After Lassiter and Juliet had left with Winston and Shawn and Gus were in the Blueberry again, Gus said "Are we going to go talk to Mason now?"
"Yeah. He said something last night about working from home today. Do you know where he lives?"
Gus nodded, starting the car. "I helped him move some furniture once."
"I need to talk to Callie too. She's the only person who was there that day that I haven't spoken to yet."
"What about…oh, you must have gone to the bookstore this morning. That's how you knew that Sofia called in sick. So, you talked to Martina?"
"Yeah, and she's a real charmer, by the way. Lassie was there too, because she had contacted the cops to tell that she had information about Hazel's murder. It turns out that she knew about Winston and Hazel too."
"Am I the only one who didn't know?" Gus grumbled, and Shawn shook his head.
"That depends on if Callie knew."
When they arrived at Mason's house, Shawn's senses—his real, Henry-trained senses, not his fake psychic senses—went into high alert. The front door of the house was standing open, with no sign of Mason or anyone else around.
"I've got a bad feeling about this," Gus said uneasily as they walked up to the door.
"Thanks, C3P0," Shawn said snidely, trying to tamp down on his own bad feeling.
"That was Han Solo's line too," Gus whisper-argued; something about the stillness around the house made them both want to be quieter than usual. "Luke and Leia also both said it. And so did Obi-Wan in Episode One and Anakin in—"
"Gus, we're all trying to collectively forget the prequels," Shawn whispered furiously as he pushed the front door further open. "Mason?" he called, his voice startlingly loud in the quiet of the house, and when there was no answer he stepped cautiously inside, looking over his shoulder at Gus who followed, looking just as unsettled as Shawn felt.
From somewhere in the house Shawn could hear the sound of laughter from a television, and he followed it, passing through an eerily empty living room that was devoid of life except for the episode of Friends playing on the TV. Gus was close enough on his heels that he could feel his breath on the back of his neck.
"Mason?" he tried again, "It's Shawn and Gus. Your door was—"
He stopped at the entrance of the kitchen, suddenly enough that Gus bumped into him. There was an island in the middle of the room, and from the other side of it he could see a trickle of blood spreading on the floor from behind it.
"Call 911," he told Gus, panic and horror rising up in him.
"Why?" Gus started to say, but then he saw the blood too and Shawn heard him suck in a breath and pull out his phone, while Shawn carefully edged his way around the island to the other side of the kitchen, careful not to step in the blood. He didn't usually react to the occasional dead body that he and Gus saw—growing up remembering every detail of crime scene photos that Henry showed him had hardened him at an early age to the sight of corpses—but seeing Mason sprawled out on his kitchen floor, his shirtfront drenched with blood, made him feel sick. Knowing it was futile, he edged close enough to pick up Mason's wrist and check his pulse.
"He's dead," he said to Gus, so that Gus could relay the information to the 911 operator. After he hung up, Gus started around the corner of the island, but Shawn held up a hand to stop him.
"Don't. You don't want to see this. I think he's been stabbed to death." He looked around for a weapon but didn't see anything. There was, however, a knife missing from the wooden knife block on the kitchen counter. He scanned the room for signs of any other clues. The only sign of a struggle was a broken glass on the floor with what looked like soda around it, suggesting that Mason had been holding the glass when he'd been stabbed.
"Whoever did this could still be here," Gus said nervously. "Maybe we should wait outside for the cops."
"My guess is that the person who did this left the front door open as they were leaving. But yeah," he agreed, with a final glance at Mason, "let's wait outside."
As they started for the exit, Shawn paused, seeing Mason's phone lying on the counter. Using a nearby dishcloth to pick it up so he didn't leave prints, he carefully checked to see what the last few calls he had made were. Starting with that morning, he could see that Mason had called the accounting firm that he and Hazel worked for, followed an hour or so later by a call to Callie, who he had talked to for nearly half an hour.
A patrol car had been in the area and showed up just minutes after they went to stand on the lawn. Shawn told them where to find the body, and a short time after that Lassiter and Juliet arrived. Shawn thought about following them into the house, but he didn't think he had missed seeing any vital clues the first time around, and he wasn't especially eager to go back into the kitchen with Mason's body. So he and Gus loitered outside until the detectives came back out to ask them what they knew.
Shawn let Gus tell them about how they had found the body, while he thought back to what he had seen in the house, deliberately avoiding thinking about the body and the blood and concentrating on everything else. He closed his eyes to recall the layout of the kitchen, and when he opened them again he realized that Lassiter was watching him with concern. When he saw that Shawn was watching him back, he pulled him to the side, while Gus continued giving his statement to Juliet.
"Are you all right, Shawn? I know you and the victim were—" he hesitated.
"We went on one date," Shawn said, before Lassiter could finish the thought, "mostly because I wanted to question him about Hazel. We weren't anything. But...he seemed like a good guy. I hate that this happened to him."
Lassiter's hand was still on his arm, warm even through his shirtsleeve. It was definitely, absolutely wrong, Shawn knew, to be having the kind of thoughts he was currently having right outside of the house where Mason's body was. Thoughts about how good Lassiter's hand might feel against bare skin, for instance, and about how nice it was to stand this close to him.
In fact, it was so nice that it was freaking him out a little. So he planted a hand against Lassiter's chest and gasped "I'm sensing that the weapon that killed Mason is missing!"
