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

by William Rabkin

  “And what is that?”

  Shawn thought. “I have no idea.”

  “Maybe you should think a little harder about the people you take advantage of.”

  “Gus, I do not take advantage of you. I treasure your friendship and your partnership. You know it’s true. Everything I do I do it for you.”

  “I’m not talking about me,” Gus said. “And I’ve told you never to quote Bryan Adams at me. I’m talking about Tara.”

  “Where is she, anyway?” Shawn said. “We sent her out for lunch ages ago.”

  “That’s exactly what I’m talking about,” Gus said.

  “You think that I’m taking advantage of her?”

  Gus did. And he’d been saying so for days. After she had driven them back from Eagle’s View, Shawn once again told her that he was freeing her from all psychic control. But instead of leaving, she just kept idling in front of their office. When the owner of the tanning parlor next door complained about the exhaust fumes, Shawn invited Tara into their office and tried again to send her away. Again, she seemed incapable of understanding. Short of calling the police and having her hauled away, there seemed to be no way to get rid of her. So Shawn started assigning her errands that would keep her out of the office. At first, it was only to give Gus and him privacy to talk about their cases and their investment strategy. But as the days went on, Shawn started to discover how convenient it was to have someone whose only desire in life was to do all the things he didn’t want to do.

  “Last week she did your laundry, cleaned your office, and brought you four meals every day.”

  “The woman has a void where her life goals are supposed to be. She’s decided to fill that gaping black hole by anticipating and fulfilling my every need. It’s not that I really want her to do all these things for me. In fact, I find it extremely draining. But it’s what she needs, so I’m willing to sacrifice my own desires for her health and well-being. It’s like Major Nelson and Jeannie, except Jeannie’s outfits weren’t quite as revealing.” Shawn looked down at his watch. “How long does it take to get a medium-rare cheeseburger?”

  “Since you sent her to Oxnard to get it-”

  “There you go again. I didn’t send her. She instinctively knew that I preferred the Oxnard BurgerZone to any of the closer branches.”

  “And the fact that you mentioned this to me in front of her didn’t have anything to do with her intuition?”

  Shawn sighed heavily. “She thinks she’s taking psychic orders from me. If she gets them wrong, she’s going to start doubting the very fabric of her existence.”

  “Yes,” Gus said. “She might even start to act on her own initiative, instead of waiting to figure out the smallest thing you might want.”

  “So you’re saying that if I were to leave these prospectuses and DVDs scattered all over the floor, knowing that as soon as she comes in with our lunch she’ll pick them up, that would be taking advantage of her?”

  “Of course it would.”

  Shawn stared down at the mess on the floor.

  “And that would be wrong?”

  “Obviously.”

  “So if there’s something I’d like her to do for me and she’d like to do for me, if I let her do it for me, that’s wrong.”

  “You’re not going to pick up this mess, are you?” Gus said.

  “I’m still working on the morality of the issue.”

  “I knew it.” Gus bent down and started to pile all the prospectuses together.

  Shawn watched him curiously. “Okay, here’s my question: If I let you pick this stuff up before she has a chance to, am I taking advantage of you? Or am I still taking advantage of her, because you’re only doing this to protect her from my evil ways?”

  Gus dumped the files back in the box and jammed the top over it. “All I’m saying is that Tara is a sweet, sad, delusional girl who’s just lost her beloved aunt Enid and is looking for some purpose in her life. And she’s never going to find it as long as she can convince herself that taking the pickles off your cheeseburgers is what she was put on Earth to do.”

  “She wouldn’t have to if you could ever get a burger without them,” Shawn said. “Even if you ask specially, it’s like they’re incapable of hearing it.”

  Gus was back on his knees, gathering the DVDs into stacks. “This isn’t about pickles.”

  “You’d be surprised how much turns out to be, in the end, about pickles.”

  “Shawn!”

