Psych Fic - Disaster Button [3/4] (PG, Gen)
[Previous: Part 2]
"This is completely unnecessary. Don't you agree, Gus?"
"I happen to think it's an excellent idea."
Shawn sulks a little, but it goes unnoticed. He and Gus are wedged between Buzz McNab and one of the extra officers they'd picked up before leaving shore while Lassiter and Juliet are out in front, following Shawn's up-to-the-minute directions on where the meeting is taking place.
"Right- no, left. No, right. Well, two wrongs don't make a right, but three rights make a left, so we'll get there if you turn now anyways." He keeps them tied up following a wild goose chase as the minutes left before midnight tick away, timing it so they arrive at deck three two minutes prior to the meeting to ensure they don't try and cut him out of the action.
Lassiter and Juliet fan out, leaving the two officers to guard the two consultants. "Stay," Lassiter warns them before he leaves.
"Should I roll over and play dead, too?" Shawn asks innocently.
Lassiter ignores that comment, switching his focus to the two officers. "You are responsible for these two. Don't let anything happen to them." If he had it his way, they wouldn't be anywhere near the action, but sending them back to their rooms now is too risky. They don't want to risk passing and spooking the two suspects meeting here tonight.
Midnight comes and goes without a peep, with the exception of Gus' whispered comment about how no one is punctual anymore, but the sound of footsteps approaching at a minute past silences his friend. Shawn almost laughs at the way Gus takes slow, shallow breaths to try eliminate the sound of him breathing, but it's kind of hard to mock that when he's doing it as well.
Lassiter and Juliet burst out from behind a potted plant with a beautifully synchronized "Freeze!" standing shoulder-to-shoulder when their second conspirator arrives on the scene.
The early bird, the taller of the two, moves to throw the laptop he's carrying overboard and takes off running, the second not far ahead of him. One of the officers assigned to guard Shawn and Gus gives chase as Juliet makes a grab for the laptop.
"O'Hara!" Lassiter yells, watching his partner lean dangerously over the railing.
"I got it!" she yells, breathing heavily as she pulls her mid-air catch back onto the safety of the deck and hands it off to McNab, straightening her back and taking a step away from the side of the boat.
"Nice catch."
"Thank you," she beams. His radio crackles to life before he can smile back, the second officer reporting in that their two suspects have eluded him.
Lassiter swears, but Juliet rolls her eyes.
"They weren't armed, so we can safely assume they pose no danger to the general public. And we got what the evidence they came here to dispose of," she points out. Sure, the takedown could have gone better, but the night isn't a complete loss.
She still looks a little miffed, but her patience mellows out Lassiter's ire, and he is much calmer by the time the second officer returns to regroup.
Lassiter rubs a weary hand over his face. "Alright, we've got that one computer tech on board - what's-her-face, Reynolds?"
"Her name is Rowe. Emily Rowe," Juliet corrects him.
"We'll give her the laptop to work in. Doubtless it's password-protected, but maybe she can crack it, find out what's on here for us."
"Nothing much we can do until then," Juliet agrees. "So considering it's twelve-thirty, I suggest we all get some sleep for the night." She eyes Shawn pointedly. "And I actually mean sleep."
-
"You better be going to sleep, Shawn."
"Don't be ridiculous, Gus. I'm - yawn - wide awake. Wanna watch a movie?"
"No! You might function - yawn - well under the influence of sleep deprivation, but I need my beauty sleep."
"Come on! I'll put it on in the background; it'll lull you gently to sleep."
"...what movie did you have in mind?"
"Indiana Jones?"
"Indiana Jones is going to lull me to sleep? Really?"
"Yes?"
"Goodnight, Shawn."
-
Shawn sets his iPhone aside. He'll pick a movie - yawn - just as soon as he slips off his shoes. He rubs the sleep out of his eyes, slipping under the warm comforter and letting his head sink into the pillow. He's just resting for a minute, that's all. He's not tired or anything.
He's asleep within five minutes.
-
Gus knocks on his door bright and early the next morning; the distinctive pattern of three quick beats, a pause, and then a final beat telling him it's his best friend. He lifts his head up from the pillow long enough to shout, "Come in!" before letting it drop, pulling the covers up where they've fallen to expose his shoulders.
"It's locked!" Gus calls back.
"Then pick the lock!"
Two weeks of trying to keep his shoulder still while he sleeps have taught him that rolling over is out of the question, so he just groans and sits up. He's aware that his hair is sticking up in all directions with no rhyme or reason and runs a hand through it to try and smooth it down. He can feel it pop back up between his fingers. Oh well. Gus has seen him in every state imaginable, and an extreme case of bed head is small pennies in comparison.
He spins the knob on the lock open and turns the handle, letting Gus in. He should really teach Gus how to pick locks one of these days. The floor is cold and there's a warm shell in his bedcovers where he could still be.
"Good morning, Shawn."
"Sure," he says, eyeing Gus' unashamedly amused smile disdainfully.
He stuffs a pillow in his face and falls back against the bed, letting his legs hang down over the end. "Why are you such a morning person?" he grumbles, voice muffled by the pillow. The warm indent where he'd slept is a comfort to muscles stiff from yesterday's poolside rescue, soothing the tight knots in his back. Now he's only sore when he moves, and not when he's sitting still.
He's lost count of the number of sleepovers he and Gus have had over the years, an event they never truly grew out of. The nights are always fun, whether they're watching movies or playing video games or trying something new (Shawn's right eyebrow is finally back to normal after their disastrous attempt at soufflé), but the mornings are a trial. Gus is always wide awake and ready to go before Shawn's even thought about hauling himself out of bed.
"There's coffee and breakfast waiting," Gus compromises. "Juliet and Lassiter headed down half an hour ago."
"Time izzit?" he asks around a yawn, fumbling for the sweater he remembers leaving on the bedside table.
"Eight-thirty," Gus says, as if that's a perfectly reasonable time to be awake. Shawn hasn't woken up before nine since before he was shot.
"Coffee?" he confirms.
"Lots," Gus promises. Shawn finds sneakers to stick his feet in and follows his friend out the door.
He's consoled by the fact that although Gus is a morning person, he's the very best sort; he comes bearing caffeine to those he inflicts his cheer on.
-
He drops down heavily into the chair beside Lassiter bearing a mug of coffee, sharing the universal nod of the sleep-deprived before the bittersweet smell of coffee loaded down with several scoops of sugar triggers something in his brain and he does a double-take.
"I know why I look like something the cat spat out," he says slowly. He fell asleep initially without much trouble, but staying that way proved to be difficult. "But why do you?"
Lassiter jerks his head at Juliet, who pipes up. "So!" she begins. "Emily cracked the laptop last night - well, this morning, I suppose. The hard drive is filled with records of all the jobs Lewis has pulled. No direct ties to Breese so far, but we're still looking. The most promising lead so far is the inventory from his most recent take, the robbery of Benson's pharmacy."
Pharmacy - he flashes back to the pill bottle he'd left under the bed for Gus to find when he'd been attacked in Benson's room. It had been the only bottle lying around with a valid prescription. What had it been called again?
