Shawn Spencer Saves the World, Chapter 3
Title: Shawn Spencer Saves the World
Author: Prairie Dawn
Characters: Ten, Rose, most of the cast of Psych
Timeline: After "The Christmas Invasion" in DW, Psych first season.
Warnings/Tropes: Dead alien guts, human suit, oblique pregnancy references.
Acknowledgements: Doctor Who belongs to the BBC. Psych belongs to USA network. Special thanks to Katididit and JimG for beta reading.
Additional note: I have not been able to rustle up the name of the coroner on Psych. If you know it, let me know and I'll be able to fix the nameless guy problem. :)
First two chapters archived at A Teaspoon and an Open Mind:
http://www.whofic.com/viewstory.php?sid=35993
Shawn led the way into the station. Santa Barbara had been feeling giddy with cash the decade the station and courthouse were built, so little expense had been spared. Warm brick accents contrasted pleasantly with decoratively shaped plaster in wide hallways and generous offices suffused with sunlight from numerous large windows. Chief of Police Karen Vick met him at the door to her office with her arms crossed. "I heard something about a dead guy in a green alien suit. I guess I shouldn't be surprised you're involved," she said to Shawn as she quickly took in his two unknown companions. "And who have we here?"
Shawn slid quickly into the infinitesimal break before either of the two aliens--he felt justified thinking of them as aliens regardless of their actual origin given that Great Britain was not America--and introduced the pair. "This is Doctor Aloysius Chimcheree of the Unified Intelligence Taskforce, show her your ID, Doctor Chimcheree, and his assistant, Lavender Lollipop."
Rose slapped him in the back of the head. "Stop that! Rose Tyler," she corrected, proffering a hand for the Chief to shake.
The Doctor flipped out his paper and shook the Chief's hand in turn. "Pleased to meet Santa Barbara's finest. And it's just the Doctor, really. Now, where have you stashed our alien murder victim?"
"Our alien murder victim?" The Chief shook her head curtly. "We're still checking your credentials." She shouted across the room, "O'Hara, any luck with getting hold of those UNIT people?"
"They want to see Doctor Chimcheree before they confirm he's working for them. I can set up a webcam," Juliet O'Hara offered. She waved cheerily at Shawn, her phone still tucked underneath her chin. A pair of crutches leaned against the wall behind her desk.
"Aw, now that's not strictly necessary, is it?" the Doctor protested, flashing a disarming smile. Unfortunately for him, Shawn's frequent use of the "I'm too cute to refuse" tactic had lent the police chief some immunity.
"I think it is, before you get involved in an official murder investigation," the Chief said, leading the Doctor and Rose over to Juliet's desk and flipping the webcam in their general direction. Shawn stood behind them, first ensuring that each had his and hers bunny ears, moving on to the obligatory man wearing noose pantomime, then finishing up with bracketing the two from behind and making suggestive hand gestures.
Juliet glanced up at the pair, and Shawn behind them. "Yes, that's him. Aloysius Chimcheree. Doctor Chimcheree." She had to pull away from the reciever for a moment to stifle a giggle. She pointedly turned the chair so she no longer had to look at Shawn, then continued her conversation. "Well, I'm glad to hear that. No, I didn't have any plans to vacation somewhere far away from Santa Barbara. Why, are you propositioning me? Oh yes, of course, I'll put him on." She turned back to face the Doctor and handed him the phone.
The Doctor plucked it out of her slim fingers with a slightly flirtatious smile. Shawn suppressed the fleeting urge to smack him and instead listened to his end of the phone conversation. "Ah, yes, hello then, and stop saluting. How's old Lethbridge-Stewart getting on these days? Oh, no, no, nothing I can't handle. Of course I'll call if I need backup, such as it is. Just your basic murder mystery at this point." He paused then, for a little longer, frowning. "What's that? I'm sorry, it would appear this cell phone needs charging, goodbye now." He flipped the phone closed and handed it graciously back to Juliet. "Now, where were we? Coroner's office, yes?"
