Disclaimer: All publicly recognizable characters, settings, etc. are the property of their respective owners. The original characters and plot are the property of the author. The author is in no way associated with the owners, creators, or producers of any media franchise. No copyright infringement is intended.
Author's Note: Many thanks to all still reading. Glad you're still out there. Reviews, feedback and constructive criticism are welcomed and appreciated greatly. :)
German words: Geheimagent? = undercover agent. Polizei = police.
As a little warning, this chapter is a bit heavier on whumpage than previous chapters.
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Chapter Eight: Squeeze You Dead Until You Take Your Last Breath, Loving You To Death
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Buzz took his time on the darkened steps, a dank smell invading his nostrils. There was a hint of black mold, and out of pure instinct, Buzz tried to hold his breath. This only lasted for the few fumbling seconds it took Buzz to locate his flashlight and turn it on. His left hand hovered over his holster, but he couldn't come up with a concrete reason—other than the tunnel, or hallway, was almost too thickly dark for the beam of his flashlight to aptly penetrate—to pull his weapon. The man he'd been following hadn't provided an appropriate reason to draw his gun and use it as a shield as he walked here, and since Buzz wasn't Lassiter, he let his hand drop to his side. Unlike himself in the light, all 6'6 of him, Buzz held himself tighter and walked with a protracted step, trying to be quiet and stay hidden. He had little advantage here, even less if this squatter knew the path well.
Buzz wasn't sure what he'd find at the end of the line, but it had to be something ordinary, right? And what he was doing, it was all just a big mistake? Maybe. But at least he could order the squatter out, even offer a ride to the hospital or a shelter. It was a little humanitarian work in the middle of trying to find a good lead to solve the disappearance of a senior officer. What was the harm in that?
X X X
Emil returned, moving out of the shadows like a ghost, a paper bag with a crumpled label in his hand. He dropped the bag next to Carlton's left hand. "Sustenance, my friend. I have kept my promise."
Lassiter blinked hard, tension flooding his muscles once again. He hadn't been asleep, per se, just . . . resting his eyes. It was hard to gauge how much time had passed; perhaps an hour, or nearly two. His captor took his seat across from him, presumably to watch him eat every bite. "Go ahead." Lassiter looked at him with suspicion. He couldn't remember the last time he'd eaten, and he was hungry, but just like he felt about the murky water, he wasn't sure if there wasn't something in the food, a drug or a poison. This whole thing still felt like a sick joke.
He had a sense Emil would slap him or threaten him with the switchblade if he refused to take a bite, so Carlton smoothed out the paper bag. He didn't recognize the name of the coffee shop, but was still grateful it wasn't from some chain restaurant. Some trendy shop would be easier to trace. Inside was a turkey sandwich wrapped in white paper. The second it was out of the bag and in his hands, Carlton's stomach lurched. He took a big bite before even unwrapping all the paper. It didn't taste poisoned; it was actually quite flavorful, with some fancy mayo on some grooved bread. As he ate, his head began to ache less, and found himself more alert as the last bits of the sandwich disappeared down his throat. He was sad that it had been so small.
As he brought one of the jars of murky water to his lips, he started. He had almost forgotten Emil's presence, Emil's expectations. Setting it down, he nodded with purpose, but couldn't bring himself to raise his hands to his temples. "Emil, would you tell me about Anja, how long you knew her, how you met her? Before . . . before you lost her."
He felt Emil's hard glare on him, an undercurrent of hostility. Carlton cleared his throat. Here goes nothing, he thought. "Maybe . . . maybe I should go first? Tell you about the great love of my life? And . . . how I lost her. I . . . reconnected with her at a high school reunion, and we started dating again after I singlehandedly aided the police in capturing a serial killer one night. It was . . . magic. Her name was Amy. Amy Lear."
Amy Lear. Abigail Lytar. Heard it both ways.
