XXIII. Deary Ducks

Shawn stayed in the lounge chair several minutes beyond Lassie's rather silent and sorta moody departure. In need of more tea, he fetched it from the kitchen and stopped to get his appendage. As he thought, his dad called him again. Shawn couldn't put it off anymore, and, now that he wanted something from his dad, hitting the call button was a little easier.

Henry said he was in the neighborhood—it was a lie, of course, and he would know Shawn was too smart to take it as anything but a lie. Henry didn't voluntarily spend a lot of time in that area of Santa Barbara, but he fabricated a story about a hardware store that sold custom stains at a better price than the bigger stores. And that wasn't a lie, just a task that Henry had been putting off for about three years.

He was unsurprised to find Shawn sunning himself in the backyard. It was not a warm day, but in the sun it was almost hot. Typical California springtime. He let himself in through the carport, and there was Shawn diagonal from him. "Tell me you have sunscreen on."

"Dad, I have sunscreen on."

"You are such a liar."

"Mmm," Shawn murmured, half-aware. "You told me to tell you. You didn't say anything about telling you the truth."

"Well, aren't you just a literal little shit? Why are you back at Lassiter's? I thought you went back to Mee Mee's."

"I did. I am. Just here for the moment. Do you think I have a backyard like this at Mee Mee's?" He wondered what year, what decade, his dad would learn that the house was supposed to be Shawn's and Adrian's. But would they have been happy there? As painful as it'd been for Shawn to lose the house, it was more painful to realize that it wouldn't have lasted. How did he know? He knew. The way that he knew that if he'd stayed at the house without Adrian, eventually he would've needed a roommate. Maybe that would've been Lassiter, if only temporarily. It was touching how things got moved around in one's dreams, then how those dreams got shifted around in reality.

When Henry took the other lounge chair, it was warm and felt good on his back. His sunglasses were on, and his shirt was loud and full of the colors of sunshine itself. He didn't have sunscreen on, either, a fact that prodded the nose of his son.

"I don't smell any coconut goodness coming from you, Pop. You don't have sunscreen on, either."

"So sue me." He added, after several seconds of thoughtful silence, "It's nice here. Quiet neighborhood."

"Lassie's barbecues can get out of hand," Shawn quipped, "so I've heard." He remembered skipping the cookout last Saturday, amid the hell and turmoil of his split with Adrian. "Hey, there's something I want to tell you so you don't worry about it anymore."

"You have a million dollars and can take care of me when I'm old?"

"No," Shawn returned, surprised by this. "Do you really want me to take care of you when you're old?"

"Yeah, when you put it that way—"

"Besides, you're in the prime of your life. You were only, what, fifteen when I was born?"

Against his better judgment, Henry chuckled at that. "Well, your mom is older than me."

"You've got lots of virile years left in you. You could still have more kids. That will, in turn, grow up to be rich adults who will use their millions to take care of you. And be a jerk to me because I'm the older, beautiful, more talented half-sibling."

"You should write soap operas."

"I'm considering it. Just like writing my One Tree Hill fanfic too much."

"But thanks for the optimistic thought. What did you want to tell me before we got on this topic? However the hell we got on this topic."

Shawn had momentarily forgotten, lost in the idea of his dad having another kid someday. What a weird idea. He could be thirty-five with a newborn brother. He didn't know if the notion was too horrifying, or just way too amusing. But who would get stuck babysitting? That's right. He would. He decided that he did not want his dad to procreate further. It'd be weird seeing a baby spawned by Henry's DNA, more than himself, since a baby would be round and bald, and probably resemble his dad in its present baby state more than it would when it grew into an adult. Everyone in the family knew that Shawn looked like his great-grandfather. Both of them, in fact, paternal and maternal. He sighed, returning to the maudlin sensation that benighted his more anecdotal daydreams.

"So, it's about me and Adrian."

Henry clasped his hands on his abdomen, jittering a little but otherwise calm. "What about you two? Did you make up?"

"No," Shawn said. It was an odd phrase to toss around, like his dad knew. But his dad was a cop, and perhaps he'd been able to seam together clues. Or Mom told him. It was more likely she'd told him. "No, I don't want to talk to him again."

