Psych: Mind Over Magic

by William Rabkin

  “Only in Bugs Bunny cartoons,” Sturges said.

  “And, judging from all your years of skilled, bomb professional experience, are we now in the middle of anything resembling a Bugs Bunny cartoon?” Shawn asked.

  “Only one of us is,” Lassiter snapped, then cast an accusatory glance at Gus. “Maybe two, if you count Tweety Bird over here.”

  “Lassie, I’m trying to—”

  Lassiter cut Shawn off with a wave of the hand. “Interfere with an ongoing police operation. Now, get out of the way.” Lassiter turned back to Sturges. “Go ahead, send in the robot.”

  Shawn tried to object, but Lassiter walked away. Shawn studied the scene, then nudged Gus hard. “You heard the man.”

  “I heard the man,” Gus said, “but that doesn’t mean he was talking to me.”

  “Of course he was,” Shawn said. “When they write the history of Santa Barbara, you’ll go down as the city’s finest semiprofessional robo-mime.”

  “They have written the history of Santa Barbara,” Gus said. “In fact, they’ve written many histories of Santa Barbara. And not one of those voluminous texts has included or ever will include a single word about the short-lived trend of robo-miming, or any of its practitioners, myself included.”

  Shawn glanced at the bomb squad truck and saw a metal box on miniature tank treads rolling down a metal ramp that extended from the open rear doors.

  “Fine,” Shawn said. “If we fail to solve this case, I only hope that Benny Fleck never learns it was because you were unwilling to do something you once did to impress girls or pick up spare change to feed your comic book addiction. ‘Sorry, Benny,’ I’ll have to explain, ‘we thought your case was fairly intriguing, but ultimately not quite as important as Deathlok the Destroyer, number fifty-seven.’ I’m sure he’ll understand.”

  Gus glared at him. “You wouldn’t.”

  “I’m sworn to tell the truth to my client, especially when it serves my purposes,” Shawn said. “And right now, my purposes are to keep Lassie from destroying his own crime scene.”

  “You mean your crime scene,” Gus said.

  “I like to think of it as our crime scene,” Shawn said. “Now robo.”

  Gus sighed, then tightened his face into an impassive mask. He straightened his posture, stiffened his joints, and glided through two mechanical steps before freezing in place. He turned his head exactly ninety degrees to survey the area, then eased it back into starting position. He might have allowed himself a moment of self-congratulation at his ability to snap into robot mode after twenty years without a moment’s practice, but the discipline of the act required keeping his mind entirely blank.

  Gus swiveled on the balls of his feet, then started toward the front door of the Cape Cod, his arms moving mechanically with every step.

  “What the hell is he doing?” Lassiter snapped.

  “You said you wanted to send in a robot,” Shawn said. “Gus does the best robot in Santa Barbara. It’s in all the history books.”

  “I mean a real robot,” Lassiter said. “That thing.”

  The metal box was all the way out of the bomb squad truck now, and a flock of technicians were huddled around it, flipping switches, checking readouts, and tightening the treads.

  “What’s the point of sending in a robot with no personality at all?” Shawn said. “With no heart and no soul, just a mindless box that beeps and boops and rolls around? Don’t you realize that real robots look like Haley Joel Osment and yearn endlessly through the centuries for the adoptive mothers who casually toss them away when they have real children? Would this metal cube be content to sit at the bottom of the ocean, dreaming of Mom while eternity ticks away?”

  “Eternity is ticking away,” Lassiter snapped. “Every time I talk to you. And where is he going now?”

  “More importantly,” Shawn said, moving to block Lassiter’s view of Gus, “what the heck were those alien things doing at the end? I thought I’d fallen asleep and another movie had started while I was napping.”

  Lassiter shoved Shawn aside. “Guster, stop!”