Lassiter withdrew his own hand, stepping back so that Shawn was no longer touching him and crossing his arms with a frown. "Not your best work, Spencer. Clearly, the murderer took the weapon."
"Ah, but did you know that the weapon was taken..."
"From the wooden knife holder in the kitchen?" Lassiter interrupted. "Yeah, I got that. Are the 'spirits' only pointing out the obvious to you today?"
"Your face is obvious," Shawn muttered, which got him a raised eyebrow from Lassiter. "Wait! I'm also seeing that he spoke to one of the other book club members today. You should find out what they talked about."
Lassiter gave him a suspicious look—well, a more suspicious look than usual. "We found his phone in the kitchen. I'm not going to find your fingerprints on it, am I?"
"Pffft," Shawn scoffed, "of course not."
"We don't even know for a fact that this murder is definitely connected to the other case. Mr. Warfield could have been killed by a different perpetrator for unrelated reasons."
Shawn raised his eyebrows skeptically. "Come on Lassie, you don't believe that for a minute. Mason and Hazel were friends. It's possible he figured something out and tipped off the killer that he was onto him or her. That's a hell of a lot more plausible than this being an unrelated murder."
The corners of Lassiter's mouth turned up into a half-smile. "You almost sounded like a cop there for a minute, Spencer."
Shawn shuddered. "That's just mean, Lassie. Puppy baby bottle rockets! There. That didn't sound like anything a cop would say, did it?"
Still looking somewhat amused, Lassiter shook his head. "No, that sounded like the kind of nonsense that could only come from you."
Shawn found himself smiling, a little giddy over the fondness in Lassiter's tone. "You like my nonsense," he said firmly. "You would be lost without it."
For some reason, that sobered Lassiter up. He sighed and rubbed his hand across his face. "You need to take Guster and go home, Shawn. If this is the same perpetrator, then the fact that they've escalated from a careful poisoning to a violent attack suggests that whoever is responsible is losing control. I know it goes against every single one of your instincts, but you need to drop the investigation."
"That's not going to happen," Shawn said immediately. The memory of Mason's body was still fresh though, so he added with only a little reluctance "However, Gus and I will give it a rest for the night, and we'll come by the station tomorrow before we do anything else. In return though, you have to do something for me."
"What do you want?" Lassiter asked softly, and Shawn suddenly realized that they were standing really close again, not quite as close as they had been at the bookstore, but close enough that he could feel the heat coming off Lassie. It made him dizzy.
"Autopsy results," he choked out, effectively killing the mood, "and any other clues you discover tonight. You're going to have to hold the Share Bear, Lassie."
Lassiter had retreated into stone-faced professionalism again, so quickly that Shawn wondered if he had imagined the tension between them. "We'll talk about it tomorrow," he said, and Shawn was going to consider that a win because it wasn't a firm no. "Now, you and Guster should get out of here."
They went back to the Psych office, where Gus made popcorn and Shawn rifled through their DVDs until he found something appropriately mood-lightening to watch, and they hung out for the rest of the evening not talking about the case or finding Mason. Watching a romantic scene, Shawn almost, almost, told Gus about the weird moments he and Lassie had been having together recently, but he kept it to himself for the time being. He wasn't sure what was going on between him and Lassiter, but whatever it was made him feel jittery and reckless, filled with equal amounts of apprehension and anticipation. It was the way he had felt about Abigail Lytar in high school, and the way he had felt about a river rafting guide named Carlos during a summer he had spent in Colorado, only magnified by about a million because it was Lassie.
Gus went home after the movie, though a part of Shawn wished that they could both just stay at the office overnight, where he knew Gus would be safe, even though he thought that it was highly unlikely that Gus was in danger; he was fairly certain that the theory he had shared with Lassiter, that Mason had probably figured out who the killer was and tipped him or her off somehow was correct. Still, if the killer simply had a beef with the book club at large, then that meant that Gus could be a target, and the thought of Gus in any kind of danger made Shawn feel sick—worse even than the time that he had gotten food poisoning after eating a bad chimichanga.
To distract himself, he picked up Gus's book club notebook, which was lying on his desk, and started flipping through it. It didn't seem likely that he would find anything useful in the reading lists and meeting notes and literary definitions, but it might give him some insight into some of the suspects, and if not, it might at least put him to sleep.
He was just about to lock up the Psych office for the night and go home when his phone rang. Checking the caller ID, he was surprised to see that the call was from Lassiter.
"Lassie! It's a surprise to hear from you this late. Is my voice the last thing you want to hear before you go to bed?"
There was an uncomfortable silence from the other end of the line. Shawn prided himself on barrelling right through uncomfortable silences, though the little voice in his head that sounded suspiciously like Gus warned him not to say anything stupid or inappropriate.
"Is this going to be one of those calls I can write a letter to Penthouse about? Dear Penthouse, I never thought it could happen to me, but one night the detective of my dreams called and-" (The Gus-voice in his head yelled "Shawn!" and went off in a corner to sulk over never being listened to.)
"Spencer, stop being an ass!" Lassiter snapped. Shawn could picture him, red-faced with annoyance and embarrassment, maybe pulling his tie loose in an effort to relax because talking to Shawn got him all riled up. He licked his lips a little at the image; if he were in the same room, maybe Lassie would push him against a wall and loom over him and this time Shawn wouldn't lose his nerve, this time he would finally, finally discover what it would be like to close the space between them and…
"Hello? Spencer, are you there?" Now Lassiter sounded a combination of worried and irritated.
