PSYCH: The Dah-Ling Store-It-Yourself (PG-13), Shawn/Lassiter.
The bad news is that one of Lassiter's highest profile arrests has just escaped from prison. The worse news is that his best hope of tracking him down is a sleep-deprived Shawn Spencer.
1987
Henry was wandering back from the bathroom when he saw the light was still on in Shawn’s room. He frowned and opened the door. Shawn was balanced on a footstool, wide-eyed and intent, putting a little Lego flag on the top of a Lego castle spire.
“Shawn, what are you doing?”
Shawn tumbled from the stool in surprise, before blinking up at his father in confusion. “I’m building a Lego palace,” he explained, after a moment.
“It’s three in the morning,” Henry snapped.
“I know! Do you even realize how much you can do if you don’t go to sleep?” Shawn asked. “It’s like having a whole extra day. I don’t know why no one’s thought of this before.”
Henry’s eyes were narrowed. “Are you on drugs?”
“Dad, I’m nine,” Shawn said wryly. “My drug of choice is a Pixy Stix.”
“Just checking,” Henry said, fighting back a grin. He grabbed Shawn up in one arm and carried him back to his bed, before standing him on top of it and meeting his eyes. “You need to sleep.”
“I don’t have time to sleep!” Shawn protested. “I have to build the Lego palace!”
“It’ll still be there in the morning,” Henry said.
“It’ll still be half-finished in the morning,” Shawn said. “If I finish it now it’ll be done. You’re the one that always tells me not to procrastinate.”
“With homework, Shawn,” Henry said.
”That’s a double-standard!” Shawn protested.
“How long have you been doing this?” Henry asked, narrowing his eyes as he looked his son over. It unnerved him that this had been going on and he hadn’t even noticed. “When was the last time you slept?”
“I don’t know, Sunday, maybe? And for like an hour in class yesterday,” Shawn said. “But I’m wide-awake.”
Henry sighed, pulling back the covers of Shawn’s A-Team sheets. “Get in,” he said.
Shawn reluctantly slid into the bed. “Okay, but I’m telling you, sleep is superfluous,” he said.
“Gus teach you that word?” Henry asked.
“No, I was reading the dictionary last night when I couldn’t sleep,” Shawn explained.
Henry considered for a moment letting Shawn play this little experiment out, but he was exhausted, and he knew that Shawn had to be too. Bribery couldn’t hurt, just this once.
“If you go to sleep, I’ll give you a Pixy Stix,” Henry told him.
“You’ve got yourself a deal,” Shawn said, and reached out to shake his hand.
2009
"I think I should sue for false advertising," Shawn said. "That movie had absolutely nothing to do with pineapples!"
Lassiter tried to ignore him, but Spencer was being even more obnoxious than usual. He didn't know what the fake psychic was even doing here; they hadn't called him in on a case since what had happened with Drimmer.
Lassiter finally bowed to the inevitable and glanced up to where Spencer was regaling Buzz with the virtues and pitfalls of something he called a 'bromance.' His hair was sticking up and his eyes were kind of wild, but there really wasn’t anything out of the ordinary about that. He couldn't seem to stop moving, and was bouncing on the heels of his feet, an unzipped hooded sweater falling a little further off his shoulder with each bounce, revealing a faded Knight Rider T-shirt underneath.
Lassiter noticed Juliet and Guster standing nearby watching the show as well, and he walked over to join them. "What the hell's wrong with him?" he asked. "He looks even more...him, than usual."
"Shawn hasn't slept in two days," Gus said wearily.
Juliet scrunched up her face. "Why not?"
"I have no idea," Gus said. "Shawn usually only sleeps about three to five hours a night anyway, but his insomnia's gotten worse lately."
Juliet frowned in sympathy. "Is this a side effect of his gift?" she asked.
"No," Gus said with a sigh. "This is just because he's Shawn."
"Lassie!" Lassiter groaned as he was spotted, and Shawn came running up to him. He had an unopened Red Bull stuck down the waistband of his jeans. "You haven't called us in like a week! I'm going to start thinking that you don't want me around."
"I don't want you around," Lassiter said. "And even if I did, you just got out of the hospital from that thing with--"
"I was in the hospital for like five minutes, they gave me aspirin and blinded me with a pen light, and that was two weeks ago," Shawn said in a rush. "I'm ready to solve crime."
"Well, there's nothing for you right now," Juliet said gently. "Maybe you should go home and get some rest."
"What is this?" Shawn asked, looking from Juliet to Lassiter and back again. "I didn't do anything wrong, you know!"
"No one is saying that," Juliet said softly.
"This time, anyway," Lassiter muttered to himself.
Shawn's eyes narrowed in his direction, and Lassiter knew he'd caught every word. “For your information, this wasn’t anything new. Lots of people have tried to kill me before, going back years and years. I’m convinced that Carlton Baker was poisoning my Hi C in third grade, and that’s not all, Marty Stein--"
“Carlton was not poisoning your Hi C, Shawn,” Gus interrupted.
“You can’t possibly know that for sure,” Shawn told him. “I’ve got bad karma with Carltons.”
“Regardless,” Lassiter broke in hotly. “None of them were people who were supposed to protect you. This is different.”
“It isn’t,” Shawn said. “Come on, you guys know you miss me, at least a little, right?”
"Spencer, I wouldn't want your help on a good day," Lassiter said. "And this looks anything but like a good day for you. Go home."
Juliet smiled sadly. “We’ll call you soon, okay? Just get some rest.”
Gus waited until they had walked back to their desks before turning to Shawn. "Okay, let's go."
“Did you see that? I think we just got broken up with! That was the don’t call me, I’ll call you, we’ll get together, really, brush off that means they aren’t ever going to call us again!”
“Shawn, calm down, that isn’t what they said at all,” Gus said. “Seriously, lets just get you home so you can sleep.”
“No, you go,” Shawn said. “I wasn’t finished talking to Buzz.”
“Shawn-” Gus started, obviously not happy about the thought of leaving him here. “You need to leave Lassiter alone.”
“Who said anything about Lassiter? I said I was going to talk to Buzz,” Shawn said.
”I know what you said,” Gus said, and sighed in resignation. “Just be careful. Call me if you need me to bail you out.”
“Of course! You know you’ll always be my one phone call,” Shawn called after him. Shawn waited until Gus was out of sight before wandering back towards Lassiter’s desk.
He’d mostly been kidding about Juliet and Lassiter giving them some kind of permanent brush off, but only mostly. The incident with Drimmer had changed things, Shawn knew. It’s not that it bothered him personally, he handled it fine, he was over it already.
But he knew that Henry had been giving Vick hell about letting Shawn get involved in the first place, and she was reluctant to let him take on another case. Lassiter was, of course, quick to jump on the bandwagon and try to lock them out. Shawn was going to have to be his usual brilliant, indispensable self, if he wanted to get back on the SBPD payroll.
It wasn’t going to be easy to do while sleep deprived, but that was why the world had Red Bull. He cracked open another one, and jumped back, startled, as it was ripped from his hands before he could take a sip. He was jittery like an addict as he watched, as if in slow motion, the beautiful blue and silver piece of mastery drop into the trash can at his feet.
"I think you're wired enough, don't you?" Lassiter asked, dusting off his hands casually.
Shawn gaped sadly at his Red Bull, looking up to protest the cruelty against energy drinks, before getting sidetracked by what he saw laid out right in front of him. He bit back a grin, and looked up to meet Lassiter’s eyes. "Don't take it out on the Red Bull just because one of your arrests escaped from prison," he said.
Lassiter frowned as Shawn pulled another Red Bull from god knew where, and made a show of popping it open and drinking it half down in one go. "Is that supposed to impress me, Spencer? It's all over the news, you could have heard about it anywhere," Lassiter said.
"I don't watch the news anymore," Shawn said. "I've been boycotting the media since they fired that adorable weather girl. I did, however, happen to notice that you left the case file open on your desk."
Lassiter lunged forward to close it and put it in a drawer, and then he grabbed Shawn's arm and led him away. "Since your better half isn't here to take notes, I'm going to need you to listen very carefully to me, do you understand, Spencer? Nod if you do."
Shawn obediently nodded, all the while staring at where Lassiter’s hand was gripping his arm like he couldn’t understand where it had come from.
"This is not your case, this is not going to be your case, and you are not going to involve yourself in this case," Lassiter snapped. "This man is dangerous. You're not going to go near him. Are we clear?"
"No, not really," Shawn said, looking up from Lassiter’s hand to meet his eyes. "Actually, I'm confused."
Lassiter let go of his arm and reached up to pinch the bridge of his nose. "I don't think I can make it any clearer, Spencer."
"No, I understand the instructions," Shawn said. "But...are you worried about me? Because usually you just say, none of your shenanigans! Or get the hell out of here, Spencer, before I arrest you for solving my case! Which always makes that little vein in your forehead throb. But now you're all, stay out of it because he's dangerous! And I'm just terribly confused because it sounds a little like you care."
“I apologize if I’ve given you that impression,” Lassiter said. “I assure you that’s not the case. I just want you to stay out of my way, okay? And also, I’ve never said shenanigans.”
“That’s a bold faced lie,” Shawn said. “You said it just now.”
Lassiter was itching to grab Shawn again and toss him from the precinct, but the images of Drimmer knocking him around were a little too fresh in his mind, and he wanted to avoid any semblance of similarity. He opened his mouth to ask again, as politely as he could, for Shawn to just stay out of this, when his answering machine clicked on.
He hadn’t even heard his phone ringing, but he went white as he registered the voice.
“Hey, Lassiter, guess who? I’m gonna make you see what you’ve done. If you’re really the cop you think you are, you’ll meet me back where it began, alone this time.”
Lassiter finally sprung into action, leaping to grab up the phone. “Riner? Riner!”
Shawn was watching him carefully. Cyril Riner was the name of the man that had escaped, Shawn had seen that much in the file before Lassiter had taken it away, along with some pictures of footprints and the murder weapon, a blood stained revolver. “Back where it began? Where is that?” Shawn asked.
Lassiter was still clutching the phone, like holding onto it could catch the man that had just been on the other end of the line, and he looked up, bemused, when Shawn spoke, like he had forgotten he was there. As if he was just coming awake, he slammed the phone down and stepped back over to Shawn.
“What did I just say?” Lassiter demanded. “Stay out of this, Spencer.”
Shawn frowned. “You’re not going alone, right?” he asked. “You’re going to call in the Marshals and the Helicopters and all that, right?”
“Riner’s left me a dozen messages since he escaped last week,” Lassiter said. “We’ve done the whole Marshals and Helicopters thing, he’s always gone when we get there.”
“But you’re not going alone, right?” Shawn asked again. “Because that would be stupid. Hey, I’ve got an idea! You should take me!”
Lassiter frowned. “Come with me, I want to show you something.” Lassiter headed off down the hall, and intrigued, Shawn followed him. They went into one of the lesser used records rooms, one that Shawn didn’t remember ever visiting it before.
“What’s in here?” he asked, and he started to turn around when he felt something cold go around his right wrist. He glanced around, disbelieving, as Lassiter handcuffed him to the nearest file cabinet.
“I just know you weren’t going to listen when I said to stay out of this,” Lassiter said.
“Lassie!” Shawn protested. “You can’t just handcuff perfectly innocent people to things! There’s a law!”
“I’m preventing you from obstructing justice,” Lassiter said, heading towards the door. “Be thankful I’m being generous enough not to just arrest you.”
