Chapter Three: Trust the Weather, It's Been Listening (2,743)

"A young girl was found this morning on Route 48 just outside Holmestead. Police are baffled as this is the fourth--

"The seventh girl was found this afternoon on the corner--

"It is unclear if all of the victims were killed by the same--

"Local police have handed over the investigation to the Federal Bureau of Investigation. Special Agent Ma--

"still have no leads regarding the ten young girls found dead in--

"That's right Chad, she was approximately 13-15 years of age. The authorities were unable to match her to any--

" filed a missing persons report. They are asking for anyone with information to please call the--

"Unable to determine the cause of death as of--"

It cut back and forth every few seconds. It was the same three news stations, the same four or five correspondants, the same eleven or twelve newscasts. Snippet after sound bite for nearly eight minutes. Shawn would have made some comment about it not being suitable for epileptics. Gus and Juliet just sat in stunned immobility.

The ringing of her cell phone jerked both of them from their stupor.

"O'Har- Hi Carlton what's- I'll meet you there." She slipped it back in her pocket and turned tentatively to her friend. "I have to go, a murder over on Grand and Hollow. But…"

Gus took a shaky breath and didn't meet her gaze. "No. You should-you should go. I'll call- Mr. Spencer will have to... Yeah go Juliet, it's okay." He finally faced her and gave an assuring if unsteady nod.

"Well, bring this by the station after and don't um, don't touch anything like directly okay? Because-"

"Evidence."

"Yeah." She looked over him once again, an bit her lip. She really needed to get over to the scene. "Gus…" she trailed and he gave her his full attention.

"Juliet, really I'm fine. I'm just going to call Shawn's dad and we'll take it over to Chief Vick. It might have something to do with-It's fine. I have it under control." She nodded, and shifted, but based upon the determined look that had settled on his features apparently he had found his resolve.

Now she just had to find hers, because this mask was bound to crack when she combed over the brutal setting that awaited her. Carlton had given out curt details and as it were she'd be spending her evening with a filleted co-ed and a sleep deprived head detective.

--

He watches the tape three more times before he calls Henry. He watches it twice while he waits for him at the Psych office. They watch it five times before they call the chief. Neither of them mention that Henry hasn't been here since, well before. He doesn't mention that there's something eerily familiar about the hills and valleys that act as the landscape in each frame. They watch it once more before they go to the station.

Gus wonders if Shawn would have known by watching it once. He always did. He'd see what this was. He'd have guessed it six seconds in. Made Gus try and guess, which he'd have to draw out of him because who would know something like that unless they were Shawn. And Gus would get it in a minute or two, he'd see the connections and pretend he wasn't quietly shocked at the way his best friend's mind worked.

Shawn would know.

He wouldn't be sitting in an chair at the department waiting for Juliet and Lassiter while Chief Vick and Mr. Spencer watched the tape again. It would be the sixteenth time if he was with them. He wouldn't be waiting for them to try and figure out the wheres and the whens. He'd already know. He'd be channeling the ghost of Barbara Walters's parakeet and spewing out random phrases with truths thrown in intermittently.

But Gus didn't know.

He had no idea and Henry had tried to reassure him, in his gruff way. He'd given some offhanded comment on the despondent drive over about how he didn't even understand so why should Gus really. The double edged tact the older man only knew. But it didn't matter. Because he knew Shawn would be so many steps ahead of them. He would have found Gus right away if Gus had gone missing. He'd know. He'd see.

But he didn't see it. He felt awkward and out of place here now. He'd felt at home, confident, with his friend at his side. He'd thought that his stride had been found, that's he'd begun to understand how this all worked. But he didn't. Not without his decoder ring of a partner and pseudo-psychic friend. He'd been playing pretend. He only belonged here as an extension of Shawn.

Because Shawn would have had it all figured out from day one, he wouldn't be clueless on day thirty-one. He would have known why something was familiar in those backdrops. He'd had rattled off the zip code, where the best pancakes could be found and the town's divorce rate.

Gus cast one more look the pair behind the glass once more, they were rewinding the tape, and the chief was dialing a telephone number.

He'd said he'd wait for Juliet but…what use was he of here anyway?

He was better off going home and doing something productive. Something he understood. Like reorganizing his sales briefcase.

He didn't need to stay here.

Not anymore.