"I'm here," Shawn said a little breathlessly. "Sorry, I just...had a vision."
"Right," Lassiter said doubtfully. "Look, I'm calling because you asked for the autopsy results."
That got Shawn's attention for a variety of reasons. "You're actually keeping me updated on the case? Lassie, I'm all aflutter here!"
"You kept your part of the bargain by staying away from the suspects for the night." He paused, then asked "You have managed to keep your nose out of the case since I last saw you, haven't you?"
"I'll thank you to keep my nose out of this," Shawn said, "but yes, Gus and I came back to the office and watched a double feature of Clueless and Bring it On, and then we had an argument over who was cuter, Alicia Silverstone or Kirsten Dunst. Not cuter in a pervy way, just in a general adorableness kind of way."
"Alicia Silverstone, obviously," Lassiter said, and Shawn grinned. He loved it when Lassie played along.
"Right? But Gus is all hung up on K-Dunst because she played Spider-Man's girlfriend. And he says that Alicia was in the worst Batman movie, which—"
"Spencer!" Lassiter interrupted, "Do you want to hear the results or not?"
"As long as you keep breathing heavy into my ear, I'll listen to anything you say," Shawn said sincerely.
There was another tiny pause, but Lassiter apparently decided to pay no attention to Shawn's blatant flirting. "Mason Warfield was stabbed four times, twice in the chest and twice in the stomach, with a blade approximately seven inches long. From the angle of the wounds we know that his assailant was shorter than him by about least five inches. He had been dead approximately an hour before you found him."
"Five inches shorter," Shawn mused. "That rules out Winston and leaves the ladies. Besides, Winston was at his pizzeria an hour before we found Mason, making pizza that I will dream about tonight." He hoped at least; he would much rather dream about pizza than about finding Mason's body.
"Right," Lassiter said. "We released Mr. Hawkins after asking him some questions about his relationships with Hazel and Mason. It's Mrs. Hawkins that we're interested in now. She talked to the victim earlier in the day and we have her on a traffic camera going in the direction of his apartment this afternoon. We've requested a warrant for her arrest as well as a warrant to search their home for the knife and the poison, but we probably won't move on it until morning. She doesn't know that we're on to her, and she's got a kid, so she's not going anywhere tonight."
"Gus and I will be down at the station in the morning," Shawn said. "I haven't talked to Callie yet. I want to see what kind of vibes I get off of her while you're questioning her."
"You can WATCH," Lassiter allowed, "but you're not to ask her any questions yourself."
"Not even about what kind of conditioner she uses? I only saw her from across a room once, but even with that I was impressed by how super shiny her hair was."
"No," Lassiter said firmly, "you cannot ask her about her hair, or her manicure, or her shoes, or if she poisoned Hazel and stabbed Mason to death. Understood?"
"You might have to explain it again to me tomorrow," Shawn said.
"You're not going to do anything stupid tonight, are you?"
"Define 'stupid,'" Shawn said, but kept talking before Lassiter could reply. "Nah, all I've got going on tonight is a little light reading. Want to come over and help me with the big words?"
There was the smallest delay, almost like Lassiter was considering it, before he said stiffly, "Good night, Spencer."
"Night, Lassie. Sweet dreams." He waited until he was certain that Lassiter had hung up before hanging up himself and then calling Gus to tell him about the autopsy results and the warrant for Callie before tucking his phone back into his pocket. With Gus's notebook in hand, he finished locking up the office and headed for home, hoping for some sweet dreams of his own.
"What the HELL, Gus?"
Gus jumped up and grabbed the stapler off of his desk, brandishing it like a weapon; Shawn sounding pissed was so unusual that he assumed they were under some sort of attack.
"What? What's wrong?"
Shawn stalked to his desk and threw down Gus's a stack of books. Gus recognized them as being titles that the book club had read over the past year.
"Where did you get these?" he asked, picking up one of the books and turning it over in his hands. "Did you buy these? You didn't use my credit card, did you, because I swear to God Shawn, if you did I'm bringing you up on charges. Or I'm at least telling your dad."
Shawn didn't pay any attention to Gus's outrage, a reaction that Gus was sadly accustomed to. "I read these last night."
"You did?" Gus asked doubtfully, staring at the pile in front of him.
"Well, I read the Wikipedia entries and any dirty parts I could find."
"Is that why you sound angry? Because you didn't get enough sleep? Because I've told you Shawn, if you don't get at least seven hours a night –"
"No! That's not why I'm angry. I'm angry because most of these books are freaking depressing, Gus! Like, take Sofia's choices: chicks always talk about these books like they're romantic, but these dudes are all a bunch of creeps! Heathcliff kills a puppy! Rochester keeps his wife locked up in the attic, and I can't decide if that's better or worse than Maxim, who killed his wife!"
"Well Shawn," Gus said, prepared to lecture, "the gothic romance tradition is tinged with horror."
"These guys," Shawn declared, pointing at the books, "are a bunch of creepy puppy-and-women killers. There's nothing romantic about any of them."