"Drugs!" he says, pointing his fork at Juliet. "I'm getting something --," he launches into a 'vision', bringing the first two fingers of one hand to his temple and rubbing slow circles there as he tries to 'remember.' "An orange bottle, a prescription of some sort..."
"Gus!" he asks. "What is am-ambien? No, that's not it. I'm-a-barb-tall."
"Amobarbital?"
"It's used to treat epilepsy and insomnia," Gus says. "But it can be used as a poison in large quantities." Shawn twirls his fork, grinning.
"I can see it in Ken's room." He watches with confusion as Juliet beams at his words; not that he's not happy to see her happy, but something feels off about her excitement. Jules usually holds off on the unqualified good mood until she has more of the bigger picture. His confusion only grows as she watches him share a look with Gus. It's too early for secrets, especially ones he's not in the loop on.
"We found a prescription bottle for amobarbital in Benson's room, under the bed," Lassiter fills him in. The way he's eyeing Shawn isn't quite right either, a blend of suspicion and begrudging admiration usually saved for when Shawn does something he's reluctantly proud of. Identifying the poison (well, a possibility, but his gut is telling him this is the one) shouldn't be anything spectacular enough to gain that look.
"I called it in," Lassiter continues. "The prescription belongs to Andrew Harris, who is one of the staff on board the ship."
"YOU!"
Shawn startles at the sudden cry, narrowly preventing a face-plant into his cereal bowl where he'd been drifting off. The group at their table turn as one to see Viola Langley stalking towards a younger, formally dressed man with slicked-back hair. Shawn tried that look once, but Gus said he looked ridiculous and he trusts Gus' opinion implicitly on such matters.
"You killed my father!" Viola yells, her ever-present boa whipping in the air behind her.
"Me?" the man scoffs. "Mr. Langley was an old friend of mine. You wanted to get rid of him because he disapproved of your little fiancé."
Shawn leans in. "Who's he?" he asks Gus. With all the focus on trying to figure out who killed Brian Lewis, he'd forgotten about his fake case and the bet with Juliet.
"The business partner, Andrew - oh." Huh. So when Lassiter had said Andrew was staff, he'd meant the man was a cast member.
"You wanted his money!" Viola replies, drawing their attention back.
Peter comes striding up from a table across the room to join Viola, taking a circular route to pass by more of the audience whose attention they've captured. "Viola, dear..."
"No, Peter!" she cries, casting off the calming hand he's placed on her arm.
"He wanted Langley's money?" Shawn grins as Penny the paramedic makes her entrance, standing up from Chief Vick's table behind him and joining the trio of actors at centre stage. "And you didn't?"
Andrew scoffs. "Please, as if you're one to talk? You have the most motive of any of us - you were dating the man."
"We were in love!"
"When pigs fly!"
Enraged beyond words, Penny slaps Andrew. Well, it's a stage-slap, Shawn sees when the hand-clap come a split-second out of sync to make the sound. Henry's influence has ruined special effects for life for him. Animation is better for him in that respect because he's able to suspend his disbelief more fully, but it's still tricky. Ever since Shawn was little, he's wanted to know how things work; he was the six-year old that continued asking 'why' until those answering the questions were blue in the face. On one particularly memorable occasion, Henry made it through thirty-two rounds before caving to the inevitable 'because I said so.'
He watches her storm out as Andrew is left reeling from the force of her anger, one hand pressed to his cheek to continue the illusion. Peter manages to coax Viola out of the room, and the audience breaks out in speculation.
Juliet raises one eyebrow. He points at her. "I've been a little busy solving real crimes, Jules. Don't you worry, this bet is still mine."
"If you say so."
He sniffs. "Gus, let's go. We've got two cases to solve, a bet to win, and a deadline." He pauses for a minute. "And grab that banana, I'm gonna need a snack."
-
"What was that, Shawn?"
"What was what?"
"Don't play. Why aren't we going with Jules and Lassie to question Andrew?"
"Oh, come on, Gus! What are they going to find out...he's taking a medication for a condition he actually has? Shocking. The prescription looked valid enough, the prescribing doctor is one of the guys on your route."
"Back up. How do you know who's on my route?"
"Well, you see--."
"-never mind. Don't answer that. If you're stalking me again, I think I'm better off not knowing."
-
"Penny!" Shawn says brightly. There's nothing like drama over breakfast to get the blood moving. He takes a bite out of his partially peeled banana as they speed up to match Penny's pace. "Where are you headed?"
"Kitchen. The back entrance though, wouldn't set the right tone for a dramatic exit if I left through the dining room, would it? I'm starving! Haven't had a chance to eat breakfast yet, we've been rehearsing and setting up for the day's scenes."
Gus frowns. "Should you be telling us all this?"
Shawn smacks him in the arm. "I'm here as Penny's friend, not as a guest! Besides, I already know who did it."
"Oh, yeah?" Gus says doubtfully. "Who, then?"
"Either Penny, Peter, or Andrew."
"If you don't know, you could've just said that."
"Don't be the last cardboard-y bite of an ice cream cone, Gus. I know that Viola didn't do it; they're setting her up as a loud, dramatic character. Everyone knows you watch out for the quiet ones." He changes tactics abruptly, addressing his next words to Penny though his eyes never leave Gus. "Great job in there, by the way! Although I'm shocked - you and Langley? He's a little old for you."
Penny's blushing when he turns back to face her, and he grins, sharing the amusement with her. "Yeah, I know, what can I say? It's what they cast me as. Apparently, I make a good mistress."
"You'd make a good boxer," Gus comments. "Excellent right hook."
"Do you make a good spy, though?" Shawn questions. "I'm thinking James Bond."
"Jason Bourne," Gus adds.
"Michael Weston."
"Austin Powers."
"Sherlock Holmes."
"Sherlock Holmes wasn't a spy, Shawn," Gus says with a frown. "He was a detective."
Shawn frowns. "But Robert Downey Jr. did all those stunts!"
"That was a movie. There was nowhere near that much action in canon. Actually, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle wrote him as more of a --."
Penny cuts in, looking both bemused and bewildered, as if she doesn't know quite how to react to the discussion taking place without her. "I did find out something," she promptly helpfully. "Viola overheard the man who passed away talking with William Breese... they were saying something about betrayal. Breese thought someone was betraying him or something, I think."
The two friends drop the topic of spies as quickly as they broached it. The murder and attempted poisoning suggest Breese's fears were valid indeed. It's not paranoia if they really are out to get you. But who would have motive, and why?
"Penny," he asks, switching gears abruptly. "How did it feel slapping Andrew? How did he take it?"
She shrugs. "He's a great sport about all the physical comedy - he wanted me to slap him for real, but I just couldn't. I took an oath to heal, not harm."
"So he enjoys his work?"
"Oh, he loves this stuff! This is only a part-time gig for me, but I heard him saying he wants to quit his day job and do this full-time."
"I saw him wandering the halls last night," Shawn fishes. He didn't, actually, but this is as good a starting place as any. He's hoping for her overall impressions of Andrew's character as a whole; the fake murder is pretty up-front about defining everyone's motives, but he has no idea how Andrew ties into Lewis' death.