The Chief stepped in front of Shawn and the Doctor. "Detective O'Hara tells me we are to give you whatever assistance you require," the Chief said, her face creasing with annoyance. "Now, I won't pretend to be happy about you nosing in on my people's investigation, and I expect Detective Lassiter and myself to be kept in the loop." She turned to Shawn. "I do not recall asking for your assistance on this case."
Shawn smirked. "I'm with him." He jerked his chin toward the Doctor, who shrugged noncommittally and started to stroll down the hallway, waving cheerily at the occasional deskbound officer or secretary. When he reached the T-intersection at the end of the hall, he turned the wrong way. Shawn caught his coat sleeve and pointed him in the right direction.
The coroner was waiting in the doorway to one of the larger autopsy rooms with a body on either side of him, looking positively giddy. He counted heads. "I think we'll all fit." He indicated the bluish green creature laid out on a stainless steel table. "Masks and gowns everyone, I'm not taking any chances with this guy." The Doctor entered first, but eschewed the gown and paper mask. "He's really no more dangerous than any other dead body," he said. Shawn followed, taking a cue from the Doctor and leaving off the protective clothing.
Lassiter squeezed in next. He conscientiously donned gown and mask, collected a pair of additional masks and gowns, and handed them pointedly to Shawn and the Doctor. The Doctor tucked his into his coat. Shawn tossed his over his shoulder. Gus caught them awkwardly, opened them, and chivalrously handed them to Rose, who shook her head and passed them back to him. Gus, apparently caught between his instinct to protect himself from alien ickyness and his desire to impress Miss Obviously Taken, put on the gown, but not the mask and succeeded in looking like a hospital patient.
"All here?" the Coroner asked, then continued, "We'll start with this fellow." Shawn leaned in to look. A Y-shaped incision marked the body's chest and abdomen, but the flaps were folded down so that whatever internal organs the creature had were not on display. "It was impossible to identify most of the internal organs. What I think was a heart suffered significant damage from two projectiles," he indicated the two entrance wounds in the chest, "Which would have been fatal even in the absence of the head wound. The anatomy and biochemistry are substantially different from human, or in fact any other animal phylum on Earth. However, given that this is a murder investigation and not a scientific study, I believe I have made some progress." He held out two misshapen pieces of metal in gloved hands, then tucked them carefully into a small baggie.
High heeled shoes clicked toward them from out in the hallway, along with the distinctive metallic click and soft thump of crutches. Shawn raised both hands to bracket his head and intoned, "I sense the approach of two blonde women," a moment before the Chief popped her head into the autopsy room. Juliet arrived a beat later. The six already in the room shuffled around to make space for them to gather arond the table. Nobody noticed Shawn, who had clearly been upstaged as "weirdest thing in the room" by the body itself.
"I thought it would be wise for me to have a look at our vic." The Chief turned to Juliet. "Aren't you on the Penzey case?"
"Lunch break," she said, hopping into the doorway to lean precariously against the wall.
The coroner nodded to each woman and continued. "As I was saying, I can conclude that the gunshot wounds to the chest would have been fatal, presuming our vic has physiological requirements even remotely similar to a human's, but because his physiology is so different from anything I've ever seen before, I cannot rule out the possiblity that the wounds occurred postmortem."
The Doctor leaned in. "Could you open the chest cavity? I'd like to get a better look at the damage."
"Certainly, Doctor...?" He peeled open the creature's chest.
"Just Doctor." the doctor plucked a probe off the coroner's instrument table and plucked at some unidentifiable scrambled guts, then pulled out that blue penlight of his and waved it around at the body cavity. "No, looks to me like the bullet wounds are a safe bet for cause of death." He tucked the penlight back into his coat pocket.