"Hey, you don't have to convince me. Things got very heated at the meeting where we discussed Wuthering Heights. Hazel, Winston, and I all thought Heathcliff was evil, but Callie, Sofia, and Mason all defended him as being a product of his...Shawn, are you even listening to me?"
"Yeah, buddy," Shawn said, rifling through his desk. "You know I always pay super close attention when you're talking about your book club debates."
"Shawn, we're trying to solve two murders. I would think that you would want to hear about the people involved."
Shawn laughed. "Come on, Gus, Hazel wasn't killed because of her opinion of the crazy dudes in the books you read. Ah, there you are," he said to the bag of Skittles he unearthed from the drawer he was digging through. "Hey, didn't Sofia say that you were sympathetic to that puppy-murdering psychopath Garfield?"
"You mean Heathcliff. You just said his name literally less than two minutes ago. Unless you mean that Garfield lost it and killed Odie in a fit of rage. And, uh, I might have started arguing in Heathcliff's favor when I realized that criticizing one of her favorite books wasn't going to win Sofia over. Anyway, why did you bother doing research on the books if you don't think they have anything to do with the case?"
Shawn stuffed his mouth full of Skittles and frowned. "Something's not right. I don't know if I believe that Callie is the killer. I mean, look at her book choices: Pride and Prejudice, Anna Karenina, and Anne of Green Gables. That isn't the reading list of a psychotic murderer."
Gus sighed and leaned back in his chair. "I have a hard time picturing Callie stabbing Mason. It's so messy, and she's so neat. But it makes sense if she thought that Mason figured out that she killed Hazel."
"I told Lassie that we would be down at the station this morning because we want to see him and Jules question Callie."
Gus nodded, standing up from his desk and grabbing his jacket. As he reached for his keys, he asked casually, "So, Lassiter's calling you and keeping you updated on the investigation? What's that about? Usually he does everything in his power to keep us away unless Chief Vick orders him to let us investigate."
Shawn hesitated, uncertain how much he wanted to share, but it wasn't as if he had ever been capable of keeping anything from Gus. "Remember when I said that I thought Lassie liked me but that he would never go after anything he wanted? Well, I might have been wrong about that."
Gus's eyes widened with surprise. "Seriously? You actually think that Lassie like likes you? Just because he's sharing information with you?"
"Well, there's been a little more to it than that," Shawn admitted, "but come on Gus, Lassie letting us in on an investigation is like a normal person buying me flowers and candy…or you know, something less girly. I mean, I would take the candy. But I'd rather have access to evidence and autopsy results than flowers. Who wouldn't?"
"Lots of people," Gus assured him, as he turned to go outside to the Blueberry. "Me, for example."
"You would rather have flowers than evidence? Gus! What kind of flowers?"
They arrived at the station just moments before Lassiter and Juliet came in with Callie, who lit up when she saw Gus standing in the hall of the PD.
"Gus!" she exclaimed, relief apparent in her voice, "Thank God you're here. I need for you to call Martina and tell her that I'm not going to be able to make it to the adult literacy session this afternoon, so she's going to have to take over. And could you also call Winston and tell him that I promised to take a jumbo bag of dog food to the animal shelter today? It's in the garage, he just needs to drop it off at the front desk. Oh! Also tell him that I need for him to send out the email blast to the volunteers for the cleaner beaches initiative. And could you—" she was still talking as Lassiter and Juliet walked her into the interrogation room.
"Wow," Shawn said. "She's like a tiny four star general of do-gooder-ness."
Gus nodded, pulling out his phone. "She can be a little intense," he agreed, "but it's always for a good cause."
"What are you doing? We gotta go in there and listen to Lassie and Jules question her."
Gus gave him a disbelieving look. "Didn't you hear her? I've got some calls to make, Shawn!"
Shawn shook his head in wonder and went into the observation room. Juliet and Lassiter were still there, watching Callie, who was sitting at the table in the interrogation room. She looked scared, Shawn thought, but then, who wouldn't under the circumstances?
Lassiter glanced up at him and said sternly, "Remember what I told you last night, Spencer. You can watch, but stay out of the way."
"Last night?" Juliet asked, intrigued.
"Don't be jealous, Jules," Shawn said, "but my number was the one that came up when Lassie decided to make a late night booty call."
"That's not true!" Lassiter snapped, practically sputtering with outrage. "O'Hara, don't listen to him."
"Nah," Shawn agreed, "I'm just kidding. It was more like a late night bonding session. We talked about movies, manicures, books…I feel so much closer to you now, Lassie." He attempted to place his hand on Lassiter's arm only to be shook off immediately.
Gus joined him just as the detectives went into the interrogation room to question the suspect, shaking his head sadly as he looked at Callie through the glass. "I never would have thought that Callie could be capable of something like this."
"I'm still not convinced that she is," Shawn said, turning his attention to the interrogation room, where Juliet sat across from Callie at the table, while Lassiter stood behind her, near the door, his arms crossed over his chest.
"Ms. Hawkins, can you tell us when the last time you saw Mason Warfield was?"
Callie folded her hands neatly on the table in front of her. "Of course. I saw Mason yesterday, at his house. I was on my lunch break, so it was around 12:30 or so, I believe."
Juliet nodded, making a note in the file in front of her. "And what did the two of you talk about?"
