Shawn didn"t bother to answer, and as Gus moved into the room, he could see that it was a foolish question. Gus gestured down at the crowbar. "How hard would you have to hit someone with that to kill him?"
"Not so hard it would sound like an explosion to anyone except the guy getting hit," Shawn said. He was staring down at the dead man"s hands. Even in death, his fingers were immaculate. Except for the ring finger on his right hand. There was something dark underneath the nail.
"Car keys," Shawn said, and Gus handed them over without even thinking. Shawn used one key to pry under the dead man"s fingernail and eased out a thick piece of rubber, so dark green it was almost black.
"What"s that?" Gus asked.
"More to the point, what"s this?" He used the key to pry open the magician"s left hand, which was locked into a fist. Inside, he was clutching an old clicker-style TV remote.
"I think that"s what they used to change channels back when they had only three of them," Gus said.
"Not much of a weapon, though," Shawn said.
"Good point," Gus said. "That"s probably why he"s dead and the guy with the crowbar isn"t."
"No, think about it," Shawn said. "You"re about to die; there"s nothing you can do about it. Why would you pick up the TV remote as your last act?"
"So no one would find out you were watching The Mentalist?" Gus said. "I mean, really, who could believe a show with such an idiotic concept?"
"To send a message."
Gus stared down at the remote in the dead man"s hand. "And that message is what-I"d rather die than go on watching this show?"
"Exactly," Shawn said.
Shawn was about to pick up the control when they heard the front door bang open. "Police!" La.s.siter yelled from the entry. "Come out with your hands up!"
"I"m in the shower," Shawn called back. "Can you just slip it under the door?"
Gus probably didn"t hear La.s.siter"s muttered curse, but he knew so precisely what that curse would have been, he might as well have. After a moment, La.s.siter and O"Hara burst through the door into the den.
"What kind of twisted game of Russian roulette are you two playing?" La.s.siter said. "Don"t you realize you could both have been killed?"
"Apparently we missed our chance." Shawn pointed down at the magician on the floor. "He beat us to it."
"Step away from the body, Shawn," O"Hara said. "I"m going to call this in."
"You can do that if you want to," Shawn said. "But there really isn"t much point. I"ve just solved this entire case."
Chapter Twenty-Two.
Gus gripped the bars with both hands and bellowed down the prison corridor. "Let us out!"
"Yes, that"s certainly going to work." Shawn was stretched out on the hard metal bunk, hands laced behind his head. "You"ve got to wonder why in the entire history of incarceration, no one ever thought of asking to be let out before."
Gus wheeled on him, furious. "This is all your fault."
Shawn yawned. "I"m not the one who robo-walked right into a crime scene. Therefore, it wasn"t me who interfered with said crime scene."
"I only did it because you told me to," Gus sputtered.
"Getting us both into trouble," Shawn said. "Really, if you"d start using a little independent judgment, we"d be better off."
Gus looked around the cell for a weapon, but there was nothing that wasn"t bolted to the ground or screwed into the wall.
"We weren"t arrested for interfering with a crime scene," Gus said, falling back on the only weapon available to him, his words. "The charge was obstruction of justice."
"What does that mean, anyway?" Shawn said.
"It means that you claimed you knew the ident.i.ty of Bal.u.s.trade"s killer, but when La.s.siter asked who it was, you wouldn"t tell him," Gus said.
"I merely said that he needed to supply me with a few basic items and a.s.semble a small group of suspects within the next twenty-four hours and I would explain it all," Shawn said. "That"s hardly obstructing justice. More like delaying it."
"Why didn"t you just tell him?" Gus demanded. "That way we"d be free, Benny Fleck would pay us, and we could think about something other than the fact that in a couple of hours I"m going to have to go to the bathroom and there are no doors here."
"If it meant that much to you, you could have told La.s.siter who did it," Shawn said.
"I would have," Gus said, "only I don"t know who that is. Because you wouldn"t tell me."