Disappointed that he had never quite finished that online course in picking pockets, Shawn checked out the room. Gus stood very still against the back wall, mouth tightly closed, swallowing. Rose tried a couple of jumps, sequestered as she was behind a wall of taller people, then resorted to buffing her nails against her shirt and pretending she wasn't interested. Juliet seemed to be having some difficulty concealing inappropriate glee. The mask she had donned helped, but her eyes twinkled. Lassie stood stock still in front of him, his face the color of wadded toilet paper. "Not a suit," he muttered. He seemed to shake himself out of his trance, then said, "All right, a dead guy's a dead guy. Juliet, take those slugs to ballistics. How about our next vic?"
Juliet tucked the baggie of bullets into a pocket and maneuvered her crutches and booted foot out the door. The coroner moved to the other table and pulled down the sheet. This body looked startlingly normal, compared to the last time Shawn had seen it. The skin had been stuffed with foam rubber to approximate a human form. The dead man was Hispanic, heavyset, and in late middle age, with crow's feet around his eyes and gray roots. His clothes had been removed and tucked into yet another plastic bag, the plaid shorts and pineapple print Hawaiian shirt neatly folded and tagged. "Here are the prints I pulled, for identification purposes." The coroner handed the sheet of prints, also bagged, to Lassiter.
The Chief leaned in to examine the man's face. Her breath huffed out of her abruptly and she drew back, suddenly pale. "Check police personnel records first. I think that's Paul Herrero."
"Chief Herrero from Simi Valley?" Lassiter leaned in to look at the dead man's face. "You could be right. I only met him a couple of times, though." He flipped out his cell phone and punched in a number. "This is Detective Carlton Lassiter, homicide, Santa Barbara police department. Is Chief Herrero in? Oh, he hasn't, has he?" He paused for a moment. "Look, we think we may have found his remains earlier today. We're still waiting on a positive ID from prints, but if you could send someone over...yes." His tone grew hesitant. "I'm sorry. No, I hope it turns out not to be him, but Karen seems pretty sure." He put his hand over the phone. "I think you should handle this, Chief," he said, passing the phone to Vick.
The Chief took it and slid between the tables until she reached the door, then let herself out. Lassiter turned back to the coroner. "Get these two bodies into separate rooms. No sense getting Simi Valley involved with...that." He gestured toward the dead alien on the table.
Rose squeezed through the space opened by the Chief to join the Doctor. "Slitheen, you think?" she asked him, gesturing toward the alien with her chin.
"Could be," he said. "But the color's odd. Too blue."
"Maybe that's just because he's dead," Rose suggested.
The Doctor appeared to consider her hypothesis, then turned back to the human remains on the other table. "The skin suits hold up for quite some time, once they're processed," he noted. "Your Chief Herrero could have been killed weeks, even months ago."
The coroner nodded. "No signs of decay, and it does appear that the body has been put through some sophisticated chemical treatment I can't begin to guess at. No internal organs or other deep structures remain. The skin, subcutaneous tissue, and in the case of the face and hands, superficial musculature have been preserved and augmented with a flexible polymer layer," He flipped back the forehead to show the grayish, siliconelike backing, glittering with hair thin silver wires.
Shawn turned to the Doctor. "So an alien could have been in charge of the Simi Valley police department for months? What could he have needed them for?" Several ideas came to mind immediately, none of them pleasant.
Lassie held up a hand to create a lull in the conversation. "If he had been replaced weeks ago, wouldn't some member of his staff have noticed a change in his behavior?"
"Yes and no," the Doctor said. "It is possible that other members of the Simi Valley police force have been replaced as well, and that they would then cover for each other. In addition, they are able to assimilate some of their victims' personality traits."
"Psychically, I suppose," Lassiter added sarcastically.
"More or less, though the technique used requires the ingestion of brain tissue." The Doctor was interrupted by a strangled noise emerging from Gus's throat.
Lassiter rolled his eyes, evidently dismayed at the deterioration of basic sanity in the room. "Well, then, maybe Spencer here can use his psychic abilities to identify any aliens that might be lurking in the Simi Valley police department."
