"Shawn, what do you mean Gus has been 'taken'?" Juliet asked, tracking Shawn as he weaved through the desks in the Santa Barbara Police Department. He paced a bit outside of the Chief's office before slumping down in the rigid chair next to Juliet's desk. Taking the seat behind the desk, Juliet pulled out her notepad, observing the slight tensing of Shawn's shoulders as she did.
Sighing, Shawn elaborated. "I mean that he has been physically moved from one place to another." Covering his face with his hand, he added. "I can't find him and I'm starting to get scared."
"How long has he been gone?" She was careful in her wording at the slight chance that Gus had left on his own. She doubted it; she'd seen the way the two men act around each other and knew enough to know that Gus would never hurt Shawn like that. Not intentionally.
Shawn's brow furrowed further as he decided whether or not to tell the truth. He still wasn't entirely convinced that he shouldn't just keep the details to himself. Plant the false notion that they'd had a really bad break-up, that Gus left him and then he could work the case all on his own. He could return to the only thing he'd ever really been good at, the only career he'd truly found a sick sense of belonging in. He knew this life had been too good to be true. He'd had Gus, his own apartment and a steady job working to make up for some of the hurt he'd caused; things had been going good… too good.
To tell the truth, the only reason Shawn hadn't just deserted Santa Barbara and tracked down his old contacts was because he knew that Gus would never forgive him. If Gus was still alive, and Shawn hadn't really bothered considering the possibility that he wasn't, he would want Shawn to try, to at least attempt to get him back without hurting anyone else in the process. Never mind that they might not be the nicest members of society, never mind that if the shoe was on the other foot, they wouldn't hesitate to kill him in return, Gus would see it as a betrayal. A renege on his promise to leave that life, that other Shawn in the past.
He knew he should cooperate, get help because Gus would want it that way. However, knowing this didn't make it any easier for him to spit the truth out. "Four weeks. He's been missing for four weeks."
"Four weeks!" Juliet exclaimed, reading his face with disbelief. "He's been gone for four weeks and you're just starting to worry?"
"Scared; I'm starting to get scared. I'm definitely worried… I worry all the time." He admitted bitterly. His eyes lowered to the silver ring on his forefinger. Before he'd gone to Gus' home that night, he'd spent his days worried sick that he wouldn't get to Gus in time. He believed that since he'd been able to find Gus with absolutely no trouble, anyone else could. He chuckled a little to himself remembering how easily it had been to kidnap Gus himself. Really, did Gus ever really have a chance of making it out of this thing alive?
Juliet leaned forward and took Shawn's hand from across the desk. Startled, Shawn was jarred out of his thoughts by the first real human contact in what felt like a lifetime. "Shawn." She said gently, the voice reserved for victims and their families. "We will find him. I know that it's really hard having to accept that you can't fix this right away; it's going to take time, but we will work our asses off to get him back." The 'for you' was unspoken but there was no doubt in Shawn's mind that Juliet had an idea of just how much Gus meant to him.
Shawn froze for a moment, eyes locked with hers as he processed what she was saying versus what he was thinking. Eventually the corner of his mouth gave a slight lift and the sorrow in his eyes, if possible, deepened further. Pulling his hand out of her grasp, Shawn shook his head and began to stand. "Thanks for your help Jules but it'd be better if you went on without me. This was my fault, I was selfish and it cost me Gus; it cost me the only person that ever really trusted me. I'm not sure having me around won't just make the situation worse."
He left Juliet at her desk calling in the missing person's report. Instead of going back to the empty apartment he'd begrudgingly returned 'home' to for the past four weeks, he went back to the Psych office. He'd done what Gus would've wanted him to do; he asked the department for help. Now, he was free to do things his way, the old way.
The missing person's case for Burton Guster made for a surprisingly thin file. After all, with the exception of the transcripts from the schools the twenty-six year old man attended, he seemed to disappear off the face of the planet for a year. To say the least, it was odd and Carlton Lassiter never settled for odd. Having already decided something was off about the Psych duo, he was certain that to unlock the mystery of Guster's past and his disappearance, he would have to use Spencer to do it. So, Lassiter began to tail Spencer, unbeknownst to his partner.
His initiative set the stage for the arrest of Shawn Spencer. Upon tailing Shawn early one morning, Lassiter finally got the probable cause he was looking for. He watched as Shawn entered the Psych office, eying the quiet neighborhood for any surveillance. Seconds later, a hooded figure followed him in, the tell-tale glint of a metallic pistol tucked in the back of his waistband. Lassiter threw his door open and rushed to the office, pausing outside, back to the wall, to peer in from an angle. Calling for backup, Lassiter counted to five before kicking the door open.
Gun raised, eyes trained on the two men speaking in hushed tones, guns trained on each other, Lassiter ordered, "Police, drop your weapon!" The unknown man sized Lassiter up and down and didn't react. He simply glanced back at Spencer as if to ask 'Is this guy serious?'.
What he said instead was, "Is this some kind of a trick, Spencer? You trying to set me up? Because I came here as payback for saving my ass in Houston. If you're trying to start something you should've brought a better cop because I guarantee you I'll have no problem finishing this." His arm raised, gun to Lassiter's eye level.
