Psych: A Mind is a Terrible Thing to Read

Chapter Sixteen

The interrogation room’s walls were the same bright, happy yellow as the rest of the police station, as if the SBPD’s decorator had decided that the best way to make a suspect talk was to let him think he was back in kindergarten.

Shawn and Gus had been in the room for two hours now, and there wasn’t a hint of milk and cookies. In fact, there hadn’t been any sign of human life. Every so often Shawn would pop up from the table to make faces in the two-way mirror, just to see if he could get a reaction. If there were people watching, they seemed to be peculiarly immune to the insult of the outstretched tongue.

“I don’t think they’re paying attention,” Gus said as Shawn tried out a new set of expressions in the mirror.

“Oh, they’re paying attention,” Shawn said. “They’re in there studying every move we make, listening to every word we say. Searching for a way to break us down and make us talk.”

“Maybe they could just ask,” Gus said. “I’m ready to talk anytime.”

“So they’ve broken you already,” Shawn said. “I thought you were made out of sterner stuff.”

“I’m ready to talk because I don’t have anything to hide,” Gus said.

Shawn rushed over to him and whispered in his ear, “That’s good, very convincing. Stick with that.”

“I don’t have to stick with it.” Gus pushed away from the table and walked to the mirror. He rapped on it sharply. “It’s the truth.”

After a moment, the door swung open, and Lassiter marched in with a bottle of Windex and a roll of paper towels. He took Gus by the shoulders, steered him back to his seat at the table, then sprayed window cleaner on the mirror.

“Good to see you finally got that promotion you wanted,” Shawn said.

Lassiter swept away the last of the ammonia streaks with a paper towel. “If you had any idea how much one of these mirrors costs, you might treat it with a little more respect.”

“Maybe if you treated us with a little more respect, we might treat your toys with a little more respect,” Shawn said.

Lassiter crumpled the towel and tossed it toward the wastebasket. It bounced off the rim, then dropped straight in. “Let me see,” he said. “You’re drawing a comparison between yourself and this mirror. You’re both shallow. I can see right through both of you. And both of you will crack under the slightest pressure. So yes, I think that does work.”

Shawn turned to Gus, amazed. “He didn’t just do that.”

“He did,” Gus said. “He turned your flip comment around and landed it right on you.”

“Lassie, that’s a first for you,” Shawn said. “And as a fair man, I give you my congratulations.”

Shawn held out his hand to be shaken. Lassiter gave it a quick glance, but didn’t take it. “Actually, Spencer, I should apologize. It’s one thing for me to crack wise when you’re trying to horn in on my cases and hog all the credit. But you’re in serious trouble now. The district attorney has been in Chief Vick’s office for an hour now trying to determine what he can charge you with.”

“But we didn’t do anything,” Gus said.

“That will be determined in a full and fair investigation,” Lassiter said. “I want to assure you right now that if we have reason to believe that you’re actually innocent, then whatever our personal feelings for one another might be, I will work ceaselessly to make sure you go free. And if we find evidence suggesting that you’re guilty, then my own personal feelings will have no impact either way on a full, fair, impartial investigation.”

Now he did reach out and take Shawn’s hand, which had been stranded in the space between them, and gave it a hearty shake. “Somebody will be back in to see you shortly.”

He walked out, and the door locked behind him with the loudest click Gus had ever heard.

“What was that?” Shawn said. “It sounded like Lassie was treating us with respect.”

“It sure did.”

Shawn sank down on the table. “How bad is this?”

Gus couldn’t believe Shawn had to ask.“If they believe Tara, they can charge us as accessories or conspirators. Or just plain murderers. Only it’s not just plain murder, because if it looks like we commissioned Tara to kill Dal, then they’re going to call it special circumstances.”

To Gus’ horror, Shawn actually seemed to like the sound of that. “I’d hope they’d see the circumstances as special,” he said. “It’s not every day we get accused of murdering someone.”

“‘Special circumstances’ is what they call it when the crime is so heinous they can ask for the death penalty,” Gus said.

“They won’t do that,” Shawn said. “They know us. They know we’d never commit murder.”

“It doesn’t matter if they know us,” Gus said. “Their job is to investigate crimes and judge the evidence, not follow their own prejudices.”

“Have you ever considered that that’s the reason our solve rate is so much higher than theirs?” Shawn said. “Because I never let the evidence confuse me when I’ve made up my mind for reasons that are completely petty and personal.”

