“I can think of a use for it right now,” Henry said.
“Anyway,” Shawn said, “we’ve come here to save you money and embarrassment.”
“That will be a first,” Henry said.
“Technically it will be two firsts,” Gus said.
“Which is what makes this such an exciting opportunity for you,” Shawn said. “We’re here to give you a chance to relive your glory days. And I mean your real glory days, not the song. Which is not only the worst song on Born in the USA, but the worst song Springsteen ever wrote, and possibly the worst song ever written by anyone in the world besides Diane Warren-”
“Hey,” Gus interrupted, “I warned you about ragging on ‘Unbreak My Heart.’ ”
Shawn ignored him. “-and which I’m sure the Hairless Four, or whatever your band calls itself, is going to do next.”
“The only glory days I’m thinking about are those wonderful ones when I was childless,” Henry said.
“I mean the days when you were important,” Shawn said.
“When you still had a purpose in life and didn’t have to dress up like Jennifer Beals in Flashdance just to make it through another dismal day. I’m offering you a case.”
Henry stared at his son. For all his questionable tactics, Shawn was smart. He knew how to get people to do what he wanted. And if Henry could generally see through him, at least he usually sounded like he was offering him something he’d genuinely desire. This time, not so much.
“You want to hire me to work for Psych?” Henry said. “Do you think I’m starving in a gutter?”
“If you were, you’d probably be dressed better,” Shawn said, then hurried to the meat of his offer before Henry could respond. “The Santa Barbara Police Department wants you back.”
Henry was happy being retired. Henry was happy not having to deal with the bureaucracy, and the lowlifes, and the long hours behind a desk, and the longer hours out in the field. Henry didn’t want to go back to work.
At least that’s what he told himself. But there was a part of him, deep down, maybe even deeper down than the place where all those songs were hiding all those years, that was jumping for joy at the offer. There was just one small problem.
“And they sent you because all their phones are broken and they’ve forgotten how to drive?” Henry said.
“It’s not really an official SBPD case,” Shawn said. “Well, it is, but the Isla Vista Foot Patrol doesn’t agree, and they’re ready to rumble to fight for their turf.”
Now Henry was completely lost. Shawn saw the confusion on his face and launched into an explanation that, after many false starts and corrections from Gus, finally approximated what had happened over the previous day.
“So you volunteered me to help you out on this one,” Henry said. “Without asking.”
“I’m asking now,” Shawn said.
“No, you’re not,” Henry said. “You’re doing everything but asking. You’re trying to trick me into doing what you want instead of honestly asking for my help.”
“Would that help?” Shawn asked.
“What?”
“Honesty,” Shawn said. “Sincerity. Heart.”
“I don’t know,” Henry said. “Since you’ve never actually tried anything that radical before, it’s hard to say what would happen if you did. But I can guarantee that nothing else is going to work.”
Shawn nodded thoughtfully as he took this in. Then he turned away from Henry and faced the wall. When he turned back, the trademark smirk was gone from his face. He stared at his father with deep, grave eyes.
“Ellen Svaco came to Psych for help,” Shawn said. “I didn’t realize the kind of trouble she was in. If I had, she might still be alive. I can’t do anything about that, but at least I can help catch her killer.”
Henry thought about this. “I’ll help,” he said. “On one condition.”
“I’m not going to sit in for you on the great rock and roll swindle,” Shawn said. “But I will troll the retirement homes for your replacement if that will make you feel better about breaking up the band.”
“It’s not that,” Henry said, “and it’s not negotiable.”
“Everything’s negotiable,” Shawn said.
“Not this,” Henry said. “If I’m on this case, you’re off it.”
Chapter Fourteen
Shawn stared at his father as if he hadn’t heard him correctly. “You do understand that this is my case.”
“I understand that it was,” Henry said. “Now you’ve got to ask yourself what’s more important: that this woman’s murderer be brought to justice, or that you’re the one who does it.”
“How about this,” Shawn said, thinking quickly. “I’ll stay on the case, but Gus will promise not to be involved.”
“Hey!” Gus protested from his corner.
“Like you weren’t looking for a way to get on this without me,” Shawn said.
“Only so I could work as a mole, passing you information from the inside,” Gus said.
“Which is why I wasn’t going to let Gus in, either,” Henry said. “This case is too dangerous.”
This was so outrageous that Shawn bolted up from the bed. And while he didn’t necessarily mean to thrust his face right into his father’s, the cramped quarters of the cabin meant that some portion of his anatomy had to be pressed up against Henry, so he made necessity his accomplice.
“Dangerous!”
“You’ve been on the case less than one day and you’ve already had two guns pointed at you,” Henry said. “At some point, one of those is going to go off.”
“Do you realize how many murderers I’ve gone up against?” Shawn demanded. “I went face-to-face with a serial killer who’d been terrorizing Santa Barbara for years when you were on the force, and I won.”
“And I’m always pleased to read about your exploits in the paper,” Henry said. “Well, most of the time, anyway.”
“Then what’s the problem?” Shawn said. “Just think of this as getting the paper a day early. Except if I were you I wouldn’t use this information for my own personal gain, like betting on horse races or anything, because that never works out well.”
“I think that’s only if some strange metaphysical force sends you the paper so you can use it to protect innocent people from fates they don’t deserve,” Gus said.
“It’s fair to say that I’m as strange a metaphysical force as any of us is going to see,” Shawn said. “So is this settled? We’ll work the case from different sides: You help the police, and Gus and I will do it the smart way. We’ll call you for the summation.”
Shawn headed for the door. At least he would have headed for the door if there had been an inch of space between Henry and the bed for him to squeeze through. But there wasn’t, and Henry didn’t move out of his way.
“I told you, it’s not negotiable,” Henry said.
“Why?”
Henry’s hard grimace softened. “When you were little, I used to worry about you all the time. When you missed curfew, when you slipped out your window in the middle of the night, when you were just a few minutes late for dinner, my heart broke at the thought that something might have happened to you.”
“You certainly hid it well,” Shawn said. “Under all that yelling and nagging.”
“Do you really think that was hiding it?” Henry said. “The point is, once you moved out of the house, I stopped worrying.”
“That was a mistake,” Shawn said. “What I was doing then was much worse than anything I did while I lived with you.”
“I knew that,” Henry said. “But you were an adult. It wasn’t my job to worry like that anymore, so I stopped. It’s the same with your detective work. As long as I don’t know about it until you’ve finished a case, it’s none of my concern. But if I have to watch you putting yourself in danger, it will be just like you’re twelve years old again. And I don’t think anyone wants that.”
“Not if you’re going to make me go to bed at eight thirty,” Shawn said. “I’m still trying to see the second half of the A-Team episode where they went to Africa. They were caught by cannibals and put in a cauldron over a fire, but before I could find out what happened to them, you unplugged the TV and turned off the lights. For all I know they were eaten decades ago.”