William Rabkin - Mind-Altering Murder

Shawn was beginning to think he might have to consult the army field interrogations manual to find the truth when Gus finally slipped up. They were hanging out at the office when Shawn mentioned he was in the mood for pizza from LaVal’s by the Pier, the one place in town that didn’t deliver. This wasn’t the first time Shawn had mentioned this craving, and usually it led to forty-five minutes of Gus refusing Shawn’s offer to wait at the office if Gus wanted to run down and pick up the pie, and then to the inevitable call to Domino’s. But this time Gus didn’t argue at all. He asked what toppings Shawn wanted.

This was the moment. The only reason for Gus to give in so easily was that he was about to make his move. All Shawn had to do was follow him and see where the trail led.

That would have been a lot easier, of course, if Shawn had had any mode of transportation faster than his own feet. Unfortunately Gus had picked him up from his home that morning so they could share the forty-five-minute ride to VirtuActive’s headquarters in Thousand Oaks. If they’d had the foresight to set up a suitcase full of chemicals in the office, Shawn could have hoped for a lightning bolt to spill them all over him, granting him superspeed. But without the proper equipment-or even a cloud in the cool evening sky-chasing Gus’ car on foot didn’t seem like a profitable enterprise.

But he had to know where Gus was sneaking off to. He couldn’t let this chance go to waste.

“Why don’t we go together and eat there?” Shawn said.

If Shawn had been hoping for some kind of strong reaction from Gus, he was disappointed. “Fine” was the only answer he got.

During the ride down toward the pier, Gus didn’t seem any more tense than he had over the previous few weeks, so Shawn began to doubt he was trying to make a secret rendezvous. What was he up to, then?

It wasn’t until Gus pulled up outside the pizzeria that Shawn figured it out. More precisely, it wasn’t until Gus made a big show of fumbling in his pockets for change, then announcing he needed to run across the street to the convenience store to break a dollar for the parking meter.

The excuse was so transparent, Shawn nearly pointed out that the meters had stopped being enforced an hour ago, and that Gus’ pockets were so full of change he’d been jingling as they left the office. But he managed to stop himself a second before the words spilled out. He told Gus he’d get a table, then went into the restaurant and spied out through the front window as Gus walked toward the convenience store. But just as Gus approached the entrance, he made a sharp zig to the left and went to the pay phone that stood outside it. He picked up the receiver, dropped in a few coins, then dialed. After a few moments he hung up the phone and headed back toward the car. Shawn didn’t stay at the window to see him feed the meter, but he did check on their way out and saw they still had twelve minutes left. If nothing else, he had to admire Gus for being thorough.

The next day, finding out whom Gus had called was easy work, as long as you consider impersonating a police officer work rather than, say, a felony. He called the pay phone company and, after spending twenty minutes being transferred from office to office, gave Detective Carlton Lassiter’s name and badge number to a junior vice president for community relations.

Gus had spent 107 seconds on the phone with United Airlines. It should have been quick work to find out if he had booked a ticket and if so to where. But the operator he spoke to would not give out any information without something called a “record locator number,” and once Shawn realized this was not a case of privacy protection but simple incompetence on the part of a bureaucracy he gave up trying. He’d have to figure out where Gus was going on his own.

That wasn’t hard. If Gus planned to be away overnight he’d need to come up with some excuse, and he hadn’t mentioned anything. So it was going to be a day trip. Realistically that ruled out any flight longer than a couple of hours. But which way would he fly? Not south-Gus could drive to LA or even San Diego almost as fast as he could fly, and Tijuana would require a passport, which Gus didn’t have. West was out, too, unless Gus was planning to bring scuba tanks. Seattle seemed too far for a day trip, and while Portland was inside the zone, Shawn couldn’t imagine why anyone would go there.

That left three good possibilities: Phoenix and Las Vegas to the east and San Francisco up north. Gus had distant relatives in Phoenix, so if he had been planning to go there he would certainly have told Shawn he was going to visit cousin Enid and the kids. Vegas was possible, but it just didn’t feel right. That left San Francisco.

Of course even if Shawn was right about the destination, he still didn’t know when Gus was going to fly. But since the trip meant Gus was going to be away for most of a day, Shawn just had to wait until he announced he needed to attend an all-day sales meeting at his other job.

As for the flight, that was the easy part. He knew how Gus’ mind worked and he knew how Gus would think about how Shawn’s mind worked. This was the one that Gus would assume Shawn would find least likely. Which meant it was the one he would pick.

Unless, of course, Gus had taken his logic a step further and realized that Shawn would have figured out what he was thinking, and so changed to a direct flight from Santa Barbara. But Shawn knew that Gus had a strong dislike of that kind of circular thinking. As a child he’d seen too many science fiction movies and TV shows where the hero was able to make an evil supercomputer explode simply by offering it an example of a logical feedback loop, and he was always careful to protect his own brain from that particular danger. So unless Gus had just given up on the whole project, he was going to be on this flight.

As he finished off the plate of fried food Shawn looked over at the gate and saw that the doors were open and passengers were coming out. The first few were middle-aged businessmen in suits and ties. They were followed by what looked like either a start-up’s software-development team or a group of escapees from a juvenile mental institution. They were all talking to the air in front of them, but since Shawn couldn’t confirm they had Bluetooth headsets attached to their ears he couldn’t decide which they were. Most of the remaining passengers were clearly tourists, ambling out of the Jetway with looks on their faces that said, This airport is already something to see and I’m going to take my time about it. At the end of the line was one more middle-aged man in a suit and tie. He walked slowly and kept glancing back over his shoulder. Shawn assumed he’d spent the trip flirting with one of the flight attendants, and he was still hoping she might come running after him to thrust her phone number into his hand.

And then the Jetway doors were empty. One of the gate agents peered in to see if anyone else would be deplaning, but that seemed to be it. There was a rush of movement around the gate as passengers waiting to board the plane started to jockey for position.

Shawn was surprised to discover how relieved he felt. After all, the mere fact that Gus wasn’t on this plane didn’t mean there wasn’t something seriously wrong. He could have used a different calculus to choose his flight. Or Shawn could have been completely wrong and Gus could be hailing a cab outside the Las Vegas airport right now. Or Gus could have gotten sick of trying to outgame Shawn’s thought process and driven up north.

Whatever the explanation for Gus’ failure to deplane from this flight, the underlying problem, whatever it might be, would still be there once Shawn got home. And worse, Shawn would have blown his best shot to figure out what it was.