Psych:Mind-Altering Murder (21 page)

"Okay, no one's listening," Shawn said. "We can talk freely now."

"I was talking freely," Gus said. "And you were talking gibberish, which sounded pretty free to me."

"I see what you mean," Shawn said. He put his finger to his lips, then went to the desk. He picked up the phone and turned it upside down, then put it in a drawer and closed it. He picked up the coffee cup Gus used for pen storage and upended it, sending writing instruments flying in every direction.

"What are you doing?" Gus said, picking up the pen that rolled to his feet.

"I don't see any bugs here," Shawn whispered. "But maybe we should step out on the balcony to talk."

"There is no balcony," Gus said. "Just a sixteen-story drop to a fast and messy death. So please feel free to step outside."

Shawn moved close to Gus and spoke softly. "We'll have to chance it, then."

"Chance what?"

"That your office is bugged," Shawn said.

Gus moved away from Shawn and spoke loudly and freely. "First of all, there is no chance that my office is bugged. And if it was, I wouldn't care, because I'm not planning on saying anything in it that I wouldn't want anyone else to hear."

"That's good," Shawn whispered. "If anyone's listening, I'm sure you fooled them. Or made them deaf, anyway. Now let's get to business."

"We don't have any business, Shawn," Gus said. "When I took this job I left Psych behind. And I guess it's kind of flattering that you've gone to all this trouble to get me to come back, but it's not going to happen. I'm happy doing what I'm doing now."

"That's even better," Shawn whispered. "Now tell me to get out of your office."

"Why would I tell you to get out of my office?" Gus said. "You haven't answered a single one of my questions."

"Good point," Shawn whispered again. "You should call security and have me thrown out. That'll convince them!"

"Convince who of what?" Gus said.

"Exactly!" Shawn said, then grabbed the phone from the drawer and hit the button for the operator. "Get me security."

Gus reached to take the receiver away from him, but Shawn snatched it away. "It's ringing," Shawn said.

Shawn's pocket started playing the theme from
Magnum, P.I.

"That's your cell," Gus said.

Shawn handed the office phone to Gus. "When they finally answer, you should give them hell. What if this was an emergency? What kind of security team do you have here?"

Gus considered slamming the phone back down in its cradle, but he had to admit, he found it a little strange that it was taking so long for security to pick up. He held the receiver to his ear and heard it ring on the other end.

Shawn yanked his cell out of his jeans pocket and pressed the answer button. "Talk to me," he said.

Shawn's voice hit Gus' ear just a second before its echo spoke through the phone. "Shawn?"

"We shouldn't talk on this line," Shawn whispered into the phone. "It might be bugged."

Shawn hung up his cell as Gus slammed the office phone down into its cradle. "I guess I forgot," Shawn said. "I'm security now."

"Shawn, this is a serious business," Gus said. "You can't just march in here with some ridiculous story and take over the entire security department."

"Apparently I can," Shawn said. "And I think the key was to make the story even more ridiculous than usual. I told Dirt Bag--"

"D-Bob," Gus said.

"Right," Shawn continued without missing a beat. "I told him that the company had suffered what seemed to be a tragic series of accidents."

"That's not ridiculous at all," Gus said. "That's a fact."

"Yes, but I didn't stop there," Shawn said. "I went on to explain that these weren't accidents at all. That they were murders."

"He didn't believe it," Gus said, although his sinking heart insisted that this was not the case.

"He had to," Shawn said. "I made a very convincing case."

"How could you?" Gus said. "It's absurd."

"Look at the pattern," Shawn said. "One guy skis into a tree. Another one crashes his car. A third guy goes for a cup of coffee and he's turned into barbecue."

"Exactly," Gus said. "There is no pattern."

"That's what Dive Bomb said."

At least the entire world wasn't going insane. D-Bob didn't jump at Shawn's insane theory. Except that he had hired Shawn.

"So, how did you convince him that you were right?"

"I didn't," Shawn said. "You did."

"I did?" This had to be a dream. Soon there would be a knock on the door and Nana the dog would come in and tell him it was time for tea, or the entire building would turn into a rocket ship heading for Mars. "How?"