“Hey! Hey, wait!” Shawn protested, but Lassiter had already shut the door, and Shawn could hear the click as he locked it, too.
Shawn bit his lip and pulled absently at the cuff, glancing around to see if there was anything he could use to pick the lock. He could always call Gus and tell him that he really did, kind of, sort of, need him to come bail him out, but he didn’t really want to give him the satisfaction, and Gus would never let him follow Lassiter to wherever it was he’d gone.
Shawn grinned as brilliance struck, and pulled his cellphone out. “Hey, Buzz? Can I please see you for a moment in records room C?”
Buzz was cautiously poking his head in a moment later. “Should you be in here?” he asked, before his eyes followed Shawn’s arm up to its wrist, where it was attached to the file cabinet. “Why are you handcuffed to the file cabinet?”
“Funny story,” Shawn said. “I was testing whether or not my powers extended into the realm of magic, and so started practicing a Houdini act. You know, locked room, in handcuffs, miraculous escape!”
“Cool!” Buzz said, delighted. “Do you want me to lock the door again?”
“Well, actually, it turns out my powers are pretty much confined to the mental realm, and so now I’m stuck,” Shawn said. “You got a key for these things?”
“Oh, sure,” Buzz said. He pulled out his key ring and unhooked the cuffs. Shawn brought his arm down gratefully. “You should probably have started a little smaller. My nephew has these trick cuffs, they keep him happy for hours.”
“I think this marks the end of my magical career, sadly,” Shawn says. “I’ll stick to clairvoyance.” Shawn started to head out, before pausing and turning back to face Buzz. “One more thing, you know that Riner case?”
“Sure,” Buzz said, nodding enthusiastically. “It was one of Lassiter’s biggest cases. It was all over the news when it happened. You don’t remember? The Dah-Ling Darling? I just can’t believe Riner’s escaped.”
Shawn scanned backwards through his memories, and then it clicked. He remembered hearing it on the news a couple of years ago, a security guard had been killed in a robbery attempt. “The murder at the Dah-Ling Store-It-Yourself,” he said, starting from the room. “Thanks, Buzz! You’ve been a great help!”
“No problem!” Buzz called after him. “Hey, are these Lassiter’s cuffs?”
Shawn kept moving, and pulled out his phone to call a cab. Gus had given him a ride here, and Shawn had planned to just walk home, but now he didn’t have time. He was probably running out of it already.
He knew he should probably find Jules or Chief Vick and let them know where Lassiter was, but Shawn had a feeling if he sent in the cavalry Riner would simply disappear as he apparently had before.
Lassiter might have a shot if he was really there alone, or mostly alone. Shawn would be his back up, whether he wanted it or not.
x x x x x x
The murder at the Dah-Ling Store-It-Yourself had been an open-shut case, and so Shawn had never really taken much interest in it. The proprietor’s daughter, dubbed by the press as the Dah-Ling Darling, had caught the murderer red handed and held him at gunpoint until the police could arrive.
She’d been the media’s darling for fifteen whole minutes at least, admired partly because of the courageous act, and partly just for being drop dead gorgeous.
Shawn was having trouble remembering too much about the murderer. The case itself had been rather uninteresting. Riner had been trying to break into one of the storage units, he’d been caught by the guard, and had shot him in a panic. The media hadn’t much cared for any of this. They’d pointed all their cameras at Ava Dah-Ling, and her tearful accounts of her harrowing experience, her testaments about the need to avenge the guard whose name she probably didn’t even remember, and even Shawn couldn’t remember, thinking back.
Shawn had the cab drop him off at the corner and walked down the street towards the Store-It-Yourself. The fence was starting to rust, and there was a crooked “No Trespassing” sign hanging off the gate. Shawn looked past it to the building.
It didn’t look like the building had received much use in the two years since the murder. The giant neon sign on the roof had seen better days, and like a kind of reverse Wheel of Fortune puzzle, it was missing most of the vowels. The building was covered with a lot of graffiti that also contained dubious spelling, which in some ways was reassuring. No one seemed to have any trouble bypassing the fence.
Shawn glanced down at the lock, only to see that it was hanging unlatched. When he reached out to poke the fence, it swung open wide. “Spooky,” he said.
Shawn cautiously stepped inside, suddenly wishing for Gus, so that Shawn could pretend to be the brave one. Gus always made it easier to look manly, because it wasn’t hard to one-up all that running away and girly screaming. It was much harder to be brave out here in the dark, all alone, with a crazy gun-wielding maniac somewhere nearby.
And then there was Riner to worry about, too.
Shawn walked down the first alleyway, reading off the numbers on the compartments. He closed his eyes for a moment, going back to Lassiter’s desk and the open file. He remembered seeing a number on the orange storage compartment door right beside the shot of the footprints-number thirty-six.
He was at fourteen. He glanced down the row, but couldn’t see anyone else, so he moved down to the next row, and then the one after that. He found compartment thirty-two, and followed it down. Compartment thirty-six was standing open, the garage-style door pulled all the way up to the ceiling. Shawn peeked around inside, but it was just an empty space.
He started to turn around again, when someone grabbed him from behind, putting a hand over his mouth and dragging him into the compartment. Shawn was just about to start biting and kicking and screaming in Gus-inspired fashion when he recognized the aftershave. He reached up to pull the hand off his mouth, and gasped for breath.
“I usually expect dinner before I let anyone get to second base,” he said.
“Shut up, Spencer,” Lassiter said, spinning him around so they were face to face. “What the hell are you doing here? How did you even get out of the cuffs?”
“Please, like that was ever going to stop me,” Shawn said. “Now, if you’d put me in an airtight coffin and dropped me into the deepest depths of the sea, then maybe you might have been rid of me.”
“I’ll keep that in mind for next time,” Lassiter snapped. “As for now, I get to drag you out of the area instead of tracking down a very dangerous suspect. Good work.”
“But you don’t have to,” Shawn protested. “I’m here to help!”
“Keep your voice down,” Lassiter hissed. “You’re a civilian, Spencer. I’m the first to admit, sometimes I forget that, but if these last weeks have taught me anything, it’s that you don’t belong here.”
“You never forget that I’m a civilian,” Shawn argued. “You remind me like every five minutes.”
“Okay, maybe it’s just the part where you’re included in with the people I’m supposed to protect and serve that I forget,” Lassiter said. “But we’re going back to the station, and this time? This time I’m pressing charges.”
“For what?” Shawn demanded.
“Trespassing,” Lassiter said.
“And you’re doing what?” Shawn asked.
“I’m an officer of the law,” Lassiter said.
“Well, you left the gate open, and I was a concerned citizen,” Shawn said. “If anyone’s going to be in trouble with Vick over this, it’s you, and we both know it.”
“We’ll see,” Lassiter said, and started to drag Shawn back towards the exit.
Shawn dug his heels in. “Wait,” he whispered. “I think he’s here-I think we’re being watched.”
Lassiter glared at him, but knew better by now than to ignore a warning from Shawn, fake psychic or not. He pulled out his gun and pointed it to the ground. "Stay here," he said, before scanning the ally. He did a quick perimeter, walking to the end of the row, and then shook his head. "There's no one here, Spencer."
He turned back around when Spencer didn’t answer. Riner was standing behind the psychic, holding a gun underneath Shawn’s chin, pointed straight up.
"I think I found him," Shawn said.
Lassiter’s expression went stony, and he took an unconscious step forward, his gun going up to aim just to the left of Shawn’s head. It had gotten dark almost without his notice, and as he tried to track Cyril’s movements he was having trouble making everything out, distinguishing between what parts belonged to Cyril, and what parts belonged to Shawn.
Cyril pulled Shawn back against him and started dragging him towards the gate. "Stay back, Lassiter," he yelled hoarsely. "You want me to kill him? I said stay back!"
Lassiter stopped moving, but kept his gun aimed straight ahead. “Let him go.”
“Not until we talk,” Cyril said. “I’ve finally got you in a position where you have to listen to me, so you’re sure as hell going to listen.”
“Soon as you let him go, you can say whatever you want,” Lassiter said.
"I didn't kill that guard," Cyril said. "I told you that. Someone else killed him, I’ve never killed anyone in my life. At least, I haven’t yet."
Shawn looked down at the concrete, tilting his head at the muddy footprints that Cyril had left behind. The muzzle of the gun was pressing in on his throat, so he lifted his head back and closed his eyes for a moment, recalling the crime scene photo of the pair of bloody footprints that had been discovered beside the body. The picture had shown them with a ruler laid beside them for perspective--they had been a size thirteen, huge, Cyril was a size ten, if that.
"Wait!" Shawn shouted, throwing his arms out and stopping Cyril’s slow progress of moving them towards the gate. "Wait, Lassie, I think he might be telling the truth. The shoe prints! The prints, at the crime scene, they weren't his."
Lassiter didn’t lower his gun, and he kept his eyes on Cyril. "Yeah, Spencer, we know that, but tons of people walked through there. It could have been a paramedic, or even a rookie," he said. “We were able to convict him just fine without having a pair of shoe prints.”
“It was James,” Cyril protested. “I’ve been keeping track of your career, Lassiter, and if you’re such a good cop, then you’ll take another look at my case.”
Shawn listened to the sound of Cyril’s voice. It was edgy and slightly frantic, had the kind of paranoid edge a man on the run should, but he didn’t sound like he was lying. Anyway, Shawn’s seen The Fugitive about a million times, and the wrongly convicted men always stuck around to clear their names-the guilty ones, they just ran.
“You want the truth?” Lassiter asked. “Right now, I don’t care if you killed that guard or not. What I care about is that you're holding a gun to his head. You want to talk? Fine, we’ll talk. But first you let him go."
”I’ve been trying to get you to talk to me for two years,” Cyril said. “I’ve lodged more than a dozen appeals. No one’s paid any attention. I’m not going to give up any advantage I can get.”
“You’re not doing anything for your case,” Lassiter said. “Innocent men don’t take hostages.”
“I said I didn’t kill that guard, I never said I was innocent,” Cyril said, and moved the gun from Shawn’s neck, holding it ahead of him to take aim and fire.
The single security light went out in a shower of sparks as the bullet shattered it to pieces, and Shawn felt the gun jam into his back to push him forward. Lassiter was shouting behind them, but the spooky atmosphere that Shawn had noted when he arrived had gone from the mild levels of Scary Movie to something closer resembling Halloween, and it was too dark to see hardly anything at all.
Cyril dragged them to a beat-up Chevy truck parked half on the curb, and took him around to the driver’s side, shoving Shawn up and in, forcing him to slide across to the passenger seat. Shawn reached for the handle on the door, but Cyril was already pulling away with a speed of acceleration even Mario Andretti could envy.
Cyril was leaving his headlights off, and spinning them off onto some kind of back road. He was still holding the gun in one hand while he drove, turning the wheel deftly with his left hand, while he kept the gun aimed just inches from Shawn’s side with his right.
Cyril glanced over at Shawn for a moment, before looking back towards the road. “You’re that guy, right, from the TV?”
“I think you’re probably thinking of John Cusack, but don’t feel bad, you’re not the first to note the resemblance,” Shawn said.
Cyril looked confused. “What? No. I mean that psychic guy, right? You solved all those cases.”
“Oh,” Shawn said. “Now you’re thinking of Shawn Spencer, am I right? Gee, I really wish I were, I hear he’s a handsome devil.”
“That’s what Lassiter called you, he called you Spencer,” Cyril said.
