Chapter 4

The next day, Lassiter was sitting at his desk, icing his knee at Juliet's insistence. He'd been walking on it way more than it was obviously ready for, and it was now staging a rebellion of increased pain and swelling. His desk was covered with the various reports they'd been compiling for the case. Sitting on top was the one he'd been dreading most. He glared at the ballistics report that had been delivered earlier in the day, reading yet again the information that confirmed his gun as the murder weapon in the deaths of the suburban couple.

Their names were Jim and Stacy McMullen, and he still had no idea why they would be the targets of a hit. The burglary-gone-bad theory did seem plausible, but, like Spencer, he just felt there was more to the case than that. Phone records for the couple showed nothing suspicious, and their bank accounts appeared free of any unusual activity. They had no children, held fairly mundane upper-middle-class jobs, and seemed to get along well enough with their neighbors. They'd been married for 4 years, and neither one had anything on their records beyond a few speeding tickets. One oddity, however, concerned the woman, Stacy McMullen. She had changed her name when they'd been married, but the odd part was that she had changed her first name as well as her maiden name. Before the marriage, her name had been Theresa Hask.

Shawn and Gus approached Lassiter's desk, and Shawn said, "I hope those reports are printed on asbestos because otherwise you're going to burn a hole in them glaring like that."

"Shawn, asbestos is a toxic material. It's illegal to use it anymore," said Gus.

"Gus, your poo-pooing is messing with my mojo."

"I'm not poo-pooing anything Shawn, I was just stating a fact."

"Is there a reason you two are flapping your lips right here at my desk?" growled Lassiter.

Shawn and Gus looked at each other and then moved their lips up and down simultaneously, making various fish-lips and other "flapping lips" facial expressions for a few moments.

When they were done, Shawn said, "No, not really."

Lassiter pinched the bridge of his nose. "What do you want?"

"Just checking in. Got any new information, or anything you need us to do?"

"No," said Lassiter, but then he thought again. "Actually, maybe you can check something for me. We've been gathering information about the couple, but there's something odd about the woman. Perhaps you two could look into it. We haven't had time to go deeper into her background yet." He showed them the reports on the couple and explained about the woman's name change.

"That does seem weird," said Shawn. "We'll see what we can find. Oh, did anything come back on those sunglasses?"

"No. They were wiped clean. No prints or anything."

Shawn's eyebrows shot up. "They must've been left by the murderer then! If they belonged to this couple, they would've had their prints on them."

"Yeah, probably, but it doesn't help us much does it?"

"Not obviously," said Shawn with a grimace. "But it raises more questions. Why did he leave them there? He didn't just forget them, did he? He's been so careful in everything else he's done, wearing the gloves and mask and sunglasses when he attacked us, and leaving no traces in the home."

"Except my gun."

"Except your gun, with no prints on it, besides yours."

Lassiter closed his eyes and rubbed his temples.

"I just mean," said Shawn, trying to make up for the bluntness of his previous statement. "He's been so careful that we shouldn't just think he left the sunglasses accidentally. Just like he didn't leave your gun accidentally."

Gus cleared his throat, trying to warn his friend of the whole foot-in-mouth habit he was apparently forming.

Lassiter frowned. "So you think the gun was some kind of message to me?"

Shawn frowned too and shrugged. As an afterthought, he put his hands up to his temples in his patented "psychic pose" and said, "The spirits aren't being clear, but they are pointing out that everything this guy does is done carefully and methodically. We should assume he's doing it for a reason. Why else did he use your gun, and then leave it? Why didn't he use that .38 he had?"

"But, what reason does he have to use my gun to kill these two people? I have zero connection to them. What kind of message is that?"

"Maybe he's getting back at you, for something. Maybe it's someone you've arrested in the past. Maybe he knows how much the idea of your gun being used to kill people would hurt you."

Lassiter's eyebrows furrowed, but his eyes began to light up as Shawn rattled off the possibilities. "Okay," he said. "I'll start looking at some of my old cases, and I'll check on anyone who's been released from prison recently that I busted."

"Cool. And we'll go check into this woman's past," said Shawn.

"Thank you, Spencer," said Lassiter.

Shawn nodded, a small smile playing on his lips, then he and Gus turned to leave. On the way out, they gave each other a quick fistbump.

oOoOoOoOoOoOoO

Two hours later, Lassiter was gathering the information he'd collected about a half dozen convicts he'd arrested who had been released from prison over the past several months. Nothing stood out to him immediately in their records. There were a couple of junkies who hadn't been known for violence. Four others had committed some kind of violent act, ranging from armed robbery to assault and even attempted murder. He had only scanned their files briefly as he'd gathered them to study more thoroughly later. At first blush, though, he didn't recall any of them making specific threats to him, and he didn't get the feeling that any of them would be the type to hold so much of a grudge against him to have committed the attack and the double-murder. Maybe there was more to the story though that would connect the dots in time.

