Chapter 3 – Promises are more like guidelines, anyway
The next morning found Shawn sitting at his small kitchen table at half past eight, staring down into his cup of coffee as if it held the answers to all the questions in the universe. Over the years Shawn had learned that combining his natural hyperactivity with additional caffeine wasn't always a good idea, but this morning he needed it. If only to have something to stare at while he brooded over the events of the previous evening.
The mob-connection had been the break he had hoped for in this case, something that got the investigation going again. But that was the least of his worries right now. Lassie and Juliet were handling this, and until he couldn't squeeze some more information out of them he'd have to wait.
No, what was really bothering him was how his Dad had behaved after Shawn had mentioned Lorenzo Delgado's name.
Actually, Shawn had even hoped that his father would recognise the name. Henry Spencer had been on the force for decades, so it was no surprise that he knew one of the big names in organised crime. But the degree of his father's reaction had shocked him.
Shawn knew all of Henry Spencer's thirty-nine different levels of anger, he knew exactly how they showed and differed in his expression, in what he said, and in the punishment Shawn could expect for his wrongdoings. Reading his father when he was angry was an art Shawn had perfected throughout a childhood full of general hyperactivity and stupid ideas.
But yesterday evening, that hadn't been anger. Probably that was what disturbed Shawn most. The reaction Henry had shown after Shawn had mentioned Delgado's name was unlike anything he had ever seen in his father. The reaction had been intense, but not so much angry but…not afraid, either. Not really. Shawn didn't quite know what his father looked and acted like when he was afraid, but he was sure that hadn't been it. Not angry, and neither afraid. Haunted, that was it. Henry had seemed haunted. Shocked, at first, then haunted and then, after Shawn had made his promise not to investigate Delgado, it was as if he had forcefully pushed all that had happened over the previous minutes away to pretend that nothing at all had happened.
It had been highly disconcerting, to say the least. During dinner, Shawn had tried to pry some more information about Delgado out of his father, but all Henry had said had been a grumbling "you promised, Shawn", and that had been it. Instead, Henry had talked about this and that in such a forced cheerfulness that it had been downright scary to watch.
Shawn had excused himself quickly after dinner, had taken his bike home, and had spent half the night brooding. He hadn't slept much, which was also the reason why he was awake at such an unholy hour.
With a deep sigh, Shawn drained his coffee, put the cup in the sink, and decided to take a shower and get dressed. There were still a couple of things he had to do today.
He shed his shirt and crossed the bathroom to turn on the shower. On his way, he caught a glimpse of himself in the bathroom mirror and stopped short. For a moment, he simply stared at himself in the mirror above the sink, right hand coming up to trace the slight bruising on his left shoulder. He didn't remember hurting his shoulder the previous day, and for a moment he wracked his brain as to where that bruise could come from. Only as he turned slightly and saw a matching bruise on the back of his left shoulder, he realised what he was looking at.
The fingers of his father's right hand had made that bruise, yesterday evening, when he had gripped Shawn's shoulders. It had hurt, true enough, but after Henry had released his hold on him, Shawn had been so busy with trying to analyse his strange behaviour that he had not really thought about it anymore.
For a moment, Shawn kept staring at the bruise – it was only a light bruise, but it was definitely there – then he shook his head, shed his shorts and got under the shower.
As the hot water ran through his hair and down his body, Shawn tried to understand why such a small bruise would freak him out so much. He had had bruises before, plenty of them, and nearly all of them had been worse and more painful than this one.
But none of them had been left by his father.
Henry Spencer wasn't a very physical person in general. He hadn't been the Dad for extensive hugs and cuddles. He had always let Shawn know that he cared in his own way, which had been a code difficult to decipher at times, but hugs and cuddles hadn't been on any daily agenda.
But he had never lain a hand on his son in anger, either. Which was a feat in itself, because Shawn knew for a fact that there had been a few moments in his life when his Dad had been sorely tempted to try and remedy things with a thorough spanking. Nevertheless, he had never hit Shawn, not once. The farthest he had gone had been leading a spying seven year old Shawn out of the large kitchen cupboard by his ear. That had been it.
But somehow, that bruise freaked him out. Not only had his Dad's strange shift in behaviour been totally unexpected, but the fact that his otherwise so unphysical Dad had gripped his shoulders hard enough to leave bruises was disconcerting. Something was going on with his father, and Shawn intended to find out what it was.
