'd recognized the walk. It was much like Shawn's - Spencer strolled just as casually through life, an appalling level of confidence informing his strut.
Something should have changed. Spencer shouldn't have been able to flirt and joke quite so easily. If he were faking being 'just fine', there should have been some hesitation. Even the indefatigable Shawn Spencer ought to take pause after enduring assault, particularly one at the level Lassiter had witnessed. Something should have changed, and it hadn't.
The group made it to the front doors, where the nurse made Spencer sign a few papers. Henry waited with impatience, foot tapping. For a moment, Lassiter wondered what Spencer's mother was like. Henry's genes on their own could never have produced a creature like Shawn Spencer. The relentlessly practical and controlled ex-cop did not match his entirely impractical and uncontrollable son, who was currently wasting everyone's time by trying to get the nurse to admit she had a thing for Ralph Macchio in the first Karate Kid movie.
"Shawn? Could you get a move on, please?"
Spencer gave him an exasperated look. "Sure, Dad." He turned back to the nurse, who dimpled. "Bye, Charlene." She giggled like a ten-year-old at his wink. Lassiter sighed. It was entirely unsurprising that Spencer was the only person who could elicit personality from the staff at St. Francis.
Once outside, Spencer finally stood. He was wearing a pair of grey sweatpants and some flip-flops from God-knew-where. Lassiter hoped they, too, were from the hospital gift shop, not wanting to dwell on where else Spencer could have found them.
"You coming back to my house, kid?" asked Henry. His tone was still that of the exasperated, tired parent.
Spencer shrugged, then winced. Lassiter had almost forgotten the cuts on his shoulders and back. He didn't miss the way Henry's eyes tightened oh-so-slightly when Shawn wasn't looking.
"Actually, I was planning on going bar-hopping," Spencer rejoined, looking between the two older men. "Interested?"
Lassiter could only imagine what his own expression was like, though if it was anything like the one on Henry's face he didn't blame Spencer for the diabolical grin stretching his overly clever mouth.
"Don't worry, guys," Spencer grinned. Lassiter actually heard Henry's sigh. Shawn scratched under the bandage on his wrist for a moment, looking up at the sky. "I was just going to go home and sleep for, like, a week."
"Oh?" Henry's voice was like acid. "And just how were you going to get home, Shawn?"
Spencer didn't hesitate, opening his eyes wide and pushing out his lower lip in a perfect five-year-old pout. "Won't Detective Lassiter give me a ride?" he asked, voice pathetic. "Pretty please?"
Henry threw his hands in the air. "Whatever, Shawn. Just come over sometime this week. We need to talk."
Lassiter looked between them, thrown. "Hang on, I never -"
Spencer interrupted him. "Will do, Dad." Henry had already started walking away; Spencer pushed his hands into his pockets, turning a self-satisfied smile on Lassiter. The detective set his jaw, wondering how many times the other man would ambush him before he'd be able to anticipate and prevent it.
"Ready, Lassie-face?"
It took Lassiter a moment to reply, having to quash a number of unsavory comments. "Why am I not surprised? And why do I have to take you back to your crappy apartment?"
"Oh, come on, Detective," Spencer returned, his smile turning coy. "You know wish you could take more chances to spend time with me. This is a great opportunity for both of us." The mock-serious tone and the too-obvious flirtation didn't come off nearly as well when the clever mouth was cracked at the corners, where Lassiter knew the gag had collected saliva and sweat. "Anyway, I was just going to ask for a ride back to the station. I left my bike - oh." He interrupted himself, a tiny burn of color appearing on his face.
"What?"
The reply seemed to take an extra beat. "That not-so-sexy doctor told me not to ride my bike for a few days, just to make sure."
Lassiter felt his jaw clench. Overly bright images clouded his vision for a second, obliterating the colorful Santa Barbara morning with white, and black, and tanned limbs tangled and spotted with red. He tried to cover the awkward moment - never his forte.
"I have to go back inside before we leave. I forgot to pick up the results of the, uh -" Spencer raised his eyebrows, smiling a little at his sudden discomfiture.
"The rape kit?" he asked, all innocence.
So much for trying to spare the other man's sensibilities. "Yes." Spencer's grin flickered - it looked almost like he was trying to keep it from widening at Lassiter's forced calm. "Don't start, Spencer," Lassiter warned. If he couldn't be solicitous, then the least he could do was treat the man the same as he always did.
"Go wait by the car, and try not to break anything. I'll be out in five minutes."
-----
McKinney then used the sexual accessory to penetrate Spencer and simulate anal intercourse; the item was lubricated. At this point on the recording (6:20) McKinney resumed vocal abuse, using the Smith & Wesson revolver (#3) to keep Spencer in the aforementioned position…
Lassiter stared at his computer. After dropping Spencer at his undoubtedly ratty apartment on Victoria Street (he'd refused, as he had the previous time, to come up for a 'nightcap'), he'd returned to the station to work on his report. At that point, the Chief dropped the bombshell that Lassiter would have the primary responsibility of watching the tapes the forensics crew had recovered from McKinney's cameras. He'd thought about protesting, but at the look on the Chief's face the words died on his lips. Lassiter had been there, seen what was happening first hand. It made perfect, logical sense for him to be the one to dissect the full footage, as well. Another detective had to watch the tapes and look over his report for accuracy - Lassiter didn't know how he'd managed to farm out that little assignment - after which Spencer would need to come in, read over the finalized documents and sign that everything in them was true.