--

Carlton, in his own very…well, perhaps lacking in delicacy kind of way, tried to warn O'Hara before they entered a particularly gruesome scene. He wasn't particularly apt when it came to the touchier side of things, but even though he did not know how to express it, he did understand. He'd understood when she'd scene her first DOA, pretended she didn't throw up when they reached the station. He'd understood when she'd seen her first murdered child. He'd pretended she didn't have tears streaking silently down her face on the back stoop while he handed her a cup of coffee she was pretty sure was laced with a dash of something extra. And she pretended she didn't notice he was much more caring and thoughtful than he wanted to seem.

So when he'd called her after the tape had arrived he'd warned her, a very young girl was found tortured and killed. He gave his phrasing that indicated it would be difficult to stomach and to be prepared. However there wasn't much that could be done because there wasn't a single Lassiter-masked expression that could have adequately primed her for this.

The girl was found in a park next to a stone fountain that sat in the middle of a circular trail that branched off the at least five others. Her denim jeans were in tatters, nothing more than crudely fashioned shorts now. Her hair might have been blonde once, though it was too matted and stained with blood for anyone to be sure. Her shirt was missing, giving full view of the wounds to her abdomen, congruent with being burned repeatedly by an electric current. Each one of her fingernails had been removed, antemortem, and it was obvious from the lacerations on the rest of her exposed form that her captor reveled in her pain.

Whomever they had been they'd cleaned up after themselves meticulously. The gashs on her arms and legs and been cleaned, the blood washed from what articles of clothing she was wearing and her shoes and socks were pristine, most likely brand new. The only thing left untouched were the blood laden bruises that speckled her face, rendering it unrecognizable, and her aforementioned saturated hair.

Juliet had to steady herself before she found her place at her partner's side. And he pretended not to see her, not to admit, to allowing her a moment of composure.

"The M.E. puts time of death around eighteen hours ago, prelim says the blow to the head was most likely the actual COD. He can't be too sure just yet though, too much else going on." The head detective began clinically when she reached him. "Her name's Jennifer Granger." He answered before she could ask. "She's a freshman according to her ID."

"Did we have an missing persons on her?" Juliet asks quietly as she watched the forensic photographer step lightly around the scene, each movement punctuated by a sharp flash.

"Her roommate called it in two days ago, but she'd only been missing for a few hours so…"

"No official case until it'd been forty-eight."

"Exactly." Lassiter continued, noting something in the file he held in his hand. "With something like this it's pretty obvious this sicko has done it before. We'll have to start searching for similar MO's in surrounding counties. The Chief asked the psychologist to work up a profile, but we all know what it's going to say. White male, mid thirties to early forties, loner, crazy mother who didn't hug him enough or hugged him too much. I just ho-"

"Detective!" A cry from a crime scene technician cut him off. The young man waved the two over frantically. Of course what they were expecting, or what they'd find acceptably shocking in this situation was not what they found.

Nope, having the words "OLLIE OLLIE OXEN-FREE Spencer" carved on a nearby tree was not on the list.

--

You know what made no sense to Jen? Sitting here in this ridiculous restaurant with their terrible food and stuck-up waiters with a guy who couldn't remember that she hated being called Jennifer. Especially when someone pronounced it Jenn-i-furr, as if trying to impress her with their not from around her accent.

She hated blind dates. Why had she agreed to this? Oh right, Kelsey. Kelsey her soon to be ex-best friend who had sworn that this guy was cute, smart, funny, sensitive, artistic and chivalrous. What had she been on that she'd believed her? After all Kel's last three boyfriends had stolen either her television set, her credit card and/or Jen's television set or credit card. Usually to fund some pyramid scheme or their habit. Plus that man Kel had been describing? Not only did he not exist outside of a teen soap, his anti-agent was sitting across from her regaling her with his recent trip to Spain with his parents.

Kelsey was so beyond dead.

Jen was going to switch her shampoo with Nair. She was going to put a can of tuna in her air conditioning duct. Consider her salt shaker full of sugar and her sugar jar full of salt. It was over, done, war would break out as soon as she was out of enemy territory. (AKA bad French restaurant with name she wouldn't want to know how to pronounce as was probably curse word anyway) She was going to make Kel wish her brothers were staying at her place.

Oh it would be monumental, the payback for this.