  Gus was robo-walking across the street toward the Cape Cod’s door, head swiveling and forearms rising and falling with every shuffling step. He’d always liked robo-miming, but he’d forgotten just how satisfying it could be to transform himself into a mechanical device, to feel the weight of two imagined C batteries nestled in the small of his back, to know only the sensations of the servo motor. He was so caught up in his robotic self that he didn’t notice the detective shouting at him. He’d stopped caring that he was walking toward a crime scene, or even that there might be a live bomb inside the house he was approaching.

  “Come back, Gus!” Detective O’Hara shouted.

  Gus kept shuffling forward.

  “Get him back here!” Lassiter commanded Shawn.

  “But that’s within the crime scene perimeter,” Shawn said. “Civilians aren’t allowed, not even those who frequently do excellent work in collaboration with the Santa Barbara Police Department.”

  Robo-Gus hit the first of three low steps with the tip of his shoe, then shuffled back a couple of inches. He stopped, swiveled his head back and forth, then moved forward again. This time when he reached the stairs, he stopped, lifted his knee until his thigh was parallel with the ground, then placed his foot on the first step.

  “Stop him now!” Lassiter yelled.

  “Yes, sir,” Shawn said, and ran across the sidewalk to join Gus, who was walking in place, his chest pressed against the front door. “It’s okay; you can stop aerobosizing.”

  Gus took a couple of seconds to wind down, shaking the life back into his joints. “What are we doing here, Shawn?”

  “Blowing this case wide open,” Shawn said. He reached for the door handle.

  “Stop!” Gus hissed. “You may be blowing us wide open. Or up.”

  “Only if there’s a bomb inside.” Shawn grabbed the doorknob, gave it a sharp twist, and pushed the door open.

  Chapter Twenty-One

  As they closed the door behind them, Gus and Shawn could hear the shouts from the police outside—and another, more ominous sound.police

  “Something’s ticking,” Gus said. “It’s the bomb.”

  “It’s a grandfather clock,” Shawn said, walking toward the timepiece in question, which was the only thing moving in the dusty living room. “But even if it was a bomb, I wouldn’t be too worried.”

  “Because being blown up is such a lovely way to spend an afternoon?”

  Shawn came back to the entry hall and grabbed Gus’ arm, pulling him into the living room. “Because the first one didn’t seem to have any effect at all.”

  Gus gazed around the sparsely furnished parlor. The couch was old and beginning to sag in the middle; the upholstery on the arms of the two big chairs was worn down almost to threads. The wallpaper had begun to peel off at the corners. The room was tacky, dated, and unappealing, but the one thing it definitely wasn’t was exploded.

  “You heard what Major Voges said,” Gus said. “They set off a small bomb to lure the first responders in, and then get them with a bigger one. We’ve been lured.”

  Shawn sighed heavily and disappeared through a door. After a moment, Gus heard him cry out.

  “What is it?” Gus called, dreading the answer.

  “Come here, quickly,” Shawn said. “We don’t have a lot of time.”

  “You found a timer, didn’t you?” Gus froze in place. What does it feel like to be blown up? he wondered. Is it painful? And if it is, do you feel the pain in all the various pieces scattered around the room? Or is there more of a central agony? “Is it counting down in big red numbers? Do we have less than a minute left? Because I’ve got a lot of life to flash back on before I die, and I’m not sure a minute will be enough.”

  “There’s no timer,” Shawn said. “Now get in here.”

  Gus didn’t want to. He wanted to turn around and tiptoe to the front door. After all, if they were both blown
up, who would come to visit Shawn’s grave every day for the next eighty years? He owed it to Shawn to leave, to stay alive to pay him the homage he was due.

  “Gus!” Shawn called. “Now!”

  Fine, Gus thought. If that’s the way he wants it, let his grave go unvisited. Gus walked slowly to the doorway Shawn had disappeared through, and found himself in a long corridor. Shawn was at the other end of it, waving at him. As Gus followed, Shawn retreated into a room. When Gus reached it, he found himself in what must have been Balustrade’s den, a wood-paneled box furnished with a worn leather couch and a television that could almost certainly receive color broadcasts.

  Shawn was in the middle of the room, and he was leaning over something that didn’t look like any bomb Gus had ever seen.