Carlton tried to take on that stupid, dreamy look that he'd only, in the past, reserved for his ex-wife. (Before she'd officially become his ex-wife.) "We met when we were sixteen, but after graduating, we fell out of touch. Until the reunion, I mean. She was always a beautiful girl, dark hair, dark eyes, soft lips. And she just . . . she just loved me. Loved me for all I was worth."
He was thinking about Victoria again, about his mixed feelings for her now. "But Emil, I lost her. It happens. People love each other and have sex and then just leave each other. They kill each other or they just die."
"No," Emil hissed.
"It's true," Lassiter insisted.
"No," his captor repeated.
"No?" Lassiter raised an eyebrow. "That's not your love story? Yours is unique, a love for the ages? One and only?"
Emil made a warning sound at the back of his throat.
"Amy left me because a case put her life in danger," Lassiter continued. "I asked her to stay, begged her . . . but she wouldn't do it." He only knew the gist of Spencer's breakup because of officers' idle chat at the station, much later, after the tension broke. "So we've got . . . common ground." He waited, hating that he was trying to find commonalities with this lowlife, humanizing him in ways he didn't deserve.
This was just the tip of the iceberg; if this little sob story didn't work, Lassiter was prepared to go for the throat. He needed to know if this Anja was real, and just what may have happened between them to split them up, so he could aptly play his part. Emil remained silent, regarding him with an unreadable expression. "Look, Emil, I'll be straight with you. I would bet my life that you didn't bring me here because you believe, in your heart, that Anja has crossed over." He omitted the grittier parts, the bets that Emil would kill him given half the chance; that his heart was a cold star without any rotating systems of belief; that he'd probably murdered her in a fit of jealous rage and that he'd blacked it out.
He was definitely prepared to tell Emil all the violent, vicious ways he could guess Anja had died—even if the response provoked his captor to attack him. With his hands and legs free, he had more of a fighting chance. He pushed a little. "What are you so afraid of finding out?"
Silence.
"Emil . . . just . . . tell me about her. Is she a knockout? Did you antagonize others together? Hurt them? Was it magic? Was she good in bed? Is that blade hers? Is that why you kept it all these years? Did you teach her how to use it? What did she teach you?" Carlton dropped his voice. "Don't you want to cut me the way she would, if she were here?" He patted his cheek with two fingers. "Right here. Do it."
Silence, teetering on uncomfortable. Lassiter paused in these silences for seconds, then minutes, sometimes minutes entering the double digits. He couldn't tell if his words and the intention behind them were sinking in or not being heard at all, such was the blank look on Emil's face. But once he started asking the tough questions, he couldn't stop.
"No, that wasn't her, was it? She was a nice girl that you corrupted. And then she was Faye Dunaway to your Warren Beatty, right?"
Silence from the single member in the audience, with a gaze so intense a lesser man might flinch.
"Amy . . . my ex-lover, that's another reason she left," Lassiter went on. "She was afraid of what she would become, what I would make her become. You see, she was just an ordinary girl while I had this . . . extraordinary talent." He quirked a bent smile to hide his true feelings on the matter. "But she was still smarter, wiser. She knew my calling was to help others, and I wouldn't stop doing that just because we were together." There may have been a smidgen of Victoria thrown into the mix. "She didn't want to be my partner in crime, not until death do us part."
"Mr. Spencer, you do not know—" Barely above a whisper. A pointed look that pinned his back to the wall. A sigh.
Lassiter held his breath. He was either on the verge of getting through to this lunatic, enough for him to talk about his past, or of causing this lunatic to unleash psychotic fury down upon him.
Emil leaned closer, his lips parted. He turned his face away from Lassiter, in the direction of the door.
Lassiter followed his gaze but saw nothing, not even an errant shadow. "Emil?"
"SHHsh," Emil hissed.
