It's Your Party, You Can Die If You Want To

Written by: Oni-Baka

Chapter 2—Stealthilicious

Feet propped on the desk in front of him, sneakers tossed aside beside him, Shawn set about picking apart the pastry in his lap, digging out chunks of mango and popping them into his mouth. His eyes were glazed, looking through the computer screen propped before him. A google image search list was left open on the monitor, a number of hands depicted in various grisly positions along with the several completely unrelated images that always turned up on such searches—a duck with an afro; a porcelain bull painted to look like fire; it went on.

He hummed slightly, somewhat contemplatively, fingernail digging into the soft chocolate shell of the scone, distractedly seeking a sliver of pineapple.

It was clear he simply didn't have enough information—not even enough for an elementary guess. It was also clear he wasn't going to be allowed to go about forcing his way into the case as he usually did. He needed a new tactic. He needed to be sneaky. He needed to be stealth—Gus stealth, only better. His lips twitched as he formed the word in his mind—stealthilicious. That's what he needed to be.

It occurred to him briefly that he should just let this whole case go; that he should pull out before he got too far in, before the SBPD decided he was too much of a liability, that he couldn't take instructions, that he was a risk. And maybe it was too dangerous for a civilian to work this case; though Shawn didn't really consider himself a civilian in the traditional sense.

And it wasn't so much that Shawn ignored that voice, those concerns, out of hand; he simply assumed, not too erroneously he imagined (due to his history), that if necessary he could pull back from a bad situation. He assumed that he was intelligent enough to recognize the moment he would be putting himself in unnecessary danger, and he trusted that his friends and contacts were such that he would be safe were he to fall.

He assumed these protections, and so he bypassed with little mental distress the idea that he had already been warned away. Getting out was easy. Getting in, on the other hand…

"That had best not be my double chocolate mango-pineapple scone." Gus's voice snapped Shawn out of his thoughts (such as they were), and he lifted the twisted remains of the scone to his mouth demonstratively, chewing slowly, appreciative sounds coming from his throat as he chewed.

"I know you didn't just do that" Gus continued.

"I drove forty minutes for that scone; I've been looking forward to it all day."

Through the mouthful, Shawn answered, brushing off his jeans.

"Gus, something has to make up for my missing birthday cake, or how am I to deal with the trauma?" he exclaimed, spraying delicious crumbs. Taken aback, Gus raised one expressive eyebrow.

"I have no idea what you just said" he responded in semi-affectionate frustration, closing the door behind him.

"And get your nasty feet off my desk. I have to work on that." Shawn rocked back in Gus's chair with a groan and wiggled his toes.

"But I was airing my toesies" he cooed in a ridiculously childish voice, starting slightly when Gus made to come over a tad more quickly than he'd expected. Jumpy. He was still jumpy.

"Why are you here, Shawn?" Gus asked, and something in the impatience evident in Gus's voice grated at Shawn, reminding him of Lassiter.

"Why can't anyone be happy to see me?" he wondered, pushing on the desk so that the rolling chair whirled him around in a slow circle.

"It's my birthday, Gus. You should be celebrating me. That's all I ask—" the chair came to a stop so that Shawn was facing his friend again.

"Are you celebrating me, Gus? I would have to say no." Gus's other eyebrow rose skeptically.

"You ate my scone."

Shawn exploded from the chair, pacing on his side of the desk.

"Are you still on that? That was so long ago."

"It was thirty seconds ago, Shawn. I can still smell it." Gus tapped his nose, and the two simply looked at each for a moment.

"Besides" Gus continued

"if I wasn't 'celebrating' you, Shawn, I wouldn't have agreed for a third, ill-fated, against-my-better-inclinations trip to the Mexican border, again, even after what happened last time."

Shawn pursed his lips, hands coming together in a praying position.

"Point." Gus inclined his head.

"About that—I'm thinking maybe another time. We have more important plans for tonight." Gus did something like a double-take.

"What?"

"Yeah. You see, we have to be somewhere else."

"Where?" Shawn winced, turning away.

"Not sure yet." Gus's expression transformed, knowing the direction this was going in.

"Uh-huh. And—this wouldn't have anything to do with a new case, would it?" Shawn grinned.

"In a sense."

"A sense." Gus crossed his arms, waiting for the other shoe to fall.

"You see, we'll be on this case, except—no one in the police department can know about it. Especially not Lassy. And I don't know anything about it." Gus's eyebrows rose impossibly higher.

"Sounds great. A case we have no information on, won't be paid for, and can't let anyone ever know about. Sign me up." Shawn came forward, clasping Gus's hands with his own.

"You know, I was hoping you would say that. I need to use your little blue car to trail Lassy for information-gathering purposes." Gus shook his head quickly, backing away.

"I wasn't serious, Shawn. This is an awful idea."

"We don't even know if he's going anywhere near a crime scene, Gus. Please, just for this once? Please? It's my birthday." Gus still looked unconvinced, so Shawn added

"I won't make you go to Mexico." A shift in expression, and Gus broke away with a sigh.

"Fine, just for tonight. And only because I never want to go near Tequila ever again." Shawn jumped, both hands in the air, ecstatic.

"But if I get arrested because of you, it's not cool, Shawn."

XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX

The both of them ducked automatically as Lassiter came out of the police station, heading for a non-descript, almost painfully-plain red vehicle, looking as strained as Shawn had ever seen him. The detective peeled out of the parking lot at a pace Shawn wouldn't have expected, having always assumed Lassiter would be the type to drive to the very letter of the law.