"Oh, he doesn't sleep well. I thought he was doing better now that he's on medication, though." Shawn nods sympathetically, holding out a stealthy hand behind his back to fist-bump Gus.
"Does that help?" she asks quietly, and he is reminded of the shaken paramedic he'd comforted when Lewis had first been declared dead. He needs a visual reminder of the seriousness of the cases they investigate, sometimes. Humour is his default language and he couldn't operate without it, but there's a fine line between being funny and being callous that he has to balance on a daily basis.
"Absolutely," he promises her.
-
They make a small detour into Chef Arnold's lair to update him on all the latest gossip. Gus would object, but feeding Shawn is a full-time job and he figures he owes a favour to anyone who helps him out with that one.
Juliet catches them walking out of the kitchen, Shawn finishing off the last bites of an omelette as he waves a cheery goodbye to the chef. "Guess what we found out?" she says, bouncing on the balls of her feet.
"Andrew's an insomniac."
She deflates visibly, and Gus tries to adopt what he hopes is a sympathetic smile. Shawn finds out these things before the police mostly due to sheer dumb luck.
"Yeah." She would ask how he knew that, but there's no point to that anymore. "He refilled his prescription of amobarbital a few days ago at Benson's pharmacy."
"So, how did it end up in Benson's room?" Gus proposes. "Unless Andrew was one of the attackers."
Shawn pauses for a minute, pursing his lips thoughtfully. "That was a little better, actually," he says, referring to their ongoing quest to improve Gus' dramatic segue-to-commercial wrap-ups.
They regroup with Lassiter in the study. Shawn hides a smile when Juliet knocks distinctively to announce her presence before walking into the room, joining him at the table. His gaze pans over to the improvised corkboard, where the detective has posted a summary of the case so far in his distinctive chicken scratch. Well, perhaps that's not fair to the chickens. They were never known for their motor control.
He squints at the document, tilting his head on a forty-five degree angle, as if that will help with the deciphering. "You changed from printing to handwriting."
"So?"
"Halfway through a word."
On a whim - he always runs with his whims, it's his shenanigans Gus has qualms with - he tears a piece of paper from Lassiter's notebook, a book from the table, and plops himself down on the floor against the table leg.
"Detectives, Mr. Guster" he hears the Chief say from somewhere in the vicinity of the door, having just entered. "Mr. Spencer, why are you on the floor?"
"Translating from Lassie to English," he replies, holding the notepad up over his head for her to see without looking up. "Start without me," he prompts, because it's obvious enough that Vick is here for an update.
Juliet and Lassiter tag-team the report, skimming over the details on how they lost the two suspects last night and emphasizing the usefulness of the information recovered from the laptop. Vick has a highly tuned bullshit detector anyways, so she strips the story down to its bare essentials in a few seconds of processing. Shawn can hear it in the way she shifts her weight onto her other foot and crosses her arms.
"I see," she says, leaving it at that. Her tone implies she knows she's not getting a full report, but she's never been the type to micromanage. Her detectives have a viable lead on the case, the suspects don't seem to pose any danger to the general public, and they aren't likely to escape on a boat at sea, so she can let this one slide in favour of the bigger picture. It's moments like this that make her a good boss.
"Green pen," he orders, holding his hand up, palm flat. Wordlessly, Gus pulls his green and purple pens from his pocket, handing them both over. If Shawn is taking the time to colour-code, it's only a matter of time before he asks for the rest of the set he knows Gus carries.
Lassiter's logic is sound, so he settles for merely transcribing the detective's notes, labelling the suspect names in green, the motives in purple, and any additional information in blue. Summarizing the case like this helps him work through a mystery; they're not necessarily new ideas on the page, but seeing them worded differently sometimes sparks things in his head.
Finished with the retooled design, he titles it: 'IT WAS [NAME] IN THE [DINING ROOM] WITH THE [AMOBARBITAL]' and leaves a side note in the margin to say, 2/3's not bad, xoxo.
"Hugs and kisses?" Gus questions.
Shawn throws one arm around his shoulder and the other around Juliet's. "Yay team!" He puts the list back up with a strip of masking tape, pulling the two sides of the tape apart to get rid of the crease because he knows it would bug Gus otherwise.
"So, suspects," Gus starts when no one else steps forward to begin. The remaining three cede the court to him in deference to his nut shelling ability. "Both Andrew Harris and Kenneth Benson had access to the amobarbital, which we're almost sure is the murder weapon--."
"-we got the preliminary labs back this morning," Juliet cuts in. "Both Breese and Lewis tested positive for it, but Benson's blood work came back negative. We won't get the full report until tomorrow night, but it's a start."
"-which we are sure is the murder weapon," he corrects. "However, Harris is our prime suspect, due to the Benson attack. We're still missing motive, and Harris' partner."
"We need something to tie Harris to either Breese or Lewis," Lassiter notes. "But we need to be discreet - if we let Harris know we're onto him, he could make another attempt on Breese's life. Well, unless--."
"Let's hold off on using anybody as bait until we have to, yeah?" Juliet adds in before Lassiter can make that suggestion. "Make things easier for the officers guarding him now."
"Can't we just bring him in?" It might be an obvious question, but Gus has to ask. Something obvious is nagging at him, something he should be seeing, but he can't tell what. Maybe it's that.
"We could hold him for the attack on Benson," Juliet explains, "But we don't know who his partner is, and it'll be hard to keep things quiet. He's a cast member, and word gets around quickly in tight spaces like this." It's actually rather spacious for a boat, but he takes her point.
Gus' feeling is growing; twisting and morphing into something small but dense that settles in his stomach. Something's wrong. He can feel it. Juliet keeps talking, detailing how they're going to keep guards on Benson and Breese until they can find a connection with Harris and bring him and his partner in.
He looks over at the two lists taped side-by-side on the wall, the original and the duplicate. Lassiter's scrawling black pen compared to Shawn's round letters that all run together like he can't get them out fast enough. The red pen catches his attention for a brief moment, an extra line tacked onto the end of Shawn's copy that he had noticed before but written off as further commentary. "Was that there before?" he asks curiously. He doesn't really expect them to know. He certainly doesn't.
The red pen catches him off-guard. He didn't give Shawn a red pen. In Shawn's particular brand of logic, that means his friend didn't want him to see this note, at least not right away. That alone accounts for the gnawing feeling of unease that's settled itself around him. In a way, he knows what he's going to find before he starts reading.
'Hey buddy!' it reads. 'You're probably summarizing now and you know how that bores me. I'm going to go catch up with Andrew instead. Catch ya later. - Shawn'
"Shawn, you're kind of quiet," Juliet says, turning around to see Gus rip the page off the wall. He can't blame her for noticing any more than he can blame himself. That's how Shawn works - three steps ahead of everyone else, and he never takes the time to catch anyone up. Gus supposes that must get kind of frustrating at times, having to backtrack for the sake of keeping everyone in the loop, but he wishes that once - just once - Shawn would try.
"We've got to find Shawn," he says, belatedly recognizing that feeling in the pit of his stomach to be his sense that Shawn is in danger setting off alarm bells in his head. "Now."
-
Lassiter and Juliet are both on the radio co-ordinating the search when Buzz reports in. "He's sitting across the room from me," he says, sounding faintly confused.