“Spenstar, Shawn Spenstar,” Shawn corrected. “You might recognize me from my brief success on American Duos, but Hollywood’s so fickle. Now I can’t even get an interview and Nigel St. Nigel won’t take my calls.”
“Let’s make this simple,” Cyril said. “I know you’re Shawn Spencer, and you’re going to prove me innocent, or I’m going to kill you.”
“In that case, Shawn Spencer, at your service,” Shawn said.
Cyril turned on the headlights as they spun out onto a main road. Shawn winced as he noticed the welcome sign, announcing their arrival in Summerland. Shawn thought this was actually a pretty good place to come if you were on the run, because who would ever think to look here? Santa Barbara forgot this place existed all the time.
“If I’m going to clear your good name,” Shawn said, “I’m going to need some basic essentials.”
Cyril seemed suspicious. “Like what?”
“A notepad, a pencil, a yellow number 2 one, the number is very important, and about three cases of Red Bull,” Shawn said.
“Three cases of Red Bull?” Cyril repeated. He looked at Shawn doubtfully, like he was starting to believe that he really had just picked up some crazy Duos reject and not Santa Barbara’s most renowned psychic.
“I’m boycotting sleep,” Shawn explained. “If you’d like me to remain conscious whilst I investigate your case, then that’s a must.”
“You’re not right in the head, are you?” Cyril asked.
“It’s weird how often people ask me that,” Shawn said, but didn’t dwell on it. “I’m also going to need to call Lassiter.”
Cyril pulled into a Seven Eleven and looked at him strangely. “No,” he snapped. “He’s never going to help me. I thought I could get him to listen, but it’s obviously not going to happen. I was lucky you were there.”
“One man’s luck is another man’s hostage experience,” Shawn said. “But seriously. I’m going to need to call him. It’s in your own best interests, if you really are innocent. You want them to reopen your case, right?”
“Yes, but right now, all they’re going to be doing is looking for you,” Cyril snapped.
“That’s because you abducted me at gunpoint instead of making an appointment like everyone else,” Shawn said. “Let me talk to Lassiter, for exactly the reason you just pointed out. I’ve got to make them understand that the best way to get me out of this situation is the same best way to get you out of yours, prove you didn’t kill anyone.”
“Fine,” Cyril said.
“Good,” Shawn said. “But first you have to explain to me who really did kill that guard.”
Cyril nodded, glancing around in all directions rather shiftily, as though he expected a police armada to move out of the darkness and surround them. “I admitted that I was there to rob the place, but I wasn’t alone. I had a partner. James Clavor. He’s the guy that set the whole thing up, I didn’t even know what we were there to take. It happened almost exactly like they say, except it was Clavor that shot that guard, and not me.”
“But you’re the one that Dah-Ling found standing over the body,” Shawn said.
“Yeah, bad timing,” Cyril said. “She came running out of the office after Clavor was already gone. I’d stayed to see if the poor guy was still alive, so there I was, kneeling beside him, Clavor’s gun on the ground right beside me.”
“What about fingerprints?” Shawn asked.
“They didn’t have mine on the weapon, but they didn’t have his, either,” Cyril said. “We were both wearing gloves.”
“Why didn’t you tell the police any of this?” Shawn asked.
“You think I didn’t?” he asked. “They tell me James Clavor doesn’t exist. They think I made him up.”
“Hmm,” Shawn said. “Okay, give me your phone.”
“You don’t have a phone?” Cyril asked incredulously.
“It got repossessed,” Shawn explained.
“They repossess phones?” Cyril asked.
“Sure,” Shawn said. “On those Verizon commercials they make it look really cool to have all those people following you around, but they turn on you if you forget to pay your bill.”
Cyril sighed and handed over a phone. It was one of those disposable types, and looked to be almost out of minutes. Shawn kept track of Cyril out of the corner of his eye, as the other man seemed to forget he was supposed to be holding him at gunpoint, and then he started dialing the phone.
“Lassiter.” Lassiter sounded tense, and dare Shawn think it-worried.
“Hey, Lassie,” he said, and then, without preamble, “I think you need to start looking through your suspects again.”
“Spencer?” Lassiter’s voice went strange, kind of disbelieving and startled, breathless with something like relief. “Where are you?”
“I don’t want you to let anyone worry about me, okay? I’m fine. And in the name of all that’s holy, don’t call my dad,” Shawn said.
“Tell me where you are!” Lassiter snapped. “I’m going to come get you.”
“He's not going to let me tell you that,” Shawn said. “You need to listen to me. He didn't do it. I mean, he did totally try to rob the place, but he didn't kill anyone.”
“Give me a hint, Spencer,” Lassiter said. “Come on. Something to help us find you.”
“I think you need to start with Clavor,” Shawn said. “But he might not be easy to find.”
“Because he doesn't exist!” Lassiter shouted.
“I said it wouldn't be easy,” Shawn told him, and then Cyril grabbed the phone back and hung up.
“You really think he’s going to pay any attention to what you said?” Cyril asked.
“Well, I have to be honest, if he does pay any attention to what I said, it’ll certainly be a first,” Shawn said.
“Wonderful,” Cyril said.
“I need more Red Bull,” Shawn said. “If we’re on our own, my mind’s gotta be at its best, and there’s nothing like nearly lethal doses of taurine and caffeine to get the ole’ grey matter at 100%.”
“Fine, whatever,” Cyril said, “but we’re going in together, and if you try anything, I’m going to shoot the cashier, and probably you, too.”
“Understood,” Shawn said. “However, I feel obligated to point out that committing a double homicide kind of defeats the purpose of trying to clear yourself of a single murder charge.”
“You’re my last shot at proving I’m innocent,” Cyril said. “If I don’t have your help, I don’t have anything left to lose, so I might as well take you with me.”
Shawn nodded. “Okay,” he said. “I’ll be on my best behavior.”
Cyril looked anything but trusting, but Shawn slid out of the car and stuck his hands in his pockets. His diet of no sleep and all Red Bull had been working really well the last few days, but his last few days had consisted mostly of hanging around the Psych office trying to save Princess Peach from Bowser, and he had to admit he probably wasn’t at his best for solving crime.
But that didn’t really matter, because Shawn wasn’t really getting a choice. This wasn’t a job he could turn down, and anyway, even if his body was getting twitchy, Shawn’s mind was as sharp as ever. He could solve crime in his sleep. Probably.
He led the way into the Seven Eleven and made a beeline for the refrigerators at the back, pulling out Red Bull and stacking it up in his arms. Cyril was behind him, the protrusion in the side pocket of his jacket standing out prominently, and he hoped the cashier didn’t notice. Cyril was being pretty obvious about being armed, and Shawn was trying really hard not to channel Mae West.
Shawn didn’t bother to try and explain it to him, but Cyril really didn’t have any reason to be so worried.
Shawn had no intentions of making a break for it. It may not have happened exactly the way he’d planned, but he’d gotten that case he’d been looking for.
x x x x x x
Lassiter let out a frustrated cry and threw his cellphone against the side of the Store-It-Yourself. “God damn it!” he shouted.
Juliet was hovering, concerned, by his side. “Was that Shawn? Do you know where he is?”
“No,” Lassiter snapped. “Riner was listening. All Spencer would say was that Riner was innocent, and we had to reopen the case, and look into James Clavor.”
Juliet frowned. “James Clavor? I don’t remember seeing him on the list of suspects.”
And Juliet would know. She may not have been here at the time of the case, but she’d read the case reports cover to cover twice since Riner had escaped.
“You might remember him being mentioned in one of the transcripts of Riner’s interviews,” Lassiter said.
Juliet’s eyes widened. “Right! Of course. He claimed Clavor was the murderer.”
“Clavor was a fiction,” Lassiter said. “Riner made him up. We did look for the guy, we even had a sketch artist draw up a profile, we ran the name through every system we have, we checked for fingerprints. There was no evidence whatsoever that Riner had a partner with him that night.”
“Do you think Shawn really believes him?” Juliet asked quietly. “Or is he just playing along?”
“You didn’t see Spencer that night with Drimmer,” Lassiter said quietly. “He says whatever he thinks, whether he’s got a gun on him or not. And if we don’t find him fast, it’s going to get him killed.”
“But if he really believes Riner, then Riner is going to want to keep him around, he’s going to find him useful,” Juliet protested.
“And he’s going to kill him the moment Spencer figures out the truth, as he inevitably always does,” Lassiter said grimly. “And the truth is that there wasn’t anyone there with Riner that night, he killed that man himself.”
Juliet bit her lip. Lassiter was her partner and she took that very seriously, she backed him up no question-but there was one thing they never could quite seem to agree on it, and that was Shawn Spencer. Juliet didn’t know if Shawn really talked to spirits, she didn’t know if he was really psychic, she just knew that so far he’d nearly always been right.
“What if he didn’t?” she asked hesitantly. “What if Shawn’s right?”
Lassiter went still. “Then I put an innocent man in jail.”
“He still did the robbery, that would have put him away at least this long,” Juliet said. “But we need to find the truth, one way or another. I think we should do as Shawn says.”
Lassiter turned to her, his face stony. “Go ahead, then,” he said. “You look for some phantom killer, and while you’re doing that, I’ll look for Spencer.”
“Lassiter!” Juliet called as he started to head off. She cut him off and came to a stop in front of him. “You know I want to find him too. We need to work together.” She paused, noticing the way that he wouldn’t quite meet her eyes. “None of this is your fault, you know that, right?”
“Some of it’s his fault,” Vick snapped, as she came up behind them. “What the hell were you thinking, Detective?”
“Chief,” Lassiter said, looking horrified. “I hope you don’t think that I . . . I never would have allowed a civilian to accompany-”
“I know you’re not responsible for Mr. Spencer getting himself into trouble, but that doesn’t explain what you were doing here in the first place,” Vick said curtly.
“We tried to surround him at a meeting, it wasn’t working,” Lassiter said. “I thought I might have a chance if I did as he said and came alone, but Spencer heard the same message as I did, and figured out what it meant somehow.”
“Does that really surprise you?” Vick asked.
“No, that’s why I handcuffed him to a file cabinet in the records room,” Lassiter explained. “I have no idea how he got out.”
There was a gasp from somewhere nearby, and Vick, Juliet and Lassiter all turned to look at where Buzz stood by the number thirty-six storage room. “He told me he was practicing a magic trick!” he said.
“Of course he did,” Lassiter said tiredly. “And of course you believed him.”
“It seemed like something he would do,” Buzz said miserably.
“You can’t really argue with that,” Juliet pointed out.
“However he got here, we need to focus right now on getting him back,” Vick said. “We’re going to have to go to the media. I want Spencer on every station. Someone has to spot him somewhere, he’s usually kind of hard to miss.” Vick turned to eye Lassiter speculatively. “We’ll finish this discussion later. Right now, I need you to call Henry Spencer.”
Lassiter’s eyes widened. “What?”
“We have to tell him what’s happened before it hits every news station in Santa Barbara,” she said. “Since you were with Mr. Spencer when it happened, it gets to be you.”
“But Chief-”
Vick didn’t stick around to hear his protests. She stormed off, shouting for someone to arrange a press conference, and people cowered in her wake. Lassiter walked over to pick his bent, dented cellphone up off the ground, and stared at it in horror.
