Psych: A Mind is a Terrible Thing to Read p-1 Page 17

  Shawn staggered backward, as if released by the spirit that had momentarily taken control of him.

  “This is ridiculous,” Galen said. “Do we really have to wait for Steele to expose this phony?”

  “I think you need to translate for these people,” Gus said. “They don’t seem to speak kitten.”

  “Isn’t there one educated person out there?” Shawn peered at the audience. No one volunteered. “Fine. What Fluffy told me was a tale that started with domestic bliss but ended in a fate worse than death. Actually, not worse than death so much as death, which is pretty bad on its own. He was always a happy kitten, content to while away his hours playing with a bit of string or cuddling up in his mistress’ lap. Then one day he slipped through an open door to see what the world outside was like. At first, it seemed like paradise, filled with-”

  “Even if we believed you could talk to dead cats, which we don’t, this is still moronic,” Galen shouted, pushing his way through the sea of knees to march down the aisle to the stage. “He said four meows, two mews, and a raoar. You can’t possibly get all this out of that.”

  “The cat language is very complex,” Shawn said. “If a cat had written the Harry Potter books, he could have gotten through the whole thing in fifteen pages, tops. And he would still have found the space to mention that Dumbledore was gay, if that’s what he meant.”

  “Perhaps you could take an example from your feline friends and minimize your word count now, Mr. Spencer.” Chief Vick looked like she hadn’t warmed up to them much since their last visit to her office. “If you have a point, this would be the time to make it.”

  Shawn gave her a cheery wave and turned back to Galen. “Once Fluffy got out, he was snatched off the street and stuffed into a cage. No matter how much he fought and clawed, he couldn’t get away. The kidnapper wrapped his mouth and paws in duct tape so he couldn’t bite or scratch, then threw him into a ring with a pit bull. He didn’t understand the concept, but he was being used as a bait animal to train the dogs to fight.”

  “That’s terrible,” cried a woman in the audience. “My poodle Baxter disappeared last month. Is it possible that he was…?” She couldn’t bring herself to finish the thought.

  Shawn looked up again, then let his tongue drop out of his mouth. He panted.

  “You’re wasting our time,” Galen shouted. “No one wants to hear this.”

  “Sure they do,” Gus said. “It’s just you who doesn’t. Why is that, do you think?”

  Shawn snapped out of his doggie trance. “Baxter tells much the same story. Although since he’s talking in dog, there are a few more digressions. Apparently dogs don’t really care if their snacks taste like bacon or not. The point is, he was stolen off the street and used to train fighting dogs. Who also didn’t care if he tasted like bacon or not.”

  The woman collapsed into her seat. “Poor Baxter.”

  “Now you’ve upset that poor woman,” Galen said. “I demand you apologize to her right now.”

  “Fluffy and Baxter think you’re the one who should apologize,” Shawn said.

  “Me!”

  “Your kennel was closed down, but that didn’t mean the dog fighters were willing to let you out of your contract,” Shawn said. “You had promised to supply them with a steady stream of bait animals, and they didn’t care where you got them from. I’ll give you credit-you tried to refuse.”

  Gus noticed Galen reflexively cradle his splinted fingers in his free hand. Score one for Shawn.

  “But they made it clear you were going to deliver on your promises, or they were going to use you as their next bait animal. So now you haunt the streets of Santa Barbara by night, stealing the innocent pets who are naive and loving enough to let you get close to them.”

  Arno Galen’s eyes had been getting wider through Shawn’s entire explanation, and now they looked like they were planning to set out and find a new home for themselves. He backed away up the aisle.

  “You’ve got no proof of that,” he shouted.

  “Except the testimony of two eyewitnesses,” Shawn said. “Fluffy and Baxter.”

  Galen turned and ran up the aisle, disappearing through the heavy doors as if they were lace curtains. “Somebody stop that man,” Gus shouted.

  “I don’t think so,” Lassiter said.

  “He killed my Baxter,” sniffed the woman in the audience.

