Psych: The Call Of The Mild Part 26

He headed out of the camp between two tall trees. Gus shouldered his pack and followed. There was a moment's whispered discussion among the lawyers, and then Gwendolyn led the others quickly through another stand of trees and around so that they were positioned in front of Shawn and Gus.

"You're going to give us the map," Gwendolyn said.

"You couldn't trick us into a fight; you're not going to outsmart us," Shawn said. "There's no way we're going to give it to you."

"Except that there are only two of you," Savage said. "And there are three of us."

Savage took one menacing step forward. But as his foot hit the ground, something snaked through the litter of dried pine needles and seized him around the ankle. Before anyone could move, the snare tightened on his foot and flung the lawyer upside down high among the top branches of the trees. Gus heard a meaty thump as Savage's head collided with the trunk. Gus peered up. Way above them, he could see the tiny, broken figure of the lawyer dangling limply from the rope.

"I guess that makes us even again," Shawn said. "Shall we start walking?"

Chapter Fifty-Two.

After leaving the investigation, Henry had thought he'd go back to rock and roll camp. He'd driven most of the way to Ojai beating out his drum solo on the steering wheel. But he couldn't focus on jamming right now; his mind was completely preoccupied with a double homicide, and he knew that even though he wasn't officially involved, he couldn't just let it alone. So he made a U-turn as soon as he pa.s.sed the end of the divided section of Highway 33 and headed home.

He'd spent the next day working the phone and the computer trying to find any information on the case. He'd even popped into police headquarters, but La.s.siter and O'Hara were out in the field, and no one knew when they'd be back. Of course he could have called their cells and offered his services, but he knew what they'd have said: He was retired.

The long and fruitless day landed him exactly one piece of information-the janitorial contracting service Arnold Svaco had worked for had a contract to clean, among many much less interesting places, the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, and Arnold had been working there almost exclusively for years. Maybe that meant something, although Henry had no idea what. He left the information on La.s.siter's voice mail, just in case.

The next day was the last session of camp, and when he woke up Henry decided he'd go back for the big jam session finale. The case was still pushing the beat out of his mind, but after wasting all of yesterday, he decided he could leave the police work to the working police.

He was getting into the car for the drive to Ojai when his cell rang. He answered. And heard the last two words he ever expected to hear since his retirement: Hostage situation.

Henry blew through a half dozen red lights on his way to Edgecliff Road, but by the time he got to Rushton, Morelock's mansion offices, the parking lot was already filled with police cruisers. He jumped out of his car as La.s.siter rushed up to him.

"How bad is it?" Henry said.

"How bad can it get?" La.s.siter said. He started towards the mansion, a.s.suming that Henry would keep up with him. They blew past the front door and continued along the exterior of the building.

"What does he think he's doing?" Henry said.

" 'Bringing justice to an unjust world,' " La.s.siter said. "Or something even dumber. You can ask him yourself. He's been demanding to speak to you."

There was a window open at the far end of the building. La.s.siter stopped short, but gestured for Henry to walk up to it.

Henry peered into the open window. The room was enormous, the size of Henry's whole house, and furnished in nautical antiques. Across a huge desk Henry could see an elderly man in a wheelchair. He'd never met Oliver Rushton, but he'd seen enough pictures in the paper to recognize him. Standing over the lawyer was Officer Chris Rasmussen. He was pointing a gun at Rushton's head.

Henry had to think fast. He should have formulated a plan of action on the drive down, but the situation was so insane he couldn't bring himself to believe it until he saw it for himself. Now he had to improvise.

"Officer Rasmussen," he said with as much authority as he could muster. "Report."

"I came to interview Mr. Rushton," Rasmussen said, snapping to attention. "He was unwilling to speak to me, so I was required to use force."

"That's very good thinking, Officer," Henry said. "Excellent initiative. Then what?"

"He still won't talk!" Rasmussen wailed, sounding close to tears. "I've been asking and asking, but he won't tell me anything! And I keep trying to remember what you told us about interrogation techniques, but I forget!"

"It's okay, Officer," Henry said. "I don't think we covered that in cla.s.s."