  Shawn picked up one of the stacks of discs and carried it over to a shelf. There were several empty slots where the DVDs had come from. Gus had spent two full days organizing their collection. Shawn glanced back to make sure Gus wasn’t looking, then pushed the discs together and slid the new stack in at the end.

  “I guess you’re right,” Shawn said, “even if I don’t understand how giving her what she wants is wrong. But what can I do about it?”

  “To start with, you can put those discs back in the right order,” Gus said. “And then you can have a nice, quiet conversation with her in which you graciously thank her for everything she’s done for you and explain it’s time for her to leave.”

  “Haven’t I done that about fifty times?”

  “And then tell her you’re going to have her arrested if you ever see her again.”

  “That sounds kind of cruel.”

  “Of course it’s cruel,” Gus said. “You’re going to have to break her heart. But it’s for her good and it’s for our good. And I think we both know that nothing else is going to work.”

  The bell over the door rang, and Tara came in carrying white take-out bags. She was dressed in red, as always, but she’d traded the minidress for a pair of tiny shorts and a T-shirt so tight that Gus could see the order in which the cells of her lungs gave up their allotment of oxygen.

  “Sorry it took so long,” Tara said. “That guy did the pickle thing again, and I figured it was worth a little extra time to make sure he didn’t do it again.”

  “That was thoughtful of you,” Shawn said, “although it’s hard to believe you’d have to say anything twice to any man who saw you in that outfit.”

  She blushed happily at the compliment. “I don’t think that’s going to be a problem in the future,” she said.

  Gus cleared his throat. “Did you hear that?” he said significantly to Shawn. “Tara says it’s not going to be a problem in the future.”

  “Are you expecting that she should somehow do something about the problem in the past? Because that would risk bringing up the whole time-travel paradox thing. We start out trying to change the pickle count on a cheeseburger, and before we know it, I’ve killed my own grandfather, the Nazis won World War II, and there’s a dinosaur in the White House.”

  “You know what I’m talking about.”

  If Shawn was hoping for a reprieve from Gus’ judgment, he wasn’t going to get it. “I do,” he said.

  “Are the cheeseburgers okay?” Tara asked. “Because I’m feeling like my orders have changed.”

  “Just a little bit,” Shawn said. “Maybe we should talk outside for a moment.” She dropped the three white bags on the desk and headed brightly for the door.

  Gus waited until Shawn was outside, then moved over to the window and drew the curtain aside so he could watch what was happening. Tara was leaning happily against the Mercedes as Shawn went up to her. But as Gus watched, whatever Shawn was saying to her seemed to be bringing her mood down to earth. At first, she just looked confused, as if Shawn’s words were in direct conflict with the psychic orders she was receiving from him. As he kept talking, her face began to darken and she started trying to object. Gus had to give Shawn credit-it seemed like he wasn’t letting her get out more than a syllable before he was able to talk over her objection. Even from this distance, Gus could see her protests getting weaker and weaker.

  Just as Tara’s anger was beginning to fade away into tears, the phone rang behind Gus. He knew he should answer it. It might be Shepl
er, asking if they’d decided which firms they were putting their funds into. It could be Veronica Mason, apologizing for her long absence and offering to messenger over a check right now. It could even be a new client with a hot case who’d be willing to give them a big cash retainer in advance. But for the moment, none of that was as intriguing as the scene that was going on outside this window. Nothing would keep Gus from watching Shawn finally send Tara away for good.

  Nothing, that is, except for the voice that came over the machine.

  “I know you’re there, Spencer. This is Carlton Lassiter of the Santa Barbara Police department, and you have exactly ten seconds to pick up this phone.”

  Immediately Gus forgot what he’d been so engrossed in just seconds before. He sprinted for the phone and snatched up the receiver before half the allowed time had passed. “Psych Investigations. Burton Guster speaking,” he said.

  “If I were interested in talking to a sidekick, I’d have called Ed McMahon,” Lassiter growled.

