Mind-Altering Murder Page 6

  If you love somebody, set them free. That was how the song went. But there was a bumper sticker that took that thought a step further. If you love somebody, set them free. If they don't come back, hunt them down and kill them.

  Shawn had hunted Gus down. Now it was time for step two.

  Chapter Ten

  Shawn had no idea how long he'd been waiting outside that building before Gus finally came out. All he remembered was a red haze before his eyes that began to dissipate only when he saw his friend come out of the ornate door and turn on his cell phone. That was when he'd decided to make the call.

  Now he stood directly in front of Gus and he still didn't have any idea what he was going to do. He was outraged; he was hurt. But he was still aware enough to realize that he didn't actually have a real cause for complaint. None that wouldn't make him look even more foolish than he already felt, anyway.

  He ran through his vast memory of movie scenes, trying to find a role model. But he didn't have a tabletop laser, so the thought of tying Gus down to one seemed terribly impractical. And while the phrase "this matter is best disposed of from a great height--over water" did have a certain ring to it, Shawn's conspicuous lack of a henchman to say it to robbed it of most of its significance.

  Finally he decided to simply say nothing. Let Gus come up with some lame excuse. Then he'd know which way to go.

  For a long time Gus chose silence, too, which was definitely not helping Shawn's strategy. Finally he broke down.

  "This is not what you think it is," Gus said.

  Shawn stared at him. "That's the best you can do?"

  "It's a classic," Gus said defensively.

  " 'Let's get out of here. This place gives me the creeps' is a classic," Shawn said. "The kind of line that is so perfect for its setting that it sounds fresh and new in any situation, no matter how many times you've heard half-naked teenagers say it before someone sticks a machete through their neck. 'This is not what you think it is' isn't even a cliche. It's a placeholder. Filler. Because the next line has to be 'Then what is it?' And then comes the real excuse."

  "The next line isn't 'Then what is it?' " Gus said. "It's 'What do you think I think it is?' "

  "Okay, then," Shawn said. "What do you think I think it is?"

  "I know what you think it is," Gus said. "You just told me. You think I'm applying for a job with another detective agency."

  "If you already know what I think, why did you ask?" Shawn said.

  Gus stared at him helplessly, which made Shawn feel pretty good for a moment. At least he still had the power to twist Gus into knots of logic. He was pretty sure that if he put on just a little more pressure, he could make Gus' head explode just like one of those movie computers. And maybe that was exactly what he deserved for his betrayal.

  Shawn fixed Gus with a steely gaze. "W-H-Y. Question mark," he said.

  Shawn thought maybe he should duck back behind the corner to miss Gus' brain shrapnel. But the look on Gus' face suggested a level of distress no greater than mild irritation.

  "Really?" Gus said. "Haven't we been through this a million times? If you feed a computer a nonspecific question like Why? it won't explode in an existential crisis after pondering the meaning of suffering in the universe. At best it will respond that it needs more information to process the request. Most likely it won't do anything except sit there until you get tired of waiting and start playing solitaire."

  Gus' brain had apparently been hardened. No doubt he'd known this was coming. "What if I told you that everything I ever said was a lie, including this?" Shawn said.

  "I'd say it was a slight exaggeration," Gus said. "And I'd also say it's pretty harsh for you to be trying to make my brain explode when you're the one who's been following me."

  Now it was Shawn who could feel his head threatening to explode, if only at the unfairness of the accusation. "I only followed you because you were hiding something from me."

  "Maybe that should have been a hint," Gus said. "If I was hiding something from you, maybe it was because I didn't want you to know about it."

  "What kind of person hides things from his best friend?"

  "What kind of best friend doesn't respect his best friend's privacy?" Gus said.