Henry resisted the urge to whip off his sunglasses and stare at Shawn. He didn't move, just scrunched his fingers together to release the stress of this conversation. This was not easy on him, no more than it'd been on Shawn. But he hadn't talked much to Shawn for years, prior to his return to Santa Barbara. He kept tabs on him, sometimes through Maddie, sometimes through his ties at the police department and other agencies. He knew Shawn could not live a normal life because he was an extraordinary person. "Look, Shawn—sometimes people come in and out of our lives for no apparent reason. Sometimes they bring us things that we didn't know about ourselves. Insights. Gifts. Sometimes they help us develop talents, sometimes latent ones, sometimes stuff we didn't even know we had. And then they go. I'm sure that you've taken what you can from your," he briefly paused, "friendship with Adrian and have moved on."

"Not exactly. I mean, sort of. Mostly I just think he's a drunk asshole that treated me like shit—and I ran into one of his exes who said the same thing. And a little more, too. Adrian hit him."

This was alarming. Now, Henry did fulfill his instinct to whip off his sunglasses and stare at Shawn. "Did that bastard hit you?"

Shawn was already trying to turn his dad's temper and protectiveness to simmer. "Shh, Dad, indoor voices."

"But we're outside! And I can yell if I want! Shawn, did he hit you?"

Shawn was silent too long and Henry knew it too quickly. He roared out of his chair and almost tripped over it, almost lost his sunglasses. He was so flustered and dispirited and—and what was that feeling? He hadn't felt it in a while—enraged? Yes. But, no, that wasn't it. It was— It was— It was a kind of quiet, intense sadness.

Shawn waved a dismissive hand. "Only happened once, it was on the arm, and—"

"I'm going to kill him."

"Dad—I mean it—don't do anything—it wasn't a big deal. He didn't even remember it the next day. I told you he was a drunk asshole. And, anyway, it was just on the arm. The other guy got hit in the face. It took me until recently to even remember it happened. Well, we were both drinking at the time, me and Adrian. He took one swing at me, hit me. Took another swing at me, missed entirely, and I shoved him and he hit the floor, passed out. In the end, I think he fared worse."

Henry was oddly proud of Shawn's deft maneuvering. But what was he supposed to say? This was way out of his area. "Why did you tell this to me?"

"So you'd stop worrying about it. I'm fine. I'm back at the laundromat. I'm working. I solved the case of the body in holding—" He knew that his father would latch to the case and Adrian's drunken pugilism would be forgotten, as it should be.

"You solved the case? How? When?"

"This morning. And with the help of Adrian's ex that I mentioned."

He helped his dad right the overturned lounge chair. Knowing that he'd have to tell the whole story, Shawn brought his dad into the kitchen for iced tea and whatever cookies were around. Henry wasn't usually a sucker for cookies, but Shawn still had some Lorna Doone left, and Henry liked those. It was one of the few things they had in common. He expected his dad to like shrimp or fish flavored cookies, but a biscuit of commercial shortbread was enough for him.

Shawn wasted no time discussing cookies, getting too close to the reason that he wanted his dad there. When he'd wound down the tale of how he'd found the name of the body, stopping only so his dad could admire his son's determination and Lassiter's willingness to jump into a dumpster, he told his dad the name—

"Jasper Collins. He might be one of Adrian's cousins. And Lassie said he had something to do with the Collins Bank going under about ten years ago." As Shawn hoped, Henry took the bait and started opening up.

"Yeah, two of those Collins guys killed themselves. I always thought those were suspicious deaths myself, but no one believed me and it became fairly obvious, even with forensics being what they were ten years ago, that it was suicide. GSR is GSR, and if it was on their hands—"

"They shot themselves?" Shawn had not known the gory details of the case; he'd mostly skimmed newspaper articles.

