The Call of the Mild Read online

  “Multiple?” Gus asked. “Who died besides Ellen Svaco?”

  “Me,” Shawn said. “Because when I tell my dad that I volunteered him to work a case with Lassie and this idiot, he is going to kill me.”

  Chapter Twelve

  Henry Spencer raised the sticks high above his head. And waited. He’d torn the sleeves out of his sweatshirt to give his arms complete freedom, and tied a bandanna around his forehead to keep the sweat out of his eyes, and pulled on jeans that hadn’t fit in ten years because—well, he wasn’t quite sure why they’d told him to do that. But this was the moment he’d been dreaming of for weeks, the instant he’d rehearsed in his head time after time. Around him, the three others waited, poised just like him, waiting for the computerized keyboard to finish its preprogrammed run. Then they’d all kick in.

  Henry Spencer had never wanted to be a rock star. He’d never yearned to be onstage with a Stratocaster between his legs and thousands of fans screaming at his every move. He’d never learned to pick out the opening notes of “Stairway to Heaven” on the display model in the guitar store or stood in front of his mirror practicing the front-footed stance unique to rock gods and Jack Kirby superheroes.

  In his teens, in fact, Henry was almost completely oblivious to music. While his high school buddies were rocking around the clock or shaking their money maker or getting their groove thang on, Henry was doing his homework or attending practice for whichever sport was in season. He was vaguely aware that there were such things as radios, and that they tended to blare out their noise wherever he happened to be, but none of it made any more impression on him than the sound of traffic in the distance.

  It wasn’t that Henry disliked music. It was just that it was a distraction, and Henry never had time for anything that would take him away from his chosen path.

  At least until that path reached its end.

  Although Henry liked to think of himself as the same driven man he’d been before he retired, his mind and body were beginning to rebel against the decades of discipline. He told himself that it was important he continue to rise every morning at five seventeen, but his physical self knew there was no actual reason to wake before the sun, and his hand had started to hit the snooze before his training could stop it. When he set out for a quick six-mile jog, his legs began to suggest it might be nicer to stroll before they’d hit the halfway mark.

  Henry was mature enough to expect the physical changes age was inevitably bringing, but the mental ones were a continual shock. And none was more shocking than what happened the day he was cruising the manager’s specials at the Food Giant looking for a discounted steak that was still hours away from its expiration.

  He noticed the song playing over the sound system.

  Except that he didn’t just notice it. He recognizedit. Recognized that it was called “Me and You and a Dog Named Boo” and that it concerned a young man who traveled across the country in an old car, without any destination in mind. Henry tried to tell himself that he must have noticed the song in his teens because its philosophy of aimless wandering annoyed him so much, but that didn’t explain why he had just caught himself humming the tune. And it didn’t explain why his foot was tapping under his shopping cart, or why he suddenly knew that the song’s singer would end up in Los Angeles only to feel that restless urge to hit the road again.

  Even though the minutes were counting down until his manager’s special steak would expire, Henry stayed in the aisle until the song ended and the next one began. To his shock, he realized he knew this song, too. Even though the lyrics made no logical sense, Henry was now aware that he’d long felt great sympathy for a balloon seller named Levon whose only sin was the sincere desire to be a good man.

  This was an astonishing discovery for Henry, and he prowled the aisles for an hour, filling his cart with enough groceries to keep him through Christmas as he allowed the sound system to ferry song after song from the depths of his subconscious to the front of his brain.

  That shopping trip sent Henry on a six-month odyssey through the annals of pop history. He worked thoroughly and methodically, just as he had when he was investigating murders for the Santa Barbara Police Department. He started by Googling pop charts for the years he was in high school—years, his half hour of scientific research assured him, when pop music has its greatest impact on the human mind—and then plugged those titles into the search box of the iTunes store, playing the free thirty-second sample of each song. If he found he knew the next word after the snippet ended, he’d shell out the ninety-nine cents for the whole thing. By the end of the first week, his computer was bulging with pop hits of the sixties and seventies. He bought himself a tiny iPod and took it along on his runs, and discovered that the pleasure of the music convinced his legs to keep moving.