As Emil got to his feet, Lassiter saw how tense his body was, preparing itself for fight or flight. He had no idea what Emil reacting to, if he was really planning to go investigate some non-existent noise. For a couple of seconds, Lassiter thought of yelling out to the darkness, but he felt too stupid. It was bad enough that he entertained the thought that someone—an Interpol someone, with important credentials—was actually tracking Emil; would—or should already—be in the states any day, would soon be in California, throwing his weight around with the local police and demanding full and unquestionable cooperation.
And further, that Vick would go along with it. Like himself, procedure and policy meant everything to her—perhaps even more so because she was a woman asserting herself in a position of power in a, ahem, chiefly male domain.
So maybe it was them out there, the calvary. Still, he heard nothing except for Emil's soft footfalls as he left the room.
No one, according to Emil, was really looking for him. And Emil said nothing about anyone looking for Lassiter—er, Spencer—and Lassiter wondered what, if anything, Emil knew about Spencer's history of taking off when situations were too rough. Lassiter actually knew very little about this himself, save what Henry had shared over their one fateful day as fishing buddies. But Emil didn't seem to know Spencer that well; he didn't even know what he really looked like, and had not balked on the fake name Lassiter had given as "his previous girlfriend".
Still—Spencer had enough people close to him, some much, much closer than others would ever be, who would raise a call of alarm if he wasn't in a place where he said he would be, and there was no sign of him at all, and it all looked very, very suspicious, and if he hadn't turned up by the next day, or called, or texted, or sent a carrier pigeon . . . smoke signals . . . any old SOS.
Lassiter gritted his teeth. He wasn't Spencer, and the outside world knew that. Spencer, at this moment, was probably at an arcade or a park being juvenile and idiotic with Guster, oblivious and safe. And having zero "psychic" vibrations that anyone other than himself might be in danger.
X X X
He was lost. Even with his flashlight and his fairly decent sense of direction, Buzz couldn't say with any certainty that he knew where he was. The building's basement tunnel-hallway meandered, breaking off every now and then like a dead end path in a maze. Buzz had already lost track of how many times he'd had to retrace his steps. To compound matters, he hadn't even been able to hear the man's footsteps, nor any sounds beyond what may have been the distant drips of leaky faucets. The further he walked in the darkness, the more his ears popped, as if he were walking a slope and going deeper into the earth. He wasn't scared of the dark, nor of being a little lost. Eventually, he assumed, there must be an end, a light to guide him out. The only things that scared him a little was having to write up a report on this and having to see the angry, disappointed faces of Chief Vick and Juliet. Still . . . there was little point in turning back now.
It felt like hours and hours, all his measured paces, his shallow breathing, keeping his senses alert. Hours, and only that distant drip of water, that muted echo. But no, it couldn't have been hours; if it had been hours and he hadn't returned to the station, someone would have traced the GPS in his cruiser or his cell phone, would already be above to scold him. No. It couldn't have been more than a hour and a half, all his wandering.
One thing did unnerve him about this basement: not so far had he encountered any stairs that would lead either up or down. No stairs since the few he'd walked down to enter this place. Could it be a condemned building? Buzz was briefly dizzy at the thought, but pushed it away in the name of duty. If the building was condemned, it was more reason to find the odd man and persuade him to move elsewhere.
He was upon the last storage room before he knew it, end of the line; it was the only room which emitted some light from a low-watt bulb. This must be it, he thought, the squatter's little hideaway. He continued to approach cautiously, so as not to startle him. Keeping his voice low and friendly he called, "Hello?"
There was no answer, but there was a slight movement, shoulders and head turning towards the shadows facing out. And a sound, like a dog's leash pinging against a metal fence. Buzz paused, trying to get a clearer picture without shining his flashlight into the room. The last thing he wanted to do was startle and blind the poor man. "Hello?" he called again, softer, taking a few more steps towards the room.
"What?" Buzz muttered, intending only to look through the crude doorway, but he was drawn by the familiar shape of the figure sitting on the floor. As he got closer, he caught a glimpse of the face, a large blue bruise standing out against the paleness of the skin. Even in the shadows, it was an ugly, painful-looking mark. He pointed the beam of his flashlight at the ground and stepped all the way in. "Jesus. Shit."
