A Fatal Frame of Mind Page 12

  A figure stepped into the beam of the Echo’s headlights. At first all Gus could make out was the doublebarreled shotgun pointed directly at them. But once that had registered, he was able to make out some of the details of the man carrying it. And he wished he hadn’t.

  The shotgun’s owner seemed to be no more than four feet tall. But Gus realized that was only because he was so hunched over from the hump on his back. His face was as gnarled and twisted as his body, with a jagged scar that started at his hairline and zigged across his face, taking out his left eye.

  “Would have been much better if you’d thought of it before,” the hunchback said. “Could have saved me some shells that way.”

  Chapter Twenty-four

  This shouldn’t be so hard.

  After all, this wouldn’t be the first time Lassiter had asked Shawn and Gus for help. When he’d been framed for murdering a suspect in his cell and suspended during the investigation, the Psych boys had stepped in and found the real killer. And when Lassiter’s surrogate father, the sheriff of old Sonora, had been in trouble, he hadn’t hesitated to ask them to assess and correct the situation.

  But this was different. Shawn and Gus had seen him at the lowest point in his career, probably his life. They had seen him helpless, humiliated, held hostage at knifepoint. And not by some meth-crazed biker with arms like sewer pipes, but by a professor of art history. Granted, the professor was the size and shape of a grizzly bear, but that was no excuse. Now he was contemplating crawling to them for help.

  Lassiter let his department Impala idle while he struggled to decide whether he should turn the corner and pull up to the Psych headquarters. At least Chief Vick had let him keep the car pending the official Internal Affairs review.

  But the car was all she’d left him. When he returned from his rap session with that hippie quack, Chief Vick had already gotten a report from her. Of course it was a pack of nonsense. Detective Lassiter is uncooperative, it said. He refuses to acknowledge the seriousness of the incident or the emotional impact it’s had on him. Some level of denial is to be expected in this sort of situation, but Detective Lassiter’s unwillingness even to begin to process his reaction to the event is so total it tends toward the psychotic. And on and on.

  In other words, a load of hogwash. Clearly this was a woman who hated strong men. She couldn’t stand the thought that some people didn’t allow themselves to be ruled by their emotions like little children. And she refused to let herself believe that he could have gone through that ordeal and come out stronger for it. In her world, people who had a bad experience had to curl up and weep for a month just to get over it. If she accepted the fact that he had emerged psychologically unscathed, it would destroy her entire worldview. She’d need to close down her practice and take up a career she was better suited for, like teaching kindergarten or serving at soup kitchens.

  But Chief Vick didn’t see it that way. At least she couldn’t admit she did. Lassiter knew that the chief saw the world the same way he did—the same way any good cop would. She must have wanted to burst out in peals of derisive laughter when that quack tried to insist there was something bad about the fact that he wouldn’t give in to his emotions.

  But Karen Vick hadn’t gotten to be chief without understanding how the system worked. And she must have had some kind of inside knowledge about McCormack’s ties to the upper echelons of the city’s bureaucracy. No matter what her personal feelings about this psychiatric witch hunt might be, she knew she had to pretend to take the shrink seriously. If McCormack demanded that Vick place her lead detective on suspension until she signed off on his mental health, the chief would understand that this battle needed to be fought on another level. Because while it wasn’t true that you can’t fight city hall, you had to be smart to do it well. She would surrender this battle to win the war.

  That’s why he didn’t argue when the chief asked for his badge and gun. Well, he didn’t argue much. Definitely not more than half an hour. And the instant she informed him that he would be fired on the spot if he didn’t hand them over and accept his suspension immediately, he did as she asked. It was all a bit of departmental kabuki. He’d fought for his rights, and she could say she had brought the full power of her office to bear on the recalcitrant detective.

  The last words she’d said to him as he left the police station were to get help, get better, and come back quickly. And that’s why he was coming to Psych.