"Is there anybody with him?" Gus talks over Juliet in his pressing desire to know. That feeling of unease hasn't left him yet. The longer it remains, the probability of Shawn attracting danger approaches one.
"He's sitting with the chef right now, but Chief Vick just left. A few people have stopped by to chat, though." They burst through the dining room doors before Buzz has finished his sentence, scanning the crowd.
Shawn's laughing so hard he's got an arm braced over his stomach to try and contain it, the drink in one hand shaking violently. From across the room, Gus hears him say, "One o'clock's a little early to be drinking, isn't it? Oh well, bottoms up!"
He looks up.
-
"It's soluble in alcohol but not in water."
-
Harris could easily have seen Shawn with Benson - knowing Shawn, his friend was probably there when Benson was attacked and neglected to mention it, already looking for the next danger to leap into head-first.
-
The more he thinks about it, the more he's reassured Shawn isn't going to get himself accidentally poisoned; he's been sticking strictly to juice to avoid interactions with his pain meds.
-
Except Shawn didn't take his pain meds this morning.
"That's poison!" Gus yells, but Shawn doesn't seem to have heard him, glass halfway to his mouth as he launches into a story of his own to tell Arnold.
Juliet later helps him piece together the events of the next fifteen seconds, the both of them looking to make sense of it all. For his part, Gus perceives them as a blur, only momentarily coalescing into something recognizable at a few key fixed points.
Shawn's mouth is close enough to fog up the glass when Lassiter hits him like a two-ton truck, tackling him out of the chair with a grip around his middle. The detective shifts their combined weight to try and break the psychic's fall but they hit the ground hard. Shawn rolls away just as soon as they hit solid ground, wide-eyed and breathing fast, a glassy look in his eyes that suggests he is somewhere else entirely.
His wine is decorating the floor, a puddle of red seeping into the floor while the liberated glass doesn't come to a stop until it meets the leg of a chair.
Lassiter rolls over and looks straight up into the eyes of Karen Vick. "Detective Lassiter," she says, smile wan and voice tight. "Care to inform me as to why you're tackling our consultants in the middle of lunch?"
He opens his mouth, then thinks better of it and closes it. "I had a reason," he points out after a minute, judging that the best choice of the ways he could answer that.
"A very good one, I hope."
"Spencer's drink was poisoned." He watches as her glare softens, giving way to a glimpse of concern before that disappears beneath the professional exterior. When she looks up and returns her focus to the dumbfounded crowd, it's as if that crack in her demeanour was never there, but Lassiter knows better. Vick never has taken well to anybody messing with her people.
Spencer's still on the ground when Lassiter gets to his feet, the younger man sitting up and leaning against the table assuring Gus that even if he had taken a sip -- "Which I didn't, Gus, don't look at me like that" -- it would hardly be enough to kill him. "Barely poisoned," he qualifies.
"I don't care," Gus fumes, having overshot the mark for 'concerned yet suave' and landed squarely in 'don't you ever scare me like that again or I'll kill you myself.' "Barely poisoned is like slightly pregnant."
"Overkill much, Lassie?" Shawn gripes, but there's no bite to it. He glances over at the wine glass resting place, innocuous empty as it had been full, and thinks stupid. How could he have fallen for that? It wasn't drugged when he got it, he's sure of that much. His father would have his head if he accepted a drink without knowing where it came from. Which means at somewhere along the line, one of the people he talked to poisoned him.
Only the thing is, he hadn't gotten around to talking to Andrew Harris yet. Which means Harris wasn't the one to poison him.
"Thanks," he says to the room at large, trusting that Lassiter will understand it's for him. He lets his head fall back against the table, pulling his legs up to his chest. He's missed things again - key things - and almost gotten himself killed. Maybe he's not ready to come back after all.
When Shawn looks up, Lassiter is offering him a hand. Shawn doesn't react for a long minute, trying to understand the subtext there, but it doesn't look like anything more than a hand up. He grabs hold of Lassiter's wrist, letting the detective haul him into a standing position. Lassiter waves off his grateful nod uncomfortably, cutting off any further conversations along these lines with a pointed look.
"Spencer, with me," he directs, striding for the door. Shawn follows the older detective out, Juliet and Gus bringing up the rear. There's still the mess behind them to clean up, but they have a more important one to start on of an entirely different sort.
They make it to the hallway before Shawn pulls up short. "I think I'm going to sit this one out," he offers. If he can't prevent his own poisoning, he doesn't trust himself to keep Gus safe, either. Risking his life is one thing, but risking Burton Guster's is something else entirely.
The three of them stop, turning back to face him with varying degrees of confusion that he brushes off. Juliet reacts first, stepping forward to place a hand on his arm. "Shawn..."
"It's okay, Jules." She's still looking at him like he's something fragile about to break, so he can't be hitting the notes just right. "I'll just get you next time." He doesn't intend to give up Psych or anything - he could never do that - but maybe this case isn't the best for his return. Lassiter and Juliet seem to have a good handle on it, and Gus knows everything he does. Well, he thinks so, at least. Those details have always been harder to keep track of; it's taken Shawn years to understand that other people don't see what he does, and even now he finds himself surprised when other people miss a clue he considers obvious.
Lassiter tracks him as he moves to pass them. "Spencer." Shawn turns to face him.
"Contrary to what you might think," Lassiter begins. "You're not perfect, and nobody expects you to be." All Lassiter has ever really wanted from Spencer is an admission of fallibility. Shawn is good, he's not debating that, and Lassiter respects Spencer for his abilities if not his methods. He's even grown to enjoy the other man's company (in small, measured doses.) What bothers him is the station's tendency to idealize the man in light of his extraordinary solve rate. The higher the pedestal, the harder the fall.
A fallible Spencer is one that isn't playing games with smoke and mirrors. He's one Lassiter can relate to. He isn't asking for a defeated Spencer, he just wants one whose promises he can accept at face value. The thing is, faced now with a Spencer choosing to back down, it seems a hollow victory. Half Spencer's charm lies in his confidence; his arrogance might grate, but it isn't unfounded, just in need of toning down on occasion.
Mistakes aren't nearly as significant as the way you choose to deal with them. If it were O'Hara he were talking to, he would put that into words, but it's Spencer, so he holds his tongue. That's not how he's comforted Spencer in the past, and he wouldn't want to scare him off by starting now. He hopes the younger man takes his point, anyways.
"Contrary to what I may think," Shawn mirrors his words, lost in thought. He snaps his fingers three quick times in succession, realization flooding his system all at once as he flashes back to Benson's room - if Harris and his partner had left something behind, it stands to reason that they might have taken something as well.
"I need to see Ken's room again!" he yells, tearing off in the other direction. He glances over his shoulder without stopping to see they haven't moved yet. "Are you coming or what?"
-
"Dude, I can't believe I missed this."
"You missed something? Shawn, you don't miss things."
"Gus, don't be so five minutes ago. I had my crisis of faith, you guys were supportive - it was very cute, by the way - and now I'm back on my game."
"You had an entire crisis of faith in five minutes?"
"Give or take a few seconds. I solved the case during the downtime, too."