"You're just saying that to make me feel better!"

Henry could see Rasmussen's hand shaking; he was clearly about to snap. Rushton, on the other hand, looked completely in control.

"I've tried to explain to the officer that I haven't heard of the woman he's inquiring about," the lawyer said. "I'm willing to look at a picture, if you have one."

"She called you!" Rasmussen shouted.

"She called my offices," Rushton said. "As I've explained, many people work here, and she could have been calling for any of them. Or she could have misdialed. I have offered to let you go over my phone logs for the day in question, to see if her call shows up. What else can I do?"

"You can tell the truth!"

"I am telling the truth," Rushton said. "The sad fact is that one of the lawyers in the firm might well be involved in these crimes. That person may have killed one of my own employees. As soon as the lawyers return from their retreat, I promise to urge them to cooperate fully with your investigation."

"You're stalling!" Rasmussen's finger was tightening on the trigger. Henry had to do something fast.

"Officer Rasmussen, you will stand down now," he commanded.

"I can't!" Now there were tears in Rasmussen's eyes. "This is all my fault, Detective Spencer. Ellen Svaco was involved in some kind of crime ring in my own town, and I missed it. And I missed the redial thing, too. You tried to teach me, but I was too stupid to understand any of it, and now I've messed everything up. I've got to make it right!"

"This isn't the way, Officer," Henry said. "You can't fix one crime with another crime."

"That's what you said when I was in school, but how do I know this isn't something that's much more complicated in grown-up life? Nothing is like it's supposed to be!"

Rasmussen was about to explode. Henry had to do something fast. He wanted to dive through the window and knock the gun out of his hand. He wanted to tell the officer what a fool he was making of himself. If it had been Shawn in that room, he would have.

But of course his own son would never have been in such a ludicrous position. For all that Shawn pretended not to listen to Henry's advice, the fact was he always absorbed the important parts. He had allowed Henry to mold him into a man. Chris Rasmussen had never had anyone to do that for him.

"Officer," Henry started, then softened his tone. "Chris. We had forty-five minutes together twenty years ago. Forty-five minutes with a crowd of other children. And you took that brief meeting and built your entire life around it. Do you have any idea how proud that makes me?"

Henry could see sunlight glinting off the tears in Rasmussen's face. "Proud?"

"I'm only sorry I wasn't able to be there for you all along," Henry said. "I wish I had. I always wanted a second son. I hope you'll allow me to consider you that now."

Rasmussen's hand trembled furiously. And then the gun dropped to the floor.

"Clear!" Henry shouted, and the office was full of police officers in body armor. Henry's last sight of Rasmussen was just a sc.r.a.p of flesh buried under a mountain of black uniforms.

Henry was about to rejoin La.s.siter when Rushton called his name. He turned back to see that the lawyer had moved towards the window.

"I hope you meant what you said about cooperating," Henry said to him.

"My devotion to the cause of justice is as strong as yours, even if we express it in different ways," Rushton said. "I suspected that something was wrong in my firm, but until today I didn't realize just how bad it was. And that concerns you as well."

"Me?"

"I heard you mention you have a son," Rushton said. "He's a detective, isn't he?"

"Technically," Henry said, feeling a cold shiver of fear run down his spine.

"Then there's something you need to know."

Chapter Fifty-Three.

This time there was no chance that Gus was going to lose sight of the rest of the hiking party. Shawn hadn't even needed to bring up his notion of roping them all together; no one moved out of anyone else's view. Gwendolyn and Balowsky walked together, staring at each other. At one point, Gwendolyn, her eyes fixed firmly on Balowsky's face, hit a rock with her foot and tripped. She fell to the ground, rolled, and popped back up-never looking away from the other lawyer.

Even though there were two people on watch all night long, one of them had managed to slip away in the night and set the trap that took out Savage. If the killer could strike this quickly and this invisibly, what hope did the rest of them have?

From their place at the end of the pack, Gus and Shawn examined Gwendolyn and Balowsky. They both seemed completely consumed in studying each other for treachery.

