A Fatal Frame of Mind

Chapter Twenty-two

It wasn’t until he saw the windmill atop Pea Soup Andersen’s in Buellton that Gus was able to pull his eyes away from the rearview mirror. All the way up the 101 he’d expected to see red and blue lights flashing there. He couldn’t believe that the cops who’d stopped them outside the museum hadn’t just allowed them to flee in order to see where they were going.

In fact, part of him believed the cops hadn’t actually allowed them to go at all. It was quite possible that the three of them had been arrested and thrown into jail. That Gus had gone to trial and been convicted as an accessory after the fact and, under California’s felony murder laws, had been sentenced to death. Now his body was lying in a cell on death row waiting for execution while his mind spun this elaborate fantasy of escape to keep from having to deal with the truth.

Gus checked the rearview mirror again, this time to make sure that the passenger back there was still Professor Kitteredge. If he’d turned into Mariah Carey, that would have confirmed the death row fantasy scenario. He breathed a heavy sigh of relief to see his old professor, his head resting against the window as he snored quietly.

Which meant the encounter with the police had been real, too. When Gus had turned around to meet the eyes of the officer whose hand was clutching his shoulder, he expected to see the steely stare of the hunter looking down at his prey before administering the kill shot. Instead, the eyes were twinkling, and the face was smiling.

“What can we do for you, Officer?” Shawn said cheerfully. It was a long-held theory of his that if you act like nothing is wrong convincingly enough, eventually the world will take your word for it. That long-held theory had never actually worked in practice, but he was eternally hopeful that this would change one day.

“Do you know how long I’ve been searching for you?” the officer said.

Gus checked the cop’s eyeline. He wasn’t looking at Kitteredge, who had turned his back and was now apparently fascinated by a seagull that was circling slowly above their heads. He was staring directly at Shawn and Gus.

“Umm,” Gus said. “Us?”

“For weeks!” the officer said. “My best buddy is getting married next month, and I’m supposed to put together a bachelor party for him. But he’s kind of a prude, so he doesn’t want strippers or anything like that. I’ve been killing myself trying to figure out some kind of entertainment-and then I heard you talking about being psychics!”

“We’re not really that kind of psychics,” Gus said.

“Sure you aren’t,” the cop said. “That’s why you’re wearing tuxedos on a Sunday afternoon, because you’re not on your way to a performance.”

“But really we’re-” Gus started, but Shawn shoved him out of the way and stepped forward.

“Available for weddings, bar mitzvahs, and bachelor parties,” Shawn said. “You have to excuse my partner-he’s afraid his mother will find out he went into showbiz.” He produced a card and handed it to the officer. “You can reach our booking office at that number. And just ignore the part where it says psychic detectives. It was supposed to say psychic entertainers, but the printer messed it up. We were going to have him redo it, but he gave us a great price on ten thousand cards.”

The officer slipped the card into his pocket without looking at it. “You’ll be hearing from me,” he said. “And say-if you happen to know any hot girls, we’re not all prudes like the groom.”

Gus was searching for a way to answer that when some sort of shoving match broke out toward the top of the stairs. The cop gave Shawn a knowing wink, and he and his partner headed up to deal with the disturbance while the three of them ran to the Echo.

And that had been their last encounter with the police. They hadn’t even seen a highway patrolman on the freeway. Which didn’t keep Gus from worrying for the whole drive.

At least he was able to worry in peace and quiet. Shawn had closed his eyes and gone to sleep as soon as they hit the 101-less because he’d been up all night, Gus suspected, than because his other option was to spend the entire drive describing the missing painting in excruciating detail. Kitteredge, too, quickly nodded off.

Which left Gus time to finally ponder the question that would have occurred to him hours earlier if events hadn’t been moving so fast: What the hell were they doing?

When he and Shawn had set off to find Professor Kitteredge, it was to protect him from being discovered by a member of the force who might think him so dangerous he needed to be shot before being questioned. But Gus had never really considered what they were going to do once they’d found him-the task itself seemed so impossible that contemplating the next step felt like a waste of time. Then, once they had actually accomplished this, things started moving under their own impetus. Step by step, everything they did seemed to make sense at the time, and yet it didn’t actually add up to a logical plan.

In fact, nothing that had happened since they first showed up at the museum made any logical sense. Unless he meant dream logic. Because while Professor Kitteredge’s story about the search for King Arthur’s magic sword was powerfully convincing when he’d laid it out, once Gus had had the chance to think it over, it began to sound ridiculous. They might as well be searching for Cinderella’s glass slipper.

Gus knew there was only one right thing to do now. He should wake up Kitteredge and tell him he had no choice but to turn himself in. Then he’d pull into the Pea Soup parking lot and call Chief Vick to arrange the professor’s surrender. That would fulfill his original intention, which was to make sure Kitteredge would be safe until he could prove his innocence.

