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.
Nothing came up. The number was blocked.
That might have been a problem for a civilian, Gus knew, but he was a private detective, the nonpsychic half of Santa Barbara’s premier psychic detective agency. Better than that, he was a self-taught private detective, so he wasn’t burdened with the by-the-book thinking of your average private detective school graduate—that is, if there were private detective schools and if they used books. The point was, Gus was a man of action. He tensed up his entire body, took a deep breath, and pounded his index finger against the buttons marked star, six, and nine.
An electronic siren screeched out through the phone. Apparently, call return was blocked as well. This was going to be harder than he thought. But hard was what Gus was all about.
Gus’ first thought was to call a friend on the force and get him to run a trace on the number the way the classic dicks of yore would have done. But since neither Shawn nor Gus had ever gotten around to saving the life of a future police detective in the jungles of ’Nam, thus earning his undying loyalty, there weren’t a lot of cops who would donate their morning to the agency.
Fortunately, Gus didn’t need police help to track this number. He could use his own mastery of technology. Snatching the receiver back up, Gus punched in the three numbers that would summon aid directly from the phone company. As soon as he heard the click of the connection, he let them know what he needed them to do.
“This is Burton Guster from Psych Investigations, and this is an—”
A soothing female voice interrupted him. “Para ayuda en español, oprima el numero dos,” she said.
Before Gus could respond, there was a loud beep on the line. He knew the sound. There was another call coming in. He hit the TALK button.
“Psych, talk to me,” Gus said.
“Please, please help.” It was the same raspy whisper, but it sounded even more desperate this time. “He’s going to—” A loud click cut the connection.
“No!” Gus wasn’t going to lose this man again. He slammed his finger against the TALK button, praying that the phone company representative was still on the line. “I need to have that call traced, right now.”
“Please listen carefully, as our menu choices have changed,” a chipper man intoned on the line. “For repairs, say ‘repairs.’ For billing, say ‘billing.’ ”
“This is a matter of life and death,” Gus said.
“I’m sorry, I don’t recognize that option,” the voice said. “For account status, say ‘account status.’ For—”
“Help!”
“Okay,” the voice said.
Gus breathed a sigh of relief. He could hear circuits switching as his crucial call was sent to a specialist.
“For help with your account status, say ‘account status,’ ” the voice said. “For help with repairs, say ‘re pairs.’ For help—”
Gus slammed down the receiver. There was no time to waste with a phone company computer. He had to help. The fact that he didn’t know whom he was helping, what he was helping him with, or where the help was needed wasn’t going to stop him. He punched in a series of numbers that would send any calls directly to his cell phone and grabbed his car keys. At least he’d be out stalking the mean streets when the next call came, and he could swoop down wherever he had to be.
He was just heading toward the door when it swung open and Shawn ambled into the office, bou
ncing a small, hard rubber ball.
“Where have you been?” Gus demanded.
“In this time of technological miracles, it’s easy to think that everything has been invented,” Shawn said as he tossed the ball against the far wall. It flew back into his hand. “And then some fresh genius comes up with something brilliant like Extreme Handball.”
Shawn took careful aim and hurled the ball across the room. It bounced off the floor and ricocheted into a framed picture of Gus shaking hands with Santa Barbara’s mayor, then flew back to Shawn in a shower of glass.
“We’ve got to go right now,” Gus said, grabbing Shawn as he came through the door and pushing him back out.
“No hurry,” Shawn said. “The quarterfinals don’t start for another hour.”
“We have a case,” Gus said. “High priority. Completely urgent.”
“It can wait,” Shawn said. “Headhunter Hank is going down today.”
“Headhunter who?”
Shawn stared at him as if he’d just said he couldn’t name all the Goonies. “He’s only the reigning champ of Extreme Handball in all of Santa Barbara. And I’m playing him next. Do you know what this means?”
“That you’re going to miss your game,” Gus said. “This is life and death.”