  This was not going at all the way Shawn had thought it would. Gus should have broken down and begged for forgiveness by now. Instead he seemed as angry as Shawn. Now Shawn wasn't sure where to turn. Escalation was always an option, of course, but he wasn't quite sure how to accomplish that without sounding like a jilted lover. He could try being calm and reasonable, but that approach just didn't appeal at the moment. And he'd already tried to blow up Gus' brain. Maybe, he thought, he should have come up with a plan before he confronted Gus.

  But one of Gus' great qualities was his inability to stay mad for long, and the anger was already easing from his face. That old, familiar guilty look was coming on. Which meant that he would be ready to have a civilized conversation about his elaborate betrayal. Better yet, it meant he'd gone soft, and it would be a snap for Shawn to grind him into the sidewalk.

  "Look, I'm really sorry about keeping this from you," Gus said before Shawn could raise his boot heel to start the grinding.

  "You didn't keep anything from me," Shawn said. "I've known about it all the time. All about it all the time, in fact. As if you could hide anything from me."

  Gus didn't look like he'd been ground into anything, let alone the concrete. He didn't even look angry. Shawn studied his face and tried to understand the expression on it. Then he took a step back when he realized it was pity.

  "Of course not," Gus said. "And I should thank you for going along with me on this and pretending you didn't know anything about it until now."

  Shawn's mouth dropped open, but no words came out. Was it possible that Gus was patronizing him?

  "This was always going to be a really hard decision for me," Gus continued, "and it was one I needed to make all by myself. I kind of wish you'd have given me another day alone on this, just so I had all the information I needed, but my mind's pretty much made up by now."

  "So you're going to work for another detective agency?" Shawn said. "What are they offering you that's so great? You've already got the best cases, the best offices, and the best work schedule anyone could ever ask for."

  At least this wiped the look of pity off Gus' face. And while his bones didn't seem to be cracking under Shawn's heel yet, the expression of surprise was slight improvement.

  "Why would I work for another detective agency?" Gus said.

  "That was my question," Shawn said. "You're the one who's supposed to give the answer."

  "I'm not interviewing for a detective job," Gus said. "I'd never leave Psych for another agency."

  Before Shawn could rap the brass nameplate to provide a physical action that would lend a visual underline to his next statement, the heavy door swung open behind Gus and a scrawny punk in dirty khakis and a wrinkled polo grabbed him from behind in a bear hug.

  "You are the man, Burton Guster," the punk said, his ponytail bobbing enthusiastically. "I want you to start work tomorrow."

  Even though Shawn had figured out exactly what was going on, to hear it confirmed like this stabbed him like an ice pick in the heart. "So you'd never leave Psych for another detective agency," Shawn said, then turned to glare at the punk. And he saw. Saw the designer thread count of his khakis through the layer of grime. Saw the full carat twinkling in the stud in his ear. Saw the admissions wristband from Sid's Joint, one of San Francisco's trendiest and most expensive clubs, holding back his ponytail. Saw the folded copy of Pharm Report sticking out of his back pocket.

  And he knew the truth. "This guy isn't a detective," Shawn said. "He's a high-ranking official in a pharmaceuticals company."

  "Hey, that's really impressive," ponytail said, beaming. "How did you know that?"

  "I speak to the spirits." Shawn was about to turn back to Gus, but ponytai
l grabbed his arm.

  "That's really cool," he said. "I want to know more about it."

  "Some other time," Shawn said.

  "Anytime," ponytail said. "Stop by my office whenever you feel like it. I'm Diarmuid Robert Benson, president, CEO and owner of Benson Pharmaceuticals. But to my friends I'm D-Bob, and since you seem to be a friend of my new friend Gus, that makes you my friend, too."

  Shawn pulled away from D-Bob's clutch. "Your friend Gus?" Shawn said. "You always make friends this fast, Diarmuid?"

  "Only when I can offer them a quarter mil a year, plus housing allowance, hiring bonus, and three weeks' paid vacation," Benson said cheerfully.

  Shawn stared at Benson, then turned to Gus. "What's going on here?"

  "I told you," Gus said. "Rutland Armitage isn't a detective agency. It's a headhunting firm."