Gus slumped in his chair, trying not to think of his execution day. Of course the attempt itself sent death row images flooding through his head. He saw his mother weeping behind the glass, his father stubbornly refusing to look at him. Uncle Pete was there, clutching his Bible in his manicured fingers, and little adopted second cousin Daisy, no longer the cross-eyed child with braces he used to tease, but now a long, lanky beautiful reporter for CNN. She’d have written him once while he was on death row, saying how much she had loved him as a child and how she’d never stopped, and how she now regretted all the time they’d wasted without ever getting together. And next to her, weeping softly into a lace handkerchief, was Mariah Carey, expressing her grief by wearing a black peignoir over a matching bra and panty set. Oddly, while Gus’ execution was set some time in the future, she seemed to have stepped right out of the “Vision of Love” video.

“First of all,” Shawn said, drumming his fingers impatiently on the table, “we are not going to be executed, because we’re not guilty. And more important, if we do get the death penalty, Mariah Carey is not coming to see you die.”

“You don’t know that,” Gus said. “And I have no idea what you’re talking about anyway. Who said anything about Mariah Carey?”

“You didn’t have to say anything,” Shawn said. “You were clutching your heart and mouthing the lyrics to ‘Emotions.’”

“I wouldn’t even be thinking about the needle if you had acted responsibly in the beginning,” Gus said. “I begged you to get rid of Tara.”

“So you’re saying this is my fault,” Shawn said. “Because if you are, I sure hope you’re enunciating well for all the nice people who are sitting behind that mirror and recording every word.”

Gus looked back up at the mirror guiltily. “Oh my God,” he said. “We’re turning on each other, just like they want us to.”

“Technically, it’s just you turning on me at this point,” Shawn said.

“I’m so sorry. I panicked,” Gus said.

“It happens,” Shawn said. “Just keep reminding yourself that they can’t touch us, because we haven’t done anything. In America, our justice system doesn’t convict innocent people. In fact, in California our justice system doesn’t even convict guilty ones, as long as they’ve had their faces in the paper a couple of times before they pick up the meat cleaver.”

The door swung open, and Bert Coules came in, scowling. “That’s very amusing, Mr. Spencer,” he said. “And I’m afraid all too true. OJ. Robert Blake. And of course your own personal favorite, Veronica Mason.”

“She really was innocent,” Shawn said.

“Right, because you said so.”

“Me and the real killer,” Shawn said. “I do seem to recall something like a dramatic courtroom confession.”

“From a delusional hysteric who fantasized an entire romantic life with the victim,” Coules said, “and who might well have confessed to his murder simply to bring some drama to her pathetic, lonely life.”

“Veronica Mason is every bit as innocent as we are,” Shawn said.

“For once we agree on something, Mr. Spencer,” Coules said. His lips stretched across his teeth in a tight approximation of a smile. “Maybe if we talked, we might find a few other areas of agreement. Let’s start with your friend Tara Larison.”

Coules reached into his briefcase and pulled out a sheaf of papers. He fanned them out across the table like a winning poker hand. “I have sworn depositions from people who work at three fast-food restaurants, one coffeehouse, a video store, and several other businesses who sold goods or services to Tara Larison. They all say she told them she was doing your bidding.”

Gus grabbed the documents and leafed through them. They all confirmed what Coules was telling them.

“She liked doing errands.”

Coules piled the documents together and slipped them back into his briefcase. “She liked doing errands for you-isn’t that right?”

“Yes,” Shawn said. “What’s your point?”

“Why are you asking what his point is?” Gus whispered. “You know what his point it. He’s trying to prove you mentally ordered Tara to kill Dallas Steele.”

“Right, and you hear how stupid that sounds when you say it out loud?” Shawn whispered back. “Let’s make him say it.”

“I’m happy to,” Coules said. “I’m trying to prove that Tara Larison was acting under your orders when she committed murder.”

“That’s not fair,” Shawn said. “We were whispering. Isn’t there some kind of privilege here?”

Coules snapped his briefcase shut and went toward the door.

“Wait a minute,” Gus said. “How is this even possible? Dallas Steele has only been dead for a couple of hours. How could you gather all these depositions in that time?”

“I didn’t collect these depos in relation to the murder of Tara Larison,” Coules said. “I was investigating the murder of John Marichal.”

Gus knew he’d heard that name somewhere before, but he couldn’t place it.

Shawn’s memory was sharper. “The guy from the impound yard?”

“She snapped his neck,” Coules said. “Nearly twisted his head off. And all because he wouldn’t give you back that piece of crap car.”

“Don’t talk about the Echo that way,” Shawn said. “Gus gets very emotional.”

Coules just smiled that tight smile again.

“I don’t think you’re helping,” Gus said to Shawn.