McNab's eyes widened as he realized what he was seeing. An excited confusion rolled through his skull. "Detective!" he breathed, trying to ignore what could have been a frustrated fear which tightened the lines of the detective's face. Lassiter blinked at him, disbelief forcing his tongue to stay still. "Sir, are you hurt?" McNab stared at the chain around Lassiter's waist, following its short path to the wall behind him; he wondered quickly if the chain was slack enough to allow Lassiter to stand. "Detective Lassiter—"
"No," Lassiter hissed, starting to breathe hard. Starting to sweat. "No."
McNab moved closer, cutting off the dim light between them with his form, and watched Lassiter shake his head silently, an angry-scared look in his eyes.
It occurred to Buzz, with a sudden prickling of anxiety, that he'd made a rookie mistake—not securing the room; a scrape of shoe on concrete behind him sent him reaching for his holster, half turning in the dim light. He raised his flashlight and momentarily blinded the man, who covered his eyes with an arm before Buzz could fully register his face. The man grunted with purpose and pounced, leaping up and slamming Buzz hard on the side of the head.
Buzz's flashlight thudded on the ground barely two seconds before his body joined it. Carlton recoiled, opening his mouth to yell something out of concern or shock, but he caught himself from saying a word.
There was silence, too long and too short, interrupted eventually by Lassiter's fast breathing and string of muttered foreign curses from Emil.
"Polizei! Why was he calling you that?" Emil seethed, staring down at Buzz, who lay on his back on the floor with a small gash on the side of his temple. Emil spat on the ground. He was holding Lassiter's 9mm by the middle of the barrel. He turned a harsh gaze on Lassiter, demanding answers. "Detective? Sir?" he mocked.
For nearly the first time ever, Carlton was at a loss for words. In the beginning, he hadn't stopped running his mouth, telling this man over and over who he was not. The man had a question for every one of his answers—and conversely, an answer for every one of his questions. But now, an outsider had come in with a legitimate suspicion—a person of interest who might have a key to who Lassiter really was. And for the first time, the man seemed to consider that he may have been mistaken in who he actually had.
But right now, Carlton felt his answer—the right answer—could mean the difference between McNab's life or death. He swallowed hard, stealing a glance at the young officer. An incredibly ironic turn of events, Carlton mused humorlessly. He now faced the duty of re-convincing the man who he was—who he wasn't. When he spoke, Lassiter was surprised at how dry his mouth was. He swallowed again, trying to work moisture onto his tongue. "He's—he's just confused," Carlton lied, sounding a bit desperate to his own ears. "He's just a kid." McNab had not gotten a good look at the man who'd hit him, Lassiter thought. But he had found them, seen the inside—and perhaps the above ground—of this charming little hideaway, as well as wherever it led to get outside.
There is a way out, Lassiter thought with a distant flutter of relief—shot down as it set in that he might never see it.
Though he despised it, Lassiter tried to react more like Spencer. Spencer was friendly with McNab; early on, he'd even alerted the pertinent members of the SBPD when McNab had been targeted by a murderer, and then talked up the Head Detective's Glock skills to get the killer to surrender. It had . . . worked, too, and McNab had not been harmed in the least.
Lassiter recalled a flash of the young officer's respectful grin upon the Head Detective's reinstated return after he'd been cleared of murder charges. He felt again the sliver of concern when he remembered McNab had been there when Lassiter busted Petrovich. And McNab had not protested once when handed off a bum case by Lassiter and O'Hara—or when that bum case became exciting enough to be taken away from him.
Goddamn it, Lassiter thought. Spencer, had he been here, would have already rattled off an entire alphabet of quips as to why McNab's life should be spared. Face it, you make a terrible Spencer, Lassiter reminded himself—a thought that gave his lips a rueful grin.