"I told him the truth," Shawn said. "That you had figured it all out weeks ago and taken the job here so you could work undercover. And now that you were getting closer to the killer you needed me to come in to help."

Chapter Twenty-eight

T
here were something like a bazillion restaurants in San Francisco, but Gus and Shawn ended up back at the same diner where they'd shared their last meal. It seemed appropriate. After all, this is where Gus' career with Benson Pharmaceuticals had really started; it might as well mark the end as well.

"I'm going to try to explain this one last time," Gus said after the waitress had taken their order and disappeared with the menus. "This is not an undercover operation."

"Not anymore," Shawn said. "Not now that the boss knows what you're doing."

"I'm not doing anything." Gus had to fight to keep his voice from rising an octave and several decibels.

"It's okay," Shawn said. "I understand why you had to do it this way. I'll admit I was getting a little obsessed with the whole
Criminal Genius
thing, and all those times you tried to tell me about the serial killer at Benson Pharmaceuticals, I didn't exactly give your fascinating theory the attention it deserved."

"All
what
times?" It was getting harder to keep his voice from turning into a shriek.

"I don't know," Shawn said. "Didn't I say I wasn't listening?"

"You're not listening now," Gus said.

"Yes, but only because now I already know," Shawn said. "So it's a waste of our time if I spend it listening to you rehashing the past instead of moving on into the future."

Gus felt a sharp pain in his right hand. He looked down and discovered he was clenching his fork so tightly it was about to draw blood. He forced his hand to relax until the fork clanked back down onto the table.

"I am trying to tell you that I took this job--"

"Because you couldn't find any other way to get me on the case, I know," Shawn said. "It was one giant cry for help, and I was so distracted I couldn't hear it. Looking back on the past few months, I'm so embarrassed. To think I actually believed you were trying to ditch me when you flew up for your final interview, when it's so obvious that you were leaving bread crumbs the size of Buicks for me to follow."

"Umm, sure," Gus said.

"And when you said you were leaving detective work for a job pushing pills, you probably expected me to fall down laughing," Shawn said. "You must have been so shocked when I said okay."

"I was a little surprised," Gus said. It was true, although not for the reasons Shawn now believed. "But I was always serious about this job."

"You would have had to be," Shawn agreed. "Just like when Steve Sloan went rogue and Mark Sloan had him committed to that asylum for loony cops on
Diagnosis Murder
."

Now Gus was sure this was a dream. "You watched
Diagnosis Murder
?"

"I was dating a girl who worked in a nursing home," Shawn said. "She had to keep up on the episodes so she'd have something to talk to her patients about. Anyway, the point is if Mark and Steve hadn't been completely convincing the guy from
Jake and the Fat Man
would never have broken down and led them to where he'd walled up his family."

It occurred to Gus that if he had taken the simple precaution of walling up Shawn somewhere before he'd taken the job at Benson, he might still have a future there. But it was too late for that now. Still it was possible he might be able to salvage his new career, if only he could figure out what Shawn was talking about. Or better yet, if he didn't even try, and simply made his own point as plainly and forcefully as he could.

"Shawn, if you've never listened to me before, you've got to listen now," Gus said.

"I'm sure I've listened some," Shawn said. "Like that time I was about to try parasailing, and you said that it was just like jumping off a cliff with a kite strapped to my back."

"You went anyway and you broke your ankle," Gus said, despite having just taken a vow not to be dragged off the subject at hand.

"Yes, but not because I didn't listen," Shawn said. "I thought you meant it as a recommendation."

"Fine," Gus said. "In that case I'm going to ask you to listen first and if there's anything you think you might not understand, ask questions afterward. Can you do that?"

"I can do even better," Shawn said. "I can ask questions before I listen. Or even during, although that doesn't save quite as much time."

Gus sighed heavily enough that Shawn took the hint and stopped talking.