He tentatively held it out to Juliet. “O’Hara, maybe you should-”
“I don’t think so,” she said quickly. “I’m too young to die.”
x x x x x x
Henry Spencer used to have big dreams for his only son. He knew most parents did. Old Lou Butters used to wax poetic every time his kid blew his nose, but unlike most of the parents he knew, Henry’d actually had a kid worth bragging about. Not that he ever had.
Shawn had always been a little too smart for his own good. No one ever knows what to do with a prodigy-move them forward three grades, hold them back for another year. He won’t stop talking, his teachers always said. Or, he won’t focus on the work.
But Shawn always passed his tests with flying colors when exam time came. Used to drive Gus nuts that he didn’t even have to study to do it.
Henry honestly didn’t know where he’d gone wrong.
Shawn should have been a cop. He had it in his blood. He was that kind of rare detective that you could usually only find in Sherlock Holmes. Henry had resented Shawn for years for giving it all up to be a river-rafting tour guide, a bartender, an ice-cream taster, and god knew what else.
But there were times when Henry was secretly relieved, when he thought it was better this way, better that Shawn didn’t have to see the things he’d seen, or do the things he’d done, or put his life on the line every single day.
And then this job came along, where Shawn could do all of those things without even having to follow the rules that might save him.
Henry really shouldn’t be so surprised that this call finally came.
“You want to say that to me again?” he growled.
“Your son’s been taken hostage by Cyril Riner.” Lassiter didn’t sound like his usual matter-of-fact self, Lassiter sounded worried. And that scared Henry most of all.
“Where is he?” Henry demanded. “What’s being done?”
”We don’t know,” Lassiter said. “But we’ll find him. That’s a promise.”
“You’ve been at this job long enough to know better than to make promises,” Henry snapped.
“I’ve been at it long enough to know you only make the ones you can keep,” Lassiter said. “I will find him.”
Henry wasn’t reassured, because he was doing this job when Lassiter was a kindergartner, and he knew all the tricks. That was one promise you were allowed to make. You could say, we’ll find him. You couldn’t say, we’ll find him alive.
Because you only made the promises you could keep.
“I’m coming to the station,” Henry said.
“That’s not neccess-” Henry hung up on him.
The thing about Shawn was that he wasn’t at all the son that Henry had wanted. He was careless, reckless, thoughtless, and as always, too smart for his own good.
None of that mattered, of course. He still loved him so much it hurt.
x x x x x x
They managed to pay for the Red Bull, the notepad, the pack of number 2 pencils (they wouldn’t sell them separately), as well as two bags of Cheetos boasting 20% more cheese, without arousing any undue suspicion.
Mostly Shawn suspected this was because the cashier was actually sleep-working. He was wearing a nametag that said Tad, and he took their money and bagged their stuff all while looking past them with the kind of vacant stare Shawn only ever expected to encounter on a zombie. You know, if he encountered zombies outside of Resident Evil.
They got back in the truck and Cyril pulled up to the one of the gas pumps. “I need to fill up,” he said. “You stay here or-”
“Or you’ll go on a killing spree, bad things will happen, lots of death and mayhem, got it,” Shawn said.
Cyril frowned at him. “I have a feeling you’re not taking me seriously.”
“Don’t take it personally,” Shawn said. “I don’t take anything seriously.”
Cyril slammed the door on him, and Shawn leaned forward, watching as he tried to feed a twenty into the Quick Pay machine. It kept spitting it back out, so Shawn figured he had a few minutes. He could, of course, always open the door and make a run back to the zombie-cashier, but honestly, he felt safer with Cyril, and anyway, he had a case to solve.
Instead he pulled out the notepad, and his pencil, and scribbled a note on each side, before folding it in half and sticking it in the glove box. Then he took out his cellphone, and started text-ing Lassiter.
allo allo
Spencer where are you?
am ok slving case dnt wory u'll get frwn lines h n k
where are you? how are you texting?
Stl hve my phne. wrst kdnpr evr. lmao.
"Are you text messaging?" Cyril shouted, leaning into the car to snatch the phone out of his hands. "Give me that! I thought the ‘Can you hear me now’ guy stole your phone back? Christ, you're like the worst hostage ever!"
Cyril climbed into the truck, scrolling back through the messages to see what had been said.
"Sorry, I flunked out of hostage school," Shawn told him. "But you're not doing so great as a kidnapper either. For instance, you're not a killer."
"That's what I've been saying," Cyril said.
"Exactly, but I have no fear for my life," Shawn explained. "You've had the safety on your gun this whole time, and there’s not even any bullets in it. You used your last one to shoot out the light."
Cyril frowned, tossing the gun on the seat between them after a moment, with a resigned sigh. "Then why did you come with me?"
"Well, I didn't know that at the time, and you are kind of scary looking," Shawn conceded. Cyril had probably been called ruggedly handsome once, like that Brawny towel guy, but he’d since acquired scars down beside his right eye and across the left side of his chin, and his eyes were perpetually narrowed, suspicious of everything they saw.
"Two years in prison'll do that to a guy," he said after a moment. Cyril looked down at the phone. “What the hell is H and K?”
“Hugs and Kisses,” Shawn explained, unabashedly.
“You're sending hugs and kisses to Lassiter?” Cyril asked, disbelievingly.
“He's a big softy, really,” Shawn said. “Those little signs of affection are good for him. It makes him feel appreciated.”
Cyril looked a little pale. “Oh my god, are you Lassiter’s boyfriend? Have I kidnapped Lassiter’s boyfriend?”
"Not at all, but if it makes you feel better, you're not the first to think we were lovers," Shawn told him primly. "The last guy that kidnapped me thought so too."
“The last guy to kidnap you?” Cyril asked. “How often does this happen to you?”
“More often than you’d think, honestly,” Shawn said.
Cyril started to turn the key to start the truck, but hesitated. “What happened to him? The last guy to kidnap you?”
“Lassiter killed him with the gun he keeps in the peanuts,” Shawn said. Cyril looked a little sick, and Shawn felt obligated to reassure him. “Don’t worry, that guy really was a murderer. This is totally different.”
“But Lassiter doesn’t know that,” Cyril said.
Shawn frowned, realizing he was right. “I can handle Lassiter,” he said.
“You’ve got to stop contacting him, you’re only making things worse,” Cyril said.
“Au contraire,” Shawn said. “It’s pissing him off. And Lassie doesn’t think clearly when he’s angry.”
Cyril peeled out of the lot and turned back onto a main road. “The last thing I want is to make Lassiter angrier.”
“Really?” Shawn asked. “Personally, it’s one of my favorite pastimes.”
Cyril looked down at Shawn’s phone as it buzzed again, proclaiming: answer me on the text screen. Cyril rolled down the window and tossed it out. Shawn cried out and turned to look behind them, but his phone was lost along the dark road.
“That was a new phone,” he said sadly. “I wasn’t kidding about the Verizon people, you know, they’re scary. You’d better watch your back.”
“I’ve got bigger problems, don’t you think?” Cyril asked. “And so do you.”
“Oh, please,” Shawn said. “You really are the worst kidnapper ever. I could have escaped like fifty times if I’d wanted to.”
Cyril glanced at him sideways. “Then why didn’t you?”
“Because I believe you,” Shawn said. “And you haven’t got anybody else who does.”
“Why?” Cyril asked. “Why do you believe me?”
“Because you’re telling the truth,” Shawn said simply. “Psychic, remember? I just know.”
“I don’t believe in psychics,” Cyril said. “But I’ve kept up on Lassiter’s career, which means I’ve seen quite a bit of yours, too, and it’s kind of hard to argue with your success.”
“What is this thing between you and Lassiter?” Shawn asked. “You’re like Kimble and Gerard.”
“He’s the guy that put me away,” Cyril said. “It’s not something that you forget. He never believed me. I tried to explain it, I went through the lie detector test, nothing worked. He thought I was scum.”
“You broke the law,” Shawn said. “Lassiter takes that very seriously. He’d put me in jail if he could.”
“What for?” Cyril asked, surprised.
“He doesn’t believe I’m psychic, either,” Shawn said.
“If he’s not going to believe you either, then I don’t know how we’re going to prove to him that he’s wrong,” Cyril said.
“That’s nothing, I do that once a week at least,” he said. “All you have to do is show the evidence to him in a way that makes sense. He doesn’t do leaps of faith. So let’s start with something solid. Tell me about James Clavor.”
”I don’t know much,” Cyril said haltingly. “I barely knew him, and it was two years ago.”
”Two years in which you’ve had nothing to do but think about him,” Shawn said. “So tell me everything.”
“We met through a mutual friend, Fred Greenly,” he said. “He said that Clavor had a job for me, low risk, high pay off. I was a construction worker, you know, but it was only part time. I could never seem to make enough to get by.”
“Where did you meet?” Shawn asked.
“The Hottie Tottie Tavern,” he said.
“The Hottie Tottie Tavern?” Shawn echoed. “Did you just make that up?”
“It’s a strip bar at the edge of Summerland,” Cyril explained. “Looked like he spent a lot of time there, everyone knew him. Fred made the introductions. James was one of those tough no small talk guys, had this huge cobra on his right arm. He didn’t say much, just laid out the plan. It was a really good plan, I really didn’t think anything could go wrong. It seemed odd though.”
“What did?” Shawn asked.
“He didn’t seem exactly capable of making that plan on his own, you know? Rumor had it he’d just fallen out of favor with his former crew, a group of successful, smalltime jewel thieves. He’d just been their muscle. He wasn’t a planner,” he said.
“No, obviously,” Shawn said. “Anyone that was thinking would have known better than to shoot that guard in a panic.”
“Exactly,” Cyril said. “But if he was working with anyone else I never met them.”
“What about Fred?” Shawn asked.
Cyril shook his head. “Fred didn’t have anything to do with it. He even used to visit me in prison, said he blamed himself for making the introduction.”
“Yeah, I’m going to need to talk to him,” Shawn said.
“That’s going to be a little hard,” Cyril said, “he died about a year ago of a heart attack.”
“That’s never stopped me before,” Shawn said. “I’m on very good terms with the spirit world.”
Cyril shot him a disbelieving look. “Uh huh.”
“It does, however, complicate matters,” Shawn admitted. “So keep going. What happened then?”
“Nothing much,” he said. “Clavor told me I had the job, said to meet me across the street from old Dah-Ling’s. We got number thirty-six open but Clavor wouldn’t let me go in it. He’d paid me a couple thousand up front, so I didn’t argue with him. And the rest you already know.”
“What did they call him?” Shawn asked.
Cyril frowned. “What?”
“You said the people at the Hottie Tottie seemed to know him, so what did they call him? James? Jimmy? Hey, you?” Shawn asked.
Cyril shook his head. “Maybe Jimmy? One of the girls thought his name was Daniel, another thought it was Dave. Clavor said he never gave any of them his real name.”
“And you thought he had given it to you?” Shawn asked.
“Not really,” Cyril said. “But it was the only one I had.”
“Fair point,” Shawn said, and turned to glance out the window as they stopped at a light. Shawn squinted into a little Mom and Pop Electronics store. There were about a dozen televisions set up in front of the window of varying size, and Shawn was staring back at himself from every single one of them.
Shawn recognized the photo. He was smiling and holding a pineapple that had been wrapped in a large pink bow for Juliet’s birthday. She’d taken the photo in front of the police station, and if you looked hard enough, you could just make out Gus’s elbow on the very edge of the left side.
The picture flashed off the screen, and switched to Vick holding court with the media, giving a press conference in a freshly pressed suit. Shawn knew this created about a million and one problems for him and Cyril both, but all he could think was that his father was going to see this.
