Mind-Altering Murder

Chapter Twenty

“I wish I could help you, Jules. I really do,” Gus said. “I just don’t have the time to get back to Santa Barbara.”

“And I didn’t have the time to fly up here,” O’Hara said. “Or the money. And it’s not like the department is paying for this trip.”

As they walked through the wide hallways of the Benson Pharmaceuticals headquarters, O’Hara found she practically had to run to keep up with Gus. Of all the strange things that had been going on lately, this had to be the strangest. The Gus she knew was always the guy who was lagging behind shouting, “Hey, guys, wait up!” He wasn’t the leader. But he strode through these offices as if he owned the place.

“I’ve given you every bit of information we have about Mandy Jansen, Jules,” Gus said. “There just isn’t any more.”

O’Hara felt a tremor of guilt flit through her at the mention of the name. Since she’d gone to see Shawn two days ago she hadn’t done a thing about that case. But the book in the game had pushed everything else out of her mind.

“You’ve been more than helpful on that case,” she said. “But that’s not why I’m here.”

“Then what?”

“It’s Shawn.”

“What about him?” Gus said, his step slowing slightly.

“He needs your help on the Macklin Tanner thing,” she said.

Gus stiffened and increased his pace. “If Shawn needs my help he knows where to find me.”

“I’m not sure he does,” O’Hara said.

“He’s a detective,” Gus said. “He tracked me to San Francisco when I was trying to keep my destination hidden from him. It’ll be much easier now that he has my business card with my phone number on it.”

“He doesn’t want to bother you,” O’Hara said. “He knows you’re in an exciting new phase of your life, and the last thing he wants is for you to think he’s trying to drag you back to Psych.”

“So he sent you to do it instead.”

Gus stopped outside a door. The nameplate read BURTON GUSTER, EXECUTIVE VICE PRESIDENT.

“Last time I was here, hadn’t you just been promoted to senior vice president?” she said.

“It’s one of the things that make this such an exciting company to work for,” Gus said. “Lots of room for advancement. But it also means there’s a huge amount of work for those who are ready to take it on. And I’m already backed up.”

“All I need is a couple of minutes,” O’Hara said.

Gus sighed and pushed open the door and led her into an office the size of the house she grew up in. Floor-to-ceiling windows looked out over the Ferry Building and the Bay Bridge to Treasure Island and the East Bay. She couldn’t help but stare at the view-not only because it was so beautiful, but because she couldn’t quite bring herself to reconcile it with its owner. People like Gus didn’t get offices like this. And yet here he was.

Gus led her to a sitting area in one corner of the office, two armchairs and a couch all arranged for maximum appreciation of the view. He sat in one of the chairs and motioned for her to do the same.

“Tell me about Shawn,” he said.

“There’s not much else to tell,” she said. “He’s completely obsessed with this computer game.”

“That’s not much of a surprise,” Gus said. “It’s pretty addictive if you like that kind of thing-and Shawn likes that kind of thing.”

“That’s what I thought at first, too,” she said. “Just Shawn being Shawn. But it’s more than that. He’s got to find Macklin Tanner or he’ll tear himself apart. And he’s convinced that the only clue is the one he’ll find in the game.”

“That’s nothing new,” Gus said.

“But this is,” she said. “We found the clue.”

“We?”

The look on his face told her he was reading much more into this pronoun than it could possibly carry. “I helped him out one time. It was the least I could do after all the cases you guys worked on for us.”

“So you found the clue,” he said. “That’s great. Why do you need my help?”

“Because we can’t understand what it means,” she said.

“You’re two great detectives,” Gus said. “If you can’t figure it out, why do you think I can?”

“Because it’s a book,” O’Hara said. “You like books. You understand books. I’ve always been something of a reader, but I never had the passion. And Shawn-well, you know.”

He did. “I’ll do what I can. But I’m not going to be able to get to Santa Barbara anytime soon, and I can’t imagine there’s a way to get into the game from here.”

“You don’t need to,” O’Hara said. “I’ve drawn it for you.”

She pulled a piece of paper out of her purse and unfolded it on his desk. She had drawn the book’s front cover and spine.

“What about the back cover?” Gus said, studying the pictures.

“Nothing,” she said. “Black leather.”

“And inside?

“Blank page after blank page.”

“It could be some kind of invisible ink,” Gus said. “If so, you’ve got to do something to make it appear. If that’s the case I can’t help you.”

“I don’t think it is,” O’Hara said. “We’ve already tried a couple of ideas, and the pages just get dirty. Whatever the clue is, it’s here.”

Gus picked up the paper and looked at it again. “It’s by Edgar Allan Poe, which seems appropriate for the game,” Gus said. “But what’s this title?”

“The One That No One Has Actually Read,” O’Hara said. “I have researched every word Poe ever wrote, and there’s nothing with a title anything like this.”

“Of course there isn’t,” Gus said, breaking into a broad smile. “Because this isn’t a title. It’s a description.”

