Time of Dying
Chapter Three
Once again the fog began to lift and Shawn could feel himself slowly awake. He could hear steady beeps from a heart monitor and smell the harsh odor of antiseptic. He didn't need psychic powers to determine that he had ended up in a hospital.
As he opened his eyes he was greeted with extreme brightness from the fluorescent light that was directly above his bed. Shawn looked over and was unsurprised to see the eyes of Juliet peering down at him. She smiled at him trying to convey a positive feeling yet her smile was unable to reach her eyes and when Shawn truly looked into them he could see the sadness that her eyes were unable to hide.
Shawn attempted to speak but he found that he couldn't get any words to come out. His throat felt raw and his mouth was extremely dry. Juliet noticed his attempt and ultimate failure at speech and grabbed the cup of ice chips that the nurse had left on the bedside table a few minutes ago. After allowing a few of the melting ice chips to sooth his throat Shawn once again attempted to talk.
"Fancy meeting you here Jules," Shawn attempted at humor.
"Shawn, how are you feeling?" Juliet asked refusing to believe her boyfriend's lame attempt.
Shawn quickly dropped his false bravado when he replied in barely a whisper, "my head's killing me and my best friend is dead. How the hell do you think I'm feeling?"
With that question, the tears that Juliet had tried so hard to prevent started to fall. Her sobs were quiet but that made them all the more devastating as Shawn's spirit fell further then he thought even possible.
'Great fucking going Shawn!' he thought. 'Get your friend killed and then can't even manage to comfort your girlfriend.'
Without any help from Shawn, Juliet collected herself and cleared her throat before attempting to speak once again.
"Shawn I know that you just woke up and everything but we need to get your statement about what happened." Juliet said in a comforting voice. "Lassiter thought it might be best if I was the one to take your statement but he's right outside if you would rather do this with him."
"No. Please no Lassiter." Shawn replied quietly but hastily.
"But do you think my dad could sit with me while we go over this?" he asked. Then after thinking for a moment, "Has anyone even told him what happened? He was like a second dad to Gus. Oh God, Gus' parents. Has anyone told the Gusters?" Shawn rambled, breathing heavily, and eyes darting around the room manically.
"Yes on all accounts" was Juliet's response. "Let me go get your dad and then we can begin."
As Juliet went to collect his father, Shawn used the time to compose himself. He might allow himself to feel the guilt and misery that Gus' death brought but he wouldn't allow his pain to effect anyone else he cared about. He had already caused the demise of one friend he couldn't bring himself to do it to anybody else ho loved. No. He would suck it up and show nobody else his pain.
Juliet returned just a few minutes later with Henry Spencer in tow. For a split second the elder Spencer stood at the door unsure of what to do but as quickly as he made up his mind he was at his son's bedside with a protective grip on the younger man's shoulder. Henry gazed down at his son and was shocked at what he saw. He was unable to see any of the life or happiness that his son's face usually held. Rather all he was able to detect was coldness. Shawn's eyes were dull and there wasn't a hint of a smile anywhere to be seen. The sight before him made Henry's heart drop. In that instant it all became real. Gus was dead and his son's spirit was irrevocably changed.
"Ok Shawn if you're ready start at the beginning."
With a sigh of resignation Shawn began his story.
24 Hours Earlier
There was a knock at the door and when Gus looked up he was greeted with the sight of Mrs. Simpson, the office secretary.
"I'm sorry to interrupt you Mr. Guster but I just got off the phone with a Dr. Donald Westphall" Mrs. Simpson said.
"Who?" Gus asked in confusion. "I don't recall a Dr. Westphall on my rotation. Is he a new client?"
"No, no he isn't a client. Dr. Westphall said he was your veterinarian" the secretary replied in equal confusion. "If he isn't I can just call back and tell him he had the wrong number."
'SHAWN!' Gus thought. Only his friend would call him at the office in the middle of the day, while he was at work, pretending to be a veterinarian. Sometimes he wondered why he even gave Shawn his office number. Of course knowing his friend he knew that Shawn would have found someway to disrupt his day and at least this way he wasn't actually showing up at the office.
"Oh no sorry I forgot. My usual vet, Dr. Hamilton, is on vacation and Dr. Westphall is filling in until he gets back" Gus covered. Spending time with Shawn certainly had increased his ability to come up with lies on the fly. "What did Dr. Westphall need?"
Mrs. Simpson's face of utter confusion quickly turned into one of absolute glee. "Well, you're neighbor, Mr. Mark Craig, brought in Mrs. Pickles,"
'again with the fake cat' Gus thought.
"and apparently she's gone into labor" Mrs. Simpson continued, oblivious to the eye roll Gus offered at the name of the imaginary feline. "Congratulations you're going to be a new granddaddy!"