  Surely, this must have been what she meant when she told him to get help. For some reason, Chief Vick had a bizarre faith in Shawn Spencer’s abilities; when there was a problem she thought (inevitably mistakenly) that the police couldn’t solve on their own, she reached out to the Psych boys. Where else would she have wanted him to go?

  But it wasn’t easy for him. Asking for any kind of assistance came hard to Lassiter men. His grandfather had settled in Santa Barbara only because he’d gotten lost on the road from Boston to Chicago and refused to ask for directions. And begging for help from a couple of guys with a work ethic that would get them fired from a comic book store was particularly painful. He longed to slam the car into drive and head out to search for Kitteredge on his own.

  Instead, as he always did when faced with a difficult decision, he made a mental list of pros and cons.

  The negative list was filling up fast. To start with, there was nothing Shawn and Gus could do that would clear his name. He hadn’t been framed this time; he had allowed himself to be taken hostage inside his own police station. There wasn’t a bizarre set of circumstances that needed to be exposed; tragically, everything had been visible to the world all along. And since the Psych boys had been present to see his humiliation, there was a strong possibility that they’d simply start laughing the instant he walked through their door.

  He knew he could keep filling up the cons all day long—or all night long, since the sun was sinking quickly into the ocean. There were so many ways in which Lassiter had been humiliated, and there were a thousand variations still to be played out. Anything he did now would just make it all worse. Best to turn the car around, drive home, and stay in bed until the official investigation was over.

  Especially since the list in the other column was so damn short. One item. Six words.

  I’m going to get that bastard.

  It was that simple: Lassiter wanted him. Wanted to see him behind bars, where he belonged. He wanted to be the man who put him there. And he knew Chief Vick wanted the same thing. Why else would she have sent him here?

  That was that, then. He was going to do it. Before he could second-guess himself, he put the car into drive, flipped on the turn indicator, and pulled around the corner and up to the bungalow that served as Psych’s headquarters.

  But before he turned off the ignition he saw that something was wrong. The bungalow’s lights were all ablaze, and its front door was partially open. And it clearly hadn’t been opened by its owner. The glass half of the door had been smashed in.

  Lassiter reached instinctively for his gun and cursed when he remembered that it was locked in the chief’s desk. How was he supposed to roust evildoers if he was unarmed? What had Chief Vick been thinking?

  He didn’t have a gun and he didn’t have a badge, but Lassiter still had the two most important tools in his crime-fighting skill set—his intelligence and his training. And what they were telling him was that this was his moment. He couldn’t guarantee that Kitteredge was inside the bungalow. He was unable to swear that the professor had come back to finish off two of the witnesses to his crime spree. But he could make an educated assumption. And his intelligence and training would back him up.

  Silently opening the car door, Lassiter crept to the front of the bungalow and positioned himself at the side of the doorway. He listened intently, and after a moment he heard a rustle from inside.

  That was Kitteredge. It had to be. All Lassiter had to do was step through this door and take him down. It would all be over.

  Except that it
wouldn’t, he realized. He was pretty sure he could take down the man-bear in a fair fight, but what then? Without his badge, he had no power to make an arrest. And what he wanted more than anything was to see Kitteredge back in the custody of the Santa Barbara Police Department. If Lassiter launched an attack at him without the authority of the shield, he might actually aid in the professor’s defense once some commie lawyer started screaming about brutality.

  Lassiter wanted his man, but even more he wanted to see him taken down the right way. He couldn’t do this on his own. He pulled out his cell phone and punched in the first number on his auto-dial. He didn’t know how many friends he had on the force right now, but he was certain that no matter what had happened his partner would still be loyal to him.

  Inside the bungalow, someone started singing. For a moment Lassiter wondered why Kitteredge would take this moment to belt out the chorus to “Billy, Don’t Be a Hero.” As soon as the thought crossed his mind he realized that the voice didn’t belong to the professor but to Bo Donaldson. And he knew why Bo was singing.

  It was his special ring tone on Juliet O’Hara’s phone.

