Psych: Mind Over Magic

Chapter Twenty

The neighborhood was one of those quaint parts of the city dating from an ancient time when citizens of Santa Barbara still believed that the population who spent their lives serving their superiors, cleaning their houses, fixing their cars, or serving their dinners, should be allowed to live within a gas tank’s drive from them. The houses were designed and built for people who would use them to live in, possibly raise children in, not simply as markers to prove how much more money they had than their neighbors.

That meant there were no Moorish castles on this block, no Spanish palaces, or quasi-Mediterranean su pervillas. Instead, there were simple, one-story cottages and ranch houses, few with more than three bedrooms and a good number with only one bath. The small front yards were mostly patches of brown lawn, and there weren’t many houses not in need of a fresh coat of paint. A few blocks in either direction, the houses started to get bigger and newer as the older places were being replaced by lot-spanning micromansions, but this area was essentially untouched. Had the real estate boom gone on for another year, this street might have been demolished to make room for a fleet of grander dwellings, but the discovery that the area had been the dumping ground for a local chemical company’s effluent before being developed for housing tended to make the land here less attractive to spec builders. Small wonder that you could still buy a house on this street for as little as eight hundred thousand dollars.

If there were any houses still standing after today, that was. Right now, that seemed to be in question.

Both ends of the block had been closed off by fire engines. A squadron of police cars was arrayed up and down the street, and uniformed officers were pounding on doors, grabbing the residents who opened them, and racing them away beyond the fire engine boundaries. A boxy gray truck loomed in front of a particularly shabby Cape Cod, the words BOMB SQUAD emblazoned on all sides to chase away any residents who might have ignored the police pounding on their doors.

Shawn and Gus stood with Detectives Lassiter and O’Hara, staring at the Cape Cod.

“This is fun,” Shawn said finally. “Tomorrow you should all come over and stand outside my house.”

“No one asked you to come along, Spencer,” Lassiter said. “I think we can handle this perfectly well without your help.”

“What, standing around and watching while no one does anything?” Shawn said. “Nobody does that better than me.”

“He’s the champ,” Gus said. “He never misses an episode of Private Practice.”

“This is called staging,” Lassiter said. “We’re getting all our people into position, evacuating the civilians out of the area, and then we move.”

“That’s not very interesting,” Shawn said. “In the movies, this part is handled in a few quick cuts.”

“Or a montage,” Gus said.

“Only if the house in question is located in 1987,” Shawn said. “And then the audience spends their time wishing all these cops would turn their weapons on Kenny Loggins before he starts another song. The point is, we’re supposed to cut in right before the action starts.”

“If what you want is a movie, go see one in a theater,” Lassiter said.

“That’s a good idea,” Shawn said. He turned to Detective O’Hara, who was snapping her cell phone shut. “How about it, Jules? We could catch a matinee of all twenty-two Bond movies, and probably still make it back before anything actually happens.”

“Shawn, you shouldn’t even be here,” O’Hara said. “It would probably be best if you and Gus moved back behind the line.”

“And miss all the excitement?” Shawn said. “Besides, you brought us here.”

Technically, that was true, but it certainly hadn’t been on purpose. Shawn and Gus had dropped by the police station to see if there had been any test results back on the air in the canisters from the Vegas penthouse. When they got there, they found Lassiter and O’Hara strapping themselves into Kevlar on their way to the door.

“Jules, Lassie!” Shawn said as the two detectives bustled past him.

“Can’t talk, sorry,” O’Hara said. “Come back tomorrow.”

The front door closed behind them.

“They didn’t just do that,” Shawn said.

“They so did,” Gus said.

“Didn’t even stop to apologize,” Shawn said.

“Or to let you have the last word,” Gus said.

“Exactly,” Shawn said. “I have a reputation to protect around here. Whenever anyone leaves the room, I get to make a pithy quip that sums up the essentials of the mise-en-scene in a way that not only adds some much-needed levity to our tragedy-besotted world, but gives a unique perspective that often leads everyone involved to see the situation in the correct light.”

“It’s amazing that they go anywhere without your services,” Gus said.

“It’s amazing they think they can get away with it,” Shawn said.

