Mind-Altering Murder

Chapter Twenty-eight

There were something like a bazillion restaurants in San Francisco, but Gus and Shawn ended up back at the same diner where they’d shared their last meal. It seemed appropriate. After all, this is where Gus’ career with Benson Pharmaceuticals had really started; it might as well mark the end as well.

“I’m going to try to explain this one last time,” Gus said after the waitress had taken their order and disappeared with the menus. “This is not an undercover operation.”

“Not anymore,” Shawn said. “Not now that the boss knows what you’re doing.”

“I’m not doing anything.” Gus had to fight to keep his voice from rising an octave and several decibels.

“It’s okay,” Shawn said. “I understand why you had to do it this way. I’ll admit I was getting a little obsessed with the whole Criminal Genius thing, and all those times you tried to tell me about the serial killer at Benson Pharmaceuticals, I didn’t exactly give your fascinating theory the attention it deserved.”

“All what times?” It was getting harder to keep his voice from turning into a shriek.

“I don’t know,” Shawn said. “Didn’t I say I wasn’t listening?”

“You’re not listening now,” Gus said.

“Yes, but only because now I already know,” Shawn said. “So it’s a waste of our time if I spend it listening to you rehashing the past instead of moving on into the future.”

Gus felt a sharp pain in his right hand. He looked down and discovered he was clenching his fork so tightly it was about to draw blood. He forced his hand to relax until the fork clanked back down onto the table.

“I am trying to tell you that I took this job-”

“Because you couldn’t find any other way to get me on the case, I know,” Shawn said. “It was one giant cry for help, and I was so distracted I couldn’t hear it. Looking back on the past few months, I’m so embarrassed. To think I actually believed you were trying to ditch me when you flew up for your final interview, when it’s so obvious that you were leaving bread crumbs the size of Buicks for me to follow.”

“Umm, sure,” Gus said.

“And when you said you were leaving detective work for a job pushing pills, you probably expected me to fall down laughing,” Shawn said. “You must have been so shocked when I said okay.”

“I was a little surprised,” Gus said. It was true, although not for the reasons Shawn now believed. “But I was always serious about this job.”

“You would have had to be,” Shawn agreed. “Just like when Steve Sloan went rogue and Mark Sloan had him committed to that asylum for loony cops on Diagnosis Murder.”

Now Gus was sure this was a dream. “You watched Diagnosis Murder ?”

“I was dating a girl who worked in a nursing home,” Shawn said. “She had to keep up on the episodes so she’d have something to talk to her patients about. Anyway, the point is if Mark and Steve hadn’t been completely convincing the guy from Jake and the Fat Man would never have broken down and led them to where he’d walled up his family.”

It occurred to Gus that if he had taken the simple precaution of walling up Shawn somewhere before he’d taken the job at Benson, he might still have a future there. But it was too late for that now. Still it was possible he might be able to salvage his new career, if only he could figure out what Shawn was talking about. Or better yet, if he didn’t even try, and simply made his own point as plainly and forcefully as he could.

“Shawn, if you’ve never listened to me before, you’ve got to listen now,” Gus said.

“I’m sure I’ve listened some,” Shawn said. “Like that time I was about to try parasailing, and you said that it was just like jumping off a cliff with a kite strapped to my back.”

“You went anyway and you broke your ankle,” Gus said, despite having just taken a vow not to be dragged off the subject at hand.

“Yes, but not because I didn’t listen,” Shawn said. “I thought you meant it as a recommendation.”

“Fine,” Gus said. “In that case I’m going to ask you to listen first and if there’s anything you think you might not understand, ask questions afterward. Can you do that?”

“I can do even better,” Shawn said. “I can ask questions before I listen. Or even during, although that doesn’t save quite as much time.”

Gus sighed heavily enough that Shawn took the hint and stopped talking.

“Shawn, when I left Psych to take this job, I left Psych to take this job,” Gus said. “I wasn’t going undercover, and I wasn’t trying to convince you that you had missed out on a string of murders. I was offered a position as a vice president in a multinational pharmaceuticals company and I accepted it. I never wanted you to leave Santa Barbara and join me up here to investigate some case that never existed in the first place. So if that’s the reason you’ve invented this job as head of security for yourself, you don’t need to stick with it any longer. You can go back home.”

Shawn waited patiently for several moments after Gus had stopped talking. “That’s really interesting,” he said finally.

“What’s that?” Gus said.