  Normally Gus might have given in to his instinctive desire to defend Ed McMahon’s underrated acting career. He certainly would have bristled at being called a sidekick. But there was something in Lassiter’s voice that strongly suggested this wasn’t the time for repartee. “Whatever you have to say to Shawn, you can say to me.”

  “You sure about that?”

  “Absolutely.”

  Lassiter did.

  And Gus tried to figure out why he had been so insistent that Lassiter tell him personally.

  When the bell over the door chimed and Shawn came back in, Gus was still staring down at the receiver in his hand.

  “That was tough,” Shawn said. “And I don’t mean ‘figuring out your taxes’ tough. This was more like ‘Babe finding out his mother had been ground up for hamburger’ tough.”

  Gus didn’t even look up at him. He just kept staring at the phone.

  “Don’t tell me you don’t want details, Gus,” Shawn said. “Or that you’re not dying to tell my that Babe’s mother was a pig and they make hamburger out of cow. Let me have it.”

  Shawn waited for Gus to take the bait. But Gus didn’t even seem to hear him. “Lassiter called.”

  “Speaking of Babe. Which, to protect me from charges of cliche-mongering, you may apply to the lovely Juliet O’Hara, not to the oft-drawn comparisons between police officers and our oinking friends. So what did he want?”

  “Us,” Gus said. “There’s a warrant for our arrest.”

  Chapter Ten

  Walking through the bright yellow corridors of the police station, Gus was certain everyone was staring at him. He’d been here so many times before, but always as a consultant helping out on a case. While there were usually a few suspicious glares from members of the force, there were also people who were glad to see him. And even the ones who resented him knew that there was a small chance that he’d help clear a case off their board and make their averages look better.

  But this time Gus had come in the backseat of a squad car. He was here as a suspect, and the mood was completely different. Harsh stares came from every corner of the precinct. If Gus had been cuffed, chained, and manacled, the reception couldn’t have been any colder.

  Why hadn’t they simply told the truth when they had been called down to the impound office? Gus vaguely remembered being afraid that he’d be accused of the murder. It could have made for a couple of unpleasant days. But now they’d lied to the police and obstructed justice. When Lassiter accused him of killing the impound clerk now, what could he say that would convince anyone of his innocence?

  “Hey, guys!” It was Officer McNab, whose usual cheery smile had been replaced by an ominous baring of his teeth.

  “Don’t let him get me alone in my cell,” Gus whispered to Shawn.

  “What are you talking about?” Somehow, Shawn seemed to be oblivious to the hostility radiating out at them.

  “Officer McNab,” Gus said. “He’s got some new interrogation technique he’s learned from the feds, and he’s itching to take it out on me. I saw it in his eyes.”

  “The only thing in those eyes was the adoring friendliness of a well-fed puppy,” Shawn said. “Officer Friendly thinks McNab is too soft.”

  “That’s a technique,” Gus said, “because he knows we’re suspects. He wants to soften us up.”

  “How much softer could you get? You’ve already passed Jell-O on the wiggle test.”

  “Lassiter said he wanted to talk to us about a violent, ugly criminal act,” Gus said. “And he made it sound like he wanted to perform one on us.”

  Shawn clapped Gus on the back. “There’s nothing to worry about, Gus. We haven’t committed any violent, ugly crimes. Unless you count the sweater you’re wearing.”

  Lassiter stepped out in front of them. “Chief Vick’s office. Now.”

  He turned and headed into Vick’s office. Shawn gave Gus a reassuring smile. “See, it’s just the same as always. Nothing to worry about.”

  Living in Santa Barbara, Gus had never had much experience with snow. But one winter his parents took him up to the mountains to go cross-country skiing. He had started out happily, but ten minutes after he left the trailhead, he’d gotten hopelessly lost in the woods. He wandered around in the snow for hours before he was finally discovered by a troop of Boy Scouts. He had never felt so cold again until he stepped into Vick’s office.