“I believe that, Mr. Spencer,” Coules said. “I believe you both got emotional. So emotional that Tara killed John Marichal.”

“He was a violent escaped convict,” Gus said. “How could a scrawny little thing like Tara break his neck?”

“The same way she put a BurgerZone fry cook in the hospital,” Coules said. “In a way, she did us all two great favors with Marichal-she took a wanted criminal off the streets, and she’s going to send you away for a long time.”

The door swung open, and Chief Vick came in, looking stern. “I’m not convinced about that yet, Mr. Coules.”

Gus felt his heart lightening. Maybe they weren’t completely alone in the world. Maybe they had one friend.

“Which part?”

“We have sufficient evidence to hold Tara Larison on suspicion of murder in the death of Dallas Steele,” she said. “But we have no hard evidence tying her to Marichal’s death yet.”

“Except her prints at the scene.”

“Two of my detectives were with her there long after the murder,” Vick said.

“Because these two were trying to corrupt the crime scene.”

“If we killed John Marichal, why did someone try to kill us when we went back to the impound lot to investigate?” Shawn said.

“This is the first I’ve heard of that,” Chief Vick said.

“We meant to report it, but we got a little busy,” Shawn said.

“What he means is they didn’t have any reason to make it up before,” Coules said.

“If you think we’re making it up, go check it out for yourself,” Gus said. “Look for bullet holes and broken glass in a bunch of cars from the sixties.”

“Right,” Coules said. “Kids never use wrecked cars for target practice. So any evidence we find of gunshots is proof someone was shooting at you.”

They turned to Chief Vick for help. She shrugged apologetically. “I’m afraid he’s right. If you had come to us right after it happened, maybe we could have done something.”

“Next time don’t wait so long to manufacture your alibis,” Coules said.

Chief Vick turned back to the district attorney. “The only thing you have tying Tara to Marichal’s murder is your belief that Mr. Spencer and Mr. Guster were angry at him,” she said. “And your belief that she was psychically compelled to do his bidding.”

“ Her belief, not mine,” Coules said. “I refuse to endorse the ridiculous notion that this man is actually psychic.”

“In which case, you need to prove conspiracy,” Vick said. “You’ll need to demonstrate that Mr. Spencer made it known to Miss Larison that he wanted these victims dead.”

“That’s going to be easy with Steele,” Coules said. “He’d called a press conference to expose Spencer as a fraud. When I worked in Florida, I put away an entire drug cartel with less evidence than this.”

“That is troubling,” Vick said. She turned to Shawn and Gus. “I guess there’s no way out of this for you, is there?”

“You say that like you think we should be able to come up with an answer,” Shawn said.

“Only if you’re innocent,” Vick said. “Otherwise I’m going to have to put you under arrest and let Mr. Coules hold you until trial. If only you could find a flaw in his otherwise excellent logic.”

Gus’ mind spun. Chief Vick was trying to throw them a lifeline. But as far as he could see, the rope was still hanging just out of reach.

The realization hit Shawn and Gus at the same time.

“I guess there’s no way out for us,” Shawn said.

“None at all,” Gus agreed.

“You’ve got us,” Shawn said to Coules. “We wanted Steele dead, and Tara acted on that desire, just like she did on all the others.”

“I wonder how she knew so well what you wanted all the time,” Gus said.

“Like she said, she took my psychic orders.”

“But that can’t be,” Gus said. “Coules refuses to endorse the ridiculous notion that you’re actually psychic.”

“Good point,” Shawn said. “Then we must have told her we wanted Steele dead before the press conference started.”

“Of course,” Gus said. “I can’t remember-how did we do that again? Because we were locked in the North Tower all night. She didn’t come up there, did she?”

Chief Vick shook her head. “We’ve been studying the house’s security logs for that night. It turns out that most of the doors and windows are monitored. Thanks to that, we believe that Tara broke in through the underground garage and went straight to the auditorium. As far as we know, the door to the north tower didn’t open between the time Shepler took you up there and the time he brought you down.”

“That would certainly clinch our innocence,” Shawn said, “if only it weren’t for modern technology.”

“That’s right,” Gus said, his spirits rising. “We could have plotted the entire thing out on our cell phones.”

“Except there’s no reception anywhere within five miles of Eagle’s View,” Vick said.

Coules’ glare shifted from Vick to his two prime suspects. “I don’t know what kind of game you’re playing-”

“We’re not playing. We’re trying to help you,” Shawn said. “Where were we again?”

“You were explaining how you conspired with Tara Larison to kill Dallas Steele,” Vick said.

“Right,” Gus said. “All we need is to pinpoint the moment when we gave her the order to commit the murder, and we’re going down.”