"d.a.m.n right," Shawn said. "Not if you"re going to blab it all over the place."
At the far end of the corridor, a heavy metal door swung open with a creak. Gus heard st.u.r.dy, sensible pumps clacking on the concrete.
"Let me out!" Gus shouted. "Let me out and I promise to testify against Shawn!"
Santa Barbara Police Chief Karen Vick stepped up to the cell and gazed at Gus with the same calm, cool gaze she always had for them. And as always, her calm and her coolness made Gus stop worrying about whatever had been making him nervous and made him start worrying about what she might be thinking.
"I"d be careful about making that offer too loudly," Chief Vick said. "There are some members of this force who would be only too happy to take you up on it."
Shawn hopped off the bunk. "Fortunately, you"re not one of them."
"Fortunately, I"m not one of them yet," Chief Vick said. "But my patience isn"t infinite."
"I don"t see why," Shawn said. "It"s not like your bathroom doesn"t have doors."
Gus had long marveled at the way Chief Vick seemed completely unaffected by even the most non sequitursiest of Shawn"s non sequiturs. This time was no exception.
"I am prepared to release the two of you," she said. "Before I do, I need to ask you a few questions. First, do you know who killed August Bal.u.s.trade?"
"We do," Shawn said.
Gus was about to object that they most certainly did not, but Shawn silenced him with a look.
"Do you know what happened to P"tol P"kah?"
"We do," Shawn said.
"We do?" Gus said. "I mean, of course we do."
"Do you plan to explain this to the Santa Barbara Police Department at any time in the near future?"
"A great magician never reveals his secrets," Shawn said. Gus kicked him in the shin. "But he"s happy to reveal someone else"s. So yes, all will be explained."
"When?"
"Tonight," Shawn said. "At the Fortress of Magic."
"Of course," Chief Vick sighed. "I suppose you have a list of people you want us to bring there."
"Funny you should mention that," Shawn said, pulling a piece of paper out of his shirt pocket. "By the way, the booking officer should have taken this away from me. I could have used it to pick the lock, dig through the concrete, tunnel five hundred miles, and end up in Mexico."
Chief Vick eyed the list dubiously. "That might have made more sense than what you"ve got here. And what"s this?" she said, flipping the paper over to reveal a second list.
"Just a few things we"ll need before the big show," Shawn said.
"A digital video camera, a quart of bourbon, police reports from the night of the disappearance, a twenty-two-ounce steak with onion rings," she read.
"You can forget that last one," Shawn said. "That was only if we were ordering our last meal."
She glanced down the rest of the list. "I"ll see what I can do about these. Anything else?"
"I"d asked La.s.siter to have some tests run on a tank of air," Shawn said. "Has he had a chance to do that, or has he been too busy arresting people who are trying to solve his case for him?"
"Detective La.s.siter is a man of his word," the chief said, a touch of frost in her voice. "If he says he"ll do something, he will do it. Especially if it will help bring a criminal to justice."
"So?" Shawn said. "Results?"
"It was air, Mr. Spencer," Chief Vick said. "Just plain old air. Nothing remotely Martian about it."
Gus watched Shawn carefully, looking for any trace of disappointment. But if Shawn was hoping for proof of interplanetary involvement before tonight"s denouement, he wasn"t displaying the letdown.
"Is that all, Mr. Spencer?" the chief asked.
"One more thing," Shawn said. "Pull your guard off the door at the Fortress of Magic."
"I"m happy to put my man back on the streets," Chief Vick said. "But it"s not going to do you much good if the government agents are still there."
"What do you think the bourbon is for?" Shawn said.
