William Rabkin - Psych - Mind Over Magic

“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.”

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.”

“What do you think the bourbon is for?” Shawn said.

It took only a few minutes for Shawn and Gus to be processed out of the jail, and a few more for Gus to celebrate the fact of a toilet stall enclosed by solid metal on four sides. By the time he emerged, informed enough about the inequities of global trade to participate in a symposium, thanks to the most recent issue of The Nation that some officer had left hanging on the handicap rail, Shawn was hefting a cardboard box full of supplies. Chief Vick had come through, even if, for the bourbon, she’d had to substitute a two-thirds-full bottle of cheap scotch from the desk of one of her detectives.

Since they’d left the Echo in the police parking lot when they’d ridden with Lassiter and O’Hara to Balustrade’s house, it was only minutes later that the box was safely stowed in the backseat and Shawn and Gus were on their way to the Fortress of Magic.

They rode in silence, as Gus refused to ask Shawn what he had figured out and Shawn declined to volunteer. Even as they climbed the long hill up to the Fortress’ front door they didn’t speak, except for once, when Shawn asked Gus to carry the box and Gus declined on the grounds that since he didn’t know how the items inside were to be deployed, he didn’t want to leave himself vulnerable to new charges of obstruction.