Was he?
Gus did a quick inventory of his vital signs. Heart steady, breathing slow and regular, skin cool and dry. If he was terrified, his body was doing one hell of a job of hiding it.
He reached for the gavel again, but his fingers refused to close around it. What was happening to him? Why couldn’t he perform this one small act?
He looked out at the audience. They looked back with a mixture of confusion and impatience. Behind him, D-Bob was fidgeting in his seat. He was losing his fans.
Except for Shawn. He was beaming and nodding in encouragement. Did he want Gus to take this job?
Gus felt a stab of betrayal. Shawn wasn’t supposed to encourage him to take this job. Shawn was supposed to be fighting against it. That was his duty-to drag Gus back to preadolescence whenever he started to act too much like a grown-up. Sure, Gus had ordered him to stop, but when had Shawn ever done anything he didn’t want to do?
That was the difference between Shawn and all the other people in the room. Look at them out there, gaping up at me like sheep, he thought. There’s only one reason they’re looking at me like that-because their boss told them to.
And he wouldn’t be any different. Sure, he would be the president. But once Gus took this job he would spend the rest of his life doing what was expected of him. That was what it meant to live in the grown-up world. And all the luxuries that came with it, the high-rise apartment and the fancy restaurants and the big office, they were all just markers that could be taken away if Gus didn’t behave.
Shawn’s world didn’t work like that. He did whatever he wanted and didn’t care who approved. That was why some people hated him-because he didn’t care. He was free.
Gus had been free, too. He’d thought he left that life behind because he was ready for something real. But he’d been lying to himself. What they’d had was real. They made their own world and lived in it.
Gus had made a serious mistake with Professor Kitteredge and the consequences had been ugly. He’d tried to tell himself he was atoning for that by moving into the adult world. But really he was just running away. Running away from a life where he had complete freedom and, in consequence, complete responsibility for his actions, to one where he would do what he was told and be relieved of blame. He hadn’t been growing up. He was hiding.
Gus looked out at the sheep in front of him and now he was afraid. But he wasn’t scared that Jerry Fellows was a serial killer and a terrorist who would kill him the moment he banged that gavel.
He was afraid Jerry wasn’t.
Because if Jerry was a murderer, then everything Gus used to know was still true. He was a detective. An outsider. Free.
But if Jerry was just a kindly old mailman, then the world he realized he needed to get back to didn’t exist anymore.
Gus’ fingers closed around the gavel. He cleared his throat.
“Friends and colleagues,” he said. “I know you’re all waiting for me to say something.”
He looked out over the crowd. This was the moment.
“But first, my friend Shawn would like to say a few words.”
Chapter Thirty-seven
Shawn bounded onto the stage as a confused murmur went through the crowd. Gus could feel D-Bob’s eyes boring into his back, but he refused to turn around. He stepped out of Shawn’s way and let him take the rostrum.
“I’m sure you’re all wondering why I called you here today,” Shawn said.
A confused murmur confirmed that the audience was wondering about something, probably whether it was the world that had gone insane or just Gus.
“This is highly inappropriate,” D-Bob hissed from behind them.
“I said, I’m sure you’re all wondering why I called you here today,” Shawn said, raising his arms as if expecting some kind of mass audience response.
The crowd stared at him blankly.
“Technically, I’m the one who called them here today,” D-Bob said. “And they all know why they’re here. It’s our annual employee retreat.”
Shawn barely spared a glance back at him.
Gus stepped up next to Shawn, relishing the moment. Over the years, Lassiter had suggested that Shawn and Gus take what he called their “show” on the road. He meant it as a put-down, accusing them of cheap theatrics. But up here on the stage he embraced the insult. Shawn was going to give one of his great performances and Gus felt thrilled to be a part of it.
“Say, Shawn,” he said brightly. “Why have you called us all here today?”
“To accept,” he said simply.
What the hell did that mean? Gus had known what the next line was supposed to be: to expose a murderer. The audience would gasp in collective shock, Shawn would pretend to communicate with the spirits, and quick as boy howdy, Jerry Fellows would fall to his knees confessing his crimes.
Gus took a surreptitious step closer to Shawn and whispered out of the corner of his mouth. “What are you doing?”
“What does it look like I’m doing?”
“I don’t have a clue.”
“Exactly!” Shawn whispered, then grabbed the microphone from its stand. “My friends, we’ve got trouble at Benson Pharmaceuticals,” he bellowed into the mike. “Trouble with a capital T and that rhymes with P and that stands for…”
He held the microphone out to the audience for their collective response. Unfortunately the mike was not sufficiently sensitive to pick up the sound of facial muscles contorting into expressions of confusion.
Finally a voice came from behind them. “Would that be pills?” D-Bob ventured.
“Pills!” Shawn bellowed.
Gus sidled closer to Shawn. “Aren’t you supposed to be exposing a killer here?”
“You told me there was no killer,” Shawn whispered back. “And that the corporate lifestyle is the only way to go. Who am I to argue with someone of your great wisdom?”
This couldn’t be happening. Gus had finally realized what he wanted out of life and Shawn was hurling it back in his face. He wanted to grab Shawn, to shove him off the stage and out the door. Instead he made a grab for the microphone.
“Let’s have a big hand for our former head of security, Shawn Spencer,” Gus shouted into the mike before Shawn pulled it away again.
“Yes, pills,” Shawn said over the smattering of confused applause. “How long have we been delivering medication through this antiquated form? The basic pill hasn’t changed in over a thousand years, and I say it’s time to step into the future!”
Shawn held out the microphone to catch the cheers from the crowd, and then yanked it back when it became clear there weren’t going to be any.
“Why don’t we have computers in pills yet?” Shawn said. “We’ve got computers in everything else. Why are our phones smart while our pills are still dumb?”
“You’re the one who’s dumb!” someone yelled from the crowd, and a murmur of assent rippled through the room.
D-Bob rose from his stool and raised his hands for quiet. “The man has ideas,” D-Bob said. “Let’s hear him out.”
Gus stared at his boss, horrified. Shawn didn’t have ideas. He was spouting gibberish. How could D-Bob take him seriously?
“Thanks, D,” Shawn said. “You may think it’s too futuristic to contemplate a pill you can program to fight whatever disease you send it after. In fact, this is based on a technology that’s almost fifty years old, one that was hugely promising but was squashed by the traditional pill makers.”
To Gus’ astonishment, D-Bob looked fascinated. “Tell us about that,” D-Bob said.
“You have to understand, they didn’t have computers in 1966, so their methods might sound a little primitive today,” Shawn said.
“Of course they had comp-” Gus started, but D-Bob shushed him furiously.
“Let the man speak!” D-Bob said.
“But the principle is the same,” Shawn said. “The traditional way of doing things is to take one pill that can tackle a particular kind of sickness-headache, stomachache, whatever. But in this other method the scientists sent a tiny spaceship filled with eenie-weenie doctors into the patient’s bloodstream. They weren’t dumb pills mindlessly attacking the one symptom they were made for. These valiant doctors could look for problems and take care of whatever they found.”