Chapter 11

Juliet froze the moment she saw the face of the man whom she was certain was Shawn Spencer. Suddenly he bolted down the path and she called after him.

"Wait, Shawn!" She cried. She started running after him but she lost him when he reinterred the crowded streets of Santa Barbara. Why did he run? The look that he gave her too; It was like he didn't even know her. Part of her was happy, but the other part was largely confused. She had somehow managed to forget about Shawn... how was that even possible? Shawn was by far the most unforgettable person anyone could ever hope to meet. Then there was the fact that she had literally just chased him from the scene of a potential bombing case. What had he been doing there? Moreover, it had been months since she had last seen him, which begged the question: what had he been doing all that time?

Months since she last saw him... when had she last seen him? Suddenly it all clicked back into place and she remembered the day he and Gus both disappeared and she went looking for them and found Gus's phone. Gus! She had forgotten about him too! Juliet's head began to spin and her temples throbbed from exhaustion, however it did feel as though a great weight had been lifted from her mind.

"O'Hara! Where did he go?" Asked Detective Lassiter as he came rushing up the path toward her. "Where is he?"

Juliet turned to him and said, "Carlton... I just saw Shawn."

"Shawn? Shawn who?" said Lassiter.

"Shawn Spencer!" Juliet pressed. "The guy whose been driving you berserk for years!" Lassiter merely stared at her in confusion. "The 'Psychic Detective'!"

"O'Hara, are you feeling okay?" He asked.

"I'm fine," she replied.

"Well, not the way I see it. You just let our lead suspect get away!"

"He wasn't our lead. The only reason Shawn would be at a place like that at a time like this is to try and stop the crime from happening," Juliet reasoned as they both began walking back to the square.

"Sounds like you know this 'Shawn' fellow really well," Lassiter said.

"Yes, and you know him too!" Juliet continued.

"O'Hara—"

"Carlton, listen to me! For whatever reason, both you and I have forgotten about Shawn and Gus and I think they're in some sort of trouble. We need to find them and save them and our only lead is still sitting on my desk. Come on!" Juliet counted herself very lucky that she hadn't thrown away the phone she'd found after she had forgotten about its meaning, but whenever she thought about it during the past months, she just couldn't. She might not have remembered who Gus was, but she did remember that the phone was important somehow.

"O'Hara! Where are you going?" Carlton called after her.

"Back to the station!" She replied.

After a lot of explaining and convincing, Juliet and Lassiter were finally back at the police department and Juliet made a beeline for her desk. She instantly knew where the phone was and picked it up. The lead... what was it again? A photo! Yes, that was it. She began pouring through Gus's photos and the first thing that came up was the video that Gus had taken of his and Shawn's capture. She clicked on it and then held it up for Lassiter to see.

The video began in very dark lighting, so it was difficult to see much, but after the lens adjusted they could see Shawn standing in an alleyway at night. There was someone talking to him—a female—but they couldn't see her.

"We're you followed?" The female voice asked.

"Yes," was Shawn's reply. Then a figure emerged from the shadows of the alley and they saw a young woman in a blue sundress walk up to Gus with a cold look in her eyes. The phone began shaking and everything became too blurry to make out anything. They could hear Gus's heavy, nervous breathing more clearly than anything else. Suddenly the phone was dropped and It landed in that small tuft of grass in the sidewalk. It was angled just so that you could see the girl standing over Gus and a sign for a pizza shop called 'The Leaning Tower of Pizza'.

"What... where am I?" That was Shawn's voice. "What did you do to him?"

The girl looked up and said, "The same thing we're going to do to you." Then there was a stifled scream and then the video stopped. Apparently the battery was full.

"Wait a minute," said Lassiter. "Wait, wait, wait." He began pacing. "Shawn and Gus..."

"Is it starting to come back to you?" Juliet asked hopefully.

"Oh no!" Lassiter cried. "Were they those two buffoons who kept making my life miserable?"

"Yes! Exactly! What made you remember?"

"The voices. I just can't get those two outa my head even when I forget about them! Wait, why did I forget about them? Please tell me you know, because I would love to be able to recreate it," said Lassiter.

"I know about as much as you do," Juliet replied. "But we could try poking around that alley. It's right next to that pizza place you hate."

"Okay, but before we do that we need to run facial ID on that girl," Lassiter pointed out.

From there the two of them began their investigation of Shawn and Gus's disappearance. Which was very difficult because everyone else they talked to seemed to have forgotten them as well, and they weren't able to jog a lot of their memories, most likely because Lassiter and Juliet knew them best and had more important memories attached to them. They ran the facial ID and found out that the girl in question was a teenage runaway named Amber Coleman from New York. But that didn't help much because no one had seen her in six years.

Next they needed to know what Shawn and Gus were doing in the alley in the first place. The only person closer to Shawn besides them and Gus was his father, so they headed to Henry Spencer's house. The two of them knocked on his door and frankly were startled by the conversation that ensued.

"Yes? What do want?" said Henry as he appeared in the doorway.

"Henry, we're here about Shawn," said Juliet.

"Shawn? Shawn who?" Henry replied.

Juliet bit her lip. She was afraid of this. Whatever had caused them to forget had also effected Shawn's father. She reached into her pocket and pulled out Gus's phone. She opened photos and pulled up a picture of Shawn.

"This is Shawn Spencer, your son," she said firmly. "I know you probably don't remember, but you have to try. This is his best friend, Burton Guster," she swiped over to a picture of him.

"Look, I don't know what your talking about, but I as sure as heck do not have a son!" Henry retorted fiercely. "Now, obviously you have the wrong person, so goodbye and good riddance."

"But Mr. Spencer—" It was no use. By the time Juliet had opened her mouth, the door was closed again.

"Well that went well," Lassiter said. "I mean, we can't go barging in to try and convince him. Besides, he probably knows about as much as we do. Come on, O'Hara. Let's go investigate the crime scene."

Juliet looked down at the ground and sighed. She began to slowly follow Lassiter down the path in the front yard when she jumped from a very loud bang. She turned to see the front door wide open and Henry Spencer on the front porch calling after them.

"Wait!" he said. "Was he a psychic detective?"