Psych: Mind Over Magic p-2 Read online

  Psych: Mind Over Magic

  ( Psych - 2 )

  William Rabkin

  William Rabkin

  Psych: Mind Over Magic

  Prologue

  1988

  The criminal justice system was a farce. Millions of lawyers fought in thousands of courtrooms, and the result was almost always the same. Criminals walked free and victims were hurt all over again.

  Henry Spencer had been fighting this realization for all the years he’d been a member of the Santa Barbara Police Department. He’d had to, because if he had ever acknowledged it, he’d never have been able to put on his blues in the morning.

  But as of today, there was no longer any way to deny the truth. The court had jammed his face in it as surely as if he were a puppy that had left a mess on the living room carpet.

  Six months Henry had been tracking a bunko crew. Six months he had interviewed the little old ladies whose life savings had been scammed away by these sleazebags. Finally he’d been allowed to set up a sting and the creeps walked right into it-caught on tape, caught with the cash, caught with no doubt.

  Except to the United States criminal justice system, that was. For them, there was plenty of doubt. Reasonable doubt, they called it, but it was only reasonable if you could bring yourself to believe that the crooks accidentally switched a bag full of scrap paper for the one holding their victim’s life savings, and then accidentally used her money to buy first-class tickets to Antigua.

  Henry slammed through his front door and kicked it shut behind him. He should be at the station right now, finalizing the paperwork on a burglary case that was going to arraignment tomorrow, but what was the point? Even if he did everything perfectly, the defense lawyer would argue that the defendant thought he was entering his own house, and that he only crowbarred open a second-story window because he’d misplaced his keys. And the idiot prosecutor would be unable to come up with a way to argue the point.

  Henry tossed his gun in the safe and banged it shut, spinning the combination lock. He didn’t want the feel of the weapon against his thigh; he didn’t need any more temptation-especially since he had a sixer of Anchor Steam in the fridge and no one he needed to share it with.

  He pushed his way through the swinging door into the kitchen and froze. Where he had left breakfast dishes scattered over the table, there now arose an enormous tiered edifice of white frosting with a small plastic bride and groom standing on top.

  “Shawn!” he shouted. “Get down here.”

  Two small faces appeared on either side of the wedding cake. Henry was pretty sure they belonged to his son Shawn and Shawn’s best friend, Gus, but both were so completely smeared with white, they could have been snowmen.

  “Hi, Dad,” one of them said in Shawn’s voice. “Want some cake?”

  “I want you to tell me where you got this,” Henry said. “And then I want you to tell me exactly how much trouble you’re in.”

  “It’s our cake, Dad,” Shawn said.

  “Which I’ll believe as soon as you show me the ring on Gus’ finger,” Henry said.

  Gus lifted both hands and waggled his fingers. No rings. “We went into the bakery and Shawn asked for the biggest, best cake they had. And they had this, because someone had ordered it and never picked it up.”

  “Poor Kathleen,” Shawn said. “If only she’d listened to her father. He knew Steve was no-good, that lousy two-timer.”

  Henry could feel the blood vessels under his scalp constricting. His day had been bad enough already without having to deal with his own son’s malfeasance.

  “Even accepting that this ludicrous story is true,” Henry said, “where could you have possibly gotten the money for a cake like this?”

  “They gave us a big discount,” Gus said. “Apparently there isn’t much of a market for used wedding cakes.”

  “I’m sure you’re right,” Henry said. “But you went into the bakery and asked for the biggest, best cake they had. And I want to know where did you get the money for that?”

  Shawn shrugged innocently. “Oh, you know,” he said. “Around.”

  Henry briefly considered his alternatives. He could get the gun out of his safe, but Henry had long felt that if the imposition of discipline required the threat of deadly force, you’d probably lost the moral authority needed for good parenting. He played with the notion of putting Shawn across his knee and waling on him, but deep down Shawn was Henry’s son, and physical punishment would only make him more stubborn.