  As his quest went on, Henry found himself moving away from top-40 singles. Apparently the radios blaring in the background of his youth went in for album cuts as well. And this is where his life changed.

  The album was called Who’s Next,and he had downloaded it because he recognized a song about what it’s like to live without ever being truly understood—didn’t this exactly match what he’d felt in his teens? If he’d just bought the single he might have listened to it a few times and moved on to “Dark Water” or “Joy to the World.” But he was doing albums now, so he hit the song that followed “Behind Blue Eyes.”

  There was no chance that the teenage Henry Spencer would have put up with “Won’t Get Fooled Again.” An anthem blasting all authority as corrupt was simply not something he would have been ready to accept as he dreamed of a life in blue.

  But as an adult, Henry was secure enough in his beliefs that he didn’t need to engage a thirty-five-year-old pop song in a political argument. He was caught immediately by the opening guitar chord’s transition into that hypnotic synthesizer riff, and then the crash as the bass, guitar, and drums all kicked in at once. He knew this song. He’d heard it over and over and over again, and somehow he’d never noticed it until this very moment.

  It wasn’t until the time counter hit the seven-and-a-half-minute mark that Henry realized he was in trouble. He’d been listening while he was washing the dinner dishes, shuffling his feet roughly in rhythm with the tune, when the guitar, bass, drums, and vocal all dropped out again, leaving only that hypnotic, repeating synth line. Henry was scrubbing a plate when Keith Moon’s drums kicked in.

  The plate hit the surface of the water and sent suds flying as Henry’s hands pounded along with the drums. Before he knew what he was doing, he had air-drummed the end of the song.

  Henry wheeled around to make sure no one was watching him, although he knew he was alone in the house. What was he doing? He took a deep breath, turned back to the dishes, and vowed never to let this happen again.

  But it did. And not just with The Who. If he didn’t keep strict control at all times, his hands would start banging out the rhythms of almost any song. And when he came across Phil Collins’ “In the Air Tonight,” he knew that no amount of self-control would keep him from drumming the break.

  It didn’t take Henry long to understand what was happening: His hands were living the adolescence he’d never allowed them in his youth. And the only way to stop them would be to quit music. Go back to his sound-track-free existence, marching only to the beat of his own internal metronome.

  He could do it. He knew he still had the strength. But as soon as he realized that, he understood something else: He didn’t want to. He liked the tunes that filled the empty spaces in his head.

  As a lifelong soldier in the fight between chaos and order, Henry knew the most important rule of battle: Either you fight with everything you’ve got, or you surrender. Anything in between does nothing but cause harm to everyone involved.

  So Henry surrendered to adolescence. Not permanently, of course, and not in ways that anyone would ever know about. He decided to take one great plunge into a second childhood, knowing that he would climb out feeling
refreshed and rejuvenated, and never needing to do it again.

  He signed up for a Rock and Roll Fantasy Camp. He’d spend five days in the hills outside Ojai learning to drum from the masters. Not Keith Moon, of course, or John Bonham—drummers, it appeared, tended to have shorter shelf lives than the manager’s specials at Food King. But there were plenty of aging stars who would teach him. And when it was all done, he’d have it out of his system, and no one would ever have to know.

  In any other context he probably would have felt nothing but pity for his fellow campers, all middle-age men grasping to retrieve a tiny bit of their youth. But this week wasn’t about judgment; it was about living out a fantasy he’d never even known he had. So for today, Ralph the Lawyer and Fred the Developer and Sid the Dentist were actually Pete and Rog and the Ox. And Henry—for this one shining moment, Henry was Keith Moon.