"Shawn, when I left Psych to take this job, I left Psych to take this job," Gus said. "I wasn't going undercover, and I wasn't trying to convince you that you had missed out on a string of murders. I was offered a position as a vice president in a multinational pharmaceuticals company and I accepted it. I never wanted you to leave Santa Barbara and join me up here to investigate some case that never existed in the first place. So if that's the reason you've invented this job as head of security for yourself, you don't need to stick with it any longer. You can go back home."

Shawn waited patiently for several moments after Gus had stopped talking. "That's really interesting," he said finally.

"What's that?" Gus said.

"This whole listening thing," Shawn said. "You'd think you might learn a little more by doing it, since presumably people scatter information throughout the entirety of a speech like that. But no matter how long I kept quiet, I didn't hear anything I didn't already know from your first sentence. Look, food's here."

It was. The waitress was hovering over their table with trays that could easily tip over the Flintstones' car. She dropped them in the center of the table, leaving it for Shawn and Gus to figure out which plate belonged to whom, and disappeared again.

Shawn grabbed one of the plates, picked up the headsized burger and crammed two eyes' and a nose's worth into his mouth. Gus took advantage of what would be at least a few seconds of enforced silence to make his point again.

"What I'm trying to say is that while I appreciate the faith you put in me, it's wrong," Gus said. "I didn't come here because I believed there was a case. In fact, I still don't believe there's a killer out there stalking pharmaceuticals executives. It's just a series of coincidences."

Gus spat out the last syllables as quickly as he could, since he could see the giant mass of food moving down Shawn's throat like a rabbit in a python.

"There is no case here, Shawn, but there is one back in Santa Barbara," Gus said before Shawn could usher the last traces of food all the way into his stomach. "I appreciate your faith in me, but you've got to tell D-Bob that whatever you told him about the serial killer was wrong and that you're resigning as head of security."

Shawn studied Gus closely. "You're sure about this?"

"About everything except telling D-Bob," Gus said. "I have no idea how you can stuff that bit of toothpaste back into the tube."

"Nothing to worry about there," Shawn said. "I wouldn't squeeze that tube if your life depended on it."

It took Gus a moment to realize what Shawn was saying. "You didn't tell him about the killer?"

"He was my favorite suspect," Shawn said. "I wasn't going to share my suspicions with him."

"Then how did you get the job?"

"The same way you got yours," Shawn said, taking another huge bite out of the burger.

"You landed this job by spending years working in pharmaceuticals sales and having a unique point of view on the issues that confront our industry in these troubling times?" Gus said.

Shawn managed to get the wad of beef and bun down his throat. "Wouldn't it surprise you if I said yes?"

"If by 'surprise' you mean drive me into a such a rage I'd gouge out your eyes with this spoon, then hurl myself off the Golden Gate Bridge, then definitely it would," Gus said.

"You make it tempting to say yes," Shawn said. "But I have to tell the truth. I did it the old-fashioned way. I earned it."

"Earned it how?"

"By lying," Shawn said. "He knew we were old friends from the last time I met the guy. So I told him that your presence in the company had established a psychic link for me to see its aura. And that emanation was pulsing red for danger."

"He bought that?" Gus said, dismayed.

"Your boss is kind of a moron," Shawn said. "Unless he's actually the killer. Think we have time for dessert before we go back to the office?"

Gus slid out of the booth, fished in his pocket, and dropped a couple of bills on the table. "You do," he said. "In fact, you should have dessert for both of us. You don't need to stop by the office before you head back to the airport. I'll tell D-Bob you're on a vision quest or something. He'll like that."

Shawn took one last suck on his milk shake and scrambled out of the booth to follow him. "I can't go back to Santa Barbara now," he said. "I've got a job to do."

"Making my life miserable?" Gus said as he pushed open the door and stepped out onto the busy sidewalk.

"That's part of it," Shawn said.

That was so astonishing Gus stopped dead in the middle of the sidewalk. At least until a kid texting on his phone while he rode his skateboard slammed into him, propelling him into the street. Just before he flew into traffic Gus grabbed the pole of a NO SKATEBOARDS Sign and swung himself back into the mass of pedestrians, nearly knocking over a trio of secretaries.