“I think we’ve got a problem,” he said.
on to part two
1987
Henry was wandering back from the bathroom when he saw the light was still on in Shawn’s room. He frowned and opened the door. Shawn was balanced on a footstool, wide-eyed and intent, putting a little Lego flag on the top of a Lego castle spire.
“Shawn, what are you doing?”
Shawn tumbled from the stool in surprise, before blinking up at his father in confusion. “I’m building a Lego palace,” he explained, after a moment.
“It’s three in the morning,” Henry snapped.
“I know! Do you even realize how much you can do if you don’t go to sleep?” Shawn asked. “It’s like having a whole extra day. I don’t know why no one’s thought of this before.”
Henry’s eyes were narrowed. “Are you on drugs?”
“Dad, I’m nine,” Shawn said wryly. “My drug of choice is a Pixy Stix.”
“Just checking,” Henry said, fighting back a grin. He grabbed Shawn up in one arm and carried him back to his bed, before standing him on top of it and meeting his eyes. “You need to sleep.”
“I don’t have time to sleep!” Shawn protested. “I have to build the Lego palace!”
“It’ll still be there in the morning,” Henry said.
“It’ll still be half-finished in the morning,” Shawn said. “If I finish it now it’ll be done. You’re the one that always tells me not to procrastinate.”
“With homework, Shawn,” Henry said.
”That’s a double-standard!” Shawn protested.
“How long have you been doing this?” Henry asked, narrowing his eyes as he looked his son over. It unnerved him that this had been going on and he hadn’t even noticed. “When was the last time you slept?”
“I don’t know, Sunday, maybe? And for like an hour in class yesterday,” Shawn said. “But I’m wide-awake.”
Henry sighed, pulling back the covers of Shawn’s A-Team sheets. “Get in,” he said.
Shawn reluctantly slid into the bed. “Okay, but I’m telling you, sleep is superfluous,” he said.
“Gus teach you that word?” Henry asked.
“No, I was reading the dictionary last night when I couldn’t sleep,” Shawn explained.
Henry considered for a moment letting Shawn play this little experiment out, but he was exhausted, and he knew that Shawn had to be too. Bribery couldn’t hurt, just this once.
“If you go to sleep, I’ll give you a Pixy Stix,” Henry told him.
“You’ve got yourself a deal,” Shawn said, and reached out to shake his hand.
2009
"I think I should sue for false advertising," Shawn said. "That movie had absolutely nothing to do with pineapples!"
Lassiter tried to ignore him, but Spencer was being even more obnoxious than usual. He didn't know what the fake psychic was even doing here; they hadn't called him in on a case since what had happened with Drimmer.
Lassiter finally bowed to the inevitable and glanced up to where Spencer was regaling Buzz with the virtues and pitfalls of something he called a 'bromance.' His hair was sticking up and his eyes were kind of wild, but there really wasn’t anything out of the ordinary about that. He couldn't seem to stop moving, and was bouncing on the heels of his feet, an unzipped hooded sweater falling a little further off his shoulder with each bounce, revealing a faded Knight Rider T-shirt underneath.
Lassiter noticed Juliet and Guster standing nearby watching the show as well, and he walked over to join them. "What the hell's wrong with him?" he asked. "He looks even more...him, than usual."
"Shawn hasn't slept in two days," Gus said wearily.
Juliet scrunched up her face. "Why not?"
"I have no idea," Gus said. "Shawn usually only sleeps about three to five hours a night anyway, but his insomnia's gotten worse lately."
Juliet frowned in sympathy. "Is this a side effect of his gift?" she asked.
"No," Gus said with a sigh. "This is just because he's Shawn."
"Lassie!" Lassiter groaned as he was spotted, and Shawn came running up to him. He had an unopened Red Bull stuck down the waistband of his jeans. "You haven't called us in like a week! I'm going to start thinking that you don't want me around."
"I don't want you around," Lassiter said. "And even if I did, you just got out of the hospital from that thing with--"
"I was in the hospital for like five minutes, they gave me aspirin and blinded me with a pen light, and that was two weeks ago," Shawn said in a rush. "I'm ready to solve crime."
"Well, there's nothing for you right now," Juliet said gently. "Maybe you should go home and get some rest."
"What is this?" Shawn asked, looking from Juliet to Lassiter and back again. "I didn't do anything wrong, you know!"
"No one is saying that," Juliet said softly.
"This time, anyway," Lassiter muttered to himself.
Shawn's eyes narrowed in his direction, and Lassiter knew he'd caught every word. “For your information, this wasn’t anything new. Lots of people have tried to kill me before, going back years and years. I’m convinced that Carlton Baker was poisoning my Hi C in third grade, and that’s not all, Marty Stein--"
“Carlton was not poisoning your Hi C, Shawn,” Gus interrupted.
“You can’t possibly know that for sure,” Shawn told him. “I’ve got bad karma with Carltons.”
“Regardless,” Lassiter broke in hotly. “None of them were people who were supposed to protect you. This is different.”
“It isn’t,” Shawn said. “Come on, you guys know you miss me, at least a little, right?”
"Spencer, I wouldn't want your help on a good day," Lassiter said. "And this looks anything but like a good day for you. Go home."
Juliet smiled sadly. “We’ll call you soon, okay? Just get some rest.”
Gus waited until they had walked back to their desks before turning to Shawn. "Okay, let's go."
“Did you see that? I think we just got broken up with! That was the don’t call me, I’ll call you, we’ll get together, really, brush off that means they aren’t ever going to call us again!”
“Shawn, calm down, that isn’t what they said at all,” Gus said. “Seriously, lets just get you home so you can sleep.”
“No, you go,” Shawn said. “I wasn’t finished talking to Buzz.”
“Shawn-” Gus started, obviously not happy about the thought of leaving him here. “You need to leave Lassiter alone.”
“Who said anything about Lassiter? I said I was going to talk to Buzz,” Shawn said.
”I know what you said,” Gus said, and sighed in resignation. “Just be careful. Call me if you need me to bail you out.”
“Of course! You know you’ll always be my one phone call,” Shawn called after him. Shawn waited until Gus was out of sight before wandering back towards Lassiter’s desk.
He’d mostly been kidding about Juliet and Lassiter giving them some kind of permanent brush off, but only mostly. The incident with Drimmer had changed things, Shawn knew. It’s not that it bothered him personally, he handled it fine, he was over it already.
But he knew that Henry had been giving Vick hell about letting Shawn get involved in the first place, and she was reluctant to let him take on another case. Lassiter was, of course, quick to jump on the bandwagon and try to lock them out. Shawn was going to have to be his usual brilliant, indispensable self, if he wanted to get back on the SBPD payroll.
It wasn’t going to be easy to do while sleep deprived, but that was why the world had Red Bull. He cracked open another one, and jumped back, startled, as it was ripped from his hands before he could take a sip. He was jittery like an addict as he watched, as if in slow motion, the beautiful blue and silver piece of mastery drop into the trash can at his feet.
"I think you're wired enough, don't you?" Lassiter asked, dusting off his hands casually.
Shawn gaped sadly at his Red Bull, looking up to protest the cruelty against energy drinks, before getting sidetracked by what he saw laid out right in front of him. He bit back a grin, and looked up to meet Lassiter’s eyes. "Don't take it out on the Red Bull just because one of your arrests escaped from prison," he said.
Lassiter frowned as Shawn pulled another Red Bull from god knew where, and made a show of popping it open and drinking it half down in one go. "Is that supposed to impress me, Spencer? It's all over the news, you could have heard about it anywhere," Lassiter said.
"I don't watch the news anymore," Shawn said. "I've been boycotting the media since they fired that adorable weather girl. I did, however, happen to notice that you left the case file open on your desk."
Lassiter lunged forward to close it and put it in a drawer, and then he grabbed Shawn's arm and led him away. "Since your better half isn't here to take notes, I'm going to need you to listen very carefully to me, do you understand, Spencer? Nod if you do."
Shawn obediently nodded, all the while staring at where Lassiter’s hand was gripping his arm like he couldn’t understand where it had come from.
"This is not your case, this is not going to be your case, and you are not going to involve yourself in this case," Lassiter snapped. "This man is dangerous. You're not going to go near him. Are we clear?"
"No, not really," Shawn said, looking up from Lassiter’s hand to meet his eyes. "Actually, I'm confused."
Lassiter let go of his arm and reached up to pinch the bridge of his nose. "I don't think I can make it any clearer, Spencer."
"No, I understand the instructions," Shawn said. "But...are you worried about me? Because usually you just say, none of your shenanigans! Or get the hell out of here, Spencer, before I arrest you for solving my case! Which always makes that little vein in your forehead throb. But now you're all, stay out of it because he's dangerous! And I'm just terribly confused because it sounds a little like you care."
“I apologize if I’ve given you that impression,” Lassiter said. “I assure you that’s not the case. I just want you to stay out of my way, okay? And also, I’ve never said shenanigans.”
“That’s a bold faced lie,” Shawn said. “You said it just now.”
Lassiter was itching to grab Shawn again and toss him from the precinct, but the images of Drimmer knocking him around were a little too fresh in his mind, and he wanted to avoid any semblance of similarity. He opened his mouth to ask again, as politely as he could, for Shawn to just stay out of this, when his answering machine clicked on.
He hadn’t even heard his phone ringing, but he went white as he registered the voice.
“Hey, Lassiter, guess who? I’m gonna make you see what you’ve done. If you’re really the cop you think you are, you’ll meet me back where it began, alone this time.”
Lassiter finally sprung into action, leaping to grab up the phone. “Riner? Riner!”
Shawn was watching him carefully. Cyril Riner was the name of the man that had escaped, Shawn had seen that much in the file before Lassiter had taken it away, along with some pictures of footprints and the murder weapon, a blood stained revolver. “Back where it began? Where is that?” Shawn asked.
Lassiter was still clutching the phone, like holding onto it could catch the man that had just been on the other end of the line, and he looked up, bemused, when Shawn spoke, like he had forgotten he was there. As if he was just coming awake, he slammed the phone down and stepped back over to Shawn.
“What did I just say?” Lassiter demanded. “Stay out of this, Spencer.”
Shawn frowned. “You’re not going alone, right?” he asked. “You’re going to call in the Marshals and the Helicopters and all that, right?”
“Riner’s left me a dozen messages since he escaped last week,” Lassiter said. “We’ve done the whole Marshals and Helicopters thing, he’s always gone when we get there.”
“But you’re not going alone, right?” Shawn asked again. “Because that would be stupid. Hey, I’ve got an idea! You should take me!”
Lassiter frowned. “Come with me, I want to show you something.” Lassiter headed off down the hall, and intrigued, Shawn followed him. They went into one of the lesser used records rooms, one that Shawn didn’t remember ever visiting it before.
“What’s in here?” he asked, and he started to turn around when he felt something cold go around his right wrist. He glanced around, disbelieving, as Lassiter handcuffed him to the nearest file cabinet.
“I just know you weren’t going to listen when I said to stay out of this,” Lassiter said.
“Lassie!” Shawn protested. “You can’t just handcuff perfectly innocent people to things! There’s a law!”
“I’m preventing you from obstructing justice,” Lassiter said, heading towards the door. “Be thankful I’m being generous enough not to just arrest you.”
“Hey! Hey, wait!” Shawn protested, but Lassiter had already shut the door, and Shawn could hear the click as he locked it, too.