  The doodling synthesizer beats were accelerating. Ralph was warming up his shoulder for the windmilling guitar chords. Fred was swirling his long blond hair—or the long blond hair that existed in his mind, anyway. Sid clutched the fretboard of his bass as if it were about to blast out of his hands.

  And Henry was ready. Sticks poised, waiting to slam down on the shining-white drum heads. He’d practiced the solo in his head for months, and now it was almost time.

  He raised the drumsticks high over his head. He could feel the rhythm rising in his blood. The moment was now.

  And then there was silence.

  The synthesizer stopped just before it reached its crescendo. The musicians all looked up, confused, like shuttle astronauts whose liftoff had been aborted without warning.

  Henry glanced over at the side of the stage. At the skinny young man who was bending over the synthesizer. Please, no, he prayed, although he knew this one was never going to come true. Please don’t let it be him.

  Shawn flipped one last switch and turned to face the band.

  “I’m sorry,” he said. “Were you guys listening to that?”

  Chapter Thirteen

  The cabins at the Rock and Roll Fantasy Camp were small and Spartan; the campers’ fees went to paying the guest instructors, or at least their coke dealers, therapists, and exwives, and not for luxurious accommodation. This didn’t bother Henry when he checked in. The cabin was plenty big enough for one.

  But now it held Henry, Shawn, and Gus, along with Henry’s fury and his embarrassment, and it was feeling mighty cramped. Shawn’s throat was too close to Henry’s hands to be certain they wouldn’t attempt revenge for their thwarted celebration. Henry almost regretted ripping the sleeves out of that sweatshirt; right now unlimited freedom for his arms seemed to be an invitation to filicide.

  Fortunately Shawn had made that difficult by spreading himself over Henry’s single bed. Gus was still an available target, having wedged himself into a corner between a dresser and the cabin’s sole window, but there was no more point in blaming Gus than there had been at any point in his lifelong friendship with Shawn. Gus was a passenger.

  “I’m going to ask you one more time,” Henry said, trying to keep his voice as calm as possible. “What exactly are you doing here?”

  “I’ve decided I haven’t embarrassed myself and my family enough in life, and thought this was a great way to look like a total tool,” Shawn said. “Oh, no, wait. That’s you.”

  Henry’s hands clenched into fists. With great mental effort, he forced them to relax. “Have you considered I might be here to investigate a case for a friend?”

  “I’m sure you are,” Shawn said. “The case of the missing youth. Or is it the mystery of the lost hair?”

  “I realize this is terribly unpleasant for you,” Henry said. “If only there was some way you could have avoided it. You know, like by staying away.”

  “How could I, when you were practically blasting out press releases across the country?”

  “I didn’t tell anyone about this,” Henry said.

  “You told MasterCard,” Shawn said.

  “What did you do?” Henry said, his anger rising even further. “Hack into my credit card account?”

  “Shawn wanted me to,” Gus said. “But I told him no. There are layers of security, traps for hackers who try to break in. I heard of one guy in Michigan who thought he could get into—” He saw the look on Henry’s face and stopped himself. “Besides, I said. That would be wrong.”

  “Not to mention illegal,” Shawn said. “So we broke into your house and found your last bill. You really do need to use that shredder.”

  “I can think of a use for it right now,” Henry said.

  “Anyway,” Shawn said, “we’ve come here to save you money and embarrassment.”

  “That will be a first,” Henry said.

  “Technically it will be two firsts,” Gus said.

  “Which is what makes this such an exciting opportunity for you,” Shawn said. “We’re here to give you a chance to relive your glory days. And I mean your real glory days, not the song. Which is not only the worst song on Born in the USA, but the worst song Springsteen ever wrote, and possibly the worst song ever written by anyone in the world besides Diane Warren—”

  “Hey,” Gus interrupted, “I warned you about ragging on ‘Unbreak My Heart.’ ”

  Shawn ignored him. “—and which I’m sure the Hairless Four, or whatever your band calls itself, is going to do next.”