"Mason called me yesterday morning and told me that he wanted to talk to me. He said that he wanted to apologize to me for any part he played in keeping my husband's affair with Hazel a secret."
Juliet set down her pen and leaned forward, asking gently, "Did you know about the affair?"
Callie shook her head. "Not until the day Hazel died. We were all in shock, of course, but I could tell that there was something else going on with Winston. He told me that he loved her before her body had even been taken away." She seemed to shrink in on her herself, crossing her arms tightly across her chest. "I had no idea before that."
"I imagine you were furious," Juliet said.
"I was hurt," Callie corrected.
"So you expect us to believe that you didn't know that your husband was sleeping with your best friend for the past six months?" Lassiter asked bluntly.
"I didn't!" Callie insisted.
"Or," Lassiter continued relentlessly, "to believe that you didn't poison Hazel out of the anger and jealousy that came from knowing that you had been betrayed?"
Callie's voice shook when she replied. "I did not kill Hazel. I could not kill anyone, much less anyone I considered a friend. But I'll tell you this, Detective," she continued, uncrossing her arms and gripping the edge of the table, "if I were going to kill anyone for betraying my trust, it would have been my husband. He's the one who stood up in front of a church full of people and promised to be faithful to me."
Juliet opened a folder and pulled out three pieces of paper, spreading them out in front of Callie. It was hard to be certain from the distance provided by the two-way glass Shawn and Gus were standing behind, but Shawn was sure that it was copies of the threatening notes that Hazel had received.
"Have you ever seen these before?" Juliet asked.
Callie studied them, frowning. "I've seen this one," she said pointing at the first one in the row that Juliet had laid out. "Hazel showed it to me. She said that it was under her windshield wiper blade one night when she left the bookstore. She never told me that she had gotten more, though."
"Was Hazel worried about the letter? Did she suspect anyone?"
"I think I was more worried about it than she was," Callie said. "It's not exactly a threat, but I thought it was seriously creepy. She seemed a little freaked out at first, but a few days later she came to me and said that she knew who had done it and that it was no big deal. I took her word for it, but she never told me that she had received more notes like it."
The door behind Shawn and Gus opened and Chief Vick came in, a file folder in her hand and a serious expression on her face. "Good morning, gentlemen," she said to them politely, and then frowned. "Did Detective Lassiter hire you for this case?"
Shawn opened his mouth to try and spin some sort of story that would explain their presence without implicating Lassiter, but he was saved the trouble. The Chief held up her hand to forestall his explanation. "Never mind, we'll talk about it later." She tapped on the glass to get the attention of her detectives, who excused themselves to Callie and came into the observation room.
"We believe we've found the knife that was used to murder Mason Warfield," Vick said without preamble, handing the folder she was holding to Lassiter. Shawn edged close enough so that when Lassiter opened the folder, he could see a picture of a bloody butcher knife lying in a trash can.
"Where was this found?" Juliet asked.
"The trash can is located outside of the house where Callie and Winston Hawkins live. It turned up in the search we started conducting this morning."
"A trash can outside of her house? Anyone could have put it there," Shawn pointed out. "My senses are telling me that there's more to this story than what we're seeing." Truthfully, he wasn't sure why he was so uncertain of Callie's guilt; he had no attachment to the woman and the evidence was stacking up against her. There was just something that didn't add up.
"The lab is running an analysis on the blood now to find out if the DNA matches Mr. Warfield's and to see if there are any prints on the knife," Vick said, disregarding Shawn and his "senses." "What I suggest you do now, detectives, is let Ms. Hawkins stew for a bit while we wait for the results to come in."
Gus pulled Shawn aside while the detectives conferred among themselves. "I'm gonna take off, Shawn."
"Your other job?" Shawn asked, and Gus shook his head.
"Nah. I'm meeting Sofia, but mostly I just can't watch this anymore. Callie is my friend. I don't want to watch Lassie and Jules grill her until she breaks."
"I don't know, Gus, I'm not feeling this. I don't think she did it."
"I hope you're right," Gus said, "but motive, means, opportunity…that's the big three isn't, it?"
"I guess," Shawn agreed doubtfully. "But I still think we're missing something. Hey, did you say that you were meeting Sofia?"
"That's right. She's coming over to my apartment—"
Shawn punched him lightly in the arm. "Gus! You sly dog, you. In the middle of the afternoon?"
"No! I mean, we could," he backtracked quickly. "A playa is always ready for the game, Shawn. But I told her about Pottering, and I think she'd like to try it. She wants to see my broom before deciding."
"Okay, I don't know what most of that meant," Shawn said, faintly horrified, "except for the thing about the playa and the game. Don't…don't say that again, Gus. It's not good. The broom, and the pottery…I don't know what that was, but it sounds dirty."
"Pottering," Gus corrected, "and you do so know what it is, I showed you the pictures!"
"No," Shawn said firmly, "I'm sure that you didn't. You're my best friend, Gus, but I don't need to see pictures of you doing anything with your broom. Ugh. Weirdest euphemism ever. And if you did show me pictures, they were so traumatic that I erased them from my memory."
"It's not weird, Shawn! She'd really like to try it, but she wants to see the size of my broom before…" he trailed off as he noticed that Vick, Lassiter, and Juliet were all looking at him curiously, and that Shawn was barely suppressing a laugh. "Never mind. I don't time for this right now. Call me later if anything changes with the case."