The Doctor looked over at Shawn, who was leaning against the wall, propped up by one elbow. Shawn flicked at his temple, then waved jauntily. The Doctor turned back to Lassiter. "If he were actually psychic, that would be a phenomenally bad idea. That would be such a bad idea even I wouldn't try it."
Rose interrupted with a splutter as she apparently choked on a laugh. "Like something being a bad idea ever stopped you."
"Fortunately," the Doctor continued, as though she hadn't spoken, "there are other indicators."
"They fart a lot," Rose clarified.
"Doctor," Lassiter said. "I can't believe I'm actually glad to have some big shot nosing in on my case. First time for everything. Would you go to Simi Valley with the idiot and see what you can find out? Your credentials may prove useful in getting us past some jurisdictional red tape. Juliet?" He looked around. "Good, she's already taken the evidence. And, Miss," he said, referring to Rose. "A good man is lying here, dead. This is not a joke."
"A good man and an evil alien," Shawn reminded the room.
Rose crossed her arms and faced Lassie stubbornly. "They do. Gas exchange with the suit or something."
Shawn took a last look at the alien and the skin of the Simi Valley police chief. There was an oddly geometric, rectangular, in fact, indentation on the neck of the alien. Not knowing yet what it meant, he chose to keep it to himself, in case it turned out to connect to something. He cocked finger and thumb and pointed cheekily at the coroner, winking. The coroner returned the gesture with a discreet double thumbs up and a wicked grin. That man was going to have an entertaining evening with the dead.
The Doctor followed him out the door with Rose leaning into him. "So what's with you and that fellow? Missing Mickey are we?"
"Doctor!" she slapped him on the arm. "Really, he's nowhere near as bad as Mickey. He has a sensitive nose."
"That's a super smeller," Gus corrected from behind them.
A resounding, liquid bellow of a fart echoed from down the hallway. The Doctor quickened his steps in response. Shawn jogged to keep up, Rose and Gus following right behind him.
Author: Prairie Dawn
Characters: Ten, Rose, most of the cast of Psych
Timeline: After "The Christmas Invasion" in DW, Psych first season.
Warnings/Tropes: Dead alien guts, human suit, oblique pregnancy references.
Acknowledgements: Doctor Who belongs to the BBC. Psych belongs to USA network. Special thanks to Katididit and JimG for beta reading.
Additional note: I have not been able to rustle up the name of the coroner on Psych. If you know it, let me know and I'll be able to fix the nameless guy problem. :)
First two chapters archived at A Teaspoon and an Open Mind:
http://www.whofic.com/viewstory.php?sid=35993
Shawn led the way into the station. Santa Barbara had been feeling giddy with cash the decade the station and courthouse were built, so little expense had been spared. Warm brick accents contrasted pleasantly with decoratively shaped plaster in wide hallways and generous offices suffused with sunlight from numerous large windows. Chief of Police Karen Vick met him at the door to her office with her arms crossed. "I heard something about a dead guy in a green alien suit. I guess I shouldn't be surprised you're involved," she said to Shawn as she quickly took in his two unknown companions. "And who have we here?"
Shawn slid quickly into the infinitesimal break before either of the two aliens--he felt justified thinking of them as aliens regardless of their actual origin given that Great Britain was not America--and introduced the pair. "This is Doctor Aloysius Chimcheree of the Unified Intelligence Taskforce, show her your ID, Doctor Chimcheree, and his assistant, Lavender Lollipop."
Rose slapped him in the back of the head. "Stop that! Rose Tyler," she corrected, proffering a hand for the Chief to shake.
The Doctor flipped out his paper and shook the Chief's hand in turn. "Pleased to meet Santa Barbara's finest. And it's just the Doctor, really. Now, where have you stashed our alien murder victim?"
"Our alien murder victim?" The Chief shook her head curtly. "We're still checking your credentials." She shouted across the room, "O'Hara, any luck with getting hold of those UNIT people?"