“We did think of that,” she said. “But what good does it do us? I mean, sure, we can rule out the things we read in school-‘The Raven,’ ‘The Tell-Tale Heart.’ But he wrote dozens of stories and God knows how many poems and a lot of them are pretty obscure. Where would we start?”

“With ‘actually,’ ” Gus said.

“I don’t understand.”

“The title isn’t ‘The One That No One Has Read,’ ” Gus said. “It’s ‘The One That No One Has Actually Read.’ Which means that it’s something people refer to as if they’ve read it, even though they haven’t.”

“And this means something to you,” O’Hara said.

“It sure does,” Gus said. “Would to you, too, if you’d ever worked as a private detective. Because people who think they’re smart always like to suggest that the solution is much easier than you know it has to be. If you’re searching for something, they want to suggest that the reason you’re not finding it is because you’re looking too hard, and not in the most obvious place. And when they do that, they always make reference to ‘The Purloined Letter.’ ”

She looked at him blankly. “I’m thinking that’s a Poe story.”

“It is,” Gus said. “Although I’ve never read it, either. Nobody has. But we all know the solution-that the reason the police were never able to find the stolen letter was because the thief knew they’d look in every elaborate hiding place, but they’d never notice it if it was left out in plain sight.”

“That’s ridiculous,” O’Hara said. “The police always check the obvious places first.”

“Maybe police work was different back then,” Gus said. “Or maybe it’s a lousy story. That would certainly explain why no one bothers to read it. But the solution is famous, and that’s what this book title refers to.”

“So it’s saying that Macklin Tanner has been in plain sight all along?” she said. “But that doesn’t make any sense at all. He’s not like a letter you can stuff in an envelope. If he was at his home or at the office, someone would have noticed him a long time ago.”

“Then maybe this isn’t the clue you think it is,” Gus said.

“It has to be,” O’Hara said.

“What else can you tell me about the book?” Gus said.

“Just what’s in the picture.”

Gus squinted down at the drawing of the volume’s spine. “What are these squiggles?”

“Those aren’t squiggles,” she said. “They’re numbers.”

“Not these numbers.” Gus looked again. “They can’t be.”

“They are,” she said. “Why can’t they?”

“Don’t you know anything about the Dewey decimal system?” he said, trying to mask his impatience at her ignorance.

“I know it’s how books are classified in libraries,” she said.

“Then I suppose you also know that the numbers aren’t assigned randomly,” Gus said. “That they have specific and precise meanings.”

“Sure. I guess. I mean, they’d have to, or what’s the point?”

“Exactly,” Gus said. “What is this number you scrawled on the Poe book’s spine?”

O’Hara started to answer, then stopped herself. She took the paper back, studied it closely, and then put it down again. “Six-eighty-two-point-seven MTN. Does that mean something?”

“I don’t know yet, but I can tell you exactly what it doesn’t refer to,” Gus said. “The classification for literature, which is the only Dewey designation that makes sense for this book, is eight hundred. If I remember correctly, American Literature in English is classified in the eight-tens. Fiction, I believe, would put it in the eight-thirteens. So this book would be classified as eight-thirteen-point-something Po. But Poe might not be classified with the literature. It could be considered fiction, in which case it wouldn’t have a number at all. The spine would just say FIC and then the first three letters of his last name-which in this case would be his entire last name.”

O’Hara felt her heart starting to pound. This could be something. “So what do these numbers mean?”

“I might be tempted to say nothing,” Gus said. “After all, we have no idea if the programmer responsible for this part of the game knew anything about the Dewey decimal system or if he just remembered there were supposed to be numbers on the spine of a library book. But those letters at the end suggest that’s wrong.”

O’Hara looked at them again. “MTN,” she said. “Macklin Tanner.”

“That’s what I’m thinking,” Gus said. “Which means that those numbers have to be a map to where he is.”

“So what is six-eighty-two-point-seven?” she said.

Gus got out of his chair and walked across the office to the large desk that sprawled in the exact center of the window. He passed his hand through one of those light beams and the panel slid open to reveal the face of the computer. “Do you really think I’m such a nerd I’d know the entire Dewey decimal system?”

There didn’t seem to be a way to answer that would actually move the conversation forward, so O’Hara didn’t say anything. Gus started typing onto the computer screen.

“Okay,” he said after the display loaded. “The six hundreds are all about technology.”

“That doesn’t do us any good,” O’Hara said. “We already know that Tanner is a technological genius.”

“But not this kind,” Gus said. “Computer stuff all starts in the triple zeroes, because the entire system was developed a hundred years before Bill Gates was born, and there was no way to squeeze a new world of publications into existing categories.”

“So what kind of technology are we talking about?” O’Hara said.

“The kind that existed in the nineteenth century,” Gus said. “In terms of the six-eighties, we’re looking at ‘manufacture for specific use.’ ”

“How specific?”

“Well, six-eighty-five is leather, fur, and related items. Six-eighty-four is furnishing and home workshops.”

“And six-eighty-two?”

He checked the display, then checked it again. “Small forge work,” he said. “Blacksmithing.”