  No, Henry wasn’t going to get anything out of Shawn. The kid just didn’t seem to have a conscience-at least not an internal conscience. Fortunately, the external model was tiptoeing toward the door, his face still covered with frosting.

  “Gus,” Henry said softly. “Son. Tell me. Where did the money come from?”

  Gus froze. “I’ve got to be getting home now,” he said. “My folks are probably waiting for me.”

  “I’m sure they are, Gus,” Henry said. “Say, why don’t I give you a ride?”

  “Uh, no, thanks, that’s okay,” Gus said.

  “It’s really no problem,” Henry said. “I’ll just run you over to your house. Of course, I should probably walk you to your front door, just to make sure everything’s okay.”

  “Honestly, you don’t have to do that,” Gus said.

  “Really, Dad,” Shawn said, “Gus has walked up his front steps lots of times.”

  “That way I can say hello to your folks,” Henry said. “Lovely people, so proud of their son. I’m sure they’ll be dying to hear how their talented boy made so much money in one day.”

  Gus stared at Shawn, who glared back at him. Then he turned back to Henry. “Shawn did it,” he said. “He was playing spot the lady.”

  “Spot the lady?” Henry said. “That sounds like fun. Do you think I could play?”

  Shawn sighed-caught. “Costs a dollar.”

  Henry reached for his wallet, then pulled his hand away. “I think we should play one round for free.”

  Shawn shot one last glare at Gus. He wiped his hands on his shirttail to get the icing off, then wiped them again on Gus’ shirt to make sure they were clean. Then he dug in his shirt pocket and came out with three playing cards. With great effort he shoved the wedding cake to the edge of the table to clear off a space, then put the three cards down with their faces up. There were two numbered clubs and the queen of hearts.

  “It’s a card game,” Henry exclaimed. “Why don’t you show me how to play.”

  “It’s really easy,” Shawn said. “I shuffle the cards around. You pick out the queen and you win.”

  “My, that does sound easy,” Henry said. “Let’s try.”

  Shawn flipped the cards over and smushed them around on the table. Henry pointed to the card in the middle, and Shawn turned it over. It was the queen.

  “Congratulations, you win,” Shawn said. “Now I’m tired. I think I should go to bed.”

  “Not quite yet,” Henry said. “I want to see you play it for real.”

  “That was for-”

  “For real.”

  Shawn started to move the cards around the table again. This time he moved them quickly and kept up a fast patter. “Okay, find the lady, find the lady, she’s looking for you, only one dollar, be a man.”

  Shawn separated the three cards and stepped back. Henry pointed at the center card. Shawn flipped it over. A club.

  “Sorry, Dad, you lose,” Shawn said. “You can just add the dollar to my allowance.”

  Shawn started to collect the cards, but Henry was faster. His hand slammed down on the table and before Shawn could stop him, he turned over the other two-also clubs.

  “Where’s the queen, Sha
wn?” Henry growled.

  “That’s what you’re supposed to figure out,” Shawn said. “That’s what makes the game fun.”

  “Who taught you how to do this?” Henry said, his voice full of menace.

  “What’s to teach?” Shawn said. “It’s a little game I made up.”

  Henry turned to Gus. “Who?”

  Somehow the icing on Gus’ face seemed to get even whiter. “It was Count Orloff!”

  “Count who?” Henry said. “Is that some comic book character? Do I have to start previewing your reading material?”

  Shawn shot Gus a disgusted look. “You should remember. You’re the one who dragged me to the Fortress of Magic. He was some guy in a cape with a deck of cards.”

  “What did I tell you about talking to strangers?”

  “He was talking to me,” Shawn said. “And you were right there. Even though you did seem to be preoccupied with the lady magician with the big… feathers.”

  Henry fumed. Then he grabbed Shawn’s arm and pulled him to the door.

  “Where are we going?” Shawn said.