"Come on, Shawn. You know most men commit suicide by shooting themselves. Women prefer pills or poison. It's just—nature, I guess. As much as any of that's natural. But these guys were in it bad, Shawn, and I do mean bad! They were as guilty as a summer's day is long. Jasper was the younger brother, and the two older ones said in their notes that he didn't have much knowledge of what was going on. But they had set it up in such a way that it made Jasper look a little more guilty."

"He was their fall guy?"

"Yeah, well, they tried to make him their fall guy. But when these guys offed themselves, it was with a genuine reason. They did it on the same day, maybe within an hour or two of each other. It was planned ahead of time, the only reason, when preliminary evidence came in, that made me think it was suicide. But they'd pissed off a lot of people, and they had targets on their backs. Their notes arrived at various places a few days later. They had dropped them off at the same post office—the one off State Street—and they popped up, like I said, a few days later. The police department got one. So did the bank manager. And Jasper. Jasper got one."

"You never arrested him."

"The judge felt that his brothers' deeds were criminal, yes, but that the suicide notes exonerated him. There wasn't evidence. Even the FBI got involved, and couldn't find anything to convict. Jasper spent eighteen months in psychiatric care. Alcohol rehab off and on ever since."

Shawn pulled a face. "And the rest of his family?" He knew where this was going.

"Never talked to him again. He was ostracized. But he knew he was right, that he was innocent—"

"So he didn't care if he talked to them again."

"Sometimes, even when you're proven innocent, you fare worse in a lot of ways. Jasper was one of those, unfortunately. If it is the same guy, I'm glad he was able to start his own company and make something of himself," Henry said, being fair to a guy to whom life had been criminally unfair. "To be honest with you, if it is the same Jasper Collins, and it sounds like it is, I'm glad he's out of his misery, and I'm glad he went peacefully. He deserved that, at least."

"Yeah, sounds like it," Shawn agreed.

"As I recall, he always was a bit more into technical, mechanical stuff than finances."

"Fountains might've been his hobby," Shawn elucidated.

Henry nodded. "Maybe they were."

Like the busted one Shawn had seen in the dumpster behind Hollister Fountains & Water Care. So familiar—an item handmade that Shawn had seen off and on throughout the last year of his life. He would know it anywhere. It was a one-of-a-kind item. A gift from a cousin to a cousin.

Shawn made a decision, after checking his phone to see if Lassiter had contacted him. Nothing. He wondered about Gus, but decided he would fill in his fragile friend later. He gave his dad a squeeze on the shoulder. "I gotta get to the station."

Shawn was not a conduit of revenge. To show any sort of belligerence towards Adrian for what he'd done was simply impossible. What wasn't impossible was admitting that, for the first time since last Saturday, he actually considered it. The look on his dad's face—the look on Will's—and it was impossible to stop Adrian from hurting anyone else. Adrian had said he hadn't done anything wrong. Fiercely, first out of hurt, Shawn hadn't believed it. Now, out of compunction, he disbelieved it. He couldn't make Adrian see what he'd done wrong. He couldn't make Adrian change. He could only see that there was nothing he could do, and the sense of helplessness burned in him. He wished someone would take the hot iron of pain out of his stomach. He wished he could hit Adrian in the face with a hot iron...

He was over-sympathizing with Jasper Collins. That was obvious. Someone in the wrong place at the wrong time. Someone taken advantage of by scheming brothers. Someone that was exiled from his clan for the wrong reasons. These were not necessarily things that Shawn had gone through himself—his own choices in life, however terrible they might've been, were still his own choices—but they were things that could've happened to him. Could've happened to anyone.

He knew a little of the Collins clan. Most of Adrian's cousins met with through the last year were a Collins by birth or marriage. When he got to know Adrian better, even after the night of cousin Sissy's graduation party, Shawn had grasped several ideas of Adrian's family, some which stood out more than others: they were clannish, they were rich, they spoiled themselves, and they were used to their lives. There was nary a ruffle among them. Adrian was hardly the only openly-gay member of his family. The Collins family's sense of inclusivity did not, somehow, include family jailbirds. If the disaster with the Collins bank was mentioned at all, Shawn would have certainly picked up on it.