They could hear sirens starting up and the squeal of rubber on asphalt as a fleet of police cars tore out of the lot.

“What’s more amazing is that they seem to have been right about that,” Gus said.

“Not as long as my name is on this building,” Shawn said, grabbing Gus by the shoulder and propelling him toward the station’s rear exit.

As they made their way back, Gus finally understood what a young salmon must feel when it comes time to spawn. They were definitely swimming against the tide, as a swarm of police officers jostled past them on their way to the front door. Of course, Gus reasoned, a salmon was probably pretty sure that something good was going to happen when he finally reached the end of his upstream voyage, and Gus couldn’t imagine what they were going to find in the alley behind the station, besides a couple of Dumpsters and some really bad smells, but Shawn wasn’t giving him a choice in the matter.

Finally they reached the exit and Shawn threw open the metal door. Lassiter’s car was wedged lengthwise across the alley, an inch of clearance on either side. The detective backed up the sedan until the bumper hit the wall of the courthouse that sat behind the police department, then spun the wheels left, slammed the gearshift into drive, and jerked forward until the front bumper hit the back of the station. He spun the wheels back the other way, jammed into reverse, and made it back three inches before tapping the rear wall again. Through the windshield, Gus could see that Lassiter was talking the whole time. He couldn’t hear anything through the car’s closed windows, but it wasn’t too hard to tell exactly what the detective was saying.

“Come on,” Shawn said to Gus, and pushed him toward the passenger’s side of the car. Before Gus made it to the rear door, Shawn had already slid in behind Lassiter.

“Need a little help, Lassie?” Shawn said cheerily as Gus got in next to him.

“Get out of the car, Spencer,” Lassiter said, putting the stick into drive and inching forward again.

Shawn pulled on the door handle, but the lock didn’t open. “Sorry, Detective, I can’t make it work,” Shawn said. “It’s like you use this car for transporting criminals or something.”

“Transporting criminals is exactly what I don’t want to do right now,” Lassiter said. “Detective O’Hara, please pull these two out of the backseat.”

“You’re almost free, Carlton,” O’Hara said. “Do you really want to take the time? Besides, maybe they can be some help.”

Shawn and Gus put on their most helpful expressions and leaned into the rearview mirror. Lassiter yanked the mirror around so he could see past them to the alley and backed up until he bumped into the courthouse wall. He twisted the wheel around and put the car into drive.

“If I ever find out who moved my parking space, I’m going to be filling out officer-involved shooting reports for the rest of my life,” Lassiter said, pointing up at the RESERVED FOR HEAD DETECTIVE sign stuck onto the side of the station. Gus could make out traces of blue marker poking out from the right side, a WN and a heart’s height above it, ES.

The front bumper scraped the side of the station, and then the car was free. Lassiter flipped on the siren, slammed his foot down on the gas, and the sedan rocketed forth into traffic.

During the short, fast drive to the Lower Eastside, Shawn tried to strike up a conversation with the detectives, or at least supply them with a pithy quip that would sum up the mise-en-scene. But neither Lassiter nor O’Hara seemed interested in chatting, and Shawn was having difficulty summing up the situation when he didn’t have any idea what was going on.

Lassiter’s car screamed onto the residential street just as the fire engine was backing across the mouth to block it off, and pulled up outside the dingy Cape Cod.

“You two stay in the car,” Lassiter commanded as he jumped out and crouched behind the open door. O’Hara did the same thing on her side.

“Sorry, Lassie, I can only follow one order at a time and I have to do it in the order I get them,” Shawn said. “So I’m still working on getting out of the car.”

Shawn slithered over the front seat and slid out past O’Hara, then pulled open the back door for Gus. They crouched down behind her.

“So,” Shawn said, “what’s going on here, anyway?”

“We’re not sure,” Detective O’Hara said, tightly surveying the scene. “There were reports of an explosion.”

Shawn looked around. All the houses seemed to be intact.

“Not exactly Trinity, is it?” he said. “If it was a bomb, I think it fizzled.”

“Or that’s what they want you to think.”

The voice was female and familiar, and the second Shawn heard it, he felt his arm moving to salute. He grabbed his hand and pulled it down, then stood to see Major Holly Voges coming up to the car.