  “All we have to support that is the word of these frauds,” Coules said. “Why don’t we wait until they’ve been exposed and disgraced, and then we can see what we think of their evidence?”

  Baxter’s owner started to object, but Chief Vick turned and spoke soothingly to her. “I pulled in right after that man, and I believe my car is blocking him. So unless he wants to walk back to town, he’s not going anywhere until the press conference is over.”

  “I’d say it’s over,” Shawn said. “Wouldn’t you, Gus?”

  “I can’t imagine what’s left to prove,” Gus said.

  For the first time all morning, Gus was feeling optimistic about the future. The people sitting on the aisles were already gathering up their belongings and putting on their coats. If one or two of them actually walked up to the door, that would be it for the press conference.

  Gus didn’t notice that behind them the golden curtain began to rise slowly.

  “Thank you all for coming, and please remember to drive safely on your way back home,” Gus said.

  There was a massive, unified gasp of shock from the crowd. One elderly woman in the crowd rose to her feet, then collapsed back into her chair. And now Lassiter was pushing through the seated spectators in his aisle, with Vick and O’Hara close behind. Shawn shot a puzzled glance at Gus before turning back to the crowd.

  “People, people, people,” Shawn said, “is it really that big a deal?”

  Lassie pointed behind them. Gus knew he should turn around. Knew he should see what everyone in the audience had already witnessed. All he wanted to do, though, was curl into a ball underneath one of the theater seats and hope that everybody else would go away.

  Since that didn’t look like it was going to happen anytime soon, Gus turned to see what the crowd was staring at.

  Dallas Steele was tied to a chair, his normally bronze complexion drained to an ashy white. A large knife stuck out of his heart. Tara stood over him, her hand still grasping the knife.

  Gus screwed his eyes closed, praying that when he opened them again, this would turn out to be a terrible dream. That worked as well as it always did. Tara was still standing frozen before Steele’s corpse.

  For a moment nobody moved. And then a shriek pierced the stunned silence.

  “Mr. Steele!” It was Shepler, who leaned out of the window in the projection booth. “She killed him!”

  Lassiter and O’Hara pushed past Shawn and Gus to grab Tara. She barely seemed to notice as they spun her around and slapped the cuffs on her wrists and pulled her toward the exit.

  Tara seemed to be completely unaware of her surroundings, or even that she was being arrested. The only thing she noticed as the police pulled her down from the stage was Shawn.

  “That’s the way you wanted it, right?” she said.“Please tell me you’re happy.”

  Lassiter yanked her away from Shawn and dragged her up the aisle. People scattered to get out of her way as she left red footprints up to the door.

  “I haven’t heard your answer yet, Mr. Spencer.” Chief Vick was standing in front of them. “Is this the way you wanted it?”

  Chapter Sixteen

  The interrogation room’s walls were the same bright, happy yellow as the rest of the police station, as if the SBPD’s decorator had decided that the best way to make a suspect talk was to let him think he was back in kindergarten.

  Shawn and Gus had been in the room for two hours now, and there wasn’t a hint of milk and cookies. In fact, there hadn’t been any sign of human life. Every so often Shawn would pop up from the table to make faces in the two-way mirror, ju
st to see if he could get a reaction. If there were people watching, they seemed to be peculiarly immune to the insult of the outstretched tongue.

  “I don’t think they’re paying attention,” Gus said as Shawn tried out a new set of expressions in the mirror.

  “Oh, they’re paying attention,” Shawn said. “They’re in there studying every move we make, listening to every word we say. Searching for a way to break us down and make us talk.”

  “Maybe they could just ask,” Gus said. “I’m ready to talk anytime.”

  “So they’ve broken you already,” Shawn said. “I thought you were made out of sterner stuff.”

  “I’m ready to talk because I don’t have anything to hide,” Gus said.

  Shawn rushed over to him and whispered in his ear, “That’s good, very convincing. Stick with that.”

  “I don’t have to stick with it.” Gus pushed away from the table and walked to the mirror. He rapped on it sharply. “It’s the truth.”