As Shawn stepped out of the shower, he began to formulate a plan of action. He had given his father his word that he wouldn't actively investigate Delgado. Promises to his Dad were always problematic, because normally they were fool proof. Shawn didn't really want to break the promise, but he intended to interpret it a little more freely in order to go through with the plan forming in his mind.
He would stay out of the active investigation of the Berger murder – for now. Depending on what Jules and Lassie found out, he could make no guarantees, but for now he'd keep his promise. But surely, it would not hurt anybody if he stuck to his initial plan and tried to find out more about Delgado in general. Surely he could do that without anybody, especially his father, getting to know about it. It shouldn't be too hard, because the things Shawn intended to research first were things that were not exactly recent.
He'd find out what had spooked his father so badly, and he'd find out as soon as possible.
OoOoOoOoOoOoOoOoOoOoOoOoOoOoOo
Shawn was at the Psych office at quarter past nine, and by the time Gus showed up at a few minutes to ten, he was already deeply engrossed in an internet research. In fact, he didn't even hear his friend come into the office, and neither did he notice that Gus was staring at him for a full minute before entering the room fully and stepping behind his desk.
"Good morning, Shawn", Gus said somewhat hesitantly.
Shawn looked up from his laptop, then checked his watch as if he couldn't believe how much time had already passed since his arrival.
"'Morning, Gus."
"You're in early, did anything happen?"
Shawn very nearly waved him off, but then decided against it. "Yes. Well, no. Nothing happened per se, but something strange is going on, and I need to find out what it is."
Both Gus' eyebrows rose simultaneously. "But you did hear Chief Vick when she said we were off the case, didn't you?"
Shawn nodded. "Yes, sure. It's not that. Not directly. Not yet."
"Shawn, you're not making really much sense. Not that this is a totally new development, mind you, but in this case I'd really like to know what's going on."
Shawn finished his second cup of coffee, the last for today, he vowed, and leaned back in his chair. And then he told Gus in detail what had happened at his father's house the previous evening. When he had finished, Gus thought for a moment.
"But I mean your Dad was a cop for ages. It's only logical that he should know Delgado. Maybe he's even been involved in cases that involved him."
Shawn shook his head. "You didn't see how he reacted, Gus. There's something more to the story, I've never seen him act like this before. That was way beyond his normal level of paranoia, and saying this about somebody who locks up his house even when he's home says something."
"Yes, and from what you said he also made you promise not to investigate this case. Do I need to remind you what happened the last time you broke a promise you gave him?"
Shawn slowly shook his head, but his mind was on something else entirely. "No, you don't. But right now, I am leaving the Berger investigation to Jules and Lassie. We pushed them in the right direction, that should have been enough for the moment. But there is something else about this guy, and if it's bad enough to spook my Dad, do you really think I'll just sit by and do nothing?"
"Well, he got spooked in the first place exactly because you couldn't sit by and do nothing. If you hadn't gotten involved, it would have been nothing to him but another story in the paper."
"I don't intend to break the promise I gave him. But it can't hurt to take a look at Delgado's history in Santa Barbara. That's all I'm saying."
Gus mulled this thought over, but while it was obvious that he still didn't consider it a good idea, he also didn't say anything else to stop his friend. Instead, he settled down in his chair and booted up his laptop.
"So what are you doing now?"
"Going through old newspapers. Vick said yesterday that Delgado came to California in the seventies. I've been checking the archives of the News Press and the Independent since he first appeared here."
"Anything interesting?", Gus said, his curiosity peaked.
Shawn shook his head. "No. He's mentioned a few times, but there's nothing big. Dad and Vick were right, that guy knows how to keep his own nose clean. I've come up until 1983."
Gus nodded. "All right. How about I take the News Press, you take the Independent. We should be faster that way."
"All right."
Both set to work, and for the next half hour the only sound in the room was the sounds of keys being hit and mouse buttons being clicked. The farther he progressed in time, the longer the search through the archives took. Delgado was mentioned more often, one time he had even been arrested and processed by the District Attorney on the charge of laundering money, but the day of Delgado's bail hearing the only witness against him suddenly disappeared. The man was never found again, and without the witness' statement against him there was nothing the DA could hold Delgado for and he was set free.
That was what his father and Chief Vick had been talking about. Shawn had no doubt whatsoever that if the victim had truly intended to make a statement against a mafia-boss, Delgado had lost no time in having him disposed of. Not a nice thought, and inwardly Shawn agreed with his Dad. He didn't particularly want to show up on that man's radar.