“I’ve been working through the time line, and I can’t see any point where we could have communicated to Tara after we got to Eagle’s View,” Shawn said.

“That’s easy,” Gus said. “Clearly we gave her the order after Shepler picked us up.”

“That could work,” Shawn said. “Does make us look pretty stupid, though.”

“Why is that, gentlemen?” Vick said.

“Well, when Shepler came for us, we thought Dal wanted to see us because we had made him a fortune,” Shawn said.

“And we were going to share in that fortune,” Gus said. “Ten percent of all profits were supposed to go to us.”

“There were no profits,” Coules growled. “That’s one of the reasons you hated him.”

“Yes, definitely,” Shawn said. “After he told us that, we certainly were miffed.”

“If only he’d told us before we went up to see him, this all would have been so much easier to arrange,” Gus said.

“I guess it’s possible that we hated Dal so much that we arranged to kill him before we collected our vast profits, even though his death would probably mean we’d never see a nickel,” Shawn said.

“So we told Tara she should follow us everywhere we went, just in case we popped up to Eagle’s View, so she could murder Dallas Steele in the exact time and place that would put the biggest burden of guilt on us,” Gus said.

“That must have been what we did,” Shawn said. “Except that it’s not only incredibly stupid-it doesn’t make any sense at all.”

“I’m sure it will to a jury,” Gus said.

“As long as the jury is made up completely of idiots,” Shawn said. “Think they can arrange that?”

Coules was breathing heavily, and his hands were shaking. Chief Vick pulled him aside gently.

“I don’t think you’re ready to charge them yet,” she said.

“They’re guilty, and everyone in this room knows it,” Coules said through gritted teeth.

“If you want to charge them, I can’t stop you,” Chief Vick said. “But in two minutes they’ve been able to poke huge holes in your case. Wouldn’t it make more sense to release them now and rearrest them when you’ve got everything lined up?”

“By which time they’ll be in Argentina.”

Shawn managed to put on a look of shock. “This is our home,” he said. “We didn’t move here after spending most of our lives across the country like some people. We grew up here-and we’re not going anywhere.”

“What Shawn is trying to say is, we have deep roots in the community,” Gus said.

Gus could practically see the neurons bouncing around in Coules’ head as he tried to find a way to hold on to his case.

“Fine,” Coules said finally. “Let them go for now.”

Shawn and Gus exchanged a high five, a low five, a medium five, and a couple other fives that didn’t have precise definitions.

“But you’d better enjoy your celebration now,” Coules said, “because I am going to put you away for multiple murders.”

Coules turned and walked out of the interrogation room.

“That man needs to slow down and enjoy life a little more,” Shawn said.

“Don’t be fooled by the red face and shaking hands,” Chief Vick said. “Bert Coules loves his job. There’s nothing that gives him more pleasure than putting a criminal behind bars.”

“Except in this case,” Shawn said, “I think he’d prefer to put us there.”

“There’s one thing you need to understand, Mr. Spencer,” Chief Vick said. “I didn’t believe he had the evidence to charge you today, and I wanted to spare you and Mr. Guster a great deal of unpleasantness and Mr. Coules a great deal of humiliation. But if we find evidence against you, I’ll be working with him.”

She opened the door and ushered them out to the corridor, where two state marshals were leading a manacled woman in an orange prison jumpsuit toward the door. As soon as she saw them, she started screaming.

“Shawn! Help me!”

It took Gus a second to recognize the woman, if only because he’d never seen her in anything that wasn’t tight and red before. Now, stuffed into the baggy jumpsuit, her hair still wet and stringy after the blood had been washed out of it, eye shadow running down her face like tears, she didn’t look like the dangerously hot daughter of Satan. She looked like a little girl. A psychotic, delusional, murderous little girl, true, but even so, Gus felt his first twinge of pity for her.

“Shawn,” Tara cried again,“I only did what you wanted me to!”

All traces of pity vanished from Gus’ heart. Regan MacNeil was only a little girl, too, and she could make her head spin all the way around. There was no reason to think that this one couldn’t have made Marichal’s head do the same thing, let alone plunge a knife into Dallas Steele.

The deputies pulled Tara out of the room. Before the massive oak doors closed behind her, Gus got a glimpse of the short gray bus that would take her to the state prison for women near Chowchilla.

“Poor girl,” Shawn said. “We’ve got to help her.”

“We can testify in her defense, I guess,” Gus said. “Try to explain to a jury how crazy she really is.”

“We could do that,” Shawn said. “Or we can do something really useful.”

“What’s that?” Gus asked with a sinking heart.

“We can figure out who the real killer is.”