[Next to Part 4]
"This is completely unnecessary. Don't you agree, Gus?"
"I happen to think it's an excellent idea."
Shawn sulks a little, but it goes unnoticed. He and Gus are wedged between Buzz McNab and one of the extra officers they'd picked up before leaving shore while Lassiter and Juliet are out in front, following Shawn's up-to-the-minute directions on where the meeting is taking place.
"Right- no, left. No, right. Well, two wrongs don't make a right, but three rights make a left, so we'll get there if you turn now anyways." He keeps them tied up following a wild goose chase as the minutes left before midnight tick away, timing it so they arrive at deck three two minutes prior to the meeting to ensure they don't try and cut him out of the action.
Lassiter and Juliet fan out, leaving the two officers to guard the two consultants. "Stay," Lassiter warns them before he leaves.
"Should I roll over and play dead, too?" Shawn asks innocently.
Lassiter ignores that comment, switching his focus to the two officers. "You are responsible for these two. Don't let anything happen to them." If he had it his way, they wouldn't be anywhere near the action, but sending them back to their rooms now is too risky. They don't want to risk passing and spooking the two suspects meeting here tonight.
Midnight comes and goes without a peep, with the exception of Gus' whispered comment about how no one is punctual anymore, but the sound of footsteps approaching at a minute past silences his friend. Shawn almost laughs at the way Gus takes slow, shallow breaths to try eliminate the sound of him breathing, but it's kind of hard to mock that when he's doing it as well.
Lassiter and Juliet burst out from behind a potted plant with a beautifully synchronized "Freeze!" standing shoulder-to-shoulder when their second conspirator arrives on the scene.
The early bird, the taller of the two, moves to throw the laptop he's carrying overboard and takes off running, the second not far ahead of him. One of the officers assigned to guard Shawn and Gus gives chase as Juliet makes a grab for the laptop.
"O'Hara!" Lassiter yells, watching his partner lean dangerously over the railing.
"I got it!" she yells, breathing heavily as she pulls her mid-air catch back onto the safety of the deck and hands it off to McNab, straightening her back and taking a step away from the side of the boat.
"Nice catch."
"Thank you," she beams. His radio crackles to life before he can smile back, the second officer reporting in that their two suspects have eluded him.
Lassiter swears, but Juliet rolls her eyes.
"They weren't armed, so we can safely assume they pose no danger to the general public. And we got what the evidence they came here to dispose of," she points out. Sure, the takedown could have gone better, but the night isn't a complete loss.
She still looks a little miffed, but her patience mellows out Lassiter's ire, and he is much calmer by the time the second officer returns to regroup.
Lassiter rubs a weary hand over his face. "Alright, we've got that one computer tech on board - what's-her-face, Reynolds?"
"Her name is Rowe. Emily Rowe," Juliet corrects him.
"We'll give her the laptop to work in. Doubtless it's password-protected, but maybe she can crack it, find out what's on here for us."
"Nothing much we can do until then," Juliet agrees. "So considering it's twelve-thirty, I suggest we all get some sleep for the night." She eyes Shawn pointedly. "And I actually mean sleep."
-
"You better be going to sleep, Shawn."
"Don't be ridiculous, Gus. I'm - yawn - wide awake. Wanna watch a movie?"
"No! You might function - yawn - well under the influence of sleep deprivation, but I need my beauty sleep."
"Come on! I'll put it on in the background; it'll lull you gently to sleep."
"...what movie did you have in mind?"
"Indiana Jones?"
"Indiana Jones is going to lull me to sleep? Really?"
"Yes?"
"Goodnight, Shawn."
-
Shawn sets his iPhone aside. He'll pick a movie - yawn - just as soon as he slips off his shoes. He rubs the sleep out of his eyes, slipping under the warm comforter and letting his head sink into the pillow. He's just resting for a minute, that's all. He's not tired or anything.
He's asleep within five minutes.
-
Gus knocks on his door bright and early the next morning; the distinctive pattern of three quick beats, a pause, and then a final beat telling him it's his best friend. He lifts his head up from the pillow long enough to shout, "Come in!" before letting it drop, pulling the covers up where they've fallen to expose his shoulders.
"It's locked!" Gus calls back.
"Then pick the lock!"
Two weeks of trying to keep his shoulder still while he sleeps have taught him that rolling over is out of the question, so he just groans and sits up. He's aware that his hair is sticking up in all directions with no rhyme or reason and runs a hand through it to try and smooth it down. He can feel it pop back up between his fingers. Oh well. Gus has seen him in every state imaginable, and an extreme case of bed head is small pennies in comparison.
He spins the knob on the lock open and turns the handle, letting Gus in. He should really teach Gus how to pick locks one of these days. The floor is cold and there's a warm shell in his bedcovers where he could still be.
"Good morning, Shawn."
"Sure," he says, eyeing Gus' unashamedly amused smile disdainfully.
He stuffs a pillow in his face and falls back against the bed, letting his legs hang down over the end. "Why are you such a morning person?" he grumbles, voice muffled by the pillow. The warm indent where he'd slept is a comfort to muscles stiff from yesterday's poolside rescue, soothing the tight knots in his back. Now he's only sore when he moves, and not when he's sitting still.
He's lost count of the number of sleepovers he and Gus have had over the years, an event they never truly grew out of. The nights are always fun, whether they're watching movies or playing video games or trying something new (Shawn's right eyebrow is finally back to normal after their disastrous attempt at soufflé), but the mornings are a trial. Gus is always wide awake and ready to go before Shawn's even thought about hauling himself out of bed.
"There's coffee and breakfast waiting," Gus compromises. "Juliet and Lassiter headed down half an hour ago."
"Time izzit?" he asks around a yawn, fumbling for the sweater he remembers leaving on the bedside table.
"Eight-thirty," Gus says, as if that's a perfectly reasonable time to be awake. Shawn hasn't woken up before nine since before he was shot.
"Coffee?" he confirms.
"Lots," Gus promises. Shawn finds sneakers to stick his feet in and follows his friend out the door.
He's consoled by the fact that although Gus is a morning person, he's the very best sort; he comes bearing caffeine to those he inflicts his cheer on.
-
He drops down heavily into the chair beside Lassiter bearing a mug of coffee, sharing the universal nod of the sleep-deprived before the bittersweet smell of coffee loaded down with several scoops of sugar triggers something in his brain and he does a double-take.
"I know why I look like something the cat spat out," he says slowly. He fell asleep initially without much trouble, but staying that way proved to be difficult. "But why do you?"
Lassiter jerks his head at Juliet, who pipes up. "So!" she begins. "Emily cracked the laptop last night - well, this morning, I suppose. The hard drive is filled with records of all the jobs Lewis has pulled. No direct ties to Breese so far, but we're still looking. The most promising lead so far is the inventory from his most recent take, the robbery of Benson's pharmacy."
Pharmacy - he flashes back to the pill bottle he'd left under the bed for Gus to find when he'd been attacked in Benson's room. It had been the only bottle lying around with a valid prescription. What had it been called again?