  The chief was sitting behind her desk and didn’t even make an effort to rise as they came in. That worried Gus, because she was unfailingly polite and professional. Aside from a brief period during her pregnancy, he’d always known her to be cool and steady at all times. She was exactly the kind of leader he’d dreamed of being when he imagined himself as president. But now she was looking at him like something she wished she hadn’t stepped in.

  Lassiter had taken a place on one side of her. That he was scowling at Shawn and him was no surprise. But Detective Juliet O’Hara was on the other side of the desk, and even her usually friendly face was set in a hard glare.

  “Hey, Chief.” Apparently Shawn hadn’t noticed the frost in the room. He greeted the police as if they’d just jumped out to wish him a surprise happy birthday. “Jules, Lassie, what’s the story?”

  “It seems that you are, Mr. Spencer,” Vick said. “I wish it were a happier one.”

  “Can’t tell if a story is happy until you get to the ending,” Shawn said. “Take Of Mice and Men, for instance. If you never bothered to read the last few pages, it could be the delightful tale of two carefree young men making their dreams come true.”

  “Only if you’re an idiot,” Lassiter said.

  “Oddly, that’s exactly what our eighth-grade English teacher said. She was quite harsh on poor Gus.”

  “You’re the one who lost the book before I could finish it.”

  “Perhaps we could turn our attention to the matter at hand,” Vick said.

  “The very serious matter at hand,” Lassiter said.

  “Are we all grumpy today?” Shawn said. “Even you, Jules?”

  “It’s Detective O’Hara.” The air seemed to freeze as it came out of her mouth. “And while we all appreciate your concern about our mood, we have more important issues to deal with.”

  Gus could feel his blood pressure rising. His heart pounded; his palms were covered in sweat.

  “We’re dealing with a serious allegation here, gentlemen,” Chief Vick said. “I appreciate the work you’ve done for this department, and would like to give you the benefit of the doubt. But there’s a great deal of evidence, and I need some explanations.”

  It was too late for that, Gus knew. If they’d talked at the impound lot, everything would be fine. But there was nothing he could say now that wouldn’t get them both into bigger trouble. There was really only one choice now, and that was to lawyer up. If they were going to treat him like a criminal, he was going to act like one.

  Gus was preparing to declare his rights when he realized someone was talking in a voice th
at sounded remarkably like his.

  “We went to pick up my car the day of the murder,” the voice was saying. “The attendant pulled the shotgun and tried to kill us.”

  Gus looked around to see who was imitating his voice. No one was speaking. There were all staring at him.

  “Before you go any further, you might want to consult a lawyer, Mr. Guster,” Vick said.

  “Or at least with me,” Shawn said.

  Apparently whoever was mimicking Gus was doing it from inside his body. Gus decided to give up and let the impostor take over. “He pulled out a shotgun and tried to kill us, just because we were trying to get my car back. I knocked the gun out of the way on his first shot. That’s why there were holes in the shack’s wall.”

  “At least there’s something to thank you for,” O’Hara said.

  “Then we ducked below the counter, and I grabbed the barrel of his gun to keep him from aiming it at us. When I released it, he flew backward and the gun went off again, blowing that big hole in the ceiling. Before he could get up, we ran out of there. He might have gunned us down in flight if Tara hadn’t showed up right then.”

  “So Tara Larison was on the scene as well,” Lassiter said thoughtfully.

  “Please go on, Mr. Guster,” Vick said.

  “That’s really all there was to it. Except that when we went to the crime scene, we were concerned because our fingerprints were on the barrel of the gun. And Lassiter had a theory of the crime that fit exactly with everything we’d done, except we didn’t kill the guy.”

  “Why didn’t you just explain all this to the detectives?” Vick said.

  Gus started to answer, but then stopped. He hadn’t thought of a single good reason all morning, and one wasn’t coming to him now. “Shawn?”

  “Yes, Gus?”

  “Why didn’t we just explain all this to the detectives?”

  “Because the spirits were calling out for us to solve the case ourselves,” Shawn said. “Because he’d tried to kill us. This time it was personal.”