Mind-Altering Murder

Chapter Twenty-nine

“I quit,” Gus said.

“A bold statement,” Shawn said. “Forcefully spoken. Brief and yet eloquent. If I could give you the tiniest smidge of advice, I’d just say that it would be more convincing if you weren’t on your knees while you said it.”

Gus looked back over his shoulder at Shawn, who was spread out over one of the sofas in his office. Then he turned back to the carpet in front of him and pulled another stretch of silver duct tape off the roll. He laid the top half of the tape along the bottom edge of the closed curtain, then pressed the bottom of it against the floor.

“As long as I’m within ten feet of this window, I’m keeping low to the ground,” Gus said. “The lower my center of gravity, the less chance I’ll plunge to my death if the glass falls out.”

“First of all, if the glass does fall out a strip of duct tape and a curtain won’t stop you,” Shawn said. “If Goldfinger could get sucked out through that tiny airplane window, there’s no way you’re not going out a hole the size of a billboard.”

“That would be true if we were two miles in the air,” Gus said. “As it is, explosive decompression is just about the only thing I don’t have to worry about.”

“You also don’t have to worry about whether you’re such a man that one romp in the hay is enough to make a criminally oriented lesbian aviatrix turn straight in both ways,” Shawn said. “And also you don’t have to worry that the glass will come out,” Shawn said.

“Says the company’s chief safety officer,” Gus said.

“Exactly,” Shawn said. “I commissioned an inspection of every window in these offices, and they are all firmly glued. Or however they’re stuck in there.”

That was at least partially true. There had been an inspection and it had cleared all the windows, although it had been performed by engineers working for the building’s owners and their insurance company. The fact that they still had no explanation for the sudden failure of Steve Ecclesine’s window did tend to undercut Gus’ confidence in the security of his own, however.

Gus pulled another strip of tape off the roll and overlapped it on the piece holding the curtain to the carpet. “That doesn’t exactly fill me with confidence.”

“Then this should,” Shawn said. “The killer hasn’t repeated himself yet. Skiing accident, electrocution, suicide. I don’t think he’s going to feel that the window gag was so good he needs an encore.”

“That’s great,” Gus said. “As long as there really is a killer. I’m still not convinced this isn’t one more in a tragic series of accidents.”

“Yes, you are,” Shawn said. “You just don’t want to be.”

Gus got up on his knees, then hurled the roll of tape directly at Shawn’s head. Shawn ducked and the tape bounced off the wall behind him.

“All right, I am,” Gus said. “I’m convinced.”

“Don’t forget, I’m also right that you don’t want to be,” Shawn said.

“I haven’t forgotten.” Gus slid across the carpet on his knees until he reached an armchair opposite Shawn’s sofa and pulled himself into it. “Believe me, I’m never going to forget that. Because I want this job. I want to stay here.”

“No, you don’t,” Shawn said.

Gus might have jumped out of his chair and grabbed Shawn’s shirt to shake some sense into him if that hadn’t required standing up within a football field’s distance of the window. “You don’t know what I want,” he said. “You only know what you want.”

“That’s right,” Shawn said. “But we always want the same thing, so what difference does it make?”

“It’s not that we want the same thing,” Gus said. “You always manage to get what you want, and I find a way to convince myself that that’s what I’d wanted all along.”

“So everyone’s happy,” Shawn said.

“One of us is happy and one of us is pretending to be,” Gus said.

“That works, too,” Shawn said.

That was enough to propel Gus out of his chair. Let the window blow out if it wanted to. He couldn’t sit here and listen to this.

“Not anymore,” Gus said. “I’ve got to have my own life. You can stay ten years old forever if that’s what you want, but I’ve got to grow up.”

“I’m sure your voice will change one of these days,” Shawn said calmly.

Gus stalked over to the door. It would be so easy to fling it open and walk out, never to see Shawn’s face again. Of course it would have been easier if they hadn’t been sitting in Gus’ office, to which he would have to return sooner or later. All Shawn would have to do to foil Gus’ plan was to continue to sit on the comfortable guest couch.

And it wasn’t what Gus wanted, anyway. At least it wasn’t what his calm, rational side wanted, and he’d never been able to shut up that part of him, even in the heat of rage.

Yes, Gus realized, he wanted to leave childhood behind and step with both feet into the adult world. But he didn’t want to leave Shawn back there in his preadolescent days. He wanted to bring his best friend along with him. Would that even be possible? He had no idea. But he owed it to their friendship to give it at least one good try.

Gus turned back from the door. “It is a string of coincidences,” he said. “Tragic accidents and a suicide, all completely unconnected except by happenstance.”

“You know that’s not true,” Shawn said.