“You think Extreme Handball isn’t?” Shawn said, hurling the ball against the wall, where it dislodged three pictures and a clock before returning to his hand. “It’s a desperate struggle between two men, an existential battle on a concrete court. Kill or be killed. And by killed, I mean these things really sting when they hit. Headhunter Hank Stenberg is going to feel like he’s the guest of honor at a jellyfish convention by the time I’m done with him.”
“Headhunter Hank can—” Gus broke off, finally recognizing the name. “Hank Stenberg? You’re going to play against Hank Stenberg?”
“Someone’s got to take that killer down.”
“You mean the kid who lives down the street from your dad? I doubt he’s even twelve years old.”
“That’s what they said about all those Chinese gymnasts, and they still walked off with the medals,” Shawn said.
“We have work to do,” Gus said.
“That’s for sure,” Shawn agreed. “My serve is strong, but there are a couple of moves I haven’t quite mastered yet. I was thinking we could head down to the handball courts and I could try them out on you.”
“We are not going to the handball courts.”
Shawn glanced around the office. “I guess we could do it here, but it’s going to be dangerous with all this broken glass lying around.”
“We are not going to the handball courts because we have a case,” Gus said. “It might be the biggest, most exciting case we’ve ever had.”
That got Shawn’s attention. He stopped bouncing the ball. “The biggest?”
“It might be,” Gus said.
“Got it,” Shawn said. “Who died?”
“No one, if we can get there fast enough.”
“Get where?”
The phone rang once. Then Gus’ cell started ringing as the call forwarding kicked in. “There.”
Shawn snatched the cell out of Gus’ hand and hit the SPEAKER button. “Psych Investigations,” he said.
“Help, he’s killing me,” the rasp whispered harshly. But not quite as harshly, or as whispery, as it had before. There was a hint of tone, a smidgen of voice—not a lot, but enough for Gus to realize he knew the speaker from somewhere.
Shawn stared at the phone. And then spoke one syllable that chilled Gus to his liver.
“Dad?”
Chapter Three
The drive from the Psych offices usually took fifteen minutes, twice that at rush hour. But Gus kept his foot jammed down on the gas, blasting through stop signs and red lights, screaming around traffic, and violating every precept of the state vehicle code that didn’t involve the transportation of livestock. In the passenger seat, Shawn desperately dialed and redialed his father’s number, but every call went direct to voice his father’s number, but every call went direct to voice mail.
As he hurtled past a bus full of nuns on their way to a local convent, Gus cursed himself. How could he have failed to recognize Henry Spencer’s voice? He’d heard it almost every day of his life since he was in single digits. He knew it as well as his own voice—better, actually, since he always covered his ears and hummed loudly whenever he was forced to listen to a recording of himself.
Logically he knew that part of the fault was Henry’s. If he’d only identified himself, or even just engaged a little more of his vocal cords, there’s no way that Gus wouldn’t already have been there to help him. But that only made Gus worry more. Henry had been a cop for decades. He knew better than anyone how important it was to identify yourself clearly in an emergency. That meant there was only one reason he didn’t—because he couldn’t. Whatever danger he was facing, it was bigger than anything Gus could imagine.
Gus took his eyes off the road for one second to sneak a glance at Shawn. His best friend was ashen faced as he listened to his father’s voice on the outgoing message.
“Shawn, I’m so sorry,” Gus said for what must have been the hundredth time.
Shawn shook his head tightly. No need for apologies. He knew how much Gus cared about Henry.
Gus yanked the wheel hard and felt the Echo rise up on two wheels as it screamed around a corner. The car slammed back down on all fours and Gus jammed the gas pedal even harder. He could see Henry’s house straight ahead.
Two more seconds and they were out front. The Echo screamed to the curb and Shawn and Gus leapt out, tearing up the walkway to the front door. Shawn twisted the knob. It was locked.
“Stand back,” Shawn said, raising his leg to kick the door in.
“Hey, I just painted that!”