Meanwhile, O'Hara had been trying to get a confession out of McKinney. She was moving down the rap sheet under Lassiter's directions in absentia: he didn't think it wise to be in the room with McKinney after having assaulted the man. Polite he might have been, but the bastard was proving impossible to crack. O'Hara had been trying the whole "sweet cop, pissed cop" routine, working with Officer Jackson, but nothing seemed to work. Weirdly, McKinney had actually waived his right to counsel, something that one of Lassiter's suspects had never tried before. O'Hara informed him that McKinney would be pleading not guilty to anything the district attorney tried to pin on him - therefore, as an innocent person, he felt he didn't need to "waste the government's money" on his defense.
Now it was what Lassiter thought of as Day 3 P.I. (Post "Incident"). The DA's office was in almost constant contact with the Chief, who was keeping an amazingly cool head about it all. The mood around the station was still subdued - Spencer was a favorite, after all, and gossip (both worried and shocked) about what had happened flew between nearly every officer. Spencer was scheduled to come in the next day for the confirmation of the report’s accuracy; Lassiter found himself hoping, quite desperately, that nothing untoward would happen. He didn't think he could handle it.
He typed a few more atrocious paragraphs on his report. It was while he was musing that he wouldn't give this one to O'Hara for spell-checking that he began to get the creeping, scalp-prickling sensation that he was being watched. He looked up - and there was Guster.
Lassiter hadn't thought about Spencer's best friend and partner for one moment of the preceding seventy-two hours. With the look he was currently receiving - a mix between determination and anger - he wondered what else he should be feeling guilty about.
"Can we talk?" said Guster. He was, as always, impeccably dressed - though Lassiter did note that the pressed lavender shirt was a touch messy around the tuck.
"Now isn't exactly the best time," Lassiter started, going for the sarcastically annoyed tone he used any time the CEO and Head Gopher of Psych invaded his presence.
Guster interrupted before Lassiter could begin any sort of sarcastic diatribe. "I need to talk to you now."
Lassiter stilled. Glancing around, he didn't see any suitable candidates for rescue: O'Hara was away for lunch and a well-deserved break from McKinney, the Chief was mid-call to the DA, and all of the junior detectives and officers had started leaving a wide circle of semi-respectful, semi-terrified space around his desk - he hadn't been the easiest person to work with for the last couple of days. While he was failing to flee, Guster took the opportunity to steal a chair from the unoccupied desk next door.
"Look, Lassiter, I wouldn't normally come to you, but I'm in some dire-ass straits," Guster began. "I need to know what happened to Shawn."
"Oh."
Guster's expression was too fixed. It occurred to Lassiter that the anger was fake - that, especially since he worked so closely with the Paragon of Insincerity, the anger was in fact a mask for something else.
"Spencer didn't tell you anything?" he managed. Guster raised both eyebrows, as if to say Of course not, you idiot. That was probably fair, Lassiter thought - though it was still surprising that Spencer hadn't shared with his best friend.
"I doubt it's my place," said Lassiter.
Guster simply stared at him for a moment and then looked down, blowing out a sigh that would have been ostentatious if the emotion wasn't warranted. "Look - just come with me, all right?"
He stood and walked a few paces from Lassiter's desk, turning to wait. The detective wondered where Guster had found the balls to be so demanding and confident that he could get Lassiter to do what he wanted. Then he remembered the bandaging on Spencer's shoulders, the way his eyes went flat and fake-happy. Getting up and following Guster down the stairs to interrogation, he supposed having one's best friend suddenly go even more false on one would give even the weakest courage.
Looking around to see that they were alone, Guster led him into Interrogation Room A and shut the door. Neither of them sat, standing an uneasy five feet apart.
"Shawn's dad called me in Utah, said I had to come back right away. That something bad had happened."
Lassiter took in this evidence of Henry's emotional attachment to his son without changing expression. Guster sighed again, crossing his arms. "Look, I know he - got in a fight, or got attacked, or something. But he won't talk about it. Or he makes up ridiculous stories about rodeo training." He looked away for a moment. "But I stopped by the office this morning to pick up something and Shawn was there." He met Lassiter's eyes. "He was asleep on the couch, and the bandages on his wrists were off. I saw the bruises, okay? You don't get bruises that deep in a fight. Or rodeo training."
Lassiter considered the other man for a moment. It had always been clear to him that Guster possessed some sort of strange attachment to Spencer, though he'd never understand why. Guster was everything Spencer was not: responsible, sober, well-dressed, relatively sane. The exasperation with his best friend was tempered by affection, and Guster usually took Spencer's side against the detectives during a case - but now Lassiter could see a deeper emotion than simple affection. Seeing the pain which flickered behind his seriousness, it was obvious that Guster was deeply concerned about his friend. Sensitive to the first honest emotion he'd seen during this entire debacle, Lassiter finally nodded.
"You heard about the murders from the past month?"
-----
This part was a little shorter, but had very very important scenes. Gus and Henry, oh boy!
What did y'all think? Was Gus a little too assertive? Did Henry come off well? Are you at all interested in the next part?
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