Gus shrugged and began to continue with his work. He had a lot of paperwork to do and couldn't allow Shawn to interrupt his work day.
Perplexed, Mrs. Simpson asked, "Aren't you going to go down to the vet's office? Mrs. Pickles needs you. Labor is a very intense and scary process and she's going to need the support of her owner to get through it."
"No, I'm sure she'll be fine. She is one tough putty tat" Gus responded with a smirk as he said the last few words in his best tweety bird impression.
At this point Mrs. Simpson looked completely shocked. "Oh no this won't do!" she exclaimed. "Nope, you need to get down there. I am going to cancel the rest of your appointments today and tell the boss that you had a family emergency and that you had to leave."
The secretary bustled out of his office before Gus had the chance to stop her. 'How could somebody get so worked up over a cat?' Gus mused. With his appointments cancelled and his boss alerted Gus had no other option than to pack up and head out of the office. There wasn't any use in staying now that he had no clients to attend to that afternoon.
When Gus reached the parking lot he quickly noticed his friend sitting on his the hood of his car with a, no-doubtedly pineapple flavored, smoothie in his hand.
"Hey old buddy! Watcha up to today?" Shawn asked as he plastered his best "innocent" smile on his face.
"Oh I don't know Shawn. Maybe I'll head down to the vet seeing as my fake cat with the stupid name is having kittens at this very minute" Gus snapped back sarcastically.
"Don't be a snail on a hot sidewalk Gus! I found a lead on our case and I needed my trusty partner to go check it out with me" Shawn countered. "I got you a smoothie…" Shawn announced holding out the smoothie as if it completely fixed the problem. "C'mon Gus, what about if I need the SuperSmeller? I need you out there buddy!" Shawn pleaded.
Deciding that he had guilted his friend enough, Gus grabbed the smoothie and let him of the hook, "you know that's right!"
"To the Blueberry then!" Shawn exclaimed as he jumped of the hood of the car and made his way quickly to the passenger side door.
8 Hours Later
"You called me out of work to sit outside of an abandoned warehouse?" Gus asked begrudgingly.
"It's called a stakeout Gus. Any good detective has to do a stakeout once in a while" Shawn defended. "Don't look so dour Guster. I brought snacks, music, and some literature to keep us occupied."
The snacks turned out to be a half-eaten bag of pretzels, Twizzlers, and a can of pineapple tidbits. The music was a complete compilation of Tears for Fears and the literature was a collection of Teen Beat magazines. All in all, Shawn's choices left something to be desired.
"What does this even have to do with our murder case Shawn?"
Two weeks ago he and Shawn had been waiting around the SBPD headquarters hoping to catch Chief Vick to get her to sign off on their latest consultant paycheck. Shawn had been busy telling him about the reunion special E! was planning on having for the cast of "21 Jump Street" or some other 80's TV show, Gus wasn't really paying attention, when Lassiter and Juliet came back from a case they had been investigating. Lassiter looked beyond frustrated and of course Shawn took that as his signal to poke his nose into their case.
Needless to say Lassiter wanted them nowhere near their investigation and quickly shooed Shawn away. All they were able to find out was that a woman by the name of Julia Mason was found dead in her apartment. Apparently she had been strangled and her best friend had found her in her bathtub after her friend hadn't seen her over a period of a few days. Regardless to what Lassiter said Shawn had taken it upon himself, and Gus, to investigate. They had spent two weeks snooping through the life of the victim in the search of the killer but had come up with nothing.
"I thought you'd never ask! So today I went back to check out the crime scene."
"You mean broke into…" Gus clarified.
"I've heard it both ways. Anyway I visited the crime scene today. I was going through Mason's apartment and you'll never guess what I found." When Gus refused to respond Shawn continued, "well I was looking at her pictures and I noticed that there was a man standing in the background of each one. Like almost every single one! How could've I missed that? Well after I noticed that I was thumbing through her highschool yearbook for purely research purposes and I ran across the same guy."
At this Gus was actually amazed. It had been two weeks and this was their first semblance of a lead.
"So the guy's name is Jeffrey Donovan."
After a few minutes of waiting for Shawn to continue and receiving no new information Gus brought up what he thought to be a logical question, "and we are waiting outside this abandoned warehouse, why?"
"Oh yeah, Donovan owns this warehouse. It was the only property I could find that was listed under his name. So I figure we wait here until he shows up."
"How did you manage to find out that this was his warehouse?"
"I might have borrowed Lassieface's computer when in a meeting with Chief Vick." When he noticed Gus' look of disapproval he quickly added, "well if he didn't want people on his computer than he shouldn't have made his password so easy. I mean who couldn't guess that Lassie would use 'Glock' as his password. I think that man cares more for his gun than he would his own child."