It took only a few minutes for Shawn and Gus to be processed out of the jail, and a few more for Gus to celebrate the fact of a toilet stall enclosed by solid metal on four sides. By the time he emerged, informed enough about the inequities of global trade to partic.i.p.ate in a symposium, thanks to the most recent issue of The Nation that some officer had left hanging on the handicap rail, Shawn was hefting a cardboard box full of supplies. Chief Vick had come through, even if, for the bourbon, she"d had to subst.i.tute a two-thirds-full bottle of cheap scotch from the desk of one of her detectives.
Since they"d left the Echo in the police parking lot when they"d ridden with La.s.siter and O"Hara to Bal.u.s.trade"s house, it was only minutes later that the box was safely stowed in the backseat and Shawn and Gus were on their way to the Fortress of Magic.
They rode in silence, as Gus refused to ask Shawn what he had figured out and Shawn declined to volunteer. Even as they climbed the long hill up to the Fortress" front door they didn"t speak, except for once, when Shawn asked Gus to carry the box and Gus declined on the grounds that since he didn"t know how the items inside were to be deployed, he didn"t want to leave himself vulnerable to new charges of obstruction.
Only when they were inside the Fortress and had ascertained that, aside from the "federal agent" Major Voges had left guarding the showroom, the place was deserted, did Shawn feel it necessary to converse.
"Okay, here"s what I need you to do," he said as they checked out the main parlor. "Go offer the guard a drink."
"Maybe you"d like me to burn down the police station while I"m at it," Gus said. "Or hack into their databases and change all the names of the criminals."
"First of all," Shawn said, "you know this guy isn"t a real fed."
"I know that"s what you told me," Gus said. "I have no way of knowing if it"s the truth or not, since you"re not sharing any actual information with me."
"Well, then," Shawn said, "there"s an easy way to find out. Go offer him a drink. If he takes it, he"s a rent-a-cop. If he doesn"t, he"s a fed."
"Or a very good rent-a-cop."
"He"s spent days standing outside a doorway with no one to talk to except Officer McNab," Shawn said. "I"ll be surprised if he hasn"t drained the bar by now."
"Uh-huh," Gus said, wandering toward the nearest open door, which led into the Fortress" cramped office. He took a seat in an ancient swivel chair and felt the leather upholstery decaying into powder beneath him. "And what will you be doing while I"m subverting justice?"
"Stuff," Shawn said."Followed by things.Then maybe, if I get a chance, more stuff. All of which is essential if we"re going to get through our reveal tonight."
Gus lifted his legs up and dropped his heels on the desk, nearly toppling over backward as he did so. The chair wobbled underneath him and he had to fight to keep from collapsing onto the floor, but it was worth straining his calves to let Shawn know exactly how indifferent he was to this plan. To complete the picture, he grabbed a dusty volume from the desk and flipped through it before he answered.
"Our reveal?" Gus said. "You mean one of those scenes where you explain it all, and I get to be amazed along with the rubes?"
"Oh, come on," Shawn said. "You know you want to be a part of this."
Gus leafed through the book, which turned out to be the Fortress" booking calendar, and did his best to look fascinated by what he saw there. He would have whistled a jaunty tune while he pretended to read, but the cloud of dust rising up around him forced him to devote all his bronchial resources to fighting off a coughing fit.
"I"ll tell you who did it," Shawn said.
Gus spared him a glance.
"I don"t mean right now," Shawn said, "but definitely before everyone else."
Gus slowly turned another page in the volume.
"Please, Gus," Shawn said. "I can"t do this without you. Which means that P"tol P"kah will get away with everything."
Part of Gus" brain registered the fact that Shawn was desperate enough to make peace that he was willing to stop pretending he couldn"t remember the Martian Magician"s stage name. But most of it was too occupied with what his eyes had just seen in the ledger.
"Please?" Shawn said.
Gus eased his feet off the desk, knowing that any sudden movement would probably smash the chair into kindling, and stood up. "Look at this," he said.
Shawn came into the office and took the book. Gus pointed down at the entry. Shawn stared, shocked.
"Do you know what this means?" Shawn said. "You"ve just cracked this case wide open."