  “First, we’re going to find everyone you swindled and give them their money back,” Henry said. “And then we’re going back to the Fortress of Magic. I’ve got a trick or two to teach Count Orloff.”

  Chapter One

  Shawn and Gus were halfway up the hill when the growling started.

  Gus froze. “What was that?”

  “It was nothing.”

  “It definitely was not nothing. It was something. Something with teeth.”

  The growling came again, closer this time. Gus wheeled around, searching for its source. The switch-back path was illuminated by dozens of ankle-high lights; the landscaped hillside on either side was lost in the black of night. Anything could be out there.

  “Let’s go home,” Gus said.

  “We just got here,” Shawn said. “In fact, technically we’re not even here yet. We’re not going to be here until we get to the top of this hill.”

  There was another growl, and this time Gus could tell it was getting closer. Somewhere beyond the reach of the path lights, bushes rustled.

  “I know what that is,” Gus said. “That’s a dog. A vicious, angry, bloodthirsty guard dog.”

  “Why would there be a guard dog out here?”

  “I don’t know,” Gus said. “Maybe to guard the place?”

  “From us? We’re invited guests.”

  “Maybe you can show Fido our invitation before he rips our throats out.”

  “Good thinking.” Shawn pulled a printed card out of his shirt pocket. Across the top, bloodred letters read ONE LAST NIGHT OF LIFE-JOIN THE WAKE AT THE FORTRESS OF MAGIC. Shawn knelt down to read the invitation in the glow of the path lights.

  “Uh-oh,” Shawn said.

  “Uh-oh?” Gus said. “ Uh-oh? What’s that supposed to mean?”

  “It’s a common expression of concern, generally uttered on the discovery of information that presages disaster.”

  “I know what it means,” Gus said.

  “Then why did you ask?”

  There was a snarl from the hill to the left of the path. Gus desperately tried to shift his eyes to night-vision mode, just in case he was actually an android sent from the robot-ruled future to hunt down and kill the future mother of the leader of the human resistance and he’d simply forgotten about that. But his nonbionic eyes refused to illuminate the hillside in a green glow.

  “Because I want to know what disaster you were presaging,” Gus said. “And since when did you start using words like ‘presaging,’ anyway?”

  “I thought ‘augur’ would seem pretentious,” Shawn said. “Am I wrong?”

  There was another growl, this time from the right. “Maybe we can find out when they put it on our grave-stones,” Gus said.

  “In that case, I’d definitely go with ‘augur,’ ” Shawn said. “Those chiselers charge by the letter. In fact, we’d probably want to switch to ‘bode’ and save a couple of bucks.”

  “Shawn!”

  “Okay, there is a small problem.” Shawn handed the invitation to Gus, who struggled to make out the words in the dim light.

  “What? It’s the right date, the right time, the right place. What’s wrong?”

  Shawn tapped the block of type at the bottom of the card. “Did we get anything along with this invitation? A note or a letter?”

  “You know we didn’t. Why?”

  “Funny little thing in small print at the bottom here. Apparently if you wish admittance to the Fortress, you must say the magic words, else all is four feet.”

  “Four feet?”

  “Although I think you can’t really say it’s all four feet. Four feet and fangs, more like.”

  “That doesn’t make any sense at all.” Gus snatched the invitation and squinted to read the tiny print.

  “Neither does siccing a pack of vicious dogs on your guests. Although I’ve been to a couple of parties where it wouldn’t have been a bad idea,” Shawn said.

  The letters danced in front of Gus’ eyes, finally resolving themselves into one recognizable word.

  “Not four feet,” Gus said. “ Forfeit. Else all is forfeit.”

  A growl came from the darkness directly in front of them. Gus moved behind Shawn, just in case.

  “Okay, Mr. Night Vision,” Shawn said. “What are the magic words?”

  Gus desperately scanned every centimeter of the invitation.

  “It doesn’t say.”

  There were growls all around them now. Brush rustled in every direction.