  “The only glory days I’m thinking about are those wonderful ones when I was childless,” Henry said.

  “I mean the days when you were important,” Shawn said.

  “When you still had a purpose in life and didn’t have to dress up like Jennifer Beals in Flashdance just to make it through another dismal day. I’m offering you a case.”

  Henry stared at his son. For all his questionable tactics, Shawn was smart. He knew how to get people to do what he wanted. And if Henry could generally see through him, at least he usually sounded like he was offering him something he’d genuinely desire. This time, not so much.

  “You want to hire me to work for Psych?” Henry said. “Do you think I’m starving in a gutter?”

  “If you were, you’d probably be dressed better,” Shawn said, then hurried to the meat of his offer before Henry could respond. “The Santa Barbara Police Department wants you back.”

  Henry was happy being retired. Henry was happy not having to deal with the bureaucracy, and the lowlifes, and the long hours behind a desk, and the longer hours out in the field. Henry didn’t want to go back to work.

  At least that’s what he told himself. But there was a part of him, deep down, maybe even deeper down than the place where all those songs were hiding all those years, that was jumping for joy at the offer. There was just one small problem.

  “And they sent you because all their phones are broken and they’ve forgotten how to drive?” Henry said.

  “It’s not really an official SBPD case,” Shawn said. “Well, it is, but the Isla Vista Foot Patrol doesn’t agree, and they’re ready to rumble to fight for their turf.”

  Now Henry was completely lost. Shawn saw the confusion on his face and launched into an explanation that, after many false starts and corrections from Gus, finally approximated what had happened over the previous day.

  “So you volunteered me to help you out on this one,” Henry said. “Without asking.”

  “I’m asking now,” Shawn said.

  “No, you’re not,” Henry said. “You’re doing everything but asking. You’re trying to trick me into doing what you want instead of honestly asking for my help.”

  “Would that help?” Shawn asked.

  “What?”

  “Honesty,” Shawn said. “Sincerity. Heart.”

  “I don’t know,” Henry said. “Since you’ve never actually tried anything that radical before, it’s hard to say what would happen if you did. But I can guarantee that nothing else is going to work.”

  Shawn nodded thoughtfully as he took this in. Then he turned away from Henry and fac
ed the wall. When he turned back, the trademark smirk was gone from his face. He stared at his father with deep, grave eyes.

  “Ellen Svaco came to Psych for help,” Shawn said. “I didn’t realize the kind of trouble she was in. If I had, she might still be alive. I can’t do anything about that, but at least I can help catch her killer.”

  Henry thought about this. “I’ll help,” he said. “On one condition.”

  “I’m not going to sit in for you on the great rock and roll swindle,” Shawn said. “But I will troll the retirement homes for your replacement if that will make you feel better about breaking up the band.”

  “It’s not that,” Henry said, “and it’s not negotiable.”

  “Everything’s negotiable,” Shawn said.

  “Not this,” Henry said. “If I’m on this case, you’re off it.”

  Chapter Fourteen

  Shawn stared at his father as if he hadn’t heard him correctly. “You do understand that this is my case.”

  “I understand that it was,” Henry said. “Now you’ve got to ask yourself what’s more important: that this woman’s murderer be brought to justice, or that you’re the one who does it.”

  “How about this,” Shawn said, thinking quickly. “I’ll stay on the case, but Gus will promise not to be involved.”

  “Hey!” Gus protested from his corner.

  “Like you weren’t looking for a way to get on this without me,” Shawn said.

  “Only so I could work as a mole, passing you information from the inside,” Gus said.

  “Which is why I wasn’t going to let Gus in, either,” Henry said. “This case is too dangerous.”

  This was so outrageous that Shawn bolted up from the bed. And while he didn’t necessarily mean to thrust his face right into his father’s, the cramped quarters of the cabin meant that some portion of his anatomy had to be pressed up against Henry, so he made necessity his accomplice.