With that they settled back into waiting. It only took about thirty minutes longer for a car to pull up outside of the warehouse. The warehouse offered no lights so it was impossible to tell what type of car the man had driven up in let alone the license plate of the vehicle. Furthermore they weren't able to tell who exactly it was that had exited the car. They couldn't tell if the man was actually who they had sat there for eight or so hours waiting for or somebody else.
"C'mon Gus. Let's follow him and see what he's doing."
"You gotta be out your damn mind Shawn if you think I am following some guy that probably killed lady into a creepy abandoned warehouse! Have you ever seen any scary movie? You don't follow the bad guy into a place where nobody would be able to hear your screams."
"You've got no sense of adventure Gus" Shawn said before getting out of the car and making his way toward the warehouse.
Gus sighed, pulled out his phone, placed a quick phone call leaving a message for Juliet when she didn't answer telling her what they were doing, and reluctantly, and against his better judgment, followed after his friend.
By the time he caught up to Shawn, his friend had reached the entry way to the warehouse. Shawn started making shapes with his hands like the cops do in the movies to signal plans but when he began to make butterflies and wolves using his hands Gus had had enough and slapped him. Giving up with the hand signals, Shawn entered and began to move slowly through the first cavernous room. The warehouse was truly abandoned. There wasn't anything there. After finding nothing of interest in the first room they moved on to the second room which was once again empty. This is how it went for the third, fourth, and fifth room as well.
Shawn insisted that before they enter each room that they had to stand at the door of the next room like cops. That included both of them standing with their hands clasped forming imaginary guns and counting down using fingers before they could enter. Obviously Shawn had watched the Magnum PI marathon that was on TV the other day. Gus wondered if Shawn would require them to wear fake mustaches to match Tom Selleck next time they went to a crime scene. With that thought Gus rolled his eyes but continued to follow his partner. To tell the truth, Gus was just hoping that there weren't any dead bodies in the warehouse. He hated dead bodies and as much as he tried to hide it from Shawn, bodies still made him want to vomit and on occasion his body had revolted and he had lost his lunch. 'Yeah I hope there aren't any dead bodies' Gus thought.
When they got to the sixth room Shawn slowly opened the door which emitted a small squeak as he did so. This room was different in that it wasn't completely empty. Rather there was a table sitting off to the side of the room with a sheet overtop it. Shawn and Gus moved over to investigate but only made it a few steps when two loud bangs echoed through the room.
Shawn screeched and dropped down to the ground for cover. When there was no more sound the psychic moved to get up. On his feet Shawn looked over and noticed that his friend was still on the ground. He moved over to Gus to tell him that it was ok and that they could continue their investigation. He made it to within a few feet of Gus when he realized that his friend wasn't ducking for cover. Shawn ran the last few feet and dropped down to his knees. There was already a big puddle of blood surrounding Gus when he pulled him into his lap.
"Gus, c'mon buddy you got to get up. We have to get out of here!" Shawn hysterically said to his friend. He put his hands over the source of the bleeding, a hole in the middle of Gus' chest and tried frantically to staunch the bleeding. "Gus please don't do this to me. Please don't leave me here alone. You have to wake up." The psychic said as he tried shaking his friend awake. When he saw that all of his efforts were not working his voice dropped to a whisper, "Gus please. Please. I'm so sorry. Just please come back. I don't know what to do without my best friend. I'm so sorry this is all my fault."
Shawn looked into the eyes of Gus and when he saw how lifeless and dull they were he realized there was no saving his friend. His best friend was gone forever. With that last thought, Shawn's mind began to shut down. He just sat there holding the body of his dead friend refusing to accept the fact that he would never talk to him again.
Shawn had told the entire story with his eyes downcast and his fingers fiddling with the edge of his blanket. He had not once looked at his girlfriend or his father and therefore had not noticed that Juliet had once again begun to cry or that his father's eyes had become overly bright with tears he would never allow anyone to see.
When Shawn finally did manage to look up, Henry had managed to rub his eyes and while they were slightly red they no longer held any unshed tears. Juliet had managed to quell her crying and clicked off the digital recorder that she had been using to document all of the details of Shawn's story.
"I'm tired" were the next words to come out of Shawn's mouth. "Do you think you guys could just leave me alone for a while so I can go back to sleep?"
"Sure" was the collective answer. Before they left Henry gave his son the most caring pat on the shoulder that he could manage and Juliet leaned in and placed a soft kiss onto Shawn's forehead. And with that the two left the hospital room. All alone once again Shawn began to quietly cry and continued to do so until he eventually fell back asleep.
So I was kind of sad that the last chapter got ZERO reviews. I realize that I only posted it yesterday but it still is upsetting.
I hope that a flashback with some happy Shawn and Gus moments, rather than just depressed Shawn, will elicit some reviews.
Anyway, hope you enjoyed. Til next Sunday... (unless I could be persuaded with reviews to update earlier) Ok, I'm done begging. Bye.