But he did remember that Brooke had an "old bank building" downtown that she'd been trying to sell for a while. Probably ten years. That was the closest Shawn got to gleaning any information regarding the Collins family, the bank, and, as the phrase on the back of books usually went, "the scandal that rocked them."

Shawn gave his dad a glance at the wheel. Tense and quiet, Henry Spencer had been veering through traffic and taking the backroads to get to the station in a hurry. That he knew all the shortcuts to La Palace de la Figueroa didn't surprise Shawn. His dad's calmness was the surprise.

"Hey, Dad?"

"Yeah?"

"Did you work that case at all? The Collins Bank case."

"No. That was a more White Collar kind of crime. Too financial for me. For some reason, I always got the gory stuff. Temp Masters always got the financial cases."

Templeton Masters—Shawn smirked at the name. He hadn't thought of it in ages. It was a name that reminded him of a Dickens character, or like his own selection of wild and unlikely aliases. Templeton Masters might've supplied the idea for those wild and unlikely aliases, now that Shawn thought about it.

There was likely to be a paper trail and a pretty thick file on the bank case. Shawn had a hunch that Lassiter would have it on his desk already. He might've even called in Juliet and/or Gus. This was the sort of cryptic puzzle, an unruly and disorderly ending to a once-simple case, that brought excitement to Lassiter. It made Shawn sigh. He liked seeing Lassiter get excited.

"Hey, Dad?"

"Yeah?"

"I'm sorry. I should've told you that Adrian hit me. I should've told you he was an asshole."

"That's all right. You told me now. And, yeah, I still want to kill him. Not literally, I guess. I just wish I could take all the bad parts of him and erase them so that they don't exist for you anymore. That's what I want. I don't want him to exist for your sake."

"You wouldn't be my dad otherwise."

Henry didn't hear him. "Maybe I can at least smash his eyeballs in. Or sock him in the jaw. Hang him up by his toes. I haven't decided yet."

"Hang him by his toes? I think you were a pirate in another life, Dad."

Henry braked hard at a red light, sending them into a sharp forward tilt. He had a tendency to drive aggressively when he was angry. Anger and being in a hurry might make them less likely to reach the station without getting into a car collision.

"I just wish you would like yourself better rather than getting involved with people who make you feel like shit to make themselves feel better."

Damn, Shawn thought, if only it were that easy! He did not discuss that aspect of it, though, but took a different approach. "Why would it be any different than two guys rough housing? You never got into a bit of drunken fisticuffs with a guy friend of yours?"

"Yeah, Temp Masters."

Shawn couldn't help but snicker. Temp Masters was a pencil-thin man who, in the 80s, had had a pencil-thin mustache and wore pleated khakis, white shirts with skinny black ties, and a pocket protector. Glasses, too, in case you were wondering. Thinning gold-brown hair. Magnanimous but shrewd blue eyes. He was the type who wouldn't hurt a fly. "You got in a fight with Temp Masters?"

"Don't try to change the subject." Because, Henry knew that as soon as they reached the police station, Shawn wouldn't talk about this anymore, and he wanted to keep him talking. "The next time you start seeing someone," his ears burned at the tips, "in whatever way that is," insert smooth recovery here, "would you please show a little more care? Check your own confidence before you rush into anything. And make sure he isn't going to drink like a fish."

That was the closest they would ever come to talking about it, at least for the next several months. Shawn used his right hand to draw an "X" over his heart, raised it to add depth to his oath. "I promise. The next person I start seeing will be calm, rational, boring, and have a steady job, no weird family members, and no history of hitting anyone. Unless it's a boxer—or an MMA superstar—or a cop," he threw on merely to satisfy his father; he didn't doubt that Henry would've been pleased to see him settled with a police officer. That would really be swift and pure and humorous irony in a lot of ways. "There. Happy?"

"It should make you happy, that's the point! Can't you see what I'm saying here? It's you who should look out for himself! You need to treat yourself better, Shawn. I don't know what would've lured you in to someone like Adrian—"

"He was attractive, vibrant, and spent a lot of money on us. Nobody's perfect."

"But those are such shallow qualities—"

"Dad, stop." Shawn was looking out the windshield. A light was red, and a car ahead of them was braking.