  “Abracadabra!” Gus said loudly.

  “You’re kidding.”

  “It’s a magic word,” Gus said.

  “To a five-year-old.”

  “Do you have a better one?”

  “I know the magic word that opens all doors, rights all wrongs, and grants all favors,” Shawn said.

  “Oh, please.”

  “Exactly!” Shawn pulled himself to his full height, took in a deep breath, and spoke in his deepest, most authoritative voice. “Please.”

  For a moment, there was silence.

  And then the growling started again.

  “That’s funny,” Shawn said. “My father always said that was the magic word.”

  Gus stared out into the darkness. “Shazam! Open Sesame! Alakazam!”

  The growling got closer. Gus tried not to let the images of feral hounds feasting on human flesh completely shut down the logic centers of his brain.

  “Anyway, we should look on the bright side,” Shawn said.

  “We’re about to be mauled to death and possibly eaten unless we come up with a magic word, and you think there’s a bright side?”

  “There’s always a bright side,” Shawn said.

  “And in this case it would be…?”

  “That I was right and you were wrong,” Shawn said.

  “Wrong about what?”

  “You said that growling was a dog.”

  Gus could hear long nails clicking on the pathway below them. “And I was wrong?”

  “Without a doubt,” Shawn said. “That’s at least four dogs.”

  Furious, Gus turned to look at Shawn’s face one last time before he bashed it into butter. But as he tried to catch one last glimpse of that insufferably smug grin, Shawn’s face winked out into darkness.

  “Shawn? Are you there?”

  “I’m here.” Gus could feel Shawn’s breath in his ear.

  “Are you… invisible?” Gus said hopefully.

  “I don’t think so,” Shawn said. “But it’s kind of hard to tell, because all the lights just went out.”

  Gus looked up and down the path. At least he assumed that’s where he was looking. The night was so black, he could have been staring at Jessica Alba modeling Victoria’s Secret and he wouldn’t have known.

  All around them, the dogs started to howl.

  Chapter Two

  There are some mornings when you get out of
bed and you know you’re going to end up being eaten by dogs. For Gus, this hadn’t been one of them. In fact, just hours before, he’d thought this was going to turn out to be one of his best days in ages.

  He’d spent the morning on his other job, driving his route as a salesman for Central Coast Pharmaceuticals, and every stop had been better than the last. The company had introduced a new version of its popular cholesterol drug, and while the pill was different from its predecessor only by virtue of its higher price tag, it came with an entirely new set of pens, notebooks, tote bags, T-shirts, and miscellaneous logo swag to distribute. Which meant that even when he couldn’t get in to see a doctor, every nurse, admissions clerk, and parking attendant acted as if he were their best friend in the world. Gus knew that people were only treating him so well because they were desperately excited to get their hands on a stainless steel commuter mug with ZOMBIA emblazoned across it, but it still made his morning rounds a happy occasion.

  By the time he returned to the Psych office with his Santa bag empty and his samples already speeding their way through the bloodstreams of Santa Barbara’s cardiac-challenged elites, he was thinking it was time to pack it in and head to the beach. Nothing else that happened was going to top his morning.

  But just as he was slipping into a Zombia T-shirt, shorts, and flip-flops-if Gus had not dedicated himself to the art of natty dressing, he could have easily made his entire wardrobe out of logo-encrusted freebies-the office phone rang. Gus picked up on the third ring.

  “Psych Investigations, Burton Guster speaking,” he said jauntily.

  There was silence on the receiver.

  “Psych, this is Gus,” he said, adding a touch of steel to the jaunt, in case this was a prank.

  There was another moment of silence, then a single word, rasped out in a choked whisper: “Help.” And then a click as the connection broke.

  Someone was in trouble. More to the point, someone was in trouble and he-Gus was pretty sure the voice had been male-had turned to Psych for help. This was more than a job; it was a moral duty. He hit the caller ID button.