"One of them is a pretty good actor," Shawn said. "I wonder if Helstrom needs a new member in his troupe."

"If only I had shared my watch with someone besides Savage, since he clearly wan't the killer," Gus said. "I would have known if whoever was staying up with me had sneaked off to set a snare. That would have narrowed the suspect pool down to one."

"How much could you actually see when you were on watch?" Shawn said.

"I could see you sleeping," Gus said. "I could see you sleeping peacefully all night long."

"You mean you could see whatever was in the direct firelight," Shawn said.

"That, too," Gus said. "But mostly I could see you sleeping."

"Yes, the clever and subtle dig has been heard and now acknowledged," Shawn said. "But my greater point was that it was really dark in the camp. If Savage had slipped away on your watch, are you sure you wouldn't have seen him?"

"I'm pretty sure he wouldn't have stepped into his own snare," Gus said.

"You're getting awfully literal all of a sudden," Shawn said.

"I'm getting scared," Gus said. "No, I take that back. I am scared."

"Okay, there's a killer out there picking us off one by one," Shawn said. "But look at the bright side. One more murder and we'll know for sure who it is. And that's halfway to safety right there."

"Unless one of us is the victim," Gus said.

Shawn stopped to think this over, as if the thought had never occurred to him. "That would be a problem," he said. "Because if the killer took out you or me, that wouldn't bring us any closer to knowing who it is."

"And because I'd be dead," Gus said, panic rising in his chest. "Or you would. Or we both would."

"That wouldn't make any sense," Shawn said. "If we were both out of the running, then there wouldn't be any question who the killer was. No, the next murder has to be a single, unless said killer is willing to take all three out at once."

"What if she is?" Gus said.

"She?"

"Oh, come on," Gus said. "Only Gwendolyn could have set that trap. She's the one with all the jungle lore at her fingertips. She's the one who is obviously willing to kill without even blinking. And she's coming after us next."

"It's a good argument, but if we guess wrong-"

"I'm not guessing," Gus said. "I know. I know from my dreams. Because the thing that's chasing me is always female. I just never realized until right now that it was a female human."

"This is based on your dream?" Shawn said. "Haven't you learned anything from working for a fake psychic-detective agency?"

"I know something has been trying to warn me of this day for almost as long as I've been alive," Gus said. "I know that I've lived what happens next again and again-and I've never survived it."

"If you give in to panic and superst.i.tion, we are never going to make it home," Shawn said. "We need to be intelligent. Rational."

"Says the psychic," Gus said.

"Exactly," Shawn said. "We can get away with almost anything by claiming I'm psychic-because people aren't intelligent and rational. They believe that stuff. We don't."

"Then maybe you should start using that brain of yours," Gus snapped.

"I am," Shawn said.

"You're using your feet," Gus said. "You're using your mouth. But you're not using your brain. You're walking along this trail, waiting for the killer to reveal herself, gambling that her preferred method of doing so won't involve our decapitation. But what you're not doing is the one thing you do well-putting together a series of microscopic clues and solving the case."

Shawn stopped, scowling angrily. "Have you considered maybe I'm doing this for you?"

Gus stopped, too. "You're keeping me stranded in the wilderness with an insane killer for my own good?"

"Immersion therapy," Shawn said. "You've got to get over this bizarre, superst.i.tious fear of a silly dream."

"Even if it kills me."

"At least you'll be cured," Shawn said and started down the trail.

Gus grabbed the top of Shawn's pack and pulled him back. "Don't you dare blame this on me," he said through clenched teeth. "People are dead. We could be dead. You can't be doing this to help me with my recurring dream. Even if you do have one of-"

Gus broke off, realization dawning on him. Shawn saw it coming and tried to get away.

"If that's the way you feel, I apologize," Shawn said as he took a step down the trail again.

But Gus wouldn't let go of his pack, and Shawn was jerked back like a marionette whose puppeteer suffered from Parkinson's. "You never told me what your recurring dream was," Gus said.

"It's really not important now," Shawn said. "If you want me to solve this crime now and leave you emotionally crippled, then that's what I'll do."

"This is your recurring dream," Gus said.