  The song stopped, and Lassiter heard O’Hara’s voice in his ear. “Carlton?”

  “I’m at the door, Detective,” Lassiter said and disconnected the call.

  He moved in front of the open door as she emerged from the bungalow’s back room, holstering her phone, her gun in her other hand.

  “What are you doing here, Carlton?” O’Hara said as she reached the doorway. “If the chief knew . . .”

  “The chief sent me here,” he said.

  She gave him a confused look. “You’ve been reinstated?”

  “Not officially,” Lassiter said. “But Chief Vick must have known my help would be appreciated. I’m only sorry I got here too late.”

  O’Hara studied him carefully, trying to decide if the truth he was telling matched up to objective reality. “Too late for what?”

  “To protect Spencer and Guster.” He pointed at the shattered glass where Kitteredge had clearly broken in. “I’d guess that the mad professor came after them. They thought they’d be safe if they locked the door and cowered in the back, but he smashed his way in and took them hostage. Or is it worse than that?” He tried to peer over her shoulder. “Did he leave their battered bodies bleeding in the back room?”

  O’Hara’s face hardened and she stepped up to block his view. “Kitteredge didn’t break in, Carlton,” she said.

  “Then who did?” he said.

  “I did,” she said. “With the authority of a court order signed by Judge Haskin.”

  Lassiter tried to make sense of what she was telling him. But none of the pieces fit together. “Why?”

  “Because Shawn and Gus were seen helping Langston Kitteredge escape,” O’Hara said. “They’re wanted for aiding and abetting a fugitive, as well as being the chief suspects in the theft of The Defence of Guenevere from the museum. And every police officer in Southern California is looking for them.”

  Chapter Twenty-five

  “Ahunchback?” Shawn whispered furiously to Gus.

  “We’re about to be gunned down by a homicidal hunchback in a mysterious valley? When did we turn into the Hardy Boys?”

  “We’re not the Hardy Boys,” Gus said, wishing his last words might be something more inspiring to future generations.

  “You’re right,” Shawn said. “The Hardy Boys had a couple of chums. All we’ve got is him.”

  Gus reflexively glanced over at the him in question. But Professor Kitteredge wasn’t on the ground where Gus had set him. He was on his feet, walking toward the armed man with his hands raised high.

  “Not a step further,” the hunchback growled.

  “Not even a box step?” Kitteredge said. He stopped walking forward and demonstrated the move. “How about a grapevine? It certainly seems appropriate here.”

  Gus covered his eyes and waited for the rain of Professor Kitteredge’s body parts that would follow the inevitable gunshot. But when no sound came, he peeled his hands away from his face.

  The hunchback had lowered the shotgun. And while Gus would not claim an ability to read expressions on that twisted face, he thought he saw something like a smile there.

  “Professor Kitteredge?” he said, taking a step forward through the headlight beams.

  “It’s me, Malko,” the professor said. “Now let’s see a couple of those moves.”

  To Gus’ astonishment, the hunchback held his gun up like a dance partner and with surprising grace executed a perfect box step. “Haven’t forgotten a thing you taught me,” he said when he finished.

  “A dancing hunchback,” Shawn said. “We’re leaving the Hardy Boys and joining up with Mel Brooks.”

  “Malko, let me introduce you to a couple of friends,” Kitteredge said, turning back toward the car. “Gus, Shawn, come over here.”

  Shawn and Gus exchanged a look, then stepped away from the car and toward the other two. Kitteredge waved them closer. Malko narrowed his one good eye and stared at them.

  “Are these the two that helped you get away from the police?” he said. “When I heard they were last seen wearing tuxedoes, I thought the reporters were joking.”

  Gus felt his heart pounding. So the cops were after them now. He couldn’t be surprised. He knew it would happen sooner or later. But he’d hoped that they would have time to find the real killer before they actually became wanted fugitives.

  “We’ve been on the news?” Kitteredge said.

