What had worn Gus out so completely was his sense of utter failure. Professor Kitteredge had reached out to him, reached out to the one person he had thought could help him, even though they barely knew each other. And not only had Gus been unable to help; he had stood by as things had gotten immeasurably worse for his old professor. Gus didn’t know exactly what Kitteredge had wanted help with, but whatever it was it couldn’t have been as bad as his current problem. He was a wanted fugitive, hunted not only for a cold-blooded murder but for taking hostage a Santa Barbara police detective. His career was ruined, his life changed forever-that is, if he managed to survive this day. Santa Barbara’s police were professional above all else, but when they were chasing a criminal who’d dared hold a knife to one of their own, Gus knew that following the letter of the law would not seem as important as bringing down the felon.
“Rule number three is a no-brainer,” Shawn said after checking to make sure that Gus was actually awake to hear him. “No cases that require formal wear.”
Gus briefly considered responding to that, but he decided to allocate all his available strength to turning the steering wheel sufficiently to execute the right turn that would head them in the general direction of their office.
“Now, rule number four might seem a little controversial at first,” Shawn said. “But when you think it over, I’m sure you realize it makes sense. If you ever get French fries when we break for food on a case, you have to give me two for every one you eat, even if I’ve got my own order. And if there are any soggy fries in my bag, you have to let me trade them for your crispy ones at a rate of three of your crispies for every one of my limps.”
Of all the rules Shawn had laid down, that struck Gus as the one that he’d most likely insist on, ludicrous as it sounded. If he didn’t object now, he knew, Shawn would not only bring it up on every case they worked in the future, but find ways to build on it so that he’d be entitled to every bit of food Gus ever ordered. Still, he couldn’t get up the energy to argue. “Whatever,” he said.
Shawn eyed him suspiciously. “You’re making this too easy,” he said.
“You could stop,” Gus said.
“When I’m getting everything I want?” Shawn said. “Like that’s going to happen. I haven’t even gotten to the most important rule yet.”
Gus didn’t know what that rule was going to be, but he knew his partner well enough to imagine. No doubt Shawn was going to insist that Gus donate all his income from his pharmaceuticals sales route to Psych, or demand that Gus call him “sir” whenever they were in public, or let Shawn use his legs as a pillow if he got sleepy on a stakeout.
If he’d had any more energy, Gus might have once again muttered “Whatever.” Instead, he shrugged. Let Shawn make any rule that amused him. They’d be in force only as long as Gus stayed with Psych, and after tonight’s fiasco he wasn’t sure how much longer he wanted that to be. He’d been playing at private detective for a few years now, and he’d been having fun. He’d even done a pretty good job from time to time.
But now he saw that whatever successes they’d had were nothing more than luck. He clearly had no idea what he was actually doing, and when his luck ran out he had no way to compensate for it. People got hurt. Maybe people even got killed, all because they trusted in him.
“Okay, here it comes,” Shawn said. “The most important rule of all. The one that’s going to change Psych forever, whether we like it or not.”
“Why?” Gus was surprised that his tongue had bothered to form the syllable, but apparently some of his reflexes were even more powerful than his exhaustion.
“Why what?”
“Why will it change Psych forever, whether we like it or not?” Gus said. “There’s no one at Psych besides us, so if we don’t like one of your rules, we can simply ignore it.”
“You can’t just ignore rules,” Shawn said.
“You do it all the time,” Gus said. “And when I hesitate before breaking a rule, you get mad at me.”
“That’s completely different,” Shawn said. “Those are other people’s rules. Man-made rules. I’m talking about the laws that are set out by the universe, like gravity or entropy or the way it’s impossible to get the last bits out of a shampoo bottle no matter how hard you shake it.”
“Okay, fine,” Gus said. “Let’s have it.”
Shawn started to speak, then turned around and reached toward the backseat.
“What are you looking for?” Gus said.
“A couple slabs of granite,” Shawn said. “Marble, if you’ve got it. It just seems like the kind of thing that would sound better if it was carved on stone tablets. Although if you don’t have any stone, I guess we could use aspirin tablets, as long as one of us can write really small.”
“Shawn…” Gus said, hoping that a good set of ellipses would convey all the words he was too tired to use.
“Okay, fine,” Shawn said. “Here’s the most important rule: When one of our clients flips out and takes Lassie hostage with a knife because he believes that there’s a global conspiracy out to frame him for murder to keep him from discovering the truth of their evil cabal, even though he’s incapable of explaining what they want or why they want it-”
“I get it, Shawn,” Gus said. “I was stupid to take Professor Kitteredge seriously. You don’t have to make a big deal about it.”
Shawn held up a finger to stop him. Gus briefly considered yanking it off his hand and throwing it out the window, but that seemed like far too much effort.
“Anyway,” Shawn continued, “back to that rule. When all that stuff happens that I just laid out and don’t feel like going through again, then it is our obligation to find that client and solve the murder before the police get him.”
It took a moment before Gus could make sense of the words. He’d so completely expected to hear Shawn say the exact opposite that at first his brain simply wouldn’t process the new information.
“Find him?” Gus said finally. “You mean Professor Kitteredge?”
“Unless you’ve got another client who took Lassie hostage and you haven’t told me about him,” Shawn said. “In which case, this would probably be a good time to bring it up, so we can prioritize.”
“But you said he was crazy,” Gus said.
“I said he was boring,” Shawn said. “Which he was when he was droning on and on about subjects no one could ever possibly pretend to care about.”
“He was talking about art,” Gus said. “And history and literature.”
“Exactly,” Shawn said. “But it’s amazing how much less boring he became when he held a knife to Lassie’s throat, started screaming about a global conspiracy, and escaped.”
“Even I thought he was crazy then,” Gus admitted. “That’s what made you like him?”
“There are three kinds of people who believe in conspiracy theories,” Shawn said. “The first kind is the average guy who listens to George Noory when he should be sleeping and has decided that there are aliens in Area 51, trilateralists in the government, and Illuminati in the drinking water because it’s much easier to blame all your failures on a vast global network that exists only to keep you down than it is to accept that maybe you’re just a loser. These are the guys you get stuck next to when you’re waiting in line at the post office and they recognize the Garfield T-shirt you pulled on because everything else was dirty as a secret welcome sign between believers. They will talk for hours about the dark forces arrayed against them, but they’re completely harmless. If they actually had the gumption to do anything in the first place, they wouldn’t be the kind of loser who has to blame faceless conspiracies for their own lack of success.”