But Gus wasn’t sure he could do that from a jail cell. Not that he believed his old professor had anything to do with Filkins’ murder. But as long as Kitteredge was unable or unwilling to provide an alibi, then this mysterious conspiracy was their only hope of finding the real killer. And no matter how absurd it sounded, someone had been able to steal that painting from under the noses of the cops. If not an all-powerful conspiracy, then who could have done it? And if the only clues to the Cabal lay hidden in that painting, and the only available copy of the picture was the one in Shawn’s mind, then separating the professor from Shawn would present an insuperable obstacle to discovering the truth.

That meant finding a place to hide out until they could break the conspiracy and catch the killer. For the moment that wouldn’t be too hard. No one was looking for Gus and Shawn.

But they would be soon. As the manhunt broadened, it was unimaginable that one of the police officers they’d met today wouldn’t realize they’d seen Kitteredge. And once they did, they’d remember who was with him. Unless it was that last cop. He wouldn’t need to remember anything-Shawn had given him a card.

That gave them a few hours to find a hiding place and stock it with all the supplies they’d need until the case was over. Once their faces were on the news, they wouldn’t dare show them in public.

Which brought him to one last option. Gus didn’t think Professor Kitteredge would agree to turn himself in to the police. But if they stopped for lunch, there was no reason Gus couldn’t excuse himself to use the rest room and call Chief Vick. He could even do it anonymously, just a loyal citizen doing his duty by reporting a sighting of a wanted fugitive. He wouldn’t have to worry about Kitteredge being hurt, because the police would not risk using their guns in such a crowded public place. They’d simply surround the table and lead the professor away.

Gus hated himself for even allowing these thoughts to pass through his mind, but at the same time he knew that his self-loathing was completely irrational. Even though he was sure Professor Kitteredge was not a murderer, there was no denying he was a wanted felon. He had taken a police detective hostage and threatened to kill him with a knife that had already taken one life. Gus couldn’t pretend that he was protecting a pure innocent; on one level the man was a criminal.

And it wasn’t like he actually owed Kitteredge the kind of loyalty he gave his clients. After all, Kitteredge had never hired Psych. He hadn’t even come to Gus for help in solving a crime, as Gus had thought when he’d felt compelled to rescue him from the police. No-he’d just sent Gus a form letter begging for a donation. If that obligated him to save the professor’s hide, then he’d also have to rescue the Salvation Army, the Red Cross, the March of Dimes, and every other charity whose pleas clogged his mailbox. And at least the charities sent him personalized return address labels. They were unusable, true, because they had Ziggy on them, but they were a nice gesture. What had Professor Kitteredge ever done for him?

Gus could feel the steering wheel fighting to turn onto the off-ramp that would lead to the restaurant. It really was the correct thing to do. And he and Shawn could still help Kitteredge once he was safely in custody.

But he couldn’t do it. He’d seen the fear in the professor’s eyes when he realized he was being framed for Filkins’ murder. He’d seen Kitteredge’s passion when he thought he was about to discover the clues hidden in the painting. He knew that only Kitteredge had the knowledge to get himself out of this terrible situation, and he needed to be free to do it. Gus had to help.

Gus yanked the wheel back to the left, and the Echo zipped past the exit. He jabbed Shawn gently with his elbow until he woke up.

Shawn blinked a couple of times, then glanced out the window. “So I guess that’s a no on lunch and betrayal,” he said.

“You knew what I was thinking?” Gus said.

“Everyone always knows what you’re thinking,” Shawn said. “You should try to control your facial expressions a little more. Really, you might as well be blinking in Morse code.”

“You were asleep,” Gus said. “You couldn’t have seen my face.”

“I could hear your muscles twitching,” Shawn said. “Do you want me to walk you through your entire thought process?”

Having already sat through it once, Gus had no desire to hear it repeated back to him.

“I’d rather hear yours,” Gus said.

“Okay,” Shawn said. “I was wondering who would win if Julie Newmar’s Cat Woman fought the Michelle Pfeiffer version. And that got me thinking about Halle Berry, and whose side she would fight on. Or would the other two team up against her because her movie destroyed the franchise forever. And then-”

“I mean about what we’re going to do now,” Gus said. “Since you were so avidly following my thoughts in your sleep, you must know how much trouble we’re about to be in.”

“Yes,” Shawn said. “In fact I almost woke up to tell you to knock it off, since you were giving me bad dreams.”

“Then do you have an idea where we should go?” Gus said.

“Well, we’re heading north,” Shawn said. “We could keep going until we cross the Canadian border.”

“That’s thousands of miles from here,” Gus said. “Plus, Canada is a foreign country. We don’t have our passports.”

“Canada is a different country?” Shawn said. “That explains a lot.”

“What it doesn’t explain is what we’re going to do now,” Gus said.

“Maybe you’ll allow me,” Kitteredge said.

Gus glanced in the mirror and saw the professor stretching his neck as he shook off the unpleasant effects of sleeping in the backseat.

“Please,” Gus said.

“We’re going to see the one man in the whole world who can help us,” Kitteredge said.

“If you’re talking about the Wizard, I am not bringing him a broomstick,” Shawn said.

Gus nudged Shawn with his elbow-harder this time.

“Who is this man, and where do we find him?” Gus said.

“To explain who he is could take a lifetime,” Kitteredge said. “But in order to find him, all you have to do is take the next exit.”