“I was a little surprised,” Gus said. It was true, although not for the reasons Shawn now believed. “But I was always serious about this job.”
“You would have had to be,” Shawn agreed. “Just like when Steve Sloan went rogue and Mark Sloan had him committed to that asylum for loony cops on Diagnosis Murder.”
Now Gus was sure this was a dream. “You watched Diagnosis Murder ?”
“I was dating a girl who worked in a nursing home,” Shawn said. “She had to keep up on the episodes so she’d have something to talk to her patients about. Anyway, the point is if Mark and Steve hadn’t been completely convincing the guy from Jake and the Fat Man would never have broken down and led them to where he’d walled up his family.”
It occurred to Gus that if he had taken the simple precaution of walling up Shawn somewhere before he’d taken the job at Benson, he might still have a future there. But it was too late for that now. Still it was possible he might be able to salvage his new career, if only he could figure out what Shawn was talking about. Or better yet, if he didn’t even try, and simply made his own point as plainly and forcefully as he could.
“Shawn, if you’ve never listened to me before, you’ve got to listen now,” Gus said.
“I’m sure I’ve listened some,” Shawn said. “Like that time I was about to try parasailing, and you said that it was just like jumping off a cliff with a kite strapped to my back.”
“You went anyway and you broke your ankle,” Gus said, despite having just taken a vow not to be dragged off the subject at hand.
“Yes, but not because I didn’t listen,” Shawn said. “I thought you meant it as a recommendation.”
“Fine,” Gus said. “In that case I’m going to ask you to listen first and if there’s anything you think you might not understand, ask questions afterward. Can you do that?”
“I can do even better,” Shawn said. “I can ask questions before I listen. Or even during, although that doesn’t save quite as much time.”
Gus sighed heavily enough that Shawn took the hint and stopped talking.
“Shawn, when I left Psych to take this job, I left Psych to take this job,” Gus said. “I wasn’t going undercover, and I wasn’t trying to convince you that you had missed out on a string of murders. I was offered a position as a vice president in a multinational pharmaceuticals company and I accepted it. I never wanted you to leave Santa Barbara and join me up here to investigate some case that never existed in the first place. So if that’s the reason you’ve invented this job as head of security for yourself, you don’t need to stick with it any longer. You can go back home.”
Shawn waited patiently for several moments after Gus had stopped talking. “That’s really interesting,” he said finally.
“What’s that?” Gus said.
“This whole listening thing,” Shawn said. “You’d think you might learn a little more by doing it, since presumably people scatter information throughout the entirety of a speech like that. But no matter how long I kept quiet, I didn’t hear anything I didn’t already know from your first sentence. Look, food’s here.”
It was. The waitress was hovering over their table with trays that could easily tip over the Flintstones’ car. She dropped them in the center of the table, leaving it for Shawn and Gus to figure out which plate belonged to whom, and disappeared again.
Shawn grabbed one of the plates, picked up the headsized burger and crammed two eyes’ and a nose’s worth into his mouth. Gus took advantage of what would be at least a few seconds of enforced silence to make his point again.
“What I’m trying to say is that while I appreciate the faith you put in me, it’s wrong,” Gus said. “I didn’t come here because I believed there was a case. In fact, I still don’t believe there’s a killer out there stalking pharmaceuticals executives. It’s just a series of coincidences.”
Gus spat out the last syllables as quickly as he could, since he could see the giant mass of food moving down Shawn’s throat like a rabbit in a python.
“There is no case here, Shawn, but there is one back in Santa Barbara,” Gus said before Shawn could usher the last traces of food all the way into his stomach. “I appreciate your faith in me, but you’ve got to tell D-Bob that whatever you told him about the serial killer was wrong and that you’re resigning as head of security.”
Shawn studied Gus closely. “You’re sure about this?”
“About everything except telling D-Bob,” Gus said. “I have no idea how you can stuff that bit of toothpaste back into the tube.”
“Nothing to worry about there,” Shawn said. “I wouldn’t squeeze that tube if your life depended on it.”
It took Gus a moment to realize what Shawn was saying. “You didn’t tell him about the killer?”
“He was my favorite suspect,” Shawn said. “I wasn’t going to share my suspicions with him.”
“Then how did you get the job?”
“The same way you got yours,” Shawn said, taking another huge bite out of the burger.
“You landed this job by spending years working in pharmaceuticals sales and having a unique point of view on the issues that confront our industry in these troubling times?” Gus said.
Shawn managed to get the wad of beef and bun down his throat. “Wouldn’t it surprise you if I said yes?”
“If by ‘surprise’ you mean drive me into a such a rage I’d gouge out your eyes with this spoon, then hurl myself off the Golden Gate Bridge, then definitely it would,” Gus said.
“You make it tempting to say yes,” Shawn said. “But I have to tell the truth. I did it the old-fashioned way. I earned it.”
“Earned it how?”
“By lying,” Shawn said. “He knew we were old friends from the last time I met the guy. So I told him that your presence in the company had established a psychic link for me to see its aura. And that emanation was pulsing red for danger.”
“He bought that?” Gus said, dismayed.
“Your boss is kind of a moron,” Shawn said. “Unless he’s actually the killer. Think we have time for dessert before we go back to the office?”
Gus slid out of the booth, fished in his pocket, and dropped a couple of bills on the table. “You do,” he said. “In fact, you should have dessert for both of us. You don’t need to stop by the office before you head back to the airport. I’ll tell D-Bob you’re on a vision quest or something. He’ll like that.”
Shawn took one last suck on his milk shake and scrambled out of the booth to follow him. “I can’t go back to Santa Barbara now,” he said. “I’ve got a job to do.”
“Making my life miserable?” Gus said as he pushed open the door and stepped out onto the busy sidewalk.
“That’s part of it,” Shawn said.
That was so astonishing Gus stopped dead in the middle of the sidewalk. At least until a kid texting on his phone while he rode his skateboard slammed into him, propelling him into the street. Just before he flew into traffic Gus grabbed the pole of a NO SKATEBOARDS Sign and swung himself back into the mass of pedestrians, nearly knocking over a trio of secretaries.
Shawn waited patiently until his acrobatic display was done, then fell into step alongside him.
“You’re admitting it?” Gus gasped once he had his heart rate back down to sustainable levels. “You only took this job to make my life miserable?”
“Not only,” Shawn said. “Also to make your life happy. And exciting. And boring. And easy. And difficult.”
“Are you planning on doing this in sequence?” Gus said. “Because you could start by making my life a little more lonely.”
“I’ll put that on the list,” Shawn said. “Along with all the other sorts of things your life can only be if it’s a going concern.”
“You’re saying you took this job to save my life,” Gus said.
“I took this job because I thought we were going undercover to expose a murderer who had found a way to kill without ever being noticed,” Shawn said. “That is, by going after people no one would ever mourn-pharmaceuticals executives.”