  After a moment, the door swung open, and Lassiter marched in with a bottle of Windex and a roll of paper towels. He took Gus by the shoulders, steered him back to his seat at the table, then sprayed window cleaner on the mirror.

  “Good to see you finally got that promotion you wanted,” Shawn said.

  Lassiter swept away the last of the ammonia streaks with a paper towel. “If you had any idea how much one of these mirrors costs, you might treat it with a little more respect.”

  “Maybe if you treated us with a little more respect, we might treat your toys with a little more respect,” Shawn said.

  Lassiter crumpled the towel and tossed it toward the wastebasket. It bounced off the rim, then dropped straight in. “Let me see,” he said. “You’re drawing a comparison between yourself and this mirror. You’re both shallow. I can see right through both of you. And both of you will crack under the slightest pressure. So yes, I think that does work.”

  Shawn turned to Gus, amazed. “He didn’t just do that.”

  “He did,” Gus said. “He turned your flip comment around and landed it right on you.”

  “Lassie, that’s a first for you,” Shawn said. “And as a fair man, I give you my congratulations.”

  Shawn held out his hand to be shaken. Lassiter gave it a quick glance, but didn’t take it. “Actually, Spencer, I should apologize. It’s one thing for me to crack wise when you’re trying to horn in on my cases and hog all the credit. But you’re in serious trouble now. The district attorney has been in Chief Vick’s office for an hour now trying to determine what he can charge you with.”

  “But we didn’t do anything,” Gus said.

  “That will be determined in a full and fair investigation,” Lassiter said. “I want to assure you right now that if we have reason to believe that you’re actually innocent, then whatever our personal feelings for one another might be, I will work ceaselessly to make sure you go free. And if we find evidence suggesting that you’re guilty, then my own personal feelings will have no impact either way on a full, fair, impartial investigation.”

  Now he did reach out and take Shawn’s hand, which had been stranded in the space between them, and gave it a hearty shake. “Somebody will be back in to see you shortly.”

  He walked out, and the door locked behind him with the loudest click Gus had ever heard.

  “What was that?” Shawn said. “It sounded like Lassie was treating us with respect.”

  “It sure did.”

  Shawn sank down on the table. “How bad is this?”

  Gus couldn’t believe Shawn had to ask.“If they believe Tara, they can charge us as accessories or conspirators. Or just plain murderers. Only it’s not just plain murder, because if it looks like we commissioned Tara to kill Dal, then they’re going to call it special circumstances.”

  To Gus’ horror, Shawn actually seemed to like the sound of that. “I’d hope they’d see the circumstances as special,” he said. “It’s not every day we get accused of murdering someone.”

  “‘Special circumstances’ is what they call it when the crime is so heinous they can ask for the death penalty,” Gus said.

  “They won’t do that,” Shawn said. “They know us. They know we’d never commit murder.”

  “It doesn’t matter if they know us,” Gus said. “Their job is to investigate crimes and judge the evidence, not follow their own prejudices.”

  “Have you ever considered that that’s the reason our solve rate is so much higher than theirs?” Shawn said. “Because I never let the evidence confuse me when I’ve made up my mind for reasons that are completely petty and personal.”

  Gus slumped in his chair, trying not to think of his execution day. Of course the attempt itself sent death row images flooding through his head. He saw his mother weeping behind the glass, his father stubbornly refusing to look at him. Uncle Pete was there, clutching his Bible in his manicured fingers, and little adopted second cousin Daisy, no longer the cross-eyed child with braces he used to tease, but now a long, lanky beautiful reporter for CNN. She’d have written him once while he was on death row, saying how much she had loved him as a child and how she’d never stopped, and how she now regretted all the time they’d wasted without ever getting together. And next to her, weeping softly into a lace handkerchief, was Mariah Carey, expressing her grief by wearing a black peignoir over a matching bra and panty set. Oddly, while Gus’ execution was set some time in the future, she seemed to have stepped right out of the “Vision of Love” video.