Another ten minutes later, Shawn suddenly found what he had been searching for.
"Gus, I think I got something. Come here."
Gus rolled his desk chair across the room and up next to Shawn's. "What is it?"
"Here. I don't remember this, but it looks as if back then it was big news." Shawn quickly connected the printer, clicked a few buttons and printed two copies of the article he had found. Handing one to Gus, he took the other for himself and began to read.
Santa Barbara Police Department Under Suspicion
After the rapid increase of organised crime in the Santa Barbara County over the past months, recent rumours have it that the police are now searching for informants and people on the pay-roll of organised crime bosses within their own ranks.
For the past months, the SBPD have focussed a lot of time and effort in trying to provide proof that Lorenzo Delgado (42), local businessman, is the head of a crime syndicate that has been spinning its web tighter and tighter around the city of Santa Barbara. The police connect the rapid rise of organised crime such as illegal gambling, bookkeeping, drug trafficking and prostitution over the past months directly to Delgado's activities, yet so far have failed to provide a single piece of evidence.
Delgado himself claimed in an interview with a local news station to be "nothing more than a mere businessman, who came to California trying to make money and find new markets and niches for business." Delgado, known to most inhabitants of Santa Barbara as entrepreneur and main importer of Italian food delicacies to California, claims to want to help the police in their investigations with whatever means available to him, and even offered the SBPD a thorough search of all his warehouses, businesses and offices, including total access to all his business documentation, with the aim of "relinquishing that ridiculous thought of me being a mafia-boss", as Delgado claims.
True enough, extensive police searches of his private and business estates at the beginning of this week again turned up no piece of evidence tying Delgado to organised crime in any way.
Much more worrisome seems the development that all the effort the SBPD put into the pursue of organised crime in our town, vital and highly sensitive information from an inside source seems to have trickled through to the culprits for months already.
There have been reports in the past about police officers turning a blind eye to gambling shops and illegal bookkeepers, accusations of bribery have been brought forth against patrol officers, but now an informant tells the Independent that the SBPD is starting to suspect some of their own of passing vital information on to the leaders of crime rings here in Santa Barbara.
As this paper has been told, Internal Affairs has been informed of the situation and is beginning their investigation which will not be limited to those officers investigating organised crime.
We can only hope that should there be any truth to those rumours, the officers in question will be found out quickly. Organised crime rings operating in Santa Barbara is a disconcerting thought in itself, the idea that police officers are involved in it and in fact even profit from it, is not tolerable.
By the time Gus had finished reading the article, Shawn was already clicking the links leading to the follow-up articles, scanning the further developments.
"Anything on what came out of it?"
Shawn clicked through some more pages, eyes roaming across the monitor, then he leaned back and shook his head.
"Not really. Internal Affairs investigated practically everybody in the SBPD. And from what was released to the press, they did have a number of officers under suspicion of being on somebody else's payroll, but they never found proof. At least I found nothing about anybody being charged, so my guess is that they never found out truly was working for Delgado, if anybody in the department was.
But judging by what I've seen, working at the PD back then can't have been fun, not with all the suspicion floating around."
"Is it that unusual for the mob to be paying police officers off?"
Shawn shrugged. "To be honest, I don't know. My guess is it happens all the time, but on such a large scale? I don't know." Shawn clicked some more. "Seems like Internal Affairs officially closed the investigation in October without results, eight months after it was opened."
"What year?", Gus asked, not finding the date on his printout.
"1987. And ever since, Delgado seems to have settled firmly in Santa Barbara. Everybody knows he's a mob boss, but nobody could ever prove him anything. He's rich enough to pay others to do the dirty jobs, and he's clever enough to make sure that nobody on his pay-roll will ever talk. I don't really know if any of that will change in this case. Somebody who's been a mob-boss for more than twenty years doesn't just start slipping up."
"Shawn, no matter what, don't even start thinking about tripping him up. It's the mafia, we don't want to get involved in that. Internet researches is about as far as I am willing to go on this one."
Shawn grinned at his friend. "What a pity."
"Oh no." Gus shook his head. "I know that grin, and I know I don't want to see that grin on your face right now. That grin doesn't mean anything good and I'm only telling you this once: the last time you broke a promise to your father, he yelled himself hoarse and you bunked on our sofa for three nights. I'm not gong to risk that happening again."
Shawn distractedly waved his friend off. He had leaned back in his chair, hands folded on his stomach, staring against the far-off wall. "I need to see those files."
Gus shook his head. "What files?"