  "And Gus is the head they've hunted for me," Benson said. "Burton Guster is Benson Pharmaceuticals' new junior vice president of marketing."

  Chapter Eleven

  Carlton Lassiter strode quickly down the marble corridor, forcing Juliet O'Hara to scramble just to keep up with him. It was certainly a change from the way he'd been acting the past couple of weeks. In the month since they'd been called to the scene of Mandy Jansen's death, he'd been dragging his heels every time she wanted to investigate further. Now that they were at Mandy's former workplace, it seemed he couldn't wait to get to their appointment.

  "Our meeting isn't for another fifteen minutes, Carlton," she said, as he sprinted for the elevator and pounded his index finger against the already lit button.

  "We get in early, we get out early," Lassiter said.

  "If Mandy's old boss can see us early," O'Hara said. "And even if that's the case, we're here to get certain information. That's going to take as long as it's going to take."

  "You've got sixteen minutes," Lassiter said as the elevator doors slid open. He stepped into the car and jabbed the DOOR CLOSE button, forcing his partner to leap in before the panels slid shut in front of her.

  "What's the hurry?" she said.

  "It's a little thing called money," Lassiter said. "Maybe it doesn't mean anything to you, but it certainly does to the department. And I don't feel free just to fritter it away."

  "They're paying us the same whether we talk to this guy for five minutes or five hours."

  "It's not our salary I'm worried about," Lassiter said. "It's the parking in this building. Fifteen dollars for twenty minutes? If we're going to arrest anyone in this pit of depravity, it should be the guy who runs the garages."

  "You could have badged the attendant," O'Hara said.

  "As I've mentioned about eight thousand times, we have no jurisdiction in San Francisco," Lassiter said. "Which means we have no right to expect to be treated as if we did. Which would make free parking an illegal emolument."

  "Maybe we could get a validation."

  "And if there actually is a killer and it turns out to be someone at the company?" Lassiter said. "Tell me then how we're not hideously compromised."

  O'Hara flirted briefly with the idea of telling him a lot more than that, but she decided to let it pass. She knew Lassiter had only agreed to this trip because she had begged him. He still believed that Mandy's death was a suicide and saw no reason to investigate further. If he'd stated his opinion firmly to Chief Vick that would have been the end of the case. But instead he gave the chief a passionate argument for keeping it open just a little longer, and even for taking a day trip up north to check out Mandy's former employer.

  That didn't mean he was happy about doing it or that he believed they would find anything up here. But partners stick up for each other, he said. If Juliet hadn't been willing to back down--and he could tell she wasn't--then his only choice was to let her lead or put in for a new partner.

  They'd spent the first part of the drive up the 101 going over the details of the case. Since there were essentially no details, that took them about as far as Solvang; then they'd ridden the remaining ninety percent of the way in silence. That was fine with her. She knew if they'd talked Lassiter would have spent most of the time trying to convince her that Mandy's death had been self-inflicted and that they should close the case. That was a conversation she wasn't eager to have again because she still didn't have a substantive response for him. She couldn't say why she refused to believe that Mandy had killed herself. She just did.

  She knew it wasn't just because, as Lassiter had hinted several times, she was identifying with the victim. It was true that the sight of a twenty-eight-year-old woman hanging by the neck in her cheerleader's outfit had an immediate emotional resonance with anyone who'd ever called the Rebel Yell or the Tiger Roar or the Duck Quack. You couldn't help but think of that time you were at your lowest ebb, fired from a job or dumped in a relationship or just lost in your life, and you put on the colors "just to see if they still fit."

  But she knew there was more to it than that. She wasn't projecting her own psyche onto a suicide victim. She was too good a cop for that. Something about the crime scene was making her crazy. So far she'd just seen little things that didn't make sense for an imminent suicide: a prescription for her mother she'd arranged to pick up the day after her death, a book on caring for ill relatives she'd requested from the library's interbranch loan.