“I know part of me wants it not to be true,” Gus said. “That’s the part of me that wants the world to conform to my idea of fun. Where there are Russian spies working behind the counters of dry cleaners, pirates plotting to take over oil rigs, and serial killers hiding inside every corporate office.”

“Why would a Russian spy go undercover in a dry cleaner’s?” Shawn said. “It would make much more sense to operate out of a shoe store.”

“See?” Gus said. “If I gave that one second of thought, I could probably find a way it made sense.”

“People are at their most vulnerable when they’ve got their shoes off,” Shawn said. “Combine that with-”

Gus slapped his hands over his ears. “Stop!”

Shawn shrugged. “Okay, but don’t blame me if you find yourself blabbing state secrets next time you go in for a pair of Keds.”

“I don’t wear Keds anymore, Shawn,” Gus said. “And that’s kind of the point. We’re not in The Goonies. There isn’t a pirate ship wrecked in a cave under every abandoned restaurant.”

“You never know if you don’t look,” Shawn said.

“I don’t want to look for what’s underneath anymore,” Gus said. “If a sea lion washes up on shore, I don’t want to check to see if it was murdered, because it wasn’t.”

“Except for Shabby.”

“A couple of years ago all the sea lions disappeared from Fisherman’s Wharf here,” Gus said. “No one knew why.”

“They were all murdered?” Shawn said.

“The next year they all came back. Because that’s what sea lions do in the real world,” Gus said. “Just like people ski into trees or get electrocuted by bad wiring or even hang themselves when life gets to be too much for them.”

“Of course they do,” Shawn said. “That’s why all those things make such good cover for murder.”

“One out of a million times maybe it’s murder,” Gus said. “I want to live in the world of the nine hundred ninety-nine thousand nine hundred ninety-nine, not the crazy world where the one just might possibly be right.”

“What fun is that?”

Gus took a deep breath. This was the hardest thing he’d ever tried to explain, and if he didn’t get it right he’d have lost the chance to bring Shawn along. “It’s not fun,” Gus said. “It’s not supposed to be fun. It’s real.”

“Real.” Shawn rolled the word around in his mouth as if he’d never heard it before.

“I need to accept the real instead of jumping after the fun,” Gus said. “Because while I’ve been chasing that one in a million, I’ve been missing what everyone else has. I don’t want to spend my time wondering if an accidental death is actually a murder. I don’t want to meet a perfectly nice new person and immediately jump to the conclusion that-”

There was a knock at the door. Then it cracked open. Jerry Fellows stuck his smiling face into the office. “Is this a bad time, Mr. G?” he said.

“I guess not, Jerry,” Gus said. “Come on in.”

Jerry wheeled his mail cart to Gus’ desk and deposited a stack of letters. “Ah, I’m sorry. I didn’t realize you were meeting with our new safety officer,” he said. “Are we still on for later, Mr. Spencer?”

“That we are, Jerry,” Shawn said.

“Anything I can do to help end this string of terrible accidents,” Jerry said. “Although if you don’t mind my saying so, Mr. G, poor Mr. Ecclesine’s passing may end up doing the world a world of good, bless his soul.”

“What do you mean?” Gus said.

“Of all the senior executives around here, he was the one most opposed to your orphan drugs campaign. Did the same back when Jim Macoby was pushing his own plan. So maybe now that he’s gone you’ve got a chance.”

“Hate to have it come at such a price,” Gus said.

“Too true, too true,” Jerry said. “But on the other hand, if you’ve got to suffer through such a terrible tragedy, it’s a blessing that some good can come out of it.”

“Thanks, Jerry,” Gus said.

“For what?”

“For reminding us that there’s more to life than the occasional bit of violence and misery,” Gus said.

“That’s what I’m here for,” Jerry said as he pushed his cart toward the door. “Just want to leave the world slightly better than it was when I got here.”

Gus held the door open for Jerry’s cart, then let it close behind the mailman before turning back to Shawn. “See?” he said. “That’s what I’m talking about. Here’s a man who can bring joy to everyone around him because he’s not busy running around trying to prove that something statistically absurd has actually happened.”

“I won’t argue with you about Jerry,” Shawn said. “He’s a great guy.”

“And I want to live in a world where a great guy is just a great guy,” Gus said. “Where I don’t have to think someone like him could ever be-”

Gus broke off as a dark thought started forming in his head. He pushed it away. He couldn’t go down that path. He wouldn’t.

“No way he’d ever be what?” Shawn said.

“He isn’t,” Gus said. But the harder he tried to push the thought out of his mind, the stronger it came back. He gave it one last shove and managed to free himself. He breathed a sigh of relief, and the thought rushed back at him like a wave crashing onto a sand castle, obliterating everything in its path.

It wasn’t just a thought anymore. Gus knew the truth. The horrible, awful, inescapable truth.