  “First of all,” Shawn said, drumming his fingers impatiently on the table, “we are not going to be executed, because we’re not guilty. And more important, if we do get the death penalty, Mariah Carey is not coming to see you die.”

  “You don’t know that,” Gus said. “And I have no idea what you’re talking about anyway. Who said anything about Mariah Carey?”

  “You didn’t have to say anything,” Shawn said. “You were clutching your heart and mouthing the lyrics to ‘Emotions.’”

  “I wouldn’t even be thinking about the needle if you had acted responsibly in the beginning,” Gus said. “I begged you to get rid of Tara.”

  “So you’re saying this is my fault,” Shawn said. “Because if you are, I sure hope you’re enunciating well for all the nice people who are sitting behind that mirror and recording every word.”

  Gus looked back up at the mirror guiltily. “Oh my God,” he said. “We’re turning on each other, just like they want us to.”

  “Technically, it’s just you turning on me at this point,” Shawn said.

  “I’m so sorry. I panicked,” Gus said.

  “It happens,” Shawn said. “Just keep reminding yourself that they can’t touch us, because we haven’t done anything. In America, our justice system doesn’t convict innocent people. In fact, in California our justice system doesn’t even convict guilty ones, as long as they’ve had their faces in the paper a couple of times before they pick up the meat cleaver.”

  The door swung open, and Bert Coules came in, scowling. “That’s very amusing, Mr. Spencer,” he said. “And I’m afraid all too true. OJ. Robert Blake. And of course your own personal favorite, Veronica Mason.”

  “She really was innocent,” Shawn said.

  “Right, because you said so.”

  “Me and the real killer,” Shawn said. “I do seem to recall something like a dramatic courtroom confession.”

  “From a delusional hysteric who fantasized an entire romantic life with the victim,” Coules said, “and who might well have confessed to his murder simply to bring some drama to her pathetic, lonely life.”

  “Veronica Mason is every bit as innocent as we are,” Shawn said.

  “For once we agree on something, Mr. Spencer,” Coules said. His lips stretched across his teeth in a tight approximation of a smile. “Maybe if we talked, we might find a few other areas of agreement. Let’s start with your friend Tara Larison.”

  Coules reached into his briefcase and pulled out
a sheaf of papers. He fanned them out across the table like a winning poker hand. “I have sworn depositions from people who work at three fast-food restaurants, one coffeehouse, a video store, and several other businesses who sold goods or services to Tara Larison. They all say she told them she was doing your bidding.”

  Gus grabbed the documents and leafed through them. They all confirmed what Coules was telling them.

  “She liked doing errands.”

  Coules piled the documents together and slipped them back into his briefcase. “She liked doing errands for you-isn’t that right?”

  “Yes,” Shawn said. “What’s your point?”

  “Why are you asking what his point is?” Gus whispered. “You know what his point it. He’s trying to prove you mentally ordered Tara to kill Dallas Steele.”

  “Right, and you hear how stupid that sounds when you say it out loud?” Shawn whispered back. “Let’s make him say it.”

  “I’m happy to,” Coules said. “I’m trying to prove that Tara Larison was acting under your orders when she committed murder.”

  “That’s not fair,” Shawn said. “We were whispering. Isn’t there some kind of privilege here?”

  Coules snapped his briefcase shut and went toward the door.

  “Wait a minute,” Gus said. “How is this even possible? Dallas Steele has only been dead for a couple of hours. How could you gather all these depositions in that time?”

  “I didn’t collect these depos in relation to the murder of Tara Larison,” Coules said. “I was investigating the murder of John Marichal.”

  Gus knew he’d heard that name somewhere before, but he couldn’t place it.

  Shawn’s memory was sharper. “The guy from the impound yard?”

  “She snapped his neck,” Coules said. “Nearly twisted his head off. And all because he wouldn’t give you back that piece of crap car.”

  “Don’t talk about the Echo that way,” Shawn said. “Gus gets very emotional.”

  Coules just smiled that tight smile again.

  “I don’t think you’re helping,” Gus said to Shawn.