  As he got closer, Gus could see that it was the tuxedo-clad body of the magician who’d slipped the card into his sock at the Fortress of Magic. He was sprawled out on his stomach, the crowbar that had been used to shatter his skull still lying beside his head.

  “Is he dead?” Gus asked as he got closer.

  Shawn didn’t bother to answer, and as Gus moved into the room, he could see that it was a foolish question. Gus gestured down at the crowbar. “How hard would you have to hit someone with that to kill him?”

  “Not so hard it would sound like an explosion to anyone except the guy getting hit,” Shawn said. He was staring down at the dead man’s hands. Even in death, his fingers were immaculate. Except for the ring finger on his right hand. There was something dark underneath the nail.

  “Car keys,” Shawn said, and Gus handed them over without even thinking. Shawn used one key to pry under the dead man’s fingernail and eased out a thick piece of rubber, so dark green it was almost black.

  “What’s that?” Gus asked.

  “More to the point, what’s this?” He used the key to pry open the magician’s left hand, which was locked into a fist. Inside, he was clutching an old clicker-style TV remote.

  “I think that’s what they used to change channels back when they had only three of them,” Gus said.

  “Not much of a weapon, though,” Shawn said.

  “Good point,” Gus said. “That’s probably why he’s dead and the guy with the crowbar isn’t.”

  “No, think about it,” Shawn said. “You’re about to die; there’s nothing you can do about it. Why would you pick up the TV remote as your last act?”

  “So no one would find out you were watching The Mentalist?” Gus said. “I mean, really, who could believe a show with such an idiotic concept?”

  “To send a message.”

  Gus stared down at the remote in the dead man’s hand. “And that message is what—I’d rather die than go on watching this show?”

  “Exactly,” Shawn said.

  Shawn was about to pick up the control when they heard the front door bang open. “Police!” Lassiter yelled from the entry. “Come out with your hands up!”

  “I’m in the shower,” Shawn called back. “Can you just slip it under the door?”

  Gus probably didn’t hear Lassiter’s muttered curse, but he knew so precisely what that curse would have been, he might as well have. After a moment, Lassiter and O’Hara burst through the door into the den.

  “What kind of twisted game of Russian roulette are you two playing?” Lassiter said. “Don’t you realize you could both have been killed?”

  “Apparently we missed our chance.” Shawn pointed down at the magician on the floor. “He beat us to it.”

  “Step away from the body, Shawn,” O’Hara said. “I’m going to call this in.”

  “You can do that if you want to,” Shawn said. “But there really isn’t much point. I’ve just solved this entire case.”

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Gus gripped the bars with both hands and bellowed down the prison corridor. “Let us out!”

  “Yes, that’s certainly going to work.” Shawn was stretched out on the hard metal bunk, hands laced behind his head. “You’ve got to wonder why in the entire history of incarceration, no one ever thought of asking to be let out before.”

  Gus wheeled on him, furious. “This is all your fault.”

  Shawn yawned. “I’m not the one who robo-walked right into a crime scene. Therefore, it wasn’t me who interfered with said crime scene.”

  “I only did it because you told me to,” Gus sputtered.

  “Getting us both into trouble,” Shawn said. “Really, if you’d start using a little independent judgment, we’d be better off.”

  Gus looked around the cell for a weapon, but there was nothing that wasn’t bolted to the ground or screwed into the wall.

  “We weren’t arrested for interfering with a crime scene,” Gus said, falling back on the only weapon available to him, his words. “The charge was obstruction of justice.”

  “What does that mean, anyway?” Shawn said.

  “It means that you claimed you knew the identity of Balustrade’s killer, but when Lassiter asked who it was, you wouldn’t tell him,” Gus said.

  “I merely said that he needed to supply me with a few basic items and assemble a small group of suspects within the next twenty-four hours and I would explain it all,” Shawn said. “That’s hardly obstructing justice. More like delaying it.”