Gus started to open the door to leave, but Shawn stopped him, lowering his voice so that the others in the room couldn't hear him. "Hey, maybe you and Sofia should stick to public places. She's still a suspect, you know."
Looking sadly back at Callie in the interrogation room, Gus shook his head. "I think the cops about have this one wrapped up, Shawn. I mean, why would Sofia have killed anyone?"
Having no answer to that, Shawn shrugged and let Gus go.
Juliet went back into the interrogation room to tell Callie that they would be back to ask her some more questions soon, and that in the meantime she should think long and hard about whether or not she knew anything else that was relevant to the case. Shawn wanted to make a crack about "long and hard," but he was too busy trying to puzzle out why the way this case was shaking out felt so unsatisfying.
He followed Lassiter and Juliet back to their desks, with both detectives giving him concerned (or possibly just confused) looks over his long silence. Before Lassiter reached his desk, he was met by Sergeant Allen, who handed him an envelope.
"This came for you about an hour ago, Detective."
"What is it?" Juliet asked, looking over his shoulder with interest.
He sat down at his desk, Shawn and Juliet flanking him on either side so that they could see the contents of the envelope. Shawn was just barely paying attention until Lassiter said "It's a copy of the sealed juvenile record for Sofia Markos that we requested."
Shawn's eyes grew wide. "Are you kidding me? Sofia has a sealed juvenile record and you never thought to mention it before?"
Lassiter scowled. "First of all Spencer, I'm not required to share information with you. In fact, I shouldn't be doing it at all, so be grateful for what you've gotten. Second of all, it's the only blemish on her record. It's probably some dumb teenage stunt with no bearing on the case."
While he was forced to acknowledge that this was true, that didn't mean that Shawn couldn't read over Lassie's shoulder so that he could make that call for himself.
"What does it say?" Juliet asked impatiently.
What it said was that Sofia had been arrested for assaulting a classmate in high school when she was sixteen. According to the witness statements in the police report, the victim had made a disparaging remark about a boy Sofia liked, and she had responded by attacking the girl so violently that she had needed sixteen stitches for a head wound.
"Wait," Shawn said, "am I reading this right? Did she attack some girl over Howie Dorough?"
"Who?" Juliet asked with a frown.
"Howie Dorough, the least popular Backstreet Boy," Shawn explained. "It would be like if I were to go around attacking people who don't like Curly Sue. Sure, it's a part of the John Hughes filmography, but no one is claiming that it's vital."
"Okay, so she reacted in an extreme way to something most of us would consider minor," Juliet said, "but does this have any bearing on the case?"
"Hold on," Shawn said, closing his eyes and thinking back to the information he had gathered over the past few days. Something from the questioning of Callie was nagging at him, if he could just...he opened his eyes and looked at Juliet.
"Six months," he said in realization. "You said that Winston's affair with Hazel started six months ago."
"That's right. That's what Mr. Hawkins himself told us when we talked to him yesterday."
Lassiter snatched the case file from off Juliet's desk and started flipping through it. "The notes," he said grimly, and Shawn nodded.
"The first one came more than a year ago. Long before Winston and Hazel started sleeping together. Callie would have had no reason to write nasty notes to Hazel back then."
Lassiter scowled; Shawn knew he hated having his neat theory torpedoed. "Okay Spencer, so if Callie didn't do it, then who did? Obviously you're looking at Sofia Markos for it, but what would her motive be?"
Shawn stared down at the arrest report in his hands of Sofia's juvenile record. What he was thinking was ridiculous, but when had that ever stopped him from pursuing a theory? He closed his eyes again, remembering the reading list for the book club and putting it together with the timeline in which Hazel received the notes.
When he opened his eyes, he looked at Juliet. "Did you guys uncover anything else about Sofia's past that would suggest that she is prone to any kind of violent outbursts?"
"Not really," Juliet said uncertainly. "She was kicked out of a sorority in college, but we weren't able to get a clear picture of exactly why. One of her classmates that we talked to said it was because she had gotten into an argument that apparently turned somewhat heated with one of her sorority sisters over a book. The woman we spoke with said that Sofia had thrown a coffee cup at the other girl."
"Bickering college girls didn't seem like much of a lead," Lassiter said. "It still doesn't. What are you thinking, Spencer?"
"I'm thinking that I need to call Gus," Shawn said grimly, reaching for his phone, and was immediately worried when the call went straight to voice mail. He left a message asking Gus to call him back immediately, then sent a text saying the same thing, and when he hadn't received any sort of reply within the next thirty seconds, he knew deep in his gut that Gus was in trouble.
"We have to go," he said, grabbing Lassiter's arm and pulling him towards the door.
Startled, Lassiter stumbled after him. "What? What the hell is going on, Spencer?"
With his free hand, Shawn checked his phone again, ignoring Juliet's concerned "Shawn? Are you all right?"
"Gus is in trouble. I'll explain on the way. Hurry, let's go!"
Honesty was overrated, Gus decided. Things had been going beautifully with Sofia—she was definitely going to go Pottering with him, after saying that his broom looked like it was just the right size for her, and she was admiring his personal library, when she asked where his copy of Wuthering Heights was, since she knew he loved it so much.