Shawn crossed him arms and leaned back against Gus' empty, yet still pristine, desk. Wearily, "Put it down, Jake." When the other man made no move towards complying, Shawn pushed off the desk and stepped halfway in front of Lassiter. "Put. It. Down."
"Jake" complied and Lassiter swallowed the small blow to his ego before ordering, "Kick your weapon over here and then keep your hands up where I can see them."
It was so generic Shawn couldn't resist making at least one snarky comment. "Okay, but would you like make any other, less cliché commands. Any requests? I know I haven't yet mastered the Moonwalk but Jake here is a complete savant at the Hokey-Pokey."
Biting his lip, his "Can it, Spencer" was drowned out by the sounds of approaching sirens. Pulling out his cuffs, Lassiter had Spencer restrained as members of the police force made their way inside. "I've got Spencer, the firearms are over there and I'd like you to put a call into a judge to see about securing a warrant. I knew something was up with Spencer the second I laid eyes on him." He muttered.
He shuffled Shawn through the door of the office, calling over his shoulder. "Hey, McNabb, if you could keep this from getting to O'Hara long enough for me too—"
"Completely ruin my trust in you?" The pint-size blonde blocked Lassiter's way through the door. To say she was pissed would be an understatement. "You go behind my back and not only tail our missing person's family but then you arrest him too? Never mind the serious breach in police procedure, what about the complete breach of my faith in you?"
"O'Hara, listen, I can explain. I'm the only one that saw that they were—"
"Oh, 'they' again? This is about your little theory, isn't it? Let it go, Lassiter, you've been trying to get to the bottom of this huge mystery for three months and you haven't yet accepted that it's complete crap?" Juliet shook her head and marched away towards her own car. "This not over, Carlton. Shawn, don't say anything, I'm getting you a lawyer."
"A lawyer, you can't do that! That's—" Lassiter objected.
"A serious breach in protocol? Well, it would be if I hadn't suddenly come into some vacation time." After opening the door, she paused. "I'm going to need all the time I can get to find a new partner."
A hand slammed down hard on the wooden table, shaking it on its wobbly legs. "We found a USB drive with department files in your desk, Spencer. Do you know what that means?" the confident smirk on Lassiter's face did nothing to change the apathy Shawn's expressions belied. But that was okay because Lassiter would get him to talk in no time.
"It means that you searched an office and found office supplies. Seriously, if you wanted to organize a scavenger hunt for paperclips and staplers, don't you think a Kinko's would be better suited?" Shawn asked sarcastically, the sour look on the interrogator's face giving him a small joy.
"It means that we know you've been using department resources to look into the records of some of the most dangerous criminals we've put behind bars. Now tell me, Mr. Spencer, if Guster just went missing, how come you've been looking into our files for the past month?"
Biting his lip, Shawn determinedly avoided the affronted expression on Juliet's face. Really, she'd done more than enough in hopes of salvaging Shawn's relationship with anyone from the SBPD but unfortunately, she'd ignored just how many circumstances of Gus' case made Shawn look guilty. It wasn't just the USB; it was only a matter of time before they found out that this was the second time Burton Guster had mysteriously disappeared, or that until two years ago, Shawn Spencer's social security number lead to a deceased eighty-year old Ukrainian immigrant.
He hadn't intended to hurt Juliet and he needed her on his side if he wanted to get out of here to find Gus on his own. "If you spent any time at all listening to your prettier and less plastic half, you'd know that after that incident with our previous homicidal landlord, I decided that it might be smarter if I did a background check on any potential apartment lenders. You think that's a crime, maybe you should arrest me?" He cocked his head to the side with a snarky grin. "Oh wait, you already did that."
Lassiter shook his head and sat down on the end of the table, intentionally blocking Shawn's view of Juliet in the corner of the room. "You seem to have an answer for everything. Let's see how you explain this." He pulled an envelope out of his pocket and dropped it down on the table, no doubt for dramatic effect.
Not sparing a glance at the disgruntled officer, Shawn took the envelope gingerly, noting the postmark date and the strangely familiar handwriting. Pulling out a photograph, he turned it over, hand instantly covering his mouth in shock. He tore the outside edges of the envelope and pulled out the remaining note. "You know why we took him. We're willing to trade if you turn yourself in."
Lassiter observed the throbbing of the vein in Spencer's neck and the flush to his skin and congratulated himself on finally getting to him. Cracking his knuckles, "'You know why we took him.' Well, Spencer, it seems to me that whoever took your 'Gus' blames you for it. You can't keep claiming plausible deniability when these people singled you out."
Still refusing to look Lassiter in the eye, Shawn's hands clenched in an attempt to control his temper. This changed everything and he wanted nothing more than to bulrush the senior detective into the wall, steal his gun and get out of here. He'd made some mistakes in his past but this one… this was possibly the worst of all. Shawn buried his face in his hands and took a couple of deep breaths in an attempt to calm down. If only Lassiter would stop talking.