Which of course cues her phone to ring, apparently her ears must have been burning the evil wench. But wait, what? Does Jen need her to fake an emergency, like say a house fire? Say elephants love cake if yes or dogs hate bananas if no? Um, how about a plain, oh my Kel what did you say? Which hospital? No I'll be right there love. Don't you worry. I'm on my way.

Jen doesn't even bother pretending she'll reschedule with Charming's evil twin's assistant. She nearly bolts from the table and out of the door, sucking the sweet air of freedom as she strolls lazily back to her Volkswagen. Kel's still going to regret this. Bail out or not the girl deserves a little mayhem.

And perhaps she should have thought about that before sticking the girl with six older brothers with a bum date. Oh, it would be delicious this revenge. She's careful to check under the cars as she walks by, a habit picked up from growing up in a bad city with all those extra Y chromosomes as family. She never thinks that he's waiting on her front stoop.

Doesn't think that turning to run just made it easier to grab her and stuff whatever the hell it was in her face. She gets a heel in his foot though, and an elbow in his gut before she realizes it tastes so sweet and the lights go out.

--

Gus's apartment doesn't actually get cleaner than it is right now. He has a lot of free time. He spends it calling contacts of Shawn, pouring over the official reports Lassiter and Juliet copied for him, listening to Shawn's CD's, and cleaning. So he decided to reorganize his closet. He's an hour and half in when he finds a box he forgot he had, it's filled with postcards from Shawn.

He'd had this thing too, he'd buy a bunch wherever he went and then save them and send them from somewhere entirely different. The ones he snagged in Miami came postmarked from Madison, Wisconsin. Those from Madison, traveled by way of Albuquerque. There were a lot from some town in Pennsylvania, a place he'd most likely found steady work, and…

Gus had a Shawn moment. Well at least half of one. He was pretty sure that this is kind of what is must feel like for him. That Aha! moment when it clicked. He dug through and found the cards he was looking for and bolted towards the door. Of course he was halfway down the hallway before he realized he needed keys.

The drive to the station took longer than he wanted and he reassured himself that he was correct about five times. But he was right, the cards said it all. And it made some sense to Gus finally, because he may not remember the placement of every pen in the mug on his secretary's desk, but this his memory could conjure up.

Five months. One town. Nearly a record. He'd stayed because of the work he'd found, a young couple who had inherited a used book store in a small town in Pennsylvania. The air had been crisp, the roads winding, the weather unruly. It had been exactly what he's been looking for at the time, something that wasn't Santa Barbara. The family had been wonderful, welcoming, entertaining, loving, and one member in particular captured Shawn's heart.

He'd wrote Gus on the back of a postcard from Arizona, telling him all about the countryside, Emma and Robert, the shop keepers, and the way his bike hugged the interstate. But no topic held more interest or delight then the adventures of Shawn and their little girl. Her name was Jenny.

--

Jenna's never really been the social type. She'd much rather be back in her dorm room listening to her bi-curious roommate tell her long-distance boyfriend that there love could traverse continents while she prowled Facebook for a "lab partner". But she had promised the girl in her Comp 121 class that she would come and she tried to keep promises. Even when they involved navigating her way through drunken amateur gymnasts putting their skills on display for adoring frat boys.

But she needed air, she'd said hi to Mandy and sipped flat beer, she'd laughed at the bad jokes Mandy's boyfriend Brock passed off as amusing and she'd nearly reached her quota. She needed a book, some Dashboard Confessional and a glass of cranberry juice. She needed out of this itchy sweater her bi-curious roommate had squeezed over her head and the slinky jeans she'd had to lie on the bed for her bi-curious roommate to button.

She weaved around the digestive pyrotechnics a Sigma something was putting on display and bobbed around two Theta something's giggling incessantly over the way their flip-flops dangled off their toes before she found the back door to the house. She closed it as quickly and quietly as possible in hopes of deterring any would-be follower. She'd rather have the porch to herself.

That's when she noticed the basketball hoop hung above the garage at the end of the driveway. She'd never been much for athletics, but it was something to kill time. The ball was settled against the far wall of the garage. He grabbed her when she bent down to pick it up.

She was so small he easily lifted her from the ground, gauze clamped tightly to her mouth and nose. The sweetness of it burst on her tongue just as she managed to find a niche above his bent knee. She dug in her heel and kicked downward with all the strength she had before she lost touch with the conscious world. Later she'd take satisfaction in causing him to favor his right leg, especially since his right foot already seemed to have sustained some damage. Though the reveling wasn't enough in the end.