"They want to see Doctor Chimcheree before they confirm he's working for them. I can set up a webcam," Juliet O'Hara offered. She waved cheerily at Shawn, her phone still tucked underneath her chin. A pair of crutches leaned against the wall behind her desk.
"Aw, now that's not strictly necessary, is it?" the Doctor protested, flashing a disarming smile. Unfortunately for him, Shawn's frequent use of the "I'm too cute to refuse" tactic had lent the police chief some immunity.
"I think it is, before you get involved in an official murder investigation," the Chief said, leading the Doctor and Rose over to Juliet's desk and flipping the webcam in their general direction. Shawn stood behind them, first ensuring that each had his and hers bunny ears, moving on to the obligatory man wearing noose pantomime, then finishing up with bracketing the two from behind and making suggestive hand gestures.
Juliet glanced up at the pair, and Shawn behind them. "Yes, that's him. Aloysius Chimcheree. Doctor Chimcheree." She had to pull away from the reciever for a moment to stifle a giggle. She pointedly turned the chair so she no longer had to look at Shawn, then continued her conversation. "Well, I'm glad to hear that. No, I didn't have any plans to vacation somewhere far away from Santa Barbara. Why, are you propositioning me? Oh yes, of course, I'll put him on." She turned back to face the Doctor and handed him the phone.
The Doctor plucked it out of her slim fingers with a slightly flirtatious smile. Shawn suppressed the fleeting urge to smack him and instead listened to his end of the phone conversation. "Ah, yes, hello then, and stop saluting. How's old Lethbridge-Stewart getting on these days? Oh, no, no, nothing I can't handle. Of course I'll call if I need backup, such as it is. Just your basic murder mystery at this point." He paused then, for a little longer, frowning. "What's that? I'm sorry, it would appear this cell phone needs charging, goodbye now." He flipped the phone closed and handed it graciously back to Juliet. "Now, where were we? Coroner's office, yes?"
The Chief stepped in front of Shawn and the Doctor. "Detective O'Hara tells me we are to give you whatever assistance you require," the Chief said, her face creasing with annoyance. "Now, I won't pretend to be happy about you nosing in on my people's investigation, and I expect Detective Lassiter and myself to be kept in the loop." She turned to Shawn. "I do not recall asking for your assistance on this case."
Shawn smirked. "I'm with him." He jerked his chin toward the Doctor, who shrugged noncommittally and started to stroll down the hallway, waving cheerily at the occasional deskbound officer or secretary. When he reached the T-intersection at the end of the hall, he turned the wrong way. Shawn caught his coat sleeve and pointed him in the right direction.
The coroner was waiting in the doorway to one of the larger autopsy rooms with a body on either side of him, looking positively giddy. He counted heads. "I think we'll all fit." He indicated the bluish green creature laid out on a stainless steel table. "Masks and gowns everyone, I'm not taking any chances with this guy." The Doctor entered first, but eschewed the gown and paper mask. "He's really no more dangerous than any other dead body," he said. Shawn followed, taking a cue from the Doctor and leaving off the protective clothing.
Lassiter squeezed in next. He conscientiously donned gown and mask, collected a pair of additional masks and gowns, and handed them pointedly to Shawn and the Doctor. The Doctor tucked his into his coat. Shawn tossed his over his shoulder. Gus caught them awkwardly, opened them, and chivalrously handed them to Rose, who shook her head and passed them back to him. Gus, apparently caught between his instinct to protect himself from alien ickyness and his desire to impress Miss Obviously Taken, put on the gown, but not the mask and succeeded in looking like a hospital patient.