"Drugs!" he says, pointing his fork at Juliet. "I'm getting something --," he launches into a 'vision', bringing the first two fingers of one hand to his temple and rubbing slow circles there as he tries to 'remember.' "An orange bottle, a prescription of some sort..."
"Gus!" he asks. "What is am-ambien? No, that's not it. I'm-a-barb-tall."
"Amobarbital?"
"It's used to treat epilepsy and insomnia," Gus says. "But it can be used as a poison in large quantities." Shawn twirls his fork, grinning.
"I can see it in Ken's room." He watches with confusion as Juliet beams at his words; not that he's not happy to see her happy, but something feels off about her excitement. Jules usually holds off on the unqualified good mood until she has more of the bigger picture. His confusion only grows as she watches him share a look with Gus. It's too early for secrets, especially ones he's not in the loop on.
"We found a prescription bottle for amobarbital in Benson's room, under the bed," Lassiter fills him in. The way he's eyeing Shawn isn't quite right either, a blend of suspicion and begrudging admiration usually saved for when Shawn does something he's reluctantly proud of. Identifying the poison (well, a possibility, but his gut is telling him this is the one) shouldn't be anything spectacular enough to gain that look.
"I called it in," Lassiter continues. "The prescription belongs to Andrew Harris, who is one of the staff on board the ship."
"YOU!"
Shawn startles at the sudden cry, narrowly preventing a face-plant into his cereal bowl where he'd been drifting off. The group at their table turn as one to see Viola Langley stalking towards a younger, formally dressed man with slicked-back hair. Shawn tried that look once, but Gus said he looked ridiculous and he trusts Gus' opinion implicitly on such matters.
"You killed my father!" Viola yells, her ever-present boa whipping in the air behind her.
"Me?" the man scoffs. "Mr. Langley was an old friend of mine. You wanted to get rid of him because he disapproved of your little fiancé."
Shawn leans in. "Who's he?" he asks Gus. With all the focus on trying to figure out who killed Brian Lewis, he'd forgotten about his fake case and the bet with Juliet.
"The business partner, Andrew - oh." Huh. So when Lassiter had said Andrew was staff, he'd meant the man was a cast member.
"You wanted his money!" Viola replies, drawing their attention back.
Peter comes striding up from a table across the room to join Viola, taking a circular route to pass by more of the audience whose attention they've captured. "Viola, dear..."
"No, Peter!" she cries, casting off the calming hand he's placed on her arm.
"He wanted Langley's money?" Shawn grins as Penny the paramedic makes her entrance, standing up from Chief Vick's table behind him and joining the trio of actors at centre stage. "And you didn't?"
Andrew scoffs. "Please, as if you're one to talk? You have the most motive of any of us - you were dating the man."
"We were in love!"
"When pigs fly!"
Enraged beyond words, Penny slaps Andrew. Well, it's a stage-slap, Shawn sees when the hand-clap come a split-second out of sync to make the sound. Henry's influence has ruined special effects for life for him. Animation is better for him in that respect because he's able to suspend his disbelief more fully, but it's still tricky. Ever since Shawn was little, he's wanted to know how things work; he was the six-year old that continued asking 'why' until those answering the questions were blue in the face. On one particularly memorable occasion, Henry made it through thirty-two rounds before caving to the inevitable 'because I said so.'
He watches her storm out as Andrew is left reeling from the force of her anger, one hand pressed to his cheek to continue the illusion. Peter manages to coax Viola out of the room, and the audience breaks out in speculation.
Juliet raises one eyebrow. He points at her. "I've been a little busy solving real crimes, Jules. Don't you worry, this bet is still mine."
"If you say so."
He sniffs. "Gus, let's go. We've got two cases to solve, a bet to win, and a deadline." He pauses for a minute. "And grab that banana, I'm gonna need a snack."
-
"What was that, Shawn?"
"What was what?"
"Don't play. Why aren't we going with Jules and Lassie to question Andrew?"
"Oh, come on, Gus! What are they going to find out...he's taking a medication for a condition he actually has? Shocking. The prescription looked valid enough, the prescribing doctor is one of the guys on your route."
"Back up. How do you know who's on my route?"
"Well, you see--."
"-never mind. Don't answer that. If you're stalking me again, I think I'm better off not knowing."
-
"Penny!" Shawn says brightly. There's nothing like drama over breakfast to get the blood moving. He takes a bite out of his partially peeled banana as they speed up to match Penny's pace. "Where are you headed?"
"Kitchen. The back entrance though, wouldn't set the right tone for a dramatic exit if I left through the dining room, would it? I'm starving! Haven't had a chance to eat breakfast yet, we've been rehearsing and setting up for the day's scenes."
Gus frowns. "Should you be telling us all this?"
Shawn smacks him in the arm. "I'm here as Penny's friend, not as a guest! Besides, I already know who did it."
"Oh, yeah?" Gus says doubtfully. "Who, then?"
"Either Penny, Peter, or Andrew."
"If you don't know, you could've just said that."
"Don't be the last cardboard-y bite of an ice cream cone, Gus. I know that Viola didn't do it; they're setting her up as a loud, dramatic character. Everyone knows you watch out for the quiet ones." He changes tactics abruptly, addressing his next words to Penny though his eyes never leave Gus. "Great job in there, by the way! Although I'm shocked - you and Langley? He's a little old for you."
Penny's blushing when he turns back to face her, and he grins, sharing the amusement with her. "Yeah, I know, what can I say? It's what they cast me as. Apparently, I make a good mistress."
"You'd make a good boxer," Gus comments. "Excellent right hook."
"Do you make a good spy, though?" Shawn questions. "I'm thinking James Bond."
"Jason Bourne," Gus adds.
"Michael Weston."
"Austin Powers."
"Sherlock Holmes."
"Sherlock Holmes wasn't a spy, Shawn," Gus says with a frown. "He was a detective."
Shawn frowns. "But Robert Downey Jr. did all those stunts!"
"That was a movie. There was nowhere near that much action in canon. Actually, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle wrote him as more of a --."
Penny cuts in, looking both bemused and bewildered, as if she doesn't know quite how to react to the discussion taking place without her. "I did find out something," she promptly helpfully. "Viola overheard the man who passed away talking with William Breese... they were saying something about betrayal. Breese thought someone was betraying him or something, I think."
The two friends drop the topic of spies as quickly as they broached it. The murder and attempted poisoning suggest Breese's fears were valid indeed. It's not paranoia if they really are out to get you. But who would have motive, and why?
"Penny," he asks, switching gears abruptly. "How did it feel slapping Andrew? How did he take it?"
She shrugs. "He's a great sport about all the physical comedy - he wanted me to slap him for real, but I just couldn't. I took an oath to heal, not harm."
"So he enjoys his work?"
"Oh, he loves this stuff! This is only a part-time gig for me, but I heard him saying he wants to quit his day job and do this full-time."
"I saw him wandering the halls last night," Shawn fishes. He didn't, actually, but this is as good a starting place as any. He's hoping for her overall impressions of Andrew's character as a whole; the fake murder is pretty up-front about defining everyone's motives, but he has no idea how Andrew ties into Lewis' death.
"Oh, he doesn't sleep well. I thought he was doing better now that he's on medication, though." Shawn nods sympathetically, holding out a stealthy hand behind his back to fist-bump Gus.