  There had to be something bigger. She just couldn't identify it. Whatever it was, it had registered somewhere in the back of her mind and she hadn't been able to bring it forward yet. Usually if she took a quick walk or a long shower she could turn off enough of her conscious brain to allow the subconscious to seep through. But she'd walked and showered and showered and walked and still she was no closer to the solution. She'd hoped the hours in the car, staring out at the scenery, might coax the clue out of hiding, but by the time they cruised past old Candlestick Park and into the city there was still nothing.

  That was why this interview with Mandy's supervisor was so important. If she couldn't find a lead here she'd have to admit there really was no case. She was not going to cut it short, no matter if the parking threatened to cost more than the unmarked Crown Vic was worth.

  The digital readout on the elevator's control panel flipped to 34 and the car decelerated suddenly. The doors slid open and they stepped out into open space. At least that was what it looked like. The vast lobby was nearly empty, a black slate floor running uninterrupted the entire length and width of the building, so that whichever direction you looked you saw nothing but floor-to-ceiling windows.

  Or almost nothing, anyway. A football field's length away from the elevators the slate rose to form some kind of large shelf, and behind that a wide spiral staircase led up to what Juliet assumed was the thirty-fifth floor. As they walked toward the eruption they saw a pair of tanned legs coming down the stairs, and by the time they were halfway there the legs had been joined by a torso and finally a head. The body parts belonged to an athletic young blond woman in a dress so short a professional tennis player might think twice about wearing it at Wimbledon. She seated herself behind the shelf and gave them a gleaming smile as they approached.

  "May I help you?" she said.

  "We have an appointment with Sam Masterson," O'Hara said.

  The blond woman's smile faltered. "May I ask what this is about?"

  "You can, but it won't do you any good," Lassiter said. "Take it from someone who's been asking for weeks."

  "I'm Detective Juliet O'Hara with the Santa Barbara Police Department," she said. "This is my partner, Detective Lassiter. We scheduled this appointment with Mr. Masterson to talk about one of his former employees, Mandy Jansen."

  "In that case, you'd better follow me," the blond woman said. "I'm Chanterelle, by the way."

  "That's a pretty name," O'Hara said.

  "It's a mushroom," Lassiter said.

  "It's a pretty mushroom," Chanterelle said.

  The woman named for a fungus got up from behind the desk and started up the spi
ral staircase. O'Hara looked up to see where they were going and found herself wondering why any woman who knew she'd be going up and down steep stairs all day would wear such a short dress, unless she was hoping to save money on visits to her gynecologist. Staring straight ahead she followed the sound of the receptionist's footsteps until both of her own feet were on level floor. Then she looked around.

  They stood in a much smaller lobby, which was only the size of the entire Santa Barbara police station. Corridors led off in either direction and they were dotted with doors spaced far enough apart that Juliet was certain the offices behind them must be enormous.

  Chanterelle waited until Lassiter had stepped up next to O'Hara--his sense of chivalry had kept him from mounting the first stair until the hem of the receptionist's dress had disappeared through the hole in the ceiling--and then pointed to a double door. "I'm going to put you in conference room B."

  "Are you going to put this Masterson in there with us?" Lassiter said. "Because we'd prefer not to bankrupt our city government."

  The receptionist smiled broadly, apparently choosing to ignore whatever she couldn't understand, and walked to the double doors. She gave a gentle knock on one of them and then threw it open.

  As Chanterelle headed back down to her station, O'Hara led Lassiter to the door. Inside, the room seemed to stretch the length of the building and it contained a polished granite table that ran from one end to the other. Enough leather chairs were clustered around it to seat a joint session of Congress. All the way at the far end of the table Juliet could make out the form of a man.

  "Mr. Masterson?" Juliet said, hoping she could make her voice carry over such a distance without shouting.

  "Please come in," the man said. His voice was muffled by the distance, but Juliet thought there was something familiar about it.