Shawn bit his lip and pulled absently at the cuff, glancing around to see if there was anything he could use to pick the lock. He could always call Gus and tell him that he really did, kind of, sort of, need him to come bail him out, but he didn’t really want to give him the satisfaction, and Gus would never let him follow Lassiter to wherever it was he’d gone.
Shawn grinned as brilliance struck, and pulled his cellphone out. “Hey, Buzz? Can I please see you for a moment in records room C?”
Buzz was cautiously poking his head in a moment later. “Should you be in here?” he asked, before his eyes followed Shawn’s arm up to its wrist, where it was attached to the file cabinet. “Why are you handcuffed to the file cabinet?”
“Funny story,” Shawn said. “I was testing whether or not my powers extended into the realm of magic, and so started practicing a Houdini act. You know, locked room, in handcuffs, miraculous escape!”
“Cool!” Buzz said, delighted. “Do you want me to lock the door again?”
“Well, actually, it turns out my powers are pretty much confined to the mental realm, and so now I’m stuck,” Shawn said. “You got a key for these things?”
“Oh, sure,” Buzz said. He pulled out his key ring and unhooked the cuffs. Shawn brought his arm down gratefully. “You should probably have started a little smaller. My nephew has these trick cuffs, they keep him happy for hours.”
“I think this marks the end of my magical career, sadly,” Shawn says. “I’ll stick to clairvoyance.” Shawn started to head out, before pausing and turning back to face Buzz. “One more thing, you know that Riner case?”
“Sure,” Buzz said, nodding enthusiastically. “It was one of Lassiter’s biggest cases. It was all over the news when it happened. You don’t remember? The Dah-Ling Darling? I just can’t believe Riner’s escaped.”
Shawn scanned backwards through his memories, and then it clicked. He remembered hearing it on the news a couple of years ago, a security guard had been killed in a robbery attempt. “The murder at the Dah-Ling Store-It-Yourself,” he said, starting from the room. “Thanks, Buzz! You’ve been a great help!”
“No problem!” Buzz called after him. “Hey, are these Lassiter’s cuffs?”
Shawn kept moving, and pulled out his phone to call a cab. Gus had given him a ride here, and Shawn had planned to just walk home, but now he didn’t have time. He was probably running out of it already.
He knew he should probably find Jules or Chief Vick and let them know where Lassiter was, but Shawn had a feeling if he sent in the cavalry Riner would simply disappear as he apparently had before.
Lassiter might have a shot if he was really there alone, or mostly alone. Shawn would be his back up, whether he wanted it or not.
x x x x x x
The murder at the Dah-Ling Store-It-Yourself had been an open-shut case, and so Shawn had never really taken much interest in it. The proprietor’s daughter, dubbed by the press as the Dah-Ling Darling, had caught the murderer red handed and held him at gunpoint until the police could arrive.
She’d been the media’s darling for fifteen whole minutes at least, admired partly because of the courageous act, and partly just for being drop dead gorgeous.
Shawn was having trouble remembering too much about the murderer. The case itself had been rather uninteresting. Riner had been trying to break into one of the storage units, he’d been caught by the guard, and had shot him in a panic. The media hadn’t much cared for any of this. They’d pointed all their cameras at Ava Dah-Ling, and her tearful accounts of her harrowing experience, her testaments about the need to avenge the guard whose name she probably didn’t even remember, and even Shawn couldn’t remember, thinking back.
Shawn had the cab drop him off at the corner and walked down the street towards the Store-It-Yourself. The fence was starting to rust, and there was a crooked “No Trespassing” sign hanging off the gate. Shawn looked past it to the building.
It didn’t look like the building had received much use in the two years since the murder. The giant neon sign on the roof had seen better days, and like a kind of reverse Wheel of Fortune puzzle, it was missing most of the vowels. The building was covered with a lot of graffiti that also contained dubious spelling, which in some ways was reassuring. No one seemed to have any trouble bypassing the fence.
Shawn glanced down at the lock, only to see that it was hanging unlatched. When he reached out to poke the fence, it swung open wide. “Spooky,” he said.
Shawn cautiously stepped inside, suddenly wishing for Gus, so that Shawn could pretend to be the brave one. Gus always made it easier to look manly, because it wasn’t hard to one-up all that running away and girly screaming. It was much harder to be brave out here in the dark, all alone, with a crazy gun-wielding maniac somewhere nearby.
And then there was Riner to worry about, too.
Shawn walked down the first alleyway, reading off the numbers on the compartments. He closed his eyes for a moment, going back to Lassiter’s desk and the open file. He remembered seeing a number on the orange storage compartment door right beside the shot of the footprints-number thirty-six.
He was at fourteen. He glanced down the row, but couldn’t see anyone else, so he moved down to the next row, and then the one after that. He found compartment thirty-two, and followed it down. Compartment thirty-six was standing open, the garage-style door pulled all the way up to the ceiling. Shawn peeked around inside, but it was just an empty space.
He started to turn around again, when someone grabbed him from behind, putting a hand over his mouth and dragging him into the compartment. Shawn was just about to start biting and kicking and screaming in Gus-inspired fashion when he recognized the aftershave. He reached up to pull the hand off his mouth, and gasped for breath.
“I usually expect dinner before I let anyone get to second base,” he said.
“Shut up, Spencer,” Lassiter said, spinning him around so they were face to face. “What the hell are you doing here? How did you even get out of the cuffs?”
“Please, like that was ever going to stop me,” Shawn said. “Now, if you’d put me in an airtight coffin and dropped me into the deepest depths of the sea, then maybe you might have been rid of me.”
“I’ll keep that in mind for next time,” Lassiter snapped. “As for now, I get to drag you out of the area instead of tracking down a very dangerous suspect. Good work.”
“But you don’t have to,” Shawn protested. “I’m here to help!”
“Keep your voice down,” Lassiter hissed. “You’re a civilian, Spencer. I’m the first to admit, sometimes I forget that, but if these last weeks have taught me anything, it’s that you don’t belong here.”
“You never forget that I’m a civilian,” Shawn argued. “You remind me like every five minutes.”
“Okay, maybe it’s just the part where you’re included in with the people I’m supposed to protect and serve that I forget,” Lassiter said. “But we’re going back to the station, and this time? This time I’m pressing charges.”
“For what?” Shawn demanded.
“Trespassing,” Lassiter said.
“And you’re doing what?” Shawn asked.
“I’m an officer of the law,” Lassiter said.
“Well, you left the gate open, and I was a concerned citizen,” Shawn said. “If anyone’s going to be in trouble with Vick over this, it’s you, and we both know it.”
“We’ll see,” Lassiter said, and started to drag Shawn back towards the exit.
Shawn dug his heels in. “Wait,” he whispered. “I think he’s here-I think we’re being watched.”
Lassiter glared at him, but knew better by now than to ignore a warning from Shawn, fake psychic or not. He pulled out his gun and pointed it to the ground. "Stay here," he said, before scanning the ally. He did a quick perimeter, walking to the end of the row, and then shook his head. "There's no one here, Spencer."
He turned back around when Spencer didn’t answer. Riner was standing behind the psychic, holding a gun underneath Shawn’s chin, pointed straight up.
"I think I found him," Shawn said.
Lassiter’s expression went stony, and he took an unconscious step forward, his gun going up to aim just to the left of Shawn’s head. It had gotten dark almost without his notice, and as he tried to track Cyril’s movements he was having trouble making everything out, distinguishing between what parts belonged to Cyril, and what parts belonged to Shawn.
Cyril pulled Shawn back against him and started dragging him towards the gate. "Stay back, Lassiter," he yelled hoarsely. "You want me to kill him? I said stay back!"
Lassiter stopped moving, but kept his gun aimed straight ahead. “Let him go.”
“Not until we talk,” Cyril said. “I’ve finally got you in a position where you have to listen to me, so you’re sure as hell going to listen.”
“Soon as you let him go, you can say whatever you want,” Lassiter said.
"I didn't kill that guard," Cyril said. "I told you that. Someone else killed him, I’ve never killed anyone in my life. At least, I haven’t yet."
Shawn looked down at the concrete, tilting his head at the muddy footprints that Cyril had left behind. The muzzle of the gun was pressing in on his throat, so he lifted his head back and closed his eyes for a moment, recalling the crime scene photo of the pair of bloody footprints that had been discovered beside the body. The picture had shown them with a ruler laid beside them for perspective--they had been a size thirteen, huge, Cyril was a size ten, if that.
"Wait!" Shawn shouted, throwing his arms out and stopping Cyril’s slow progress of moving them towards the gate. "Wait, Lassie, I think he might be telling the truth. The shoe prints! The prints, at the crime scene, they weren't his."
Lassiter didn’t lower his gun, and he kept his eyes on Cyril. "Yeah, Spencer, we know that, but tons of people walked through there. It could have been a paramedic, or even a rookie," he said. “We were able to convict him just fine without having a pair of shoe prints.”
“It was James,” Cyril protested. “I’ve been keeping track of your career, Lassiter, and if you’re such a good cop, then you’ll take another look at my case.”
Shawn listened to the sound of Cyril’s voice. It was edgy and slightly frantic, had the kind of paranoid edge a man on the run should, but he didn’t sound like he was lying. Anyway, Shawn’s seen The Fugitive about a million times, and the wrongly convicted men always stuck around to clear their names-the guilty ones, they just ran.
“You want the truth?” Lassiter asked. “Right now, I don’t care if you killed that guard or not. What I care about is that you're holding a gun to his head. You want to talk? Fine, we’ll talk. But first you let him go."
”I’ve been trying to get you to talk to me for two years,” Cyril said. “I’ve lodged more than a dozen appeals. No one’s paid any attention. I’m not going to give up any advantage I can get.”
“You’re not doing anything for your case,” Lassiter said. “Innocent men don’t take hostages.”
“I said I didn’t kill that guard, I never said I was innocent,” Cyril said, and moved the gun from Shawn’s neck, holding it ahead of him to take aim and fire.
The single security light went out in a shower of sparks as the bullet shattered it to pieces, and Shawn felt the gun jam into his back to push him forward. Lassiter was shouting behind them, but the spooky atmosphere that Shawn had noted when he arrived had gone from the mild levels of Scary Movie to something closer resembling Halloween, and it was too dark to see hardly anything at all.
Cyril dragged them to a beat-up Chevy truck parked half on the curb, and took him around to the driver’s side, shoving Shawn up and in, forcing him to slide across to the passenger seat. Shawn reached for the handle on the door, but Cyril was already pulling away with a speed of acceleration even Mario Andretti could envy.
Cyril was leaving his headlights off, and spinning them off onto some kind of back road. He was still holding the gun in one hand while he drove, turning the wheel deftly with his left hand, while he kept the gun aimed just inches from Shawn’s side with his right.
Cyril glanced over at Shawn for a moment, before looking back towards the road. “You’re that guy, right, from the TV?”
“I think you’re probably thinking of John Cusack, but don’t feel bad, you’re not the first to note the resemblance,” Shawn said.
Cyril looked confused. “What? No. I mean that psychic guy, right? You solved all those cases.”
“Oh,” Shawn said. “Now you’re thinking of Shawn Spencer, am I right? Gee, I really wish I were, I hear he’s a handsome devil.”
“That’s what Lassiter called you, he called you Spencer,” Cyril said.