"Does that help?" she asks quietly, and he is reminded of the shaken paramedic he'd comforted when Lewis had first been declared dead. He needs a visual reminder of the seriousness of the cases they investigate, sometimes. Humour is his default language and he couldn't operate without it, but there's a fine line between being funny and being callous that he has to balance on a daily basis.
"Absolutely," he promises her.
-
They make a small detour into Chef Arnold's lair to update him on all the latest gossip. Gus would object, but feeding Shawn is a full-time job and he figures he owes a favour to anyone who helps him out with that one.
Juliet catches them walking out of the kitchen, Shawn finishing off the last bites of an omelette as he waves a cheery goodbye to the chef. "Guess what we found out?" she says, bouncing on the balls of her feet.
"Andrew's an insomniac."
She deflates visibly, and Gus tries to adopt what he hopes is a sympathetic smile. Shawn finds out these things before the police mostly due to sheer dumb luck.
"Yeah." She would ask how he knew that, but there's no point to that anymore. "He refilled his prescription of amobarbital a few days ago at Benson's pharmacy."
"So, how did it end up in Benson's room?" Gus proposes. "Unless Andrew was one of the attackers."
Shawn pauses for a minute, pursing his lips thoughtfully. "That was a little better, actually," he says, referring to their ongoing quest to improve Gus' dramatic segue-to-commercial wrap-ups.
They regroup with Lassiter in the study. Shawn hides a smile when Juliet knocks distinctively to announce her presence before walking into the room, joining him at the table. His gaze pans over to the improvised corkboard, where the detective has posted a summary of the case so far in his distinctive chicken scratch. Well, perhaps that's not fair to the chickens. They were never known for their motor control.
He squints at the document, tilting his head on a forty-five degree angle, as if that will help with the deciphering. "You changed from printing to handwriting."
"So?"
"Halfway through a word."
On a whim - he always runs with his whims, it's his shenanigans Gus has qualms with - he tears a piece of paper from Lassiter's notebook, a book from the table, and plops himself down on the floor against the table leg.
"Detectives, Mr. Guster" he hears the Chief say from somewhere in the vicinity of the door, having just entered. "Mr. Spencer, why are you on the floor?"
"Translating from Lassie to English," he replies, holding the notepad up over his head for her to see without looking up. "Start without me," he prompts, because it's obvious enough that Vick is here for an update.
Juliet and Lassiter tag-team the report, skimming over the details on how they lost the two suspects last night and emphasizing the usefulness of the information recovered from the laptop. Vick has a highly tuned bullshit detector anyways, so she strips the story down to its bare essentials in a few seconds of processing. Shawn can hear it in the way she shifts her weight onto her other foot and crosses her arms.
"I see," she says, leaving it at that. Her tone implies she knows she's not getting a full report, but she's never been the type to micromanage. Her detectives have a viable lead on the case, the suspects don't seem to pose any danger to the general public, and they aren't likely to escape on a boat at sea, so she can let this one slide in favour of the bigger picture. It's moments like this that make her a good boss.
"Green pen," he orders, holding his hand up, palm flat. Wordlessly, Gus pulls his green and purple pens from his pocket, handing them both over. If Shawn is taking the time to colour-code, it's only a matter of time before he asks for the rest of the set he knows Gus carries.
Lassiter's logic is sound, so he settles for merely transcribing the detective's notes, labelling the suspect names in green, the motives in purple, and any additional information in blue. Summarizing the case like this helps him work through a mystery; they're not necessarily new ideas on the page, but seeing them worded differently sometimes sparks things in his head.
Finished with the retooled design, he titles it: 'IT WAS [NAME] IN THE [DINING ROOM] WITH THE [AMOBARBITAL]' and leaves a side note in the margin to say, 2/3's not bad, xoxo.
"Hugs and kisses?" Gus questions.
Shawn throws one arm around his shoulder and the other around Juliet's. "Yay team!" He puts the list back up with a strip of masking tape, pulling the two sides of the tape apart to get rid of the crease because he knows it would bug Gus otherwise.
"So, suspects," Gus starts when no one else steps forward to begin. The remaining three cede the court to him in deference to his nut shelling ability. "Both Andrew Harris and Kenneth Benson had access to the amobarbital, which we're almost sure is the murder weapon--."
"-we got the preliminary labs back this morning," Juliet cuts in. "Both Breese and Lewis tested positive for it, but Benson's blood work came back negative. We won't get the full report until tomorrow night, but it's a start."
"-which we are sure is the murder weapon," he corrects. "However, Harris is our prime suspect, due to the Benson attack. We're still missing motive, and Harris' partner."
"We need something to tie Harris to either Breese or Lewis," Lassiter notes. "But we need to be discreet - if we let Harris know we're onto him, he could make another attempt on Breese's life. Well, unless--."
"Let's hold off on using anybody as bait until we have to, yeah?" Juliet adds in before Lassiter can make that suggestion. "Make things easier for the officers guarding him now."
"Can't we just bring him in?" It might be an obvious question, but Gus has to ask. Something obvious is nagging at him, something he should be seeing, but he can't tell what. Maybe it's that.
"We could hold him for the attack on Benson," Juliet explains, "But we don't know who his partner is, and it'll be hard to keep things quiet. He's a cast member, and word gets around quickly in tight spaces like this." It's actually rather spacious for a boat, but he takes her point.
Gus' feeling is growing; twisting and morphing into something small but dense that settles in his stomach. Something's wrong. He can feel it. Juliet keeps talking, detailing how they're going to keep guards on Benson and Breese until they can find a connection with Harris and bring him and his partner in.
He looks over at the two lists taped side-by-side on the wall, the original and the duplicate. Lassiter's scrawling black pen compared to Shawn's round letters that all run together like he can't get them out fast enough. The red pen catches his attention for a brief moment, an extra line tacked onto the end of Shawn's copy that he had noticed before but written off as further commentary. "Was that there before?" he asks curiously. He doesn't really expect them to know. He certainly doesn't.
The red pen catches him off-guard. He didn't give Shawn a red pen. In Shawn's particular brand of logic, that means his friend didn't want him to see this note, at least not right away. That alone accounts for the gnawing feeling of unease that's settled itself around him. In a way, he knows what he's going to find before he starts reading.
'Hey buddy!' it reads. 'You're probably summarizing now and you know how that bores me. I'm going to go catch up with Andrew instead. Catch ya later. - Shawn'
"Shawn, you're kind of quiet," Juliet says, turning around to see Gus rip the page off the wall. He can't blame her for noticing any more than he can blame himself. That's how Shawn works - three steps ahead of everyone else, and he never takes the time to catch anyone up. Gus supposes that must get kind of frustrating at times, having to backtrack for the sake of keeping everyone in the loop, but he wishes that once - just once - Shawn would try.
"We've got to find Shawn," he says, belatedly recognizing that feeling in the pit of his stomach to be his sense that Shawn is in danger setting off alarm bells in his head. "Now."
-
Lassiter and Juliet are both on the radio co-ordinating the search when Buzz reports in. "He's sitting across the room from me," he says, sounding faintly confused.