"All here?" the Coroner asked, then continued, "We'll start with this fellow." Shawn leaned in to look. A Y-shaped incision marked the body's chest and abdomen, but the flaps were folded down so that whatever internal organs the creature had were not on display. "It was impossible to identify most of the internal organs. What I think was a heart suffered significant damage from two projectiles," he indicated the two entrance wounds in the chest, "Which would have been fatal even in the absence of the head wound. The anatomy and biochemistry are substantially different from human, or in fact any other animal phylum on Earth. However, given that this is a murder investigation and not a scientific study, I believe I have made some progress." He held out two misshapen pieces of metal in gloved hands, then tucked them carefully into a small baggie.
High heeled shoes clicked toward them from out in the hallway, along with the distinctive metallic click and soft thump of crutches. Shawn raised both hands to bracket his head and intoned, "I sense the approach of two blonde women," a moment before the Chief popped her head into the autopsy room. Juliet arrived a beat later. The six already in the room shuffled around to make space for them to gather arond the table. Nobody noticed Shawn, who had clearly been upstaged as "weirdest thing in the room" by the body itself.
"I thought it would be wise for me to have a look at our vic." The Chief turned to Juliet. "Aren't you on the Penzey case?"
"Lunch break," she said, hopping into the doorway to lean precariously against the wall.
The coroner nodded to each woman and continued. "As I was saying, I can conclude that the gunshot wounds to the chest would have been fatal, presuming our vic has physiological requirements even remotely similar to a human's, but because his physiology is so different from anything I've ever seen before, I cannot rule out the possiblity that the wounds occurred postmortem."
The Doctor leaned in. "Could you open the chest cavity? I'd like to get a better look at the damage."
"Certainly, Doctor...?" He peeled open the creature's chest.
"Just Doctor." the doctor plucked a probe off the coroner's instrument table and plucked at some unidentifiable scrambled guts, then pulled out that blue penlight of his and waved it around at the body cavity. "No, looks to me like the bullet wounds are a safe bet for cause of death." He tucked the penlight back into his coat pocket.
Disappointed that he had never quite finished that online course in picking pockets, Shawn checked out the room. Gus stood very still against the back wall, mouth tightly closed, swallowing. Rose tried a couple of jumps, sequestered as she was behind a wall of taller people, then resorted to buffing her nails against her shirt and pretending she wasn't interested. Juliet seemed to be having some difficulty concealing inappropriate glee. The mask she had donned helped, but her eyes twinkled. Lassie stood stock still in front of him, his face the color of wadded toilet paper. "Not a suit," he muttered. He seemed to shake himself out of his trance, then said, "All right, a dead guy's a dead guy. Juliet, take those slugs to ballistics. How about our next vic?"
Juliet tucked the baggie of bullets into a pocket and maneuvered her crutches and booted foot out the door. The coroner moved to the other table and pulled down the sheet. This body looked startlingly normal, compared to the last time Shawn had seen it. The skin had been stuffed with foam rubber to approximate a human form. The dead man was Hispanic, heavyset, and in late middle age, with crow's feet around his eyes and gray roots. His clothes had been removed and tucked into yet another plastic bag, the plaid shorts and pineapple print Hawaiian shirt neatly folded and tagged. "Here are the prints I pulled, for identification purposes." The coroner handed the sheet of prints, also bagged, to Lassiter.
The Chief leaned in to examine the man's face. Her breath huffed out of her abruptly and she drew back, suddenly pale. "Check police personnel records first. I think that's Paul Herrero."
"Chief Herrero from Simi Valley?" Lassiter leaned in to look at the dead man's face. "You could be right. I only met him a couple of times, though." He flipped out his cell phone and punched in a number. "This is Detective Carlton Lassiter, homicide, Santa Barbara police department. Is Chief Herrero in? Oh, he hasn't, has he?" He paused for a moment. "Look, we think we may have found his remains earlier today. We're still waiting on a positive ID from prints, but if you could send someone over...yes." His tone grew hesitant. "I'm sorry. No, I hope it turns out not to be him, but Karen seems pretty sure." He put his hand over the phone. "I think you should handle this, Chief," he said, passing the phone to Vick.