“It’s a standard technique of terrorists these days,” Major Voges snapped. “They set off a small explosion and wait until the area is swarming with police, fire fighters, and EMTs. Then they set off a much bigger bomb, taking out the first responders.”

“You spend a lot of time researching terrorists at the Federal Communications Commission?” O’Hara said icily.

“Hey, they’re all over the TV,” Shawn said.

“And the radio,” Gus said. “Soon as you turn one on, you’re going to learn something about them.”

“Major Voges,” Lassiter called across the car, “what’s the situation here?”

“I’m just an onlooker, Detective,” Voges said. “Here to lend whatever assistance I can. But I’m not the one to ask.”

“Then who’s in charge?” Lassiter said.

A tall man dressed head to toe in Kevlar stepped up to Lassiter. “Captain John Sturges, bomb squad,” he said. “We’ve got the area nearly secured, and we’re readying a robot to enter the premises.”

“Thank you, Captain,” Lassiter said.

“Did anyone ask the robot how it feels about that?” Shawn said. “Because it might not want to sacrifice its life for us puny humans.”

“Can you tell us what you know?” O’Hara said, ignoring Shawn.

“At two forty-seven p.m., we got several reports of an explosion from inside this house. The 911 operators who took the calls asked if it might have been a shot, but apparently the people who live in this neighborhood are familiar with the sound of gunfire, and they said it was different. We’ve tried to contact the homeowner, one August Balustrade, but there’s no answer.”

Gus was certain he’d heard that name somewhere before, but he couldn’t place it. Shawn was faster.

“Balustrade?” Shawn said. “Fat, balding guy with a face like a cherub? Real big with the five of hearts?”

“We’ll know when we get in there,” Sturges said. “That is, if he’s in one piece.”

Lassiter inserted himself between Shawn and Sturges. “Is that all?”

“One of the neighbors, a Mrs. Wilma Naugatuck, reported seeing a woman fleeing the house just after the explosion.”

“Was she injured?”

“Mrs. Naugatuck said her face was discolored, as if she’d been caught in an explosion,” the captain said. “And the explosion seems to have blown her clothes off. She ran out in her underwear.”

Down at the end of the street, a uniformed officer waved at them. Sturges nodded back at him, then turned to Lassiter. “We’re clear.”

“Let’s send in the robot,” Lassiter said.

“Hold on a second,” Shawn said. “Let’s talk about this woman in her underwear.”

“Let’s not,” O’Hara said. “Your adolescent fantasies can wait until we’ve cleaned up this mess.”

“I’m not sure there is a mess,” Shawn said. “The neighbor said her face was discolored as if from a bomb blast?”

“That’s what the lady told us,” Sturges said.

“Let’s say you’re a skilled, bomb professional,” Shawn said.

“He is,” Lassiter said.

“No, say the words, all together now.” Shawn raised his hands as if to conduct a group sing-along, but no one seemed interested in joining him. “Fine, whatever. Anyway, in all your years of skilled, bomb professional experience, have you ever known anyone to emerge from an explosion with their clothes blown off and their face charred black?”

“Only in Bugs Bunny cartoons,” Sturges said.

“And, judging from all your years of skilled, bomb professional experience, are we now in the middle of anything resembling a Bugs Bunny cartoon?” Shawn asked.

“Only one of us is,” Lassiter snapped, then cast an accusatory glance at Gus. “Maybe two, if you count Tweety Bird over here.”

“Lassie, I’m trying to-”

Lassiter cut Shawn off with a wave of the hand. “Interfere with an ongoing police operation. Now, get out of the way.” Lassiter turned back to Sturges. “Go ahead, send in the robot.”

Shawn tried to object, but Lassiter walked away. Shawn studied the scene, then nudged Gus hard. “You heard the man.”

“I heard the man,” Gus said, “but that doesn’t mean he was talking to me.”

“Of course he was,” Shawn said. “When they write the history of Santa Barbara, you’ll go down as the city’s finest semiprofessional robo-mime.”

“They have written the history of Santa Barbara,” Gus said. “In fact, they’ve written many histories of Santa Barbara. And not one of those voluminous texts has included or ever will include a single word about the short-lived trend of robo-miming, or any of its practitioners, myself included.”