"Is there anybody with him?" Gus talks over Juliet in his pressing desire to know. That feeling of unease hasn't left him yet. The longer it remains, the probability of Shawn attracting danger approaches one.
"He's sitting with the chef right now, but Chief Vick just left. A few people have stopped by to chat, though." They burst through the dining room doors before Buzz has finished his sentence, scanning the crowd.
Shawn's laughing so hard he's got an arm braced over his stomach to try and contain it, the drink in one hand shaking violently. From across the room, Gus hears him say, "One o'clock's a little early to be drinking, isn't it? Oh well, bottoms up!"
He looks up.
-
"It's soluble in alcohol but not in water."
-
Harris could easily have seen Shawn with Benson - knowing Shawn, his friend was probably there when Benson was attacked and neglected to mention it, already looking for the next danger to leap into head-first.
-
The more he thinks about it, the more he's reassured Shawn isn't going to get himself accidentally poisoned; he's been sticking strictly to juice to avoid interactions with his pain meds.
-
Except Shawn didn't take his pain meds this morning.
"That's poison!" Gus yells, but Shawn doesn't seem to have heard him, glass halfway to his mouth as he launches into a story of his own to tell Arnold.
Juliet later helps him piece together the events of the next fifteen seconds, the both of them looking to make sense of it all. For his part, Gus perceives them as a blur, only momentarily coalescing into something recognizable at a few key fixed points.
Shawn's mouth is close enough to fog up the glass when Lassiter hits him like a two-ton truck, tackling him out of the chair with a grip around his middle. The detective shifts their combined weight to try and break the psychic's fall but they hit the ground hard. Shawn rolls away just as soon as they hit solid ground, wide-eyed and breathing fast, a glassy look in his eyes that suggests he is somewhere else entirely.
His wine is decorating the floor, a puddle of red seeping into the floor while the liberated glass doesn't come to a stop until it meets the leg of a chair.
Lassiter rolls over and looks straight up into the eyes of Karen Vick. "Detective Lassiter," she says, smile wan and voice tight. "Care to inform me as to why you're tackling our consultants in the middle of lunch?"
He opens his mouth, then thinks better of it and closes it. "I had a reason," he points out after a minute, judging that the best choice of the ways he could answer that.
"A very good one, I hope."
"Spencer's drink was poisoned." He watches as her glare softens, giving way to a glimpse of concern before that disappears beneath the professional exterior. When she looks up and returns her focus to the dumbfounded crowd, it's as if that crack in her demeanour was never there, but Lassiter knows better. Vick never has taken well to anybody messing with her people.
Spencer's still on the ground when Lassiter gets to his feet, the younger man sitting up and leaning against the table assuring Gus that even if he had taken a sip -- "Which I didn't, Gus, don't look at me like that" -- it would hardly be enough to kill him. "Barely poisoned," he qualifies.
"I don't care," Gus fumes, having overshot the mark for 'concerned yet suave' and landed squarely in 'don't you ever scare me like that again or I'll kill you myself.' "Barely poisoned is like slightly pregnant."
"Overkill much, Lassie?" Shawn gripes, but there's no bite to it. He glances over at the wine glass resting place, innocuous empty as it had been full, and thinks stupid. How could he have fallen for that? It wasn't drugged when he got it, he's sure of that much. His father would have his head if he accepted a drink without knowing where it came from. Which means at somewhere along the line, one of the people he talked to poisoned him.
Only the thing is, he hadn't gotten around to talking to Andrew Harris yet. Which means Harris wasn't the one to poison him.
"Thanks," he says to the room at large, trusting that Lassiter will understand it's for him. He lets his head fall back against the table, pulling his legs up to his chest. He's missed things again - key things - and almost gotten himself killed. Maybe he's not ready to come back after all.
When Shawn looks up, Lassiter is offering him a hand. Shawn doesn't react for a long minute, trying to understand the subtext there, but it doesn't look like anything more than a hand up. He grabs hold of Lassiter's wrist, letting the detective haul him into a standing position. Lassiter waves off his grateful nod uncomfortably, cutting off any further conversations along these lines with a pointed look.
"Spencer, with me," he directs, striding for the door. Shawn follows the older detective out, Juliet and Gus bringing up the rear. There's still the mess behind them to clean up, but they have a more important one to start on of an entirely different sort.
They make it to the hallway before Shawn pulls up short. "I think I'm going to sit this one out," he offers. If he can't prevent his own poisoning, he doesn't trust himself to keep Gus safe, either. Risking his life is one thing, but risking Burton Guster's is something else entirely.
The three of them stop, turning back to face him with varying degrees of confusion that he brushes off. Juliet reacts first, stepping forward to place a hand on his arm. "Shawn..."
"It's okay, Jules." She's still looking at him like he's something fragile about to break, so he can't be hitting the notes just right. "I'll just get you next time." He doesn't intend to give up Psych or anything - he could never do that - but maybe this case isn't the best for his return. Lassiter and Juliet seem to have a good handle on it, and Gus knows everything he does. Well, he thinks so, at least. Those details have always been harder to keep track of; it's taken Shawn years to understand that other people don't see what he does, and even now he finds himself surprised when other people miss a clue he considers obvious.
Lassiter tracks him as he moves to pass them. "Spencer." Shawn turns to face him.
"Contrary to what you might think," Lassiter begins. "You're not perfect, and nobody expects you to be." All Lassiter has ever really wanted from Spencer is an admission of fallibility. Shawn is good, he's not debating that, and Lassiter respects Spencer for his abilities if not his methods. He's even grown to enjoy the other man's company (in small, measured doses.) What bothers him is the station's tendency to idealize the man in light of his extraordinary solve rate. The higher the pedestal, the harder the fall.
A fallible Spencer is one that isn't playing games with smoke and mirrors. He's one Lassiter can relate to. He isn't asking for a defeated Spencer, he just wants one whose promises he can accept at face value. The thing is, faced now with a Spencer choosing to back down, it seems a hollow victory. Half Spencer's charm lies in his confidence; his arrogance might grate, but it isn't unfounded, just in need of toning down on occasion.
Mistakes aren't nearly as significant as the way you choose to deal with them. If it were O'Hara he were talking to, he would put that into words, but it's Spencer, so he holds his tongue. That's not how he's comforted Spencer in the past, and he wouldn't want to scare him off by starting now. He hopes the younger man takes his point, anyways.
"Contrary to what I may think," Shawn mirrors his words, lost in thought. He snaps his fingers three quick times in succession, realization flooding his system all at once as he flashes back to Benson's room - if Harris and his partner had left something behind, it stands to reason that they might have taken something as well.
"I need to see Ken's room again!" he yells, tearing off in the other direction. He glances over his shoulder without stopping to see they haven't moved yet. "Are you coming or what?"
-
"Dude, I can't believe I missed this."
"You missed something? Shawn, you don't miss things."
"Gus, don't be so five minutes ago. I had my crisis of faith, you guys were supportive - it was very cute, by the way - and now I'm back on my game."
"You had an entire crisis of faith in five minutes?"
"Give or take a few seconds. I solved the case during the downtime, too."
[Next to Part 4]