His phone rang, and he saw that it was Juliet calling in from the field. She had gone out to join the search for Michael Cryer, insisting that he stay behind to rest his knee and study the reports.

"We got him!" she said triumphantly. "He's an itinerant surfer who just sleeps on the beach or in his car. Some officers finally found him while showing his picture to other surfers."

"Great job, O'Hara. What's your ETA?"

"About 15 minutes."

"Good. I want him in interrogation as soon as he's processed."

"Okay," she said, the smile in her voice carrying through the phone lines. "See you soon, partner."

Lassiter hung up and rubbed his face with his hands for a moment. Then he dug out the file on Michael Cryer from the growing pile on his desk and started to plan his interrogation strategy. Maybe this guy wasn't involved in the attack and the murders, but at least it felt good to have something concrete to do.

Within the hour, the scruffy and fairly odorous Michael Cryer was sitting in the interrogation room, both knees bouncing up and down in his anxiety as he sat cuffed at the table. Lassiter let him stew for a few minutes before entering the room. He was using a single crutch to ease the strain on his knee. The room reeked of body odor and saltwater, but he knew the smell would fade after a few minutes, once he got used to it. He'd interrogated more smelly perps than he could remember. As he entered, the kid gave him an initially frightened look, but when he noticed the crutch he almost seemed more at ease. Maybe he thinks an injured cop will go easier on him. If that's the case, he's dumb as a brick. Lassiter put his file and notepad on the table and sank into the chair across from the surfer.

"Hello, Michael Cryer. I'm Detective Lassiter. I'm going to ask you some questions about the cars that have been broken into near the beach."

"Yeah, uh, you can call me Mixie. It's like my nickname, cause I'm Mick C., so the dudes just started calling me Mixie." He smiled and tried to reach up to push some of his dirty brown hair from his eyes, but the cuffs prevented the move. Then he leaned over so his fingers could reach, but his hair flopped forward as well and even more of it ended up in his eyes. He sat back up again, looking confused, and tried to blow at his hair instead.

Lassiter raised his eyebrows and watched the kid for a few moments. "Right. Okay, Mr. Cryer, we have over the past month recorded 18 cars that have been broken into in several different beach parking lots. In one of those cars, which was broken into four nights ago, we found your fingerprints."

"Oh, man, so you think I like broke into cars? No way, man, not me. That's illegal," he said, nodding and wearing an expression of innocence that made him look more like a deer caught in headlights.

"Mr. Cryer, you have a record for petty theft," said Lassiter, making a show of consulting the report. "Two convictions."

"Oh, yeah, but see I learned that it's wrong, so I don't do that anymore."

"Then how did your fingerprints get into that car four nights ago?"

"Maybe they, like, blew in there, y'know, through the open windows or something."

Lassiter blinked. He gazed at the kid, trying to detect a hint of sarcasm or anything else to indicate that the kid was being facetious. But he couldn't, and it left him speechless for a moment.

"Hey, dude, your leg is like all jacked up, right? That sucks, man. I had that happen before, ripped my knee up surfing. Hurts like a bitch. Did you get that surfing?"

Lassiter rubbed his forehead. "No, I didn't. Look, Mr. Cryer, I need you to tell me about these car break-ins."

"That sucks too, man. I mean, those people had their stuff taken, right? That sucks, right?"

"Yeah, that sucks," said Lassiter, feeling a dull pain blooming behind his eyes.

"Yeah, people have weird stuff, too."

Lassiter straightened, sensing an opening. "I bet they do," he said, taking on a conversational tone. "Do you think they keep their weird stuff in their cars?"

The kid laughed. "Oh, yeah man, all kinds of crazy stuff. Underwear, toothpaste, deodorant, weird little puzzle things, like those metal puzzles, y'know, that you have to try to pull apart and stuff?"

Lassiter just nodded and tried to look encouraging, still hardly believing he could get a suspect this dumb, or stoned, or both.

"And tampons, man, lots of tampons in cars," he said, shivering.

Lassiter rolled his eyes.

"Oh, dude! I even found a gun one time."

Lassiter's eyes snapped up to the kid's like a blue whip. "What kind of a gun?" he asked sharply.

The kid blinked at the detective's sudden intense focus. "Uh, y'know, one of those revolvers. I think it was a .38."

Lassiter's heart started to race and he took a moment to compose his voice. "What did you do with this gun, after you 'found' it?"

"Donkey wanted it."

Lassiter stared, mouth open in a vaguely fish-like manner for a moment as he tried to process that statement and form a response. "Who?" he finally managed. "Who is Donkey?"