"Okay, drive" Shawn whispered, well aware how ridiculous it was to whisper when they'd just seen Lassiter drive away. Without picking themselves up, Gus pushed down on the gas pedal, and the car moved slowly forward, Gus barely peeking over the steering wheel.

"Faster than a tortoise, Gus, if you please" Shawn hissed, watching Lassiter turn right onto the highway. A scuffle ensued, and eventually Gus straightened and pressed down on the gas, following at a steady, though stealthy, clip.

Only fifteen minutes later, Lassiter pulled into a parallel parking spot in downtown Santa Barbara, next to a tourist trap surfer shop proclaiming 'cheap palm and tarot reading by Madame Bargussi.' An alarm went off in Shawn's mind, and he hissed for Gus to park a while away, rolling out of the car Mission Impossible style, Gus crab-walking behind a pole nearby.

"We look ridiculous" Gus hissed as they came to rest behind the building, crouched by the dumpster.

"Down" Shawn ordered, and the both of them flattened themselves against the dumpster at the exact moment Lassiter chose to go inside the store, jingling bells announcing his arrival inside.

"Now what?" Gus muttered, peeling a rotting bit of banana off his sleeve.

"We don't even know why he's here. Maybe he just wants to buy a new bathing suit."

"Think he's a banana hammock kind of guy?" Shawn wondered, making himself comfortable against the gritty wall.

"That's disgusting" Gus answered, trying very hard to think of anything else.

"Lassy's not here to buy" Shawn contended, pulling his Gameboy out of his pocket and switching it on.

"I recognize the name on the palm reader's sign. Bargussi. No, this is a crime scene." Starting a new game, Shawn set about guiding what appeared to be a poorly-constructed space ship through a series of obstacles.

"And now?" Gus asked, after a few moments of silence.

"Now we wait until Lassy leaves. Then we go see for ourselves."

XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX

It took less than ten minutes to render Shawn irrevocably, twitchingly bored. His Gameboy didn't help; the idea that he was waiting in an alleyway after dark did nothing. In the end, he resorted to playing "I Spy" with Gus for over an hour.

"How long does it take to go over a crime scene?" Shawn finally expelled, mostly to himself, glancing out into the street. Everything had been quiet outside for over half an hour now. All the stores were closed, including the one Lassiter had gone into; the vendors were gone, even the late-night couples wandering and pawing at each other had moved to their respective bedrooms.

"Oh. My. Fucking. God" Shawn suddenly shrieked, startling Gus out of the half-asleep state he had been in.

"Wha--?"

"Lassy's car!" They both turned to look automatically. They'd taken the car so much for granted, as part of the landscape, something neither of them would use in "I Spy" in light of its being too obvious.

It was gone.

"How long has he--?" Gus started, rubbing the sleep from his eyes.

"Dude, we are the worst secret spies ever!" Shawn cut in, standing quickly.

"Let's go." For once, they were in apparent agreement, and the two slunk to the storefront in question, oozing inside after only a moment's hesitation as they found the door locked for the night. Sometimes, Gus's shady lockpicking skills were damn useful.

There was no need to search for a crime scene. The small store had only a couple shelves filled with tacky beach gear, easily rendered unimportant by the streams of police tape that lined the even smaller staircase that presumably led up to Madame Bargussi's palm reading stand.

Shawn stepped over the police tape, nostrils open and eyes open wide to allow them to more quickly adjust to the darkness that grew darker as the two of them ascended. He stopped before the door, which was slightly ajar, sniffing deeply. The smell of incense was strong, thick, covering up any other smell that might have been a clue. Sweet, cloying, it made the air thick enough to feel as it slid into his lungs, and only reluctantly did Shawn push the door carefully open further, coughing slightly into the dark.

Light streamed in through a side window dramatically half-covered in tattered purple curtains. The room was painted dark, dark blue, accented in mystical-seeming patterns drawn on freehand in silver and gold. The only furniture in the room, a small, cheap table, was smashed on its side, one of its two legs broken off.

As Shawn continued to sweep his eyes over the room, his eyes caught on the sad lump crumpled in one corner. He was sure he'd seen it the moment Gus did, for there was a sharp exhalation behind him, along with a slight, girly whimper. He leaned forward rather than go any closer. It was light enough in the room with the moonlight and the light of the street light conveniently right outside.

There was the purple nail polish, the holes…clean through, and on both sides. Her shoes had been removed, letting him see that her toes had been painted silver, and that her feet were crushed, a similar piercing digging wide holes through the meat of both feet. Her arms were splayed, and Shawn felt an immediate, awful rush of realization as he recognized the pose.

In addition to being stigmatized, there was an unnatural length jutting from the woman's head; the missing leg of the table, sharpened and stabbed through her forehead. His mind supplied the word reluctantly: 'staked.'

A pool of blood, spray on the walls presumably from the woman's thrashing. Partly in an effort to keep himself from vomiting, or perhaps screaming, Shawn drew his gaze to other details, catching on the other painfully obvious detail of this murder. A message, written in what was absolutely blood, drawn directly from the pool of blood by the victim's left hand.

Matthew 10:34

Shawn shuddered, moving slightly forward, ignoring the panicked sounds he could hear coming from Gus behind him, assuming his friend was, like him, trying to hold onto his gag reflex.

Then the hand squeezed his shoulder, and he could feel the heat of breath on his neck.

Every muscle in him tensed, and he was certain he heard a familiar voice breath "I knew it." He jerked, trying to scramble away, and thus was already falling when Lassiter's fist connected with his jaw.

End Chapter 2

Thanks for reading so far—it looks like we might be in for a long haul, you and I. My muse has informed me this story will be no less than ten chapters.