William Rabkin - Psych - A Mind is a Terrible Thing to Read

Veronica whirled on him. “You mean freeing an innocent woman you were trying to convict? Is that what you call ‘shtick’?”

Gus stepped forward. “People, please, we’re trying to solve a series of murders here!”

The coffee girl peered at Gus. “Did he say something? I can never understand that guy.”

“That’s two of us, honey,” Henry said.

The room dissolved into cross talk. Gus looked over to see if Shawn had noticed how completely he’d lost control over the situation, but Shawn didn’t seem concerned.

“Ahem!” Shawn waited until the various conversations died down. “I’ve brought you all here for two reasons.”

“What’s the one besides keeping your neck out of the noose?” Coules said.

Shawn clapped his hands sharply, and Shepler opened a door in the back of the ballroom. The crowd turned to see four tuxedoed waiters emerging from a service corridor, each one carrying a silver tray laden with crystal glasses filled with what looked like iced cola. They moved through the room until every guest was holding a drink. One waiter approached Gus with the last glass. Gus reached for it, but Shawn stepped in front of him and snagged it off the tray.

“Sorry,” Shawn said. “My plan, my beverage.”

Shawn knocked it back in a couple of gulps as the waiters retreated from the room; then he handed the empty glass to Gus.

“We are here tonight to correct a terrible injustice,” Shawn said. “But first, enjoy your drink.”

Those who hadn’t did. Some of the glasses were already empty.

“It tastes kind of like coffee,” the coffee girl said. “But it’s not.”

“This, my friends, is the elusive Coca-Cola Blak, one of the greatest inventions in the history of mankind,” Shawn said. “I admit, it’s not the standard commercial version. It’s Dallas Steele’s special blend. But through an injustice of global proportion, even the normal American version of Blak is unavailable anywhere in this country. I bring you here today to unite you all in my cause to force the Coca-Cola company to bring back Blak!”

Shawn’s arms shot in the air like Richard Nixon at the end of a speech. Somehow the gesture didn’t bring a wave of cheers from his audience.

Gus sniffed the glass. It smelled like Coke with a hint of coffee grounds emanating from the ice cubes. He had a hard time imagining why anyone would get so excited over a soft drink, but then he’d never actually tried the stuff. Maybe he could request it with his last meal if Shawn kept talking about Coca-Cola products instead of producing a killer.

“You have thirty-nine minutes left, Mr. Spencer,” Chief Vick said. “I urge you to use them wisely.”

Shawn dropped his arms to his side. “Fine. We’re also here to solve a bunch of murders.”

“Murders?” the coffee girl squealed. She looked around, frantic. “No one told me anything about murders.”

Henry draped an arm around the girl, protectively. “Why is she here?”

“For one thing, I’ve seen the women you’ve been dating lately,” Shawn said.

Henry pulled his arm away from the girl, embarrassed. But she grabbed his hand and wrapped it around her, then snuggled close to him.

“As I said, we are here to solve a series of baffling crimes,” Shawn continued. “Who killed John Marichal? Who killed Dallas Steele? Who killed Betty Walinski?”

“Tara Larison,” Coules said. “Can we go home now?”

“Impossible,” Shawn said. “Tara couldn’t have killed all those people.”

“Why not?” Lassiter said.

“Because she’s the most obvious suspect,” Shawn said.

“Right, because she’s killed a bunch of people before,” O’Hara said.

“But the most obvious suspect is never the killer,” Shawn said. “Otherwise, what’s the point?”

Gus stared at him. “This is all you’ve got?”

Shawn shrugged. “It sounded good when I came up with it.”

Gus stared down at the ice cubes in his glass. Maybe if he studied them hard enough, he’d find a subliminal picture of the real killer. Because that looked like the only thing that was going to keep the police from taking Shawn’s confession in a couple of hours.

“Actually, Mr. Spencer, the likeliest suspect is almost always guilty,” Chief Vick said. “That’s what makes them obvious-evidence they’ve created in their commission of the crimes.”

Coules and the detectives muttered their agreement. Shawn held up a hand to silence them.

“Then let me give you another reason why I know Tara didn’t kill John Marichal and Betty Walinski,” Shawn said. “Because she did kill Fred Larison and Aunt Enid. Because this very morning she tried to kill Gus.”

“Well, I’m convinced,” Lassiter muttered. “Can we go home now?”

“Every one of those killings was staged to look like an accident,” Shawn said. “A fall down the stairs, a trip over a skateboard. At first I assumed, like you, that this was the work of a canny criminal covering up her crimes. But then she tried to kill Gus, and even though we caught her in the act, she insisted that it was an accident.”

“That’s right,” Gus said. Maybe there was hope outside of the dream of an ice-cube portrait. “She claimed I fell down a flight of stairs in a one-story building.”

“So she’s nuts,” Coules said. “Big deal.”

“It is a big deal. She needs to believe she’s not a killer, just the victim of a series of tragic accidents. That’s why she fooled me for so long. Because even though she had killed several people, she was completely convinced in her own mind that she didn’t.”

“So when you read her aura, it proclaimed her innocence,” Veronica said.

Shawn shot her a grateful smile. “Exactly. But for her to keep up the illusion, when she killed, she arranged the scene to look like an accident. Whoever killed John Marichal and Betty Walinski didn’t bother to make them look like anything other than victims of cold-blooded murder.”

Shawn turned to Gus to see how he was doing. Gus gave him a quick thumbs-up.

“What about Dallas Steele?” Arno rattled his handcuffs for emphasis. “I saw her kill him. And I’m willing to testify-as long as they reduce these ridiculous charges against me.”

“I’m glad you brought that up,” Shawn said. “And so is Fluffy, by the way.”

Arno made a move toward Shawn, but Lassiter pulled him back.

“You didn’t see Tara kill Steele. You saw her standing over him with a knife.”

“The knife forensics proved was the murder weapon,” Coules said.

“She made no attempt to hide or to claim Steele’s death was an accident,” Shawn said. “So we can all agree that Tara is innocent.”

Chief Vick held up her watch. “The one thing we can all agree on is that you have twenty-eight minutes left.”

“If Tara didn’t kill these people, who did?” Shawn said. “Before we can answer that question, we have to understand what an ex-con, a tackle shop widow, and a billionaire venture capitalist who didn’t know how to tie his shoes in kindergarten had in common.”

“Nothing,” Lassiter said.

“Do you think so?” Shawn said. “Let’s go back to the beginning and figure out where it all began. At first I thought it was the towing of Gus’ car. That’s what took us to the impound lot.”

“He was parked illegally,” Lassiter snapped.

“But that’s not what kept us at the impound lot.” Shawn ignored Lassiter as he plowed on. “Six thousand dollars of parking tickets did that. So we have to go back a little further to discover where this story really begins. To find our killer, we need to understand who is responsible for those tickets.”

“Umm, you?” Gus said. There was one ice cube that seemed to be growing a face as it melted.