  “You are the news,” Malko said. “We were expecting you. Come.”

  Malko turned and started to walk away. Kitteredge followed.

  “Wait a minute,” Shawn said loudly. “You were expecting us?”

  Malko stopped and glared back at him. “Yes.”

  “You shot at us,” Shawn said.

  Malko shook his head wearily. “Yes.”

  “What would you have done if you hadn’t been expecting us?” Shawn said.

  “Aimed better.” Malko started to walk again.

  “What do we do now?” Gus said.

  “We know what’s behind the curtain,” Shawn said. “A long, dark walk back to Buellton, where half the police in the state will be looking for us. So we might as well go with what’s in the box. And hope.”

  “Hope for what?” Gus said.

  Up ahead, Malko and Kitteredge were about to disappear out of the range of the headlights.

  “Hope that whatever is in the box isn’t us.”

  Chapter Twenty-six

  If Malko had led them to a hidden Chamokomee tee-pee village where all ten thousand tribe members had been hiding for three hundred years, Gus wouldn’t have been surprised. At this point in the evening he was willing to accept anything as long as it didn’t start firing shotguns at him again.

  But the hunchback merely led them to a battered golf cart filled with gardening equipment. He threw the tools on the ground and told the three guests to get in. Then he took off at what felt like fifty miles an hour until they reached a high stone wall. He turned the cart and followed the wall.

  Gus wanted to ask Malko where he was taking them, but the hunchback’s attention was totally focused on Kitteredge, who was involved in a lengthy disquisition on the etymology of the word “foxtrot”—it was, apparently, commonly believed to be named after the vaudeville performer Harry Fox, but Kitteredge had come across a document suggesting that an earlier practitioner had actually coined the name for what he saw as vulpine movements—and when Gus tried to interrupt, Malko simply ignored him.

  “There is no way this is going to end well,” Shawn said.

  “Since when are you so concerned about our safety?” Gus said.

  “Being shot at does that to me,” Shawn said. “I’m funny that way.”

  “We’ve been shot at before and you’ve never complained,” Gus said.

  “There’s a good reason for that,” Shawn said.

  “What’s that?”r />
  “Those were cases I chose,” Shawn said. “And I would never get us killed.”

  Until this moment, Gus had been filled with competing feelings. He was hungry, he was tired, he was in pain where his bruises from the car’s rough stop were being jostled by the golf cart’s rougher ride, and he was scared that he was going to spend the rest of his life in jail or shot down like Warren Beatty at the end of Bonnie and Clyde. But now all those emotions were swept from his mind by a tidal wave of self-righteous anger.

  “I knew it!” Gus said. “You’ve been a complete pain all day. Complaining about the kind of stuff you do all the time.”

  “I haven’t been complaining,” Shawn said. “I’ve been observing.”

  “You observe with your eyes, not your mouth,” Gus said.

  “That’s right,” Shawn said. “What I do with my mouth is eat. And thanks to you, we haven’t been able to do that, either.”

  Gus started to respond, then snapped his mouth shut. There was no point in taking this conversation any further. Shawn had been sulking ever since Gus told him they weren’t going to the C.Thomas Howell Film Festival. But it wasn’t because he’d missed his chance to see The Thirst: Blood War on the big screen. It was because Gus had taken the lead on this case, and Shawn couldn’t stand taking second position to anyone, even his partner and best friend.

  Gus and Shawn rode in silence as the cart made its way along the wall. Finally, after what felt like hours but was probably less than two minutes, they reached an opening and turned onto a flagstoned driveway into a courtyard.

  At least Gus assumed it was a courtyard, although the night was so dark he couldn’t see the building that enclosed it. But as the cart stopped, strings of overhead lights flickered on, bathing the area in a warm yellow glow.

  It was as if they had been transported to Tuscany. Rough stone walls broken by shuttered windows loomed above them, the harshness of the building materials softened by blooming wisteria vines that drooped from every surface.