Gus and Shawn wheeled around to see a man emerging from the garage. It took Gus a moment to realize that this was indeed Henry Spencer, because he’d spent the last eight minutes visualizing him covered in blood, his ears and hands cut off, and set on fire. The fact that he was dry, intact, and completely unflamed simply didn’t make sense.
“Dad?” Shawn’s face seemed to be torn between relief and disbelief.
“We got here as fast as we could,” Gus said.
Henry checked his watch. “Did that include a stop for doughnuts along the way?” he said. “Because if it didn’t, eight minutes is pretty pathetic.”
He walked past them to a corner of the house where red paint was beginning to peel after simmering through another summer of Santa Barbara sun.
“You said it was an emergency,” Shawn said.
“Good thing it wasn’t,” Henry said as he pulled a paint scraper out of his back pocket. “Three phone calls before you guys figured out who I was? I could have been murdered a dozen times over.”
“The day’s still young,” Shawn said, relief turning to anger.
“Wait a minute,” Gus said. “This was all some kind of test?”
“Not exactly,” Henry said. “I do need help.”
“You want us to scrape the paint off your house, you call like a normal human being and ask politely,” Shawn said. “That’s the way human beings do it.”
“If I called and asked you politely to scrape the paint off my house, you’d invent some ludicrous excuse for not coming over immediately, promise to drop by in a couple of days, and then I wouldn’t hear from you until the rainy season started,” Henry said.
“Exactly,” Shawn said. “That’s the way human beings do it.” He turned and headed back toward the Echo. “Come on, Gus.”
Gus was frozen, if only by the desire to find exactly the right parting shot for Henry. Finally he realized there was nothing he could say that would sum up everything he was feeling. He gave Henry a look he hoped would convey a bevy of emotions, then turned and followed Shawn.
“Okay, hold on,” Henry called after them. “I’m sorry if I scared you two little girls.”
“Way to apologize, Dad,” Shawn called over his shoulder.
“But I really do need your help,” Henry said. “And it doesn’t involve scraping paint, and it is kind of an emergency.”
“What kind of emergency?” Shawn said.
“The kind that’s best discussed over pizza,” Henry said. “Fortunately, Giuseppe’s took a lot less time to get here than you guys.”
By the time the three of them had finished two large pies, a family-size chopped salad, and a side of buffalo wings, Gus found his anger had been drowned in a sea of carbohydrates. That’s when Henry consented to discuss the nature of his crisis.
“It’s about Bud Flanek,” Henry said.
“What is that, some kind of skin disease?” Shawn said. “Because if you’re hoping I’m going to donate my flesh to you, I’m still using it.”
“Bud Flanek,” Henry said irritably. “You remember him. He was on my bowling team years back. Tall guy, one shoulder lower than the other, always wore bib overalls.”
“Let me guess,” Shawn said. “He’s been accused of a crime against fashion, and you want me to get him off. Sorry, Dad, I don’t think I can help.”
Gus admired the way Shawn could continue to hold his grudge even when he was stuffed with pizza, because he couldn’t fight against the warm feelings his digestive system was sending through his body.
“Is your friend in trouble?” Gus asked.
“In ways he can’t begin to imagine,” Henry said.“He’s about to get married for the first time at sixty-two.”
Shawn stifled a bored yawn. “And you want us to investigate his fiancée and prove that she’s actually some floozy who’s going to steal all his money and break his heart.”
“Why would I want that?” Henry said. “I think it’s great that Bud’s finally found someone who makes him happy. And she hardly needs his sewer department pension. She manages a very profitable bakery in Summerland. Not bad for a recent immigrant from Eastern Europe.”
“Then what do you need us for?” Shawn said. “Or did you drag us up here just to make us listen to the joyous news about one guy I barely remember marrying some woman I’ve never met? Because if that’s what’s going to make your life worthwhile, you should start a blog, and then you can bore complete strangers, too.”
Psych: Mind Over Magic Page 2