"So this picture…" He picked it up, leaning in closer to further antagonize Shawn. "Who is she, Spencer? Someone special, someone from your past? According to our records, you never had one."
"Shut up. Shut up. Shut up." He muttered in response, as if he was trying to will himself to keep himself from throwing the older man to the ground and silencing him for good. "Please, do yourself a favor and stop talking."
"Or what, Spencer? You gonna do to me what you did to her?" He turned the picture a few times and frowned. "We can't find any real record of an Addison Coleman in any of our systems and what we've found doesn't make sense. And speaking of mysterious disappearances, an Isabella Cardellini was reported missing a couple of years ago by one… Shawn Spencer, oddly enough. Apparently, just like everything and everyone else around you, she just vanished."
"I'm warning you—"
"Just gone off of the face of the planet. No notes, no phone calls to any family—"
"Let this go, Lassiter. You won't like where it ends—"
"Disappearances without any explanation, it's almost as if they've been—"
"Carlton! Maybe you should give it a rest—" Juliet interjected.
"Murdered." Lassiter finished, ignoring the threatening gleam to Shawn's gaze. "I'm starting to think maybe Guster's disappearance had a lot more to do with you than we thought. Maybe he left because he was afraid of what would happen to him if he stayed. What you would do to him if he stayed."
Shawn started to rise, fists clenched on the table but the steady roll of Lassiter's voice continued. "Maybe Guster figured out that everyone around you somehow disappeared and he didn't want to be the next victim—" The speech was cut off by a tan, muscular forearm pressing against the base of Lassiter's throat. Blinking rapidly as the edges of his vision started to blur, Lassiter gazed up as a furious Shawn Spencer pinned him to the wall behind his back. He could vaguely hear Juliet in the background telling Spencer to let him go and then, after a beat, reluctantly calling McNabb for assistance.
"You take that back! I never asked Gus to stay and I wouldn't have done anything to hurt him! I would've done anything for him! I told him to go! I gave him the chance to run but he wouldn't take it. He chose to stay—he chose to stay with me. He chose to stay!" He screamed, voice stuttering off as McNabb and another officer struggled to haul him off as Lassiter gasped for breath.
"Then why is he gone, Spencer? Huh? Explain that to me." He came closer to the reastrained man and leaned in to look him in the eye. "If Guster chose to stay with you, then why is he gone?"
The room was silent with the exception of panting breaths as Shawn refused to back down. From outside of the room, having run out to call McNabb, Juliet could see the weary lines around Shawn's eyes as his resolve started to crack. He was hiding something huge but deep in the pit of her gut, she couldn't believe it was anything unforgivable. If Shawn had lied about anything, and there was no doubt in her mind that he'd lied about a lot, she knew it was to protect himself, and probably Gus as well.
Juliet needed to get the truth from him and she wouldn't get anywhere with her partner provoking Shawn at every turn. She had to get Shawn alone.
Clenching his teeth, Shawn bit out, "I don't have anything more to say to you that you haven't already heard." After standing his ground for a moment, the senior detective coughed a few times before turning and stumbling out of the interrogation room into the hallway.
Slumping down into the chair closest to the window into the interrogation room, Lassiter eyed Spencer's strangely calm posture. Juliet joined him a few minutes later, intense look on her face. "Still think it was wrong for me to arrest him?"
Giving him a disappointed glare, she nodded and watched Shawn through the window. "Yes, I do. I don't think he did this, Carlton. Not to Gus."
"Two other women went missing, in similar ways I might add. O'Hara, he's our guy." He insisted, unsure why her approval meant so much to him.
"So what, you think he murdered three people? To what purpose?" She argued.
"You know what, your little Disney channel argument that he couldn't have killed Guster because he loved him may sound great in romance novels about vampires and werewolves but it means absolutely nothing out here in the real world. Real people don't work that way!" He shouted towards the window.
Heels clicking, Juliet marched closer to the window and gestured at the man still yelling at Lassiter through the door they'd exited. "I didn't do this. I love, Gus! I came to you for help because that's what he would've wanted me to do!"
"Lassiter, look at him. He didn't have anything to do with this… at least not in the way you think." She jumped slightly as Shawn's hand slammed into the two-way mirror. "Lassiter, he keeps saying that he 'loves' Gus. Present tense. If he'd killed Gus, he wouldn't do that."
"That's a guilty man, O'Hara. I know one, when I see one."
"Have you ever thought that he seems guilty because someone he angered in the past decided to get back at him? The only thing he's guilty of is trying not to let his past completely destroy his future. We've all been guilty of that at one point in our lives." Absently twirling the pendant on her necklace, she lowered her eyes to the tiled floor. "The least we can do is help him."
Massaging the reddened skin on his throat, Lassiter shook his head. "You can; I'm not letting this go. Spencer's hiding something and I guarantee I'll only find more bodies in his wake." He watched as Shawn reluctantly sat down and buried his head in his hands, sign of defeat. He got the rare tinge of uncertainty in the pit of his stomach and thought maybe for a second, his partner might be onto something. He watched as, after a few moments, Shawn raised his head and inexplicably met Lassiter's gaze through the window.