Lassiter tried to bite his lip before the smile became too apparent, but it was too late.
Emil caught him, his face screwed up. He was a man tottering on the edge. Though it went against everything, Lassiter held on to his smile. He had to put on his best lying face so the man with the missing presumed dead wife would not shoot McNab.
"I told him to call me that, last time I saw him," Lassiter lied, "It's a code name," Lassiter leaned in, as if to share a secret. "Because I'm Head Psychic Detective. And he's a rookie really bad with names," Lassiter continued, trying to swallow his dread. "He can hardly remember Guster's name, always calls him Burt or Matt, or other words that end in 'T'."
Emil narrowed his eyes at him. His fist tightened around the gun. "He said—" Lassiter listened as Emil tried to pronounce his last name, his real last name, but little more than a long hissing sound came from his mouth.
Lassiter felt sick, knowing how close his captor had come to learning— He swallowed hard and shrugged in answer.
With an inhuman cry of rage, Emil advanced on Lassiter and pistol-whipped him. Lassiter spat blood, dazed long enough for Emil to grab his neck with one hand, to push the gun into his stomach with the other. Lassiter's head slammed against the wall; for a handful of seconds there was an explosion of light behind his eyes. Blood dribbled down his chin.
"You are playing with me," Emil growled.
"No, no," Lassiter insisted, fighting for consciousness. "You can't . . . I can't . . . breathe." He raised his hands to his waist and let them fall. His reactions were too slow; he couldn't dare attempt to use his hands to fight off Emil, not with the barrel jammed in his stomach.
"What is your name? Who are you?" Emil demanded. Beside them, Buzz groaned but remained still.
"You . . . you know me," Lassiter choked. He jerked his head, trying to get Emil to let go of his throat. "I'm the psychic, the one—the only—"
"What is your name, friend?" Emil demanded again, his eyes darkening.
"Shawn Spencer," Lassiter choked.
"What is it?"
"Shawn Spencer."
"What is it?"
"Are you trying to wear my name out?" Lassiter shouted as best as he could. "You know my name! You know who I am! I'm Shawn Spencer, Head Psychic Detective for the Santa Barbara Police Department! Why should some undercover detective who you happened to knock out change that?" Lassiter froze, the lies spreading through him like the warmth of a shot of whiskey.
Emil released him, standing back, his gun hand dropping to his side. His voice was little more than a whisper. "What did you just say?"
"N-nothing." Lassiter shook his head, feeling it spin uncomfortably. He wanted to close his eyes for a little while, but he was afraid what might happen if he fell unconscious.
Emil set his mouth, his features settling into a vacant state. He turned his back to both of them for a moment, setting the gun down somewhere in the dark, well out of reach. He then went towards McNab, as Lassiter watched helplessly, still tasting his own blood. Calmly, Emil bent down and relieved McNab of his Glock .17, his radio, and his cell phone. After putting McNab's gun with Lassiter's 9mm, Emil calmly proceeded to break both the radio and the cell phone by stomping on each, slamming the radio against the concrete walls a few times when he was unsatisfied with its rate of destruction. Lassiter winced each time the radio hit the wall, the loud cacophony of it almost making him sick.
Emil tossed McNab's ID at Lassiter's feet. Standing there, he almost appeared taller than both Lassiter and McNab, larger and stronger and smarter. "Geheimagent?" he hissed, challenging Lassiter to continue his lie.
The words were harsh, spat at him as Carlton tried to figure out what was being said. He had never learned to speak a second language; it had been a miracle he had remembered the handful of Spanish words he'd spoken on that Telenovela. Emil didn't translate for him; instead, Lassiter gaped at him as the blank look on his face began to be consumed by a growing anger.
Buzz groaned again, tilting his head this time, but that was all for movement.
"I do not believe you, Mr. Spencer," Emil stated, offering Carlton a cool look.