  “Why didn’t you just tell him?” Gus demanded. “That way we’d be free, Benny Fleck would pay us, and we could think about something other than the fact that in a couple of hours I’m going to have to go to the bathroom and there are no doors here.”

  “If it meant that much to you, you could have told Lassiter who did it,” Shawn said.

  “I would have,” Gus said, “only I don’t know who that is. Because you wouldn’t tell me.”

  “Damn right,” Shawn said. “Not if you’re going to blab it all over the place.”

  At the far end of the corridor, a heavy metal door swung open with a creak. Gus heard sturdy, sensible pumps clacking on the concrete.

  “Let me out!” Gus shouted. “Let me out and I promise to testify against Shawn!”

  Santa Barbara Police Chief Karen Vick stepped up to the cell and gazed at Gus with the same calm, cool gaze she always had for them. And as always, her calm and her coolness made Gus stop worrying about whatever had been making him nervous and made him start worrying about what she might be thinking.

  “I’d be careful about making that offer too loudly,” Chief Vick said. “There are some members of this force who would be only too happy to take you up on it.”

  Shawn hopped off the bunk. “Fortunately, you’re not one of them.”

  “Fortunately, I’m not one of them yet,” Chief Vick said. “But my patience isn’t infinite.”

  “I don’t see why,” Shawn said. “It’s not like your bathroom doesn’t have doors.”

  Gus had long marveled at the way Chief Vick seemed completely unaffected by even the most non sequitursiest of Shawn’s non sequiturs. This time was no exception.

  “I am prepared to release the two of you,” she said. “Before I do, I need to ask you a few questions. First, do you know who killed August Balustrade?”

  “We do,” Shawn said.

  Gus was about to object that they most certainly did not, but Shawn silenced him with a look.

  “Do you know what happened to P’tol P’kah?”

  “We do,” Shawn said.

  “We do?” Gus said. “I mean, of course we do.”

  “Do you plan to explain this to the Santa Barbara Police Department at any time in the near future?”

  “A great magician never reveals his secrets,” Shawn said. Gus kicked him in the shin. “But he’s happy to reveal someone else’s. So yes, all will be explained.”

  “When?”

  “Tonight,” Shawn said. “At the Fortress of Magic.”

  “Of course,” Chief Vick sighed. “I suppose you have a list of people you want us to bring there.”

  “Funny you should mention that,” Shawn said, pulling a piece
of paper out of his shirt pocket. “By the way, the booking officer should have taken this away from me. I could have used it to pick the lock, dig through the concrete, tunnel five hundred miles, and end up in Mexico.”

  Chief Vick eyed the list dubiously. “That might have made more sense than what you’ve got here. And what’s this?” she said, flipping the paper over to reveal a second list.

  “Just a few things we’ll need before the big show,” Shawn said.

  “A digital video camera, a quart of bourbon, police reports from the night of the disappearance, a twenty-two-ounce steak with onion rings,” she read.

  “You can forget that last one,” Shawn said. “That was only if we were ordering our last meal.”

  She glanced down the rest of the list. “I’ll see what I can do about these. Anything else?”

  “I’d asked Lassiter to have some tests run on a tank of air,” Shawn said. “Has he had a chance to do that, or has he been too busy arresting people who are trying to solve his case for him?”

  “Detective Lassiter is a man of his word,” the chief said, a touch of frost in her voice. “If he says he’ll do something, he will do it. Especially if it will help bring a criminal to justice.”

  “So?” Shawn said. “Results?”

  “It was air, Mr. Spencer,” Chief Vick said. “Just plain old air. Nothing remotely Martian about it.”

  Gus watched Shawn carefully, looking for any trace of disappointment. But if Shawn was hoping for proof of interplanetary involvement before tonight’s denouement, he wasn’t displaying the letdown.

  “Is that all, Mr. Spencer?” the chief asked.

  “One more thing,” Shawn said. “Pull your guard off the door at the Fortress of Magic.”

  “I’m happy to put my man back on the streets,” Chief Vick said. “But it’s not going to do you much good if the government agents are still there.”