“This whole listening thing,” Shawn said. “You’d think you might learn a little more by doing it, since presumably people scatter information throughout the entirety of a speech like that. But no matter how long I kept quiet, I didn’t hear anything I didn’t already know from your first sentence. Look, food’s here.”

It was. The waitress was hovering over their table with trays that could easily tip over the Flintstones’ car. She dropped them in the center of the table, leaving it for Shawn and Gus to figure out which plate belonged to whom, and disappeared again.

Shawn grabbed one of the plates, picked up the headsized burger and crammed two eyes’ and a nose’s worth into his mouth. Gus took advantage of what would be at least a few seconds of enforced silence to make his point again.

“What I’m trying to say is that while I appreciate the faith you put in me, it’s wrong,” Gus said. “I didn’t come here because I believed there was a case. In fact, I still don’t believe there’s a killer out there stalking pharmaceuticals executives. It’s just a series of coincidences.”

Gus spat out the last syllables as quickly as he could, since he could see the giant mass of food moving down Shawn’s throat like a rabbit in a python.

“There is no case here, Shawn, but there is one back in Santa Barbara,” Gus said before Shawn could usher the last traces of food all the way into his stomach. “I appreciate your faith in me, but you’ve got to tell D-Bob that whatever you told him about the serial killer was wrong and that you’re resigning as head of security.”

Shawn studied Gus closely. “You’re sure about this?”

“About everything except telling D-Bob,” Gus said. “I have no idea how you can stuff that bit of toothpaste back into the tube.”

“Nothing to worry about there,” Shawn said. “I wouldn’t squeeze that tube if your life depended on it.”

It took Gus a moment to realize what Shawn was saying. “You didn’t tell him about the killer?”

“He was my favorite suspect,” Shawn said. “I wasn’t going to share my suspicions with him.”

“Then how did you get the job?”

“The same way you got yours,” Shawn said, taking another huge bite out of the burger.

“You landed this job by spending years working in pharmaceuticals sales and having a unique point of view on the issues that confront our industry in these troubling times?” Gus said.

Shawn managed to get the wad of beef and bun down his throat. “Wouldn’t it surprise you if I said yes?”

“If by ‘surprise’ you mean drive me into a such a rage I’d gouge out your eyes with this spoon, then hurl myself off the Golden Gate Bridge, then definitely it would,” Gus said.

“You make it tempting to say yes,” Shawn said. “But I have to tell the truth. I did it the old-fashioned way. I earned it.”

“Earned it how?”

“By lying,” Shawn said. “He knew we were old friends from the last time I met the guy. So I told him that your presence in the company had established a psychic link for me to see its aura. And that emanation was pulsing red for danger.”

“He bought that?” Gus said, dismayed.

“Your boss is kind of a moron,” Shawn said. “Unless he’s actually the killer. Think we have time for dessert before we go back to the office?”

Gus slid out of the booth, fished in his pocket, and dropped a couple of bills on the table. “You do,” he said. “In fact, you should have dessert for both of us. You don’t need to stop by the office before you head back to the airport. I’ll tell D-Bob you’re on a vision quest or something. He’ll like that.”

Shawn took one last suck on his milk shake and scrambled out of the booth to follow him. “I can’t go back to Santa Barbara now,” he said. “I’ve got a job to do.”

“Making my life miserable?” Gus said as he pushed open the door and stepped out onto the busy sidewalk.

“That’s part of it,” Shawn said.

That was so astonishing Gus stopped dead in the middle of the sidewalk. At least until a kid texting on his phone while he rode his skateboard slammed into him, propelling him into the street. Just before he flew into traffic Gus grabbed the pole of a NO SKATEBOARDS Sign and swung himself back into the mass of pedestrians, nearly knocking over a trio of secretaries.

Shawn waited patiently until his acrobatic display was done, then fell into step alongside him.

“You’re admitting it?” Gus gasped once he had his heart rate back down to sustainable levels. “You only took this job to make my life miserable?”

“Not only,” Shawn said. “Also to make your life happy. And exciting. And boring. And easy. And difficult.”

“Are you planning on doing this in sequence?” Gus said. “Because you could start by making my life a little more lonely.”

“I’ll put that on the list,” Shawn said. “Along with all the other sorts of things your life can only be if it’s a going concern.”

“You’re saying you took this job to save my life,” Gus said.

“I took this job because I thought we were going undercover to expose a murderer who had found a way to kill without ever being noticed,” Shawn said. “That is, by going after people no one would ever mourn-pharmaceuticals executives.”