The Chief took it and slid between the tables until she reached the door, then let herself out. Lassiter turned back to the coroner. "Get these two bodies into separate rooms. No sense getting Simi Valley involved with...that." He gestured toward the dead alien on the table.
Rose squeezed through the space opened by the Chief to join the Doctor. "Slitheen, you think?" she asked him, gesturing toward the alien with her chin.
"Could be," he said. "But the color's odd. Too blue."
"Maybe that's just because he's dead," Rose suggested.
The Doctor appeared to consider her hypothesis, then turned back to the human remains on the other table. "The skin suits hold up for quite some time, once they're processed," he noted. "Your Chief Herrero could have been killed weeks, even months ago."
The coroner nodded. "No signs of decay, and it does appear that the body has been put through some sophisticated chemical treatment I can't begin to guess at. No internal organs or other deep structures remain. The skin, subcutaneous tissue, and in the case of the face and hands, superficial musculature have been preserved and augmented with a flexible polymer layer," He flipped back the forehead to show the grayish, siliconelike backing, glittering with hair thin silver wires.
Shawn turned to the Doctor. "So an alien could have been in charge of the Simi Valley police department for months? What could he have needed them for?" Several ideas came to mind immediately, none of them pleasant.
Lassie held up a hand to create a lull in the conversation. "If he had been replaced weeks ago, wouldn't some member of his staff have noticed a change in his behavior?"
"Yes and no," the Doctor said. "It is possible that other members of the Simi Valley police force have been replaced as well, and that they would then cover for each other. In addition, they are able to assimilate some of their victims' personality traits."
"Psychically, I suppose," Lassiter added sarcastically.
"More or less, though the technique used requires the ingestion of brain tissue." The Doctor was interrupted by a strangled noise emerging from Gus's throat.
Lassiter rolled his eyes, evidently dismayed at the deterioration of basic sanity in the room. "Well, then, maybe Spencer here can use his psychic abilities to identify any aliens that might be lurking in the Simi Valley police department."
The Doctor looked over at Shawn, who was leaning against the wall, propped up by one elbow. Shawn flicked at his temple, then waved jauntily. The Doctor turned back to Lassiter. "If he were actually psychic, that would be a phenomenally bad idea. That would be such a bad idea even I wouldn't try it."
Rose interrupted with a splutter as she apparently choked on a laugh. "Like something being a bad idea ever stopped you."
"Fortunately," the Doctor continued, as though she hadn't spoken, "there are other indicators."
"They fart a lot," Rose clarified.
"Doctor," Lassiter said. "I can't believe I'm actually glad to have some big shot nosing in on my case. First time for everything. Would you go to Simi Valley with the idiot and see what you can find out? Your credentials may prove useful in getting us past some jurisdictional red tape. Juliet?" He looked around. "Good, she's already taken the evidence. And, Miss," he said, referring to Rose. "A good man is lying here, dead. This is not a joke."
"A good man and an evil alien," Shawn reminded the room.
Rose crossed her arms and faced Lassie stubbornly. "They do. Gas exchange with the suit or something."
Shawn took a last look at the alien and the skin of the Simi Valley police chief. There was an oddly geometric, rectangular, in fact, indentation on the neck of the alien. Not knowing yet what it meant, he chose to keep it to himself, in case it turned out to connect to something. He cocked finger and thumb and pointed cheekily at the coroner, winking. The coroner returned the gesture with a discreet double thumbs up and a wicked grin. That man was going to have an entertaining evening with the dead.
The Doctor followed him out the door with Rose leaning into him. "So what's with you and that fellow? Missing Mickey are we?"
"Doctor!" she slapped him on the arm. "Really, he's nowhere near as bad as Mickey. He has a sensitive nose."
"That's a super smeller," Gus corrected from behind them.
A resounding, liquid bellow of a fart echoed from down the hallway. The Doctor quickened his steps in response. Shawn jogged to keep up, Rose and Gus following right behind him.