Shawn glanced at the bomb squad truck and saw a metal box on miniature tank treads rolling down a metal ramp that extended from the open rear doors.

“Fine,” Shawn said. “If we fail to solve this case, I only hope that Benny Fleck never learns it was because you were unwilling to do something you once did to impress girls or pick up spare change to feed your comic book addiction. ‘Sorry, Benny,’ I’ll have to explain, ‘we thought your case was fairly intriguing, but ultimately not quite as important as Deathlok the Destroyer, number fifty-seven.’ I’m sure he’ll understand.”

Gus glared at him. “You wouldn’t.”

“I’m sworn to tell the truth to my client, especially when it serves my purposes,” Shawn said. “And right now, my purposes are to keep Lassie from destroying his own crime scene.”

“You mean your crime scene,” Gus said.

“I like to think of it as our crime scene,” Shawn said. “Now robo.”

Gus sighed, then tightened his face into an impassive mask. He straightened his posture, stiffened his joints, and glided through two mechanical steps before freezing in place. He turned his head exactly ninety degrees to survey the area, then eased it back into starting position. He might have allowed himself a moment of self-congratulation at his ability to snap into robot mode after twenty years without a moment’s practice, but the discipline of the act required keeping his mind entirely blank.

Gus swiveled on the balls of his feet, then started toward the front door of the Cape Cod, his arms moving mechanically with every step.

“What the hell is he doing?” Lassiter snapped.

“You said you wanted to send in a robot,” Shawn said. “Gus does the best robot in Santa Barbara. It’s in all the history books.”

“I mean a real robot,” Lassiter said. “That thing.”

The metal box was all the way out of the bomb squad truck now, and a flock of technicians were huddled around it, flipping switches, checking readouts, and tightening the treads.

“What’s the point of sending in a robot with no personality at all?” Shawn said. “With no heart and no soul, just a mindless box that beeps and boops and rolls around? Don’t you realize that real robots look like Haley Joel Osment and yearn endlessly through the centuries for the adoptive mothers who casually toss them away when they have real children? Would this metal cube be content to sit at the bottom of the ocean, dreaming of Mom while eternity ticks away?”

“Eternity is ticking away,” Lassiter snapped. “Every time I talk to you. And where is he going now?”

“More importantly,” Shawn said, moving to block Lassiter’s view of Gus, “what the heck were those alien things doing at the end? I thought I’d fallen asleep and another movie had started while I was napping.”

Lassiter shoved Shawn aside. “Guster, stop!”

Gus was robo-walking across the street toward the Cape Cod’s door, head swiveling and forearms rising and falling with every shuffling step. He’d always liked robo-miming, but he’d forgotten just how satisfying it could be to transform himself into a mechanical device, to feel the weight of two imagined C batteries nestled in the small of his back, to know only the sensations of the servo motor. He was so caught up in his robotic self that he didn’t notice the detective shouting at him. He’d stopped caring that he was walking toward a crime scene, or even that there might be a live bomb inside the house he was approaching.

“Come back, Gus!” Detective O’Hara shouted.

Gus kept shuffling forward.

“Get him back here!” Lassiter commanded Shawn.

“But that’s within the crime scene perimeter,” Shawn said. “Civilians aren’t allowed, not even those who frequently do excellent work in collaboration with the Santa Barbara Police Department.”

Robo-Gus hit the first of three low steps with the tip of his shoe, then shuffled back a couple of inches. He stopped, swiveled his head back and forth, then moved forward again. This time when he reached the stairs, he stopped, lifted his knee until his thigh was parallel with the ground, then placed his foot on the first step.

“Stop him now!” Lassiter yelled.

“Yes, sir,” Shawn said, and ran across the sidewalk to join Gus, who was walking in place, his chest pressed against the front door. “It’s okay; you can stop aerobosizing.”

Gus took a couple of seconds to wind down, shaking the life back into his joints. “What are we doing here, Shawn?”

“Blowing this case wide open,” Shawn said. He reached for the door handle.

“Stop!” Gus hissed. “You may be blowing us wide open. Or up.”

“Only if there’s a bomb inside.” Shawn grabbed the doorknob, gave it a sharp twist, and pushed the door open.