He wanted to be honest with her, and beyond that he thought that she might be amused. Flattered, even. So he had given her his most winning smile and said "I have a confession to make: I hated that book. I thought that everyone in it was terrible. I only said that I loved it because I wanted you to like me."
"What?" she asked, and Gus knew immediately that he had made a mistake. "You mean you lied to me?"
"I wouldn't say lied," he hedged. "I think you're a beautiful and intelligent woman and I wanted to get to know you better. Come on, let's go into the kitchen and you can try that wine I was telling you about."
She followed him into the kitchen, and when he handed her the glass of wine he could see that her forehead was still furrowed in confusion. "Are you saying that you weren't moved by the passion between Heathcliff and Catherine?"
"Uh, honestly I was kind of creeped out by it," Gus admitted, then hastened to add, "but that's not important! What's important is that we've had the opportunity to bond over so many other shared interests."
"But you lied," Sofia said, her voice shaking and getting louder as she spoke, "and what do you mean by 'creeped out'? Don't you understand anything about love?"
Gus was really, really wishing that he had taken Shawn's advice to meet with Sofia only in a public place, but it was too late for that now.
"Look, I'm sorry," he apologized. "It was a dumb thing to do. I wouldn't blame you if you walked out right now and never talked to me again. Here, I'll get the door for you."
He started towards the front entrance, but not fast enough; Sofia grabbed a knife from off of his kitchen counter. "I thought we had something special, but I was wrong. You're just like all the others!"
Seriously regretting his decision to go into the kitchen with her, Gus started to back away. "Ha ha, no, I was just kidding! I love Wuthering Heigiiiiiiihhhh!" His insistence devolved into a scream as Sofia slashed at him with the knife.
"You're insane!" Gus gasped, as the knife arced towards him again. He had backed out of the kitchen, but unfortunately she had managed to drive him towards a corner. He dodged the gleaming arc of the knife again and grabbed a book off the bookcase behind him, throwing it at Sofia's head.
"Mason said that too," Sofia said, ducking to avoid the book, "but I showed him!"
"Yeah, you killed him and showed him that you were INSANE!" Gus said, throwing another book at her, hearing her hiss in pain as The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy glanced off her shoulder.
"I thought you were different, Gus! I thought we had something special!"
Gus threw another book. "And I thought you were sane, but I was wrong!" She was getting closer. Desperately, he hefted another book from the shelf, the heaviest one he saw.
Seeing the title, Sofia stopped in her assault. "You won't throw that," she sneered, and raised the knife.
"Aaauggg!" Gus screamed, holding up the book like a shield. The knife went through the book, stopping centimeters short of Gus's face. Shocked and furious, he pushed forward, slamming the book into Sofia's face. She stumbled back, just as the door burst open and Lassiter stormed in, Juliet and Shawn right on his heels.
"Drop your weapon!" Lassiter shouted at Sofia, who reluctantly did so, while Shawn rushed over to Gus.
"Buddy, are you hurt? Are you okay?"
Gus stared down at the book still in his hands, horrified. "She stabbed my first edition Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix! No, I am not okay!"
A few feet away, Juliet paused in the process of cuffing Sofia. "Gus, weren't millions of first editions of that book printed? It's not worth anything, is it?"
"Not worth anything?" Gus mumbled, smoothing a hand over the formerly flawless cover. Harry now had a gaping hole right through his head; Sofia had managed to do what Voldemort couldn't.
"Gus, don't go catatonic," Shawn said worriedly. "We'll buy you a new copy with the money we get paid for this case."
Lassiter frowned. "Were you ever officially hired for this case?"
Shawn flashed an irritated look in his direction, but kept his attention on Gus. "Think of it this way, Gus: Harry Potter saved your life!"
Gus brightened slightly. "That's true. Well, it makes sense. He IS a hero, Shawn."
"Yeah, yeah," Shawn said, suppressing his eye roll. "Seriously, are you all right? She didn't hurt you, did she?"
Gus flicked his thumb across his nose, attempting to affect a position of unruffled cool. "Course not. I knew she was the killer all along. My plan to expose her worked perfectly."
Shawn patted him on the shoulder. "Sure it did, buddy," he said soothingly, because he figured it was his job as best friend to be supportive right now. Making fun of Gus could come later.
"Gus, is that really a Red Phantom #2?" Juliet asked, pointing to the framed comic book sitting on the top shelf of his bookcase. "I read that there were less than 100 copies of that issue printed."
Gus nodded eagerly, temporarily forgetting his brush with death. "You'll never believe, I found that in a comic book shop in Fresno—"
"O'Hara!" Lassiter barked, gesturing at Sofia, who was handcuffed and weeping softly, which would have made Shawn feel terrible under different circumstances, circumstances that did not involve her trying to kill Gus."We have work to do here. You can talk about funny books with Guster another time."
"Funny books?" Juliet echoed, amused. "What century are you from, Carlton?"
"You should come over some time and check out my collection," Gus said to her, and Shawn made a note to himself to ask Gus if he was just being friendly with a fellow comic book enthusiast or if he was coming on to Jules.
"Hey Lassie," Shawn called, as Lassiter and Juliet started to herd Sofia out of the apartment, "throw the book at her! Oh wait, I guess Gus already took care of that."
Gus gave him a fistbump, Lassiter gave him an exasperated eyeroll, and Juliet looked like she was trying not to laugh. Shawn grinned, pleased with the successful resolution of another case.