"Gus, come on. Haven't you been paying attention over the past few minutes? The files from Internal Affairs. I'm curious to know whom they had under suspicion. And maybe that way we could find out more about Delgado."
"What, you want to interview ex-cops and ask them whether they were being paid off by the mob twenty years ago? If that is your plan, think again."
Shawn rolled his eyes. "No, I didn't say that. I'll just go and see whether I can't get a look on those files."
Shawn got up from his chair and grabbed his jacket. Gus stood to block his path, still not entirely convinced.
"And how are you planning to do that? Files are kept in the Records Room. And last time I checked, you didn't have a key. Which is why you needed a broom to lock Lassiter in there."
Shawn shook his head with a dramatic eye-roll. "Reversed gravity, Gus. Remember? There were no brooms involved. As for the how to get in, I already have an idea. But it might be better if I went alone. I need to find a moment when neither Vick nor Lassiter are around, and I need to catch Officer Allen on her own. That might take some time."
"And what shall I do in the meantime?"
Shawn very nearly laughed out loud. "Gus, isn't it you who always complains that I'm keeping you from your real work? But if you want to, see if you can find out any more about Delgado, especially stuff in connection to the SBPD, or things about the times when the police nearly got him. Might be interesting to know how Delgado got himself out of prison time and again. Or you could play Space Invaders online. Your choice."
And before Gus had the chance to answer, Shawn was out of the office. A moment later Gus heard the kick-start of his motorcycle as Shawn roared off towards the police station.
OoOoOoOoOoOoOoOoOoOoOoOoOoOoOo
It just wasn't his lucky day. When Shawn arrived at the police department, he just caught a glimpse of Lassiter and O'Hara returning from an early lunch break. So Shawn waited for a few minutes, then he entered the building, only to be told that Officer Allen had the day off. On any other day, Shawn might have tried his luck with getting into the records room with whoever was on front-desk duty, but since he was officially not working this case and had absolutely no reason to be in the police department, he didn't want to risk it. Knowing his luck, the moment he tried to talk his way into the records room, Vick or Lassiter would appear by his elbow.
Allen would be back tomorrow, he'd simply have to try his luck then. But he also didn't want to return to the office immediately. No, maybe he'd just take a small tour on the bike and let his thoughts wander, see where that took him. On the off chance that a great idea of how to proceed in this case which wasn't even really a case would present itself, Shawn donned his helmet and started the bike.
He rode aimlessly for a few minutes, and before he knew what was happening he had left the city and was driving around aimlessly.
He didn't really pay attention to his surroundings any more than necessary to drive his bike safely. His thoughts were on Delgado and how he had managed to escape arrest for so long. He was really curious as to what the Internal Affairs investigation twenty years ago had been about, and especially why the investigation had been closed without any result as to who in the Department had been working for Delgado. And, more importantly, if Delgado had paid off cops in the SBPD, who said that he didn't have people on his pay-roll right now, as well.
It was probably because his thoughts were so focussed on all this why he didn't noticed the van. It had been behind him ever since he had left Santa Barbara. Now that they were well out of town on a lonely side road, the van accelerated and overtook Shawn. Before the fake psychic even had a chance to realise that something different than a normal traffic manoeuvre was taking place, the driver of the van stepped on the brake and turned the car sideways. Shawn instinctively hit the brakes full force and the bike began to swerve slightly. Seeing that he was still headed for a head on collision, Shawn without thinking turned the handles of his bike to the right, and the next thing he knew was that he drove off the road, the bike slid away on the rough underground and Shawn tumbled to the ground.
Hitting the brake before his evasive manoeuvre had fortunately taken most of the speed out of the crash, but still Shawn took a moment of lying still on the ground, taking stock of his body parts. All seemed to be there, and all parts seemed to be in working order. Good. And now he'd give the driver of that van a piece of his mind.
But just as he scrambled up from the ground and began brushing the grass off his jeans, suddenly there were hands on his arms pulling him roughly towards the van.
"Hey, wait a second, what's…"
A hand shot up, opened the visor of his helmet and pressed a piece of wadded fabric against nose and mouth. Shawn struggled against his assailants, but his hands were held tightly, there were at least two of them holding him, and finally he had to draw breath. The sharp chemical smell immediately filled his nose, and the last thing Shawn noticed was how his body went slack before everything turned dark.
He was already unconscious by the time the two men pulled off his helmet, tossed it to the side of the road, then pushed him into the back of the van and drove off.