"You should want to—"

"STOP! Dad, STOP!"

Henry gathered what he meant and slammed on the brakes. Once again, they shot forward in their seats. This time, the seat belts locked in place. Shawn's shoulder was jerked, and he'd thrown his hands against the dashboard to keep himself from flying into it. Ahead of them, a suggested inch or two separated them from the bumper of the car in front of them.

"That was close," Shawn said, assessing himself, the adrenaline pouring through his body. "Maybe we should talk about something else. Or I can drive. Dad, pull over, find a place to park, let me drive."

Henry wondered if that wasn't a good idea. He found a space on the next side road, and maneuvered the truck into it with a deftness that comes with longevity. Instead of driving the rest of the way, it was only two blocks and they let their feet take them there. It was not a quiet walk, not soothing to their souls.

"You're right," Shawn eventually said, hoping to put an end to the tension between them, at least about Adrian. "You're right, I should be more careful, more self-aware, when I start seeing someone. I don't think I will see anyone, though, not for a good, long, long while. No one that I don't already know." Which could include Will Lissner, or not—Shawn wasn't sure. They had too much history, and wouldn't it be weird? Plus, there was something that bothered him about Will. Too cunning? Too cute? It could be an evil combination. He tried to stay focused. "And I promise that the next person I see will have depth and not just shallow qualities, even if those shallow qualities are more appealing. Maybe I'm too deep and I like people that aren't."

Henry couldn't help snickering. It sounded like he was mocking the insight, but, upon further investigation, wondered if it wasn't closer to the truth. Shawn was a flippant, mercurial person, and maybe he liked being pampered and laughed at and the center of attention in another person's shallow, magical world. He just wished his son would aim a little higher. Date someone that was more stable, more down to earth, someone that did not indulge him. Like Lassiter, but, you know, Girl Lassiter. Preferably Girl Lassiter, but, at that point, Henry was done trying to figure out anything about Shawn, let alone personal proclivities.

Shawn crossed his arms, observing the urban view of Santa Barbara. He could feel the hollows of his bones. "Maybe I'm going through a crisis or something."

"Everyone's always in a crisis. First rule of being a cop. Everyone you meet has something going on."

At first, Shawn saw this as a deflection, Dad showing off his cop knowledge, and once again rubbing it in that Shawn had not gone into law enforcement. At least, not the badge-wearing kind. The more he analyzed the statement, the more Shawn read into it something he might've missed had he been in a cheerier frame of mind. "Even Adrian."

Henry made an open gesture. "It's likely, isn't it? Did he have anything going on when the two of you, uh, met?"

"There was some tension in the family, but he never told me what it was about. By the time we started, uh, hanging out more in July, it was gone." Shawn didn't want to go into detail. He didn't want to recount Adrian's behavior to his dad. That was too much. "I think it had something to do with his dad's side of the family."

"The Collinses."

"Yeah. His mom is Jojo Motte Harris. I didn't know—don't know—much about her, except that her family used to own some kind of store in Ventura," Shawn said. "It went out of business years ago, way before Adrian was born, and maybe even before his parents met and married. I don't know what she did with herself, professionally. She seemed nice enough. Liked me well enough, laughed at my jokes. She didn't spoil Adrian or Brooke like their dad did."

"The Collinses are very privileged," Henry added, remembering the interviews of the Collins family to follow-up with the bank case, and the subsequent suicides. "It was weird, you know, it wasn't really a huge scandal, the fall of the bank. Two or three months passed after the two brothers died, everyone seemed to forget about it. Well, 9/11 happened, and maybe that's really what got our minds off of it. Nothing distracts from a bit of news like a bigger bit of news."

"Ain't that the truth?" Shawn couldn't wait for the next case to come along, just to get away from this. He wanted to say something about it to someone, but didn't know who to say it to. Saying it to his dad was out of the question. He decided to test his ability to text and walk at the same time, which his dad frowned upon. He sent the message to Lassiter: "I think it's weird that this case involves the Collinses. We're almost there. Bringing dad."