"So how did you put it all together?" Gus asked him the next day, as they sat at their respective desks in the Psych office eating pizza. Winston had sent over one of his extra large gourmet pineapple-and-ham pizzas as a thank you for clearing both him and Callie of suspicion (he had sent one of the vegan pizzas as well, which Shawn gave to the employees of the health food store a block away). "When did you realize that Sofia was the killer?"
Shawn had spent the afternoon of the day before at the police station listening to Sofia give her confession; Gus had given his statement to the police and then offered to drive Callie home while Winston, trying to get back into his wife's good graces, took her place teaching the adult literacy group with Martina.
"It was the notes," Shawn explained. "After I realized that Hazel found the first one long before her affair with Winston started, I did what you told me to do in the first place and thought about the book club, and your reading list."
"I TOLD you the answer was in there somewhere!" Gus said triumphantly.
"If only you'd been that insightful when you decided to romantically pursue a homicidal maniac."
Gus bit into his pizza furiously but didn't argue, just waved a hand for Shawn to continue.
"The notes all came in the weeks right after you guys read Sofia's choices for the club. So, the week after your meeting on Jane Eerie—"
"Jane Eyre," Gus corrected.
"I've heard it both ways. Anyway, about a week after that meeting is when Hazel got the 'you don't know what true love is' note on her windshield. And after the Withering Heights meeting is when she got the one that said 'die you bitch.' Sofia has a real thing for that Heathcliff dude."
"It's Wuthering Heights, and," Gus said warningly as Shawn opened his mouth, "if you say that you've heard it both ways I'm taking away the rest of this pizza and not letting you have another piece."
Shawn's eyes narrowed in displeasure, but he didn't argue. "What I didn't know until yesterday was that our little Sofia has a history of lashing out at people who dislike the things she loves passionately. As far as she was concerned, it was even worse coming from Hazel, who, in her opinion, gave her a hard time at work too. She learned from a nature guide at the bookstore what kind of poison she could obtain easily that she could hide in a tea bag, and she found a way to stop Hazel from ever criticizing her or anything she loved ever again."
"Okay, but what about Mason? He was on her side during the great Heathcliff debate during our meeting!"
Shawn studied his pizza, his appetite diminishing as he thought about Mason. "That was my fault," he said quietly. "That day that she came by the office, I said something in front of her about Mason giving me some information about the case the night before. She was scared that Hazel had told Mason that Sofia was the one responsible for the notes, and that he was on to her. She thought I might be investigating her. When she went to his place and started asking questions, he did put two and two together. When he accused her, she snapped and killed him."
"Shawn, that is not your fault," Gus said. "Sofia is the only one responsible for what happened to Mason."
Shawn shrugged, not convinced. "Yeah, I know."
To change the subject, Gus asked "What are your plans for this afternoon? I was thinking of hitting the bookstore and replacing the books that got damaged yesterday. Want to come with me?"
"No, I've got something to take care of this afternoon," Shawn said, but when Gus asked what it was, Shawn just shook his head and smiled.
Lassiter got home early that day, which Shawn, who was waiting on the steps outside of his apartment, had been hoping for. He hopped to his feet, setting down the book he had been reading while he waited, and put some his newfound literary knowledge to use.
"It is a truth universally acknowledged that a snarky psychic in possession of a perfect head of hair must be in want of a grouchy detective to call his own."
Lassiter's brow furrowed in confusion. "What are you doing here? And what the hell are you babbling about now, Spencer?"
Shawn eased up to him, and was pleased when Lassiter held his ground and didn't back away. Of course, Lassiter hadn't been the one running away from this for a while, Shawn realized now; he had been waiting patiently for Shawn to catch up to him.
"Don't you recognize literature when you hear it?" Shawn asked. Being this close to Lassie made him feel giddy. Drunk. Hopeful.
"Is that what that was?" Lassiter asked. His earlier confusion had melted into an expression that Shawn didn't recognize right away. It was possible that Lassie was a little hopeful himself.
"It was pure poetry," Shawn assured him, tipping his head back a little so that he could look Lassie in the eye. "A few days ago you asked me what this was between us, and I asked you what you wanted it to be, but we were interrupted before you could answer. So, I'm asking again." He put his hand against Lassiter's shoulder, feeling the tension coiled underneath his skin. "What do you want this to be?"
Shawn's breath caught in his throat as Lassiter looked away from him, gazing briefly down at the ground between them, his eyelashes inky against the pallor of his skin. Shawn's heart thumped madly in his chest while he waited for Lassiter's reply.
His answer came in the form of action, as was fitting for Lassiter. He met Shawn's eyes again, nothing but certainty in his expression, and with no hesitation whatsoever he leaned forward and kissed him.
"And they all lived happily ever after," Shawn proclaimed breathlessly when they finally broke apart.
Lassiter tried to smirk, but at the moment he couldn't stop grinning. "Don't get ahead of yourself, Spencer."
Shawn kissed him again, sliding a hand into Lassiter's hair and pressing as close as he could while they were still standing and fully clothed.
"I don't know," he said a few minutes later, "I definitely see a happy ending in my immediate future."
"Spencer!" Lassiter groaned, but he was laughing, and taking Shawn by the hand, he led Shawn into his home, ready to start the next chapter of their story.