“I’m a pharmaceuticals executive,” Gus said.

“That’s what I’m saying,” Shawn said. “I took this job because I thought we were going undercover together. But I’m keeping it because I’m not going to let you be the next victim.”

“I can’t be the next victim, because there haven’t been any previous victims,” Gus said. “There’s just been a series of unfortunate accidents, which is not that surprising when you consider how many thousands of people Benson Pharmaceuticals employs worldwide.”

“And one suicide,” Shawn said.

“And one suicide,” Gus agreed. “If it makes you feel better I’ll promise not to put on a cheerleader’s outfit and hang myself in my mother’s basement.”

“That’s good, because you really don’t have the legs for it,” Shawn said.

Gus stopped as they reached the corner of Market Street. He pointed at the long escalator that descended to the subway stop under their feet. “Here’s the BART station,” he said. “You can take that right back to the airport.”

“Only if you come with me,” Shawn said.

“I’m not coming back,” Gus said. “I’ve got a life here.”

“Sure, but for how long?” Shawn said.

“Shawn, there is no danger at Benson Pharmaceuticals,” Gus said. “How can I convince you?”

“You can start by explaining that.”

Shawn gestured down Market to the glass-and-steel tower that housed Gus’ office. A thick crowd of people had formed outside the lobby doors. As Gus watched, a steady stream of onlookers squeezed forward to get a better view, then pushed their way out of the crowd, looking sick. One woman threw up on the curb.

Gus was running before he knew he’d meant to. His flat shoes slapped on the bricks of the sidewalk and sent a sharp sting of pain through his feet with every step, but he barely noticed. He reached the edge of the crowd and let his momentum carry him through the close-packed bodies. He could feel the onlookers push back against him, but he kept going, using knees and elbows to clear any obstruction his combined mass and velocity couldn’t move. After what felt like an eternity he broke through into a clearing, a wide, empty space on the sidewalk, ringed by spectators.

But that space wasn’t completely empty. The first things Gus noticed were the clear pebbles that littered the sidewalk. He realized he’d been walking on them since before he’d entered the crowd; some of them were still stuck in the soles of his shoes. They looked like the bits of windshield that were left on the highway once a serious crash had been cleaned up.

Gus could easily have spent the next few minutes thinking about the marvels of safety glass, wondering what kind of technology was required to make it shatter into beads instead of jagged shards. It was thicker than normal glass, true, but was that enough? Or did it have to go through some kind of chemical process? Gus had heard it referred to as tempered glass, but he had no idea how you would go about tempering something. And could a sheet of glass lose its temper the way a person could? That would make a kind of sense, since a person who lost his temper would fly into a rage, and a pane of glass that lost its temper would fly into jagged shards. Maybe this was just an etymological accident. Or perhaps Gus had stumbled onto some great truth about glass or emotions or flying into things.

Gus wanted to explore all these ideas in detail. All he had to do was turn around and push his way back through the crowd. Then he could walk around the corner to the Drumm Street entrance, take the elevator up to the sixteenth floor, lock himself in his office, and spend the rest of the day in rapt concentration. He might have to ignore the cold wind blowing through the corridors, but he was willing to do that, because the alternative was so much less appealing.

That alternative was to focus on what lay in front of him, spread out on the sidewalk. And that was the last thing he wanted to do. The last thing, but the only thing.

Gus forced his eyes to look down at the ground. He tried to avoid taking in the whole picture and instead to focus on the tiny details. Like the cracks in the bricks where the shock wave from the body’s landing had rippled out across the sidewalk. Or the brown loafer that had come off either in flight or on landing and now lay by its owner’s head. Or the tie. That hideous floral tie he had spent so much of the morning staring at across the conference table. The one Steve Ecclesine put on whenever he planned to engage in an act of corporate brutality, as if the cheery flowers could hide the cruelty of his actions.

There were short bloops of police siren from the street behind him, and Gus felt the crowd jostling as a pair of uniformed cops muscled their way through to the body lying on the ground.

“Okay, let’s move on, people,” a gruff voice said from behind him. “There’s nothing to see here.”

How wrong that voice is, Gus thought. There were things to see in every direction. If you looked down, there was the body. If you looked up, you could see the hole in the building where the window had popped out of its sixteenth-story frame. And if you looked to your left, you could see Shawn looking right back at you.

“So,” Shawn said. “We still working on that string-of-unconnected-accidents theory?”