Carlton had only a half a second to enjoy the contradictory nature of that statement, because Emil turned to McNab and gave him a violent kick to the ribs. Then another. Another. Horrified, Lassiter fell back against the wall, his eyes wide. "No!" he yelled, spitting more blood. "Don't!" Emil shot a kick at McNab's jaw. Lassiter heard a crunch. "STOP!"
Ignoring Lassiter completely, Emil straddled McNab's chest and began to punch him over and over in the face. Panic beat its fists against the inside of Lassiter's rib cage. He had to do something to help. Pivoting himself so that his shoulders were low to the ground, Lassiter lashed his legs out and hit Emil in the shoulder. As if he were stone, Emil ignored the hit, then straightened and began to systemically kick McNab on his arms and legs, right to left.
"I am just to believe that he is here by nothing more than chance?" Emil screamed, making Lassiter wince. "That you did not summon him with your psychic abilities?" He kicked McNab in the gut again, causing the half-conscious patrolmen to moan and curl away from Emil protectively. Emil viciously kicked him again in the side and back, ignoring Lassiter's cries to stop and McNab's moans of pain.
"I can't . . . I can't do that. Summon people," Lassiter argued, trying to hide his delayed awe that McNab had found him. Was it by chance, or was McNab a better cop that he'd initially thought? "I don't know why he's here!"
"You called out to him, with your mind, so he could come here to take you away. Before you have told me—If you have something to tell—"
Lassiter drew himself closer to the wall, his muscles twitching. He wanted more than anything in these moments to be free so he could help McNab. Wryly, he considered how unfair a fight it was; in spite of McNab's height and muscular advantage, Emil had the element of surprise on his side. McNab's chances of reacting to Emil's presence had been cut off completely by Emil's sneak attack, knocking him so hard in the head, the young officer immediately collapsed. What Lassiter witnessed now must be the product of ten years worth of rage on police being released, full force. It wasn't right; he should be the one taking the beating, not McNab, that big dumb oaf.
He heard a crack, then another, and assumed they were McNab's ribs, snapping one by one. "Stop it! Stop it, you sick twist!" he cried out, straining the leash of his restraints. He hadn't even been aware he'd moved. It was all there, on the tip of his tongue to confess, but he didn't believe for a second that the truth would help McNab. No, Emil only wanted to hear lies, little white lies and those darkest secrets that were untrue. Lassiter didn't know for sure, couldn't know, but he believed Anja was dead somewhere in Europe, buried in a shallow grave, never identified—since she had had no identity on file to begin with. But what Emil really wanted was some happy ending that criminals never got—that chance to run away and start clean, no matter what he asked about Anja.
Instead, Lassiter started yelling over the sound of violence, squeezing his eyes shut. As if he could reach into the past for a spell, or predict the future, he felt for the brittle notion he knew as prayer. "Anja won't approve, and you have to stop! Please, Emil!" Pleading, Lassiter hated pleading. He could count on one hand the number of times in his life he had pleaded. Only once because he was nearly shot in the back of the head. The rest were weak childhood wishes, and now, this. On behalf of another man's life. "He can't help you get your revenge! Anja isn't here!"
Lassiter was breathing hard, his muscles shaking as he held the chains from the wall. The side of McNab's face that was visible to him was smeared with blood. Emil paused, mid-kick, turned his head away from his current target. "I . . . I had a . . . an inkling, Emil. A . . . psychic episode. While you were gone. I-I just wanted to know what you had to say about her before I told you. I saw her . . . I know—"
As if a switch was flipped, Emil seemed to forget about their intruder, and went towards Lassiter, squatting down right in front of him. It was a foolish move, without the gun in his hand, especially with Lassiter's hands unchained, but Emil acted as if in a trance. "You know, my friend? What is it you know? About my Anja? Where is my Anja?"
Lassiter wondered for a split second if he could do it—attack Emil and win. He flicked his eyes to McNab's form. No. He couldn't take that chance.