“Spenstar, Shawn Spenstar,” Shawn corrected. “You might recognize me from my brief success on American Duos, but Hollywood’s so fickle. Now I can’t even get an interview and Nigel St. Nigel won’t take my calls.”
“Let’s make this simple,” Cyril said. “I know you’re Shawn Spencer, and you’re going to prove me innocent, or I’m going to kill you.”
“In that case, Shawn Spencer, at your service,” Shawn said.
Cyril turned on the headlights as they spun out onto a main road. Shawn winced as he noticed the welcome sign, announcing their arrival in Summerland. Shawn thought this was actually a pretty good place to come if you were on the run, because who would ever think to look here? Santa Barbara forgot this place existed all the time.
“If I’m going to clear your good name,” Shawn said, “I’m going to need some basic essentials.”
Cyril seemed suspicious. “Like what?”
“A notepad, a pencil, a yellow number 2 one, the number is very important, and about three cases of Red Bull,” Shawn said.
“Three cases of Red Bull?” Cyril repeated. He looked at Shawn doubtfully, like he was starting to believe that he really had just picked up some crazy Duos reject and not Santa Barbara’s most renowned psychic.
“I’m boycotting sleep,” Shawn explained. “If you’d like me to remain conscious whilst I investigate your case, then that’s a must.”
“You’re not right in the head, are you?” Cyril asked.
“It’s weird how often people ask me that,” Shawn said, but didn’t dwell on it. “I’m also going to need to call Lassiter.”
Cyril pulled into a Seven Eleven and looked at him strangely. “No,” he snapped. “He’s never going to help me. I thought I could get him to listen, but it’s obviously not going to happen. I was lucky you were there.”
“One man’s luck is another man’s hostage experience,” Shawn said. “But seriously. I’m going to need to call him. It’s in your own best interests, if you really are innocent. You want them to reopen your case, right?”
“Yes, but right now, all they’re going to be doing is looking for you,” Cyril snapped.
“That’s because you abducted me at gunpoint instead of making an appointment like everyone else,” Shawn said. “Let me talk to Lassiter, for exactly the reason you just pointed out. I’ve got to make them understand that the best way to get me out of this situation is the same best way to get you out of yours, prove you didn’t kill anyone.”
“Fine,” Cyril said.
“Good,” Shawn said. “But first you have to explain to me who really did kill that guard.”
Cyril nodded, glancing around in all directions rather shiftily, as though he expected a police armada to move out of the darkness and surround them. “I admitted that I was there to rob the place, but I wasn’t alone. I had a partner. James Clavor. He’s the guy that set the whole thing up, I didn’t even know what we were there to take. It happened almost exactly like they say, except it was Clavor that shot that guard, and not me.”
“But you’re the one that Dah-Ling found standing over the body,” Shawn said.
“Yeah, bad timing,” Cyril said. “She came running out of the office after Clavor was already gone. I’d stayed to see if the poor guy was still alive, so there I was, kneeling beside him, Clavor’s gun on the ground right beside me.”
“What about fingerprints?” Shawn asked.
“They didn’t have mine on the weapon, but they didn’t have his, either,” Cyril said. “We were both wearing gloves.”
“Why didn’t you tell the police any of this?” Shawn asked.
“You think I didn’t?” he asked. “They tell me James Clavor doesn’t exist. They think I made him up.”
“Hmm,” Shawn said. “Okay, give me your phone.”
“You don’t have a phone?” Cyril asked incredulously.
“It got repossessed,” Shawn explained.
“They repossess phones?” Cyril asked.
“Sure,” Shawn said. “On those Verizon commercials they make it look really cool to have all those people following you around, but they turn on you if you forget to pay your bill.”
Cyril sighed and handed over a phone. It was one of those disposable types, and looked to be almost out of minutes. Shawn kept track of Cyril out of the corner of his eye, as the other man seemed to forget he was supposed to be holding him at gunpoint, and then he started dialing the phone.
“Lassiter.” Lassiter sounded tense, and dare Shawn think it-worried.
“Hey, Lassie,” he said, and then, without preamble, “I think you need to start looking through your suspects again.”
“Spencer?” Lassiter’s voice went strange, kind of disbelieving and startled, breathless with something like relief. “Where are you?”
“I don’t want you to let anyone worry about me, okay? I’m fine. And in the name of all that’s holy, don’t call my dad,” Shawn said.
“Tell me where you are!” Lassiter snapped. “I’m going to come get you.”
“He's not going to let me tell you that,” Shawn said. “You need to listen to me. He didn't do it. I mean, he did totally try to rob the place, but he didn't kill anyone.”
“Give me a hint, Spencer,” Lassiter said. “Come on. Something to help us find you.”
“I think you need to start with Clavor,” Shawn said. “But he might not be easy to find.”
“Because he doesn't exist!” Lassiter shouted.
“I said it wouldn't be easy,” Shawn told him, and then Cyril grabbed the phone back and hung up.
“You really think he’s going to pay any attention to what you said?” Cyril asked.
“Well, I have to be honest, if he does pay any attention to what I said, it’ll certainly be a first,” Shawn said.
“Wonderful,” Cyril said.
“I need more Red Bull,” Shawn said. “If we’re on our own, my mind’s gotta be at its best, and there’s nothing like nearly lethal doses of taurine and caffeine to get the ole’ grey matter at 100%.”
“Fine, whatever,” Cyril said, “but we’re going in together, and if you try anything, I’m going to shoot the cashier, and probably you, too.”
“Understood,” Shawn said. “However, I feel obligated to point out that committing a double homicide kind of defeats the purpose of trying to clear yourself of a single murder charge.”
“You’re my last shot at proving I’m innocent,” Cyril said. “If I don’t have your help, I don’t have anything left to lose, so I might as well take you with me.”
Shawn nodded. “Okay,” he said. “I’ll be on my best behavior.”
Cyril looked anything but trusting, but Shawn slid out of the car and stuck his hands in his pockets. His diet of no sleep and all Red Bull had been working really well the last few days, but his last few days had consisted mostly of hanging around the Psych office trying to save Princess Peach from Bowser, and he had to admit he probably wasn’t at his best for solving crime.
But that didn’t really matter, because Shawn wasn’t really getting a choice. This wasn’t a job he could turn down, and anyway, even if his body was getting twitchy, Shawn’s mind was as sharp as ever. He could solve crime in his sleep. Probably.
He led the way into the Seven Eleven and made a beeline for the refrigerators at the back, pulling out Red Bull and stacking it up in his arms. Cyril was behind him, the protrusion in the side pocket of his jacket standing out prominently, and he hoped the cashier didn’t notice. Cyril was being pretty obvious about being armed, and Shawn was trying really hard not to channel Mae West.
Shawn didn’t bother to try and explain it to him, but Cyril really didn’t have any reason to be so worried.
Shawn had no intentions of making a break for it. It may not have happened exactly the way he’d planned, but he’d gotten that case he’d been looking for.
x x x x x x
Lassiter let out a frustrated cry and threw his cellphone against the side of the Store-It-Yourself. “God damn it!” he shouted.
Juliet was hovering, concerned, by his side. “Was that Shawn? Do you know where he is?”
“No,” Lassiter snapped. “Riner was listening. All Spencer would say was that Riner was innocent, and we had to reopen the case, and look into James Clavor.”
Juliet frowned. “James Clavor? I don’t remember seeing him on the list of suspects.”
And Juliet would know. She may not have been here at the time of the case, but she’d read the case reports cover to cover twice since Riner had escaped.
“You might remember him being mentioned in one of the transcripts of Riner’s interviews,” Lassiter said.
Juliet’s eyes widened. “Right! Of course. He claimed Clavor was the murderer.”
“Clavor was a fiction,” Lassiter said. “Riner made him up. We did look for the guy, we even had a sketch artist draw up a profile, we ran the name through every system we have, we checked for fingerprints. There was no evidence whatsoever that Riner had a partner with him that night.”
“Do you think Shawn really believes him?” Juliet asked quietly. “Or is he just playing along?”
“You didn’t see Spencer that night with Drimmer,” Lassiter said quietly. “He says whatever he thinks, whether he’s got a gun on him or not. And if we don’t find him fast, it’s going to get him killed.”
“But if he really believes Riner, then Riner is going to want to keep him around, he’s going to find him useful,” Juliet protested.
“And he’s going to kill him the moment Spencer figures out the truth, as he inevitably always does,” Lassiter said grimly. “And the truth is that there wasn’t anyone there with Riner that night, he killed that man himself.”
Juliet bit her lip. Lassiter was her partner and she took that very seriously, she backed him up no question-but there was one thing they never could quite seem to agree on it, and that was Shawn Spencer. Juliet didn’t know if Shawn really talked to spirits, she didn’t know if he was really psychic, she just knew that so far he’d nearly always been right.
“What if he didn’t?” she asked hesitantly. “What if Shawn’s right?”
Lassiter went still. “Then I put an innocent man in jail.”
“He still did the robbery, that would have put him away at least this long,” Juliet said. “But we need to find the truth, one way or another. I think we should do as Shawn says.”
Lassiter turned to her, his face stony. “Go ahead, then,” he said. “You look for some phantom killer, and while you’re doing that, I’ll look for Spencer.”
“Lassiter!” Juliet called as he started to head off. She cut him off and came to a stop in front of him. “You know I want to find him too. We need to work together.” She paused, noticing the way that he wouldn’t quite meet her eyes. “None of this is your fault, you know that, right?”
“Some of it’s his fault,” Vick snapped, as she came up behind them. “What the hell were you thinking, Detective?”
“Chief,” Lassiter said, looking horrified. “I hope you don’t think that I . . . I never would have allowed a civilian to accompany-”
“I know you’re not responsible for Mr. Spencer getting himself into trouble, but that doesn’t explain what you were doing here in the first place,” Vick said curtly.
“We tried to surround him at a meeting, it wasn’t working,” Lassiter said. “I thought I might have a chance if I did as he said and came alone, but Spencer heard the same message as I did, and figured out what it meant somehow.”
“Does that really surprise you?” Vick asked.
“No, that’s why I handcuffed him to a file cabinet in the records room,” Lassiter explained. “I have no idea how he got out.”
There was a gasp from somewhere nearby, and Vick, Juliet and Lassiter all turned to look at where Buzz stood by the number thirty-six storage room. “He told me he was practicing a magic trick!” he said.
“Of course he did,” Lassiter said tiredly. “And of course you believed him.”
“It seemed like something he would do,” Buzz said miserably.
“You can’t really argue with that,” Juliet pointed out.
“However he got here, we need to focus right now on getting him back,” Vick said. “We’re going to have to go to the media. I want Spencer on every station. Someone has to spot him somewhere, he’s usually kind of hard to miss.” Vick turned to eye Lassiter speculatively. “We’ll finish this discussion later. Right now, I need you to call Henry Spencer.”
Lassiter’s eyes widened. “What?”
“We have to tell him what’s happened before it hits every news station in Santa Barbara,” she said. “Since you were with Mr. Spencer when it happened, it gets to be you.”
“But Chief-”
Vick didn’t stick around to hear his protests. She stormed off, shouting for someone to arrange a press conference, and people cowered in her wake. Lassiter walked over to pick his bent, dented cellphone up off the ground, and stared at it in horror.
He tentatively held it out to Juliet. “O’Hara, maybe you should-”
“I don’t think so,” she said quickly. “I’m too young to die.”
x x x x x x
Henry Spencer used to have big dreams for his only son. He knew most parents did. Old Lou Butters used to wax poetic every time his kid blew his nose, but unlike most of the parents he knew, Henry’d actually had a kid worth bragging about. Not that he ever had.