"Oh, he's my brah. He's like the brains, the man with the plan, y'know. He's the one who came up with..." the kid faltered and got silent, apparently realizing finally that he was revealing too much.

"Came up with, what?"

Mixie cleared his throat and said, "Ah, yeah, y'know I don't think I should talk about that."

Lassiter stood up and leaned over the table, looming. He allowed a dangerous edge to creep into his voice. "You do need to talk about this, right now, Mr. Cryer. You are in serious trouble here. This Donkey person may just be a suspect in an attack on a police officer and in a double murder."

The kid's eyes opened wide. "Oh shit, no way, man. I've got nothing to do with anything like that, man. No way."

"We'll see," said Lassiter, sitting back down again. "Now, you need to tell me everything, and I mean everything, about Donkey."

"Dude," said the kid, eyes still wide and staring at Lassiter. "You're like good cop and bad cop all rolled into one."

Lassiter sighed and pinched the bridge of his nose, his headache coming into full bloom.

oOoOoOoOoOoOoO

"Carlton that was great!" said Juliet when Lassiter was finally able to exit the interrogation room.

"Thanks, O'Hara. He wasn't the toughest nut to crack, though," said Lassiter with a grimace. He felt like he needed a shower.

"Well, no, but he presented some other, um, difficulties for getting good information, and you figured out how to get past those really well, I thought."

Lassiter felt a warm glow from his partner's praise and gave her a small smile. "Thanks," he said. But then his expression sobered. "We need to get this Donkey character identified, as soon as possible. I think he's our guy, O'Hara."

Juliet nodded. "Yeah, too bad that kid couldn't give us anything more useful than his nickname," she said with a frown.

"I suppose we should be happy he gave us anything useful at all. Now we know that this burnout and the clown were working together on all of the beach robberies, with Donkey as the mastermind. Let's get some officers out on the beaches to look for Donkey or at least try to get more information about him. And I'd like you to go talk to the clown, see what you can dig out of him."

"Okay. What are you going to do?"

"I have some old case files to look through. Spencer helped me come up with another possible lead. The description Cryer gave of Donkey is pretty crappy, but it's better than 'wearing all black', so I'm going to see if I can find any likely suspects in the files who might match up." He shifted his weight on the crutch and realized he must have grimaced in the process.

"Good," said Juliet, eyeing him with a mothering look. "Be sure you ice your knee some more while you're at it."

oOoOoOoOoOoOoO

"Can we go get some jerk chicken now?" whined Gus as they got into the Blueberry and pulled away from a third night club. "I'm so hungry, I could even go for Indian food."

Shawn squinted at his friend and said, "Yeah, we're done with these places, I think."

"Do you have enough information for Lassiter? It just sounds to me like this woman was really into partying. How does that help?"

Shawn pursed his lips. "I don't know, yet, but she was definitely leading a way different life before she married Joe Milktoast and moved to the suburbs. I'm just not sure that was reason enough for the name change to make sense."

"Those suburbanites can be pretty harsh. Have you seen any school board meetings lately?" He shivered.

Shawn stared at Gus like he'd suddenly sprouted another set of eyeballs, but before he could comment, his phone rang. He saw that it was his dad and sighed.

"Hey Dad, what's up?"

"Shawn, I just wanted to call and cancel dinner for tomorrow night."

Shawn blinked, feeling a sudden sense of freedom. "Oh, okay. Is anything wrong?"

"No, well, not with the dinner thing, at least. There have been some break-ins in the neighborhood over the last few days. They busted in here while I was out fishing this morning, ballsy bastards."

"What! Oh my god, Dad, is your place okay? Did they take anything?"

"Shawn, it's fine. They just busted the window out of the door. I don't think they took anything, even. They messed up the living room a bit and rifled through my desk."

"Your gun?"

"Still here. First thing I checked."

"That's good at least, but I'm sorry that happened, Dad."

"Thanks, Shawn. Listen, I gotta go pack. You be careful, now. That guy who attacked you and Lassiter is still out there."

"Yeah, I know. I'll be fine. Don't worry about it. Lock your doors and get one of those fake dog-barking alarm things."

"Bye, Shawn."

Shawn ended the call with a faintly worried look on his face.

"What happened to your dad's house?" asked Gus.

"Someone broke in. They didn't take anything, though."

"Wow, that sucks. I bet you'll feel better about it after eating. And here we are!" he said, almost drooling as he pulled into the parking lot.

Shawn's phone rang again. "It's Lassie."

"No, Shawn! No," said Gus. "I need to eat!"

"Chill, man, we'll just get orders and take dinner to the station."

Gus grimaced. "Fine, but I'm eating my fries along the way."