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.
Chapter Twenty-One
As they closed the door behind them, Gus and Shawn could hear the shouts from the police outside-and another, more ominous sound. police
“Something’s ticking,” Gus said. “It’s the bomb.”
“It’s a grandfather clock,” Shawn said, walking toward the timepiece in question, which was the only thing moving in the dusty living room. “But even if it was a bomb, I wouldn’t be too worried.”
“Because being blown up is such a lovely way to spend an afternoon?”
Shawn came back to the entry hall and grabbed Gus’ arm, pulling him into the living room. “Because the first one didn’t seem to have any effect at all.”
Gus gazed around the sparsely furnished parlor. The couch was old and beginning to sag in the middle; the upholstery on the arms of the two big chairs was worn down almost to threads. The wallpaper had begun to peel off at the corners. The room was tacky, dated, and unappealing, but the one thing it definitely wasn’t was exploded.
“You heard what Major Voges said,” Gus said. “They set off a small bomb to lure the first responders in, and then get them with a bigger one. We’ve been lured.”
Shawn sighed heavily and disappeared through a door. After a moment, Gus heard him cry out.
“What is it?” Gus called, dreading the answer.
“Come here, quickly,” Shawn said. “We don’t have a lot of time.”
“You found a timer, didn’t you?” Gus froze in place. What does it feel like to be blown up? he wondered. Is it painful? And if it is, do you feel the pain in all the various pieces scattered around the room? Or is there more of a central agony? “Is it counting down in big red numbers? Do we have less than a minute left? Because I’ve got a lot of life to flash back on before I die, and I’m not sure a minute will be enough.”
“There’s no timer,” Shawn said. “Now get in here.”
Gus didn’t want to. He wanted to turn around and tiptoe to the front door. After all, if they were both blown up, who would come to visit Shawn’s grave every day for the next eighty years? He owed it to Shawn to leave, to stay alive to pay him the homage he was due.
“Gus!” Shawn called. “Now!”
Fine, Gus thought. If that’s the way he wants it, let his grave go unvisited. Gus walked slowly to the doorway Shawn had disappeared through, and found himself in a long corridor. Shawn was at the other end of it, waving at him. As Gus followed, Shawn retreated into a room. When Gus reached it, he found himself in what must have been Balustrade’s den, a wood-paneled box furnished with a worn leather couch and a television that could almost certainly receive color broadcasts.