Shawn had always been a little too smart for his own good. No one ever knows what to do with a prodigy-move them forward three grades, hold them back for another year. He won’t stop talking, his teachers always said. Or, he won’t focus on the work.
But Shawn always passed his tests with flying colors when exam time came. Used to drive Gus nuts that he didn’t even have to study to do it.
Henry honestly didn’t know where he’d gone wrong.
Shawn should have been a cop. He had it in his blood. He was that kind of rare detective that you could usually only find in Sherlock Holmes. Henry had resented Shawn for years for giving it all up to be a river-rafting tour guide, a bartender, an ice-cream taster, and god knew what else.
But there were times when Henry was secretly relieved, when he thought it was better this way, better that Shawn didn’t have to see the things he’d seen, or do the things he’d done, or put his life on the line every single day.
And then this job came along, where Shawn could do all of those things without even having to follow the rules that might save him.
Henry really shouldn’t be so surprised that this call finally came.
“You want to say that to me again?” he growled.
“Your son’s been taken hostage by Cyril Riner.” Lassiter didn’t sound like his usual matter-of-fact self, Lassiter sounded worried. And that scared Henry most of all.
“Where is he?” Henry demanded. “What’s being done?”
”We don’t know,” Lassiter said. “But we’ll find him. That’s a promise.”
“You’ve been at this job long enough to know better than to make promises,” Henry snapped.
“I’ve been at it long enough to know you only make the ones you can keep,” Lassiter said. “I will find him.”
Henry wasn’t reassured, because he was doing this job when Lassiter was a kindergartner, and he knew all the tricks. That was one promise you were allowed to make. You could say, we’ll find him. You couldn’t say, we’ll find him alive.
Because you only made the promises you could keep.
“I’m coming to the station,” Henry said.
“That’s not neccess-” Henry hung up on him.
The thing about Shawn was that he wasn’t at all the son that Henry had wanted. He was careless, reckless, thoughtless, and as always, too smart for his own good.
None of that mattered, of course. He still loved him so much it hurt.
x x x x x x
They managed to pay for the Red Bull, the notepad, the pack of number 2 pencils (they wouldn’t sell them separately), as well as two bags of Cheetos boasting 20% more cheese, without arousing any undue suspicion.
Mostly Shawn suspected this was because the cashier was actually sleep-working. He was wearing a nametag that said Tad, and he took their money and bagged their stuff all while looking past them with the kind of vacant stare Shawn only ever expected to encounter on a zombie. You know, if he encountered zombies outside of Resident Evil.
They got back in the truck and Cyril pulled up to the one of the gas pumps. “I need to fill up,” he said. “You stay here or-”
“Or you’ll go on a killing spree, bad things will happen, lots of death and mayhem, got it,” Shawn said.
Cyril frowned at him. “I have a feeling you’re not taking me seriously.”
“Don’t take it personally,” Shawn said. “I don’t take anything seriously.”
Cyril slammed the door on him, and Shawn leaned forward, watching as he tried to feed a twenty into the Quick Pay machine. It kept spitting it back out, so Shawn figured he had a few minutes. He could, of course, always open the door and make a run back to the zombie-cashier, but honestly, he felt safer with Cyril, and anyway, he had a case to solve.
Instead he pulled out the notepad, and his pencil, and scribbled a note on each side, before folding it in half and sticking it in the glove box. Then he took out his cellphone, and started text-ing Lassiter.
allo allo
Spencer where are you?
am ok slving case dnt wory u'll get frwn lines h n k
where are you? how are you texting?
Stl hve my phne. wrst kdnpr evr. lmao.
"Are you text messaging?" Cyril shouted, leaning into the car to snatch the phone out of his hands. "Give me that! I thought the ‘Can you hear me now’ guy stole your phone back? Christ, you're like the worst hostage ever!"
Cyril climbed into the truck, scrolling back through the messages to see what had been said.
"Sorry, I flunked out of hostage school," Shawn told him. "But you're not doing so great as a kidnapper either. For instance, you're not a killer."
"That's what I've been saying," Cyril said.
"Exactly, but I have no fear for my life," Shawn explained. "You've had the safety on your gun this whole time, and there’s not even any bullets in it. You used your last one to shoot out the light."
Cyril frowned, tossing the gun on the seat between them after a moment, with a resigned sigh. "Then why did you come with me?"
"Well, I didn't know that at the time, and you are kind of scary looking," Shawn conceded. Cyril had probably been called ruggedly handsome once, like that Brawny towel guy, but he’d since acquired scars down beside his right eye and across the left side of his chin, and his eyes were perpetually narrowed, suspicious of everything they saw.
"Two years in prison'll do that to a guy," he said after a moment. Cyril looked down at the phone. “What the hell is H and K?”
“Hugs and Kisses,” Shawn explained, unabashedly.
“You're sending hugs and kisses to Lassiter?” Cyril asked, disbelievingly.
“He's a big softy, really,” Shawn said. “Those little signs of affection are good for him. It makes him feel appreciated.”
Cyril looked a little pale. “Oh my god, are you Lassiter’s boyfriend? Have I kidnapped Lassiter’s boyfriend?”
"Not at all, but if it makes you feel better, you're not the first to think we were lovers," Shawn told him primly. "The last guy that kidnapped me thought so too."
“The last guy to kidnap you?” Cyril asked. “How often does this happen to you?”
“More often than you’d think, honestly,” Shawn said.
Cyril started to turn the key to start the truck, but hesitated. “What happened to him? The last guy to kidnap you?”
“Lassiter killed him with the gun he keeps in the peanuts,” Shawn said. Cyril looked a little sick, and Shawn felt obligated to reassure him. “Don’t worry, that guy really was a murderer. This is totally different.”
“But Lassiter doesn’t know that,” Cyril said.
Shawn frowned, realizing he was right. “I can handle Lassiter,” he said.
“You’ve got to stop contacting him, you’re only making things worse,” Cyril said.
“Au contraire,” Shawn said. “It’s pissing him off. And Lassie doesn’t think clearly when he’s angry.”
Cyril peeled out of the lot and turned back onto a main road. “The last thing I want is to make Lassiter angrier.”
“Really?” Shawn asked. “Personally, it’s one of my favorite pastimes.”
Cyril looked down at Shawn’s phone as it buzzed again, proclaiming: answer me on the text screen. Cyril rolled down the window and tossed it out. Shawn cried out and turned to look behind them, but his phone was lost along the dark road.
“That was a new phone,” he said sadly. “I wasn’t kidding about the Verizon people, you know, they’re scary. You’d better watch your back.”
“I’ve got bigger problems, don’t you think?” Cyril asked. “And so do you.”
“Oh, please,” Shawn said. “You really are the worst kidnapper ever. I could have escaped like fifty times if I’d wanted to.”
Cyril glanced at him sideways. “Then why didn’t you?”
“Because I believe you,” Shawn said. “And you haven’t got anybody else who does.”
“Why?” Cyril asked. “Why do you believe me?”
“Because you’re telling the truth,” Shawn said simply. “Psychic, remember? I just know.”
“I don’t believe in psychics,” Cyril said. “But I’ve kept up on Lassiter’s career, which means I’ve seen quite a bit of yours, too, and it’s kind of hard to argue with your success.”
“What is this thing between you and Lassiter?” Shawn asked. “You’re like Kimble and Gerard.”
“He’s the guy that put me away,” Cyril said. “It’s not something that you forget. He never believed me. I tried to explain it, I went through the lie detector test, nothing worked. He thought I was scum.”
“You broke the law,” Shawn said. “Lassiter takes that very seriously. He’d put me in jail if he could.”
“What for?” Cyril asked, surprised.
“He doesn’t believe I’m psychic, either,” Shawn said.
“If he’s not going to believe you either, then I don’t know how we’re going to prove to him that he’s wrong,” Cyril said.
“That’s nothing, I do that once a week at least,” he said. “All you have to do is show the evidence to him in a way that makes sense. He doesn’t do leaps of faith. So let’s start with something solid. Tell me about James Clavor.”
”I don’t know much,” Cyril said haltingly. “I barely knew him, and it was two years ago.”
”Two years in which you’ve had nothing to do but think about him,” Shawn said. “So tell me everything.”
“We met through a mutual friend, Fred Greenly,” he said. “He said that Clavor had a job for me, low risk, high pay off. I was a construction worker, you know, but it was only part time. I could never seem to make enough to get by.”
“Where did you meet?” Shawn asked.
“The Hottie Tottie Tavern,” he said.
“The Hottie Tottie Tavern?” Shawn echoed. “Did you just make that up?”
“It’s a strip bar at the edge of Summerland,” Cyril explained. “Looked like he spent a lot of time there, everyone knew him. Fred made the introductions. James was one of those tough no small talk guys, had this huge cobra on his right arm. He didn’t say much, just laid out the plan. It was a really good plan, I really didn’t think anything could go wrong. It seemed odd though.”
“What did?” Shawn asked.
“He didn’t seem exactly capable of making that plan on his own, you know? Rumor had it he’d just fallen out of favor with his former crew, a group of successful, smalltime jewel thieves. He’d just been their muscle. He wasn’t a planner,” he said.
“No, obviously,” Shawn said. “Anyone that was thinking would have known better than to shoot that guard in a panic.”
“Exactly,” Cyril said. “But if he was working with anyone else I never met them.”
“What about Fred?” Shawn asked.
Cyril shook his head. “Fred didn’t have anything to do with it. He even used to visit me in prison, said he blamed himself for making the introduction.”
“Yeah, I’m going to need to talk to him,” Shawn said.
“That’s going to be a little hard,” Cyril said, “he died about a year ago of a heart attack.”
“That’s never stopped me before,” Shawn said. “I’m on very good terms with the spirit world.”
Cyril shot him a disbelieving look. “Uh huh.”
“It does, however, complicate matters,” Shawn admitted. “So keep going. What happened then?”
“Nothing much,” he said. “Clavor told me I had the job, said to meet me across the street from old Dah-Ling’s. We got number thirty-six open but Clavor wouldn’t let me go in it. He’d paid me a couple thousand up front, so I didn’t argue with him. And the rest you already know.”
“What did they call him?” Shawn asked.
Cyril frowned. “What?”
“You said the people at the Hottie Tottie seemed to know him, so what did they call him? James? Jimmy? Hey, you?” Shawn asked.
Cyril shook his head. “Maybe Jimmy? One of the girls thought his name was Daniel, another thought it was Dave. Clavor said he never gave any of them his real name.”
“And you thought he had given it to you?” Shawn asked.
“Not really,” Cyril said. “But it was the only one I had.”
“Fair point,” Shawn said, and turned to glance out the window as they stopped at a light. Shawn squinted into a little Mom and Pop Electronics store. There were about a dozen televisions set up in front of the window of varying size, and Shawn was staring back at himself from every single one of them.
Shawn recognized the photo. He was smiling and holding a pineapple that had been wrapped in a large pink bow for Juliet’s birthday. She’d taken the photo in front of the police station, and if you looked hard enough, you could just make out Gus’s elbow on the very edge of the left side.
The picture flashed off the screen, and switched to Vick holding court with the media, giving a press conference in a freshly pressed suit. Shawn knew this created about a million and one problems for him and Cyril both, but all he could think was that his father was going to see this.
“I think we’ve got a problem,” he said.
on to part two