"I'll tell you . . . but only on two conditions."
"Conditions?" Emil repeated. His lips twitched, as if to smile or sneer.
"I want to call my father, and . . . I want you to take me away from here," Lassiter pressed on. He gave McNab an earnest look. "The energy . . . it's all, uh, poisoned. And he . . . he won't be the only one."
A dark look crossed Emil's face. He started to look at McNab, surely to plot his murder. A quick snap of his neck. A cold chill moved through Lassiter's bones. Lassiter cleared his throat, stealing Emil's attention. "I would guess . . . uh . . . they're on their way right now, more cops. With radios, cell phones, guns. Tear gas. We . . . we need to go."
Lassiter flinched as Emil slapped his mouth, but he recovered quickly. "I know what you're thinking, that I'll try to get away, but I won't. I won't, as long as you . . . leave Detective Nabby alone here, alive." Carlton almost laughed, but the sad sound withered at the back of his throat. It would be too much, to laugh, though it was all funny in a sick, black comedy sort of way. As much of a pain in the ass Shawn Spencer was, he was, above all else, sensitive to his friends' needs and the last thing he wanted was to see any of them get hurt. So Carlton used that, deciding, in the heat of the moment, that it wasn't such a bad quality to have.
Emil gave him a hard look, as if he would love nothing more than to throttle Carlton until he passed out, then go back to breaking all of McNab's ribs.
Carlton considered McNab's shaky reaction to his discovery, and tried to recall if he'd ever heard McNab curse before. Of all the things he might have happened upon—even a corpse may have been preferable—he was certain McNab was just not expecting to be a rescuer. Not that he really was; the tables were kind of turned on that. "Take my deal, Emil. Or you may not find out . . . what I know. But if you hurt my friend anymore, I'll take the secret to my grave."
They were brave words; underneath, Carlton was scared it would all go wrong in an instant. Emil could easily threaten or use McNab, or even kill him as Carlton looked on helplessly.
"What in the world do you have to offer me?" Emil asked archly, as if to trip him up.
Lassiter stared at him, incredulous. "I thought you needed me. I thought you wanted to know about Anja." It was messed to have to remind the criminal of his purposes; so many times over already Lassiter had been on the verge of yelling his head off—not for help but in utter frustration at the man's "logic" processes, the lack there of. He would have gotten on well with Spencer, Lassiter thought. Nonsense in, nonsense out. Everything in this situation lacked a solid connection with reality—even McNab's presence in this little nightmare; yes, Spencer would have been right at home.
"Perhaps," Emil spoke smoothly, "we should wait out this Geheimagent, for when he wakes, I should like to ask him if you are telling the truth."
Lassiter frowned, not knowing what to make of this. As much as he would rather wait—and trust that eventually cops would find them—Emil's state of mind was much too volatile. McNab was now as much a captive here as he was; he needed a hospital, and he needed to rest as much as possible in the meantime. Should he question McNab and find out the truth—that he'd taken the "wrong" Shawn Spencer, Emil might go find the real one, and then the three of them would be in worse trouble. And probably would get killed as collateral damage. He forced himself to speak slowly, calmly. "No, Emil. When the other police arrive, they'll arrest you. You'll go to the Gulag. You don't have much time if you want to get me out of here."
X X X
Emil stared back at Mr. Spencer. The psychic's haunting words struck a nerve deep within him, stirring some memories he would rather leave untouched. He looked at the mess of the Geheimagent on the floor. How easy it would be to finish the job, to be assured he could not follow. But perhaps . . . perhaps the man was close to death, and nothing was needed to be done.
Emil knew that he had the right man; no other psychic he had ever heard of was so selfless, proffering a good trade, warning him to flee, so crazed with fear that they may be confronted again and pulled away from their business meeting before it could be ended that he urged haste.
You have failed, Polizei, Emil thought, and spat again, hitting his victim's cheek. I do not go with you, I will never go again.
