Shawn and Gus put on their most helpful expressions and leaned into the rearview mirror. La.s.siter yanked the mirror around so he could see past them to the alley and backed up until he b.u.mped into the courthouse wall. He twisted the wheel around and put the car into drive.
"If I ever find out who moved my parking s.p.a.ce, I"m going to be filling out officer-involved shooting reports for the rest of my life," La.s.siter said, pointing up at the RESERVED FOR HEAD DETECTIVE sign stuck onto the side of the station. Gus could make out traces of blue marker poking out from the right side, a WN and a heart"s height above it, ES.
The front b.u.mper sc.r.a.ped the side of the station, and then the car was free. La.s.siter flipped on the siren, slammed his foot down on the gas, and the sedan rocketed forth into traffic.
During the short, fast drive to the Lower Eastside, Shawn tried to strike up a conversation with the detectives, or at least supply them with a pithy quip that would sum up the mise-en-scene. But neither La.s.siter nor O"Hara seemed interested in chatting, and Shawn was having difficulty summing up the situation when he didn"t have any idea what was going on.
La.s.siter"s car screamed onto the residential street just as the fire engine was backing across the mouth to block it off, and pulled up outside the dingy Cape Cod.
"You two stay in the car," La.s.siter commanded as he jumped out and crouched behind the open door. O"Hara did the same thing on her side.
"Sorry, La.s.sie, I can only follow one order at a time and I have to do it in the order I get them," Shawn said. "So I"m still working on getting out of the car."
Shawn slithered over the front seat and slid out past O"Hara, then pulled open the back door for Gus. They crouched down behind her.
"So," Shawn said, "what"s going on here, anyway?"
"We"re not sure," Detective O"Hara said, tightly surveying the scene. "There were reports of an explosion."
Shawn looked around. All the houses seemed to be intact.
"Not exactly Trinity, is it?" he said. "If it was a bomb, I think it fizzled."
"Or that"s what they want you to think."
The voice was female and familiar, and the second Shawn heard it, he felt his arm moving to salute. He grabbed his hand and pulled it down, then stood to see Major Holly Voges coming up to the car.
"It"s a standard technique of terrorists these days," Major Voges snapped. "They set off a small explosion and wait until the area is swarming with police, fire fighters, and EMTs. Then they set off a much bigger bomb, taking out the first responders."
"You spend a lot of time researching terrorists at the Federal Communications Commission?" O"Hara said icily.
"Hey, they"re all over the TV," Shawn said.
"And the radio," Gus said. "Soon as you turn one on, you"re going to learn something about them."
"Major Voges," La.s.siter called across the car, "what"s the situation here?"
"I"m just an onlooker, Detective," Voges said. "Here to lend whatever a.s.sistance I can. But I"m not the one to ask."
"Then who"s in charge?" La.s.siter said.
A tall man dressed head to toe in Kevlar stepped up to La.s.siter. "Captain John Sturges, bomb squad," he said. "We"ve got the area nearly secured, and we"re readying a robot to enter the premises."
"Thank you, Captain," La.s.siter said.
"Did anyone ask the robot how it feels about that?" Shawn said. "Because it might not want to sacrifice its life for us puny humans."
"Can you tell us what you know?" O"Hara said, ignoring Shawn.
"At two forty-seven p.m., we got several reports of an explosion from inside this house. The 911 operators who took the calls asked if it might have been a shot, but apparently the people who live in this neighborhood are familiar with the sound of gunfire, and they said it was different. We"ve tried to contact the homeowner, one August Bal.u.s.trade, but there"s no answer."
Gus was certain he"d heard that name somewhere before, but he couldn"t place it. Shawn was faster.
"Bal.u.s.trade?" Shawn said. "Fat, balding guy with a face like a cherub? Real big with the five of hearts?"
"We"ll know when we get in there," Sturges said. "That is, if he"s in one piece."
La.s.siter inserted himself between Shawn and Sturges. "Is that all?"
"One of the neighbors, a Mrs. Wilma Naugatuck, reported seeing a woman fleeing the house just after the explosion."
"Was she injured?"
"Mrs. Naugatuck said her face was discolored, as if she"d been caught in an explosion," the captain said. "And the explosion seems to have blown her clothes off. She ran out in her underwear."
Down at the end of the street, a uniformed officer waved at them. Sturges nodded back at him, then turned to La.s.siter. "We"re clear."
"Let"s send in the robot," La.s.siter said.
"Hold on a second," Shawn said. "Let"s talk about this woman in her underwear."
"Let"s not," O"Hara said. "Your adolescent fantasies can wait until we"ve cleaned up this mess."
"I"m not sure there is a mess," Shawn said. "The neighbor said her face was discolored as if from a bomb blast?"
"That"s what the lady told us," Sturges said.
"Let"s say you"re a skilled, bomb professional," Shawn said.
"He is," La.s.siter said.
"No, say the words, all together now." Shawn raised his hands as if to conduct a group sing-along, but no one seemed interested in joining him. "Fine, whatever. Anyway, in all your years of skilled, bomb professional experience, have you ever known anyone to emerge from an explosion with their clothes blown off and their face charred black?"
"Only in Bugs Bunny cartoons," Sturges said.
"And, judging from all your years of skilled, bomb professional experience, are we now in the middle of anything resembling a Bugs Bunny cartoon?" Shawn asked.
"Only one of us is," La.s.siter snapped, then cast an accusatory glance at Gus. "Maybe two, if you count Tweety Bird over here."
"La.s.sie, I"m trying to-"
La.s.siter cut Shawn off with a wave of the hand. "Interfere with an ongoing police operation. Now, get out of the way." La.s.siter turned back to Sturges. "Go ahead, send in the robot."
Shawn tried to object, but La.s.siter 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 pract.i.tioners, 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 La.s.sie 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 impa.s.sive 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 b.a.l.l.s of his feet, then started toward the front door of the Cape Cod, his arms moving mechanically with every step.
"What the h.e.l.l is he doing?" La.s.siter 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," La.s.siter 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," La.s.siter snapped. "Every time I talk to you. And where is he going now?"
"More importantly," Shawn said, moving to block La.s.siter"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."
La.s.siter 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!" La.s.siter 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. .h.i.t 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!" La.s.siter 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 doork.n.o.b, 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 spa.r.s.ely 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 Bal.u.s.trade"s den, a wood-paneled box furnished with a worn leather couch and a television that could almost certainly receive color broadcasts.
Shawn was in the middle of the room, and he was leaning over something that didn"t look like any bomb Gus had ever seen.
As he got closer, Gus could see that it was the tuxedo-clad body of the magician who"d slipped the card into his sock at the Fortress of Magic. He was sprawled out on his stomach, the crowbar that had been used to shatter his skull still lying beside his head.
"Is he dead?" Gus asked as he got closer.