Chapter 5
It was only a few weeks after Gus was held hostage in the bank when one of the worst storms they'd seen in years swept through the area. In the midst of it all, somehow Lassie's big collar was shot in the holding cells at the station. While anyone who knew Lassiter knew he would never go off book on something like this, the federal agents who had made a deal with the drug dealer to turn states witness were livid. They were entirely convinced that he had killed Chavez, one of the top tier of the Cinco Reyes gang. In their defense, Lassie was found holding the smoking gun and standing over Chavez's body. That was a bit damning. Shawn was 100% positive that Lassie was innocent. Unfortunately, her word meant nothing to the federal agents and Lassie was put on forced leave until the whole situation was resolved.
Shawn felt her heart break just a bit at the look on Lassie's face when the chief confiscated his badge in the street in front of his house. "I'm gonna prove you didn't do this, Lassie. I know you're innocent," she told him before following Gus back to the office for brainstorming. A couple hours later, Lassie showed up at the Psych office. He knew they were his only chance to clear his name, no matter how much he hated that fact. Reluctantly, they agreed to let Lassie stay in the office until his apartment was no longer considered a crime scene. In the meantime, they needed some more information. Shawn bullied Lassie into letting her blindfold him with his own tie to jog his auditory memory and they took off to the police station to find the source of the squeak he remembered hearing. By the end of the day, Shawn was almost certain that the murder was an inside job. Unfortunately, that meant that there was a pretty high chance it was another police officer. That would be a hard sell.
After getting Juliet on board and stealing a bagful of shredded paperwork from the police station, Henry showed up at the office. They had left Lassie at his house for the night so Henry could keep an eye on him and he was more than fed up with the sulking. So while Henry and Gus worked on putting the papers back together, Shawn ran out to grab some peanuts from the vender passing by. Oddly, on her way back in she was stopped by Detective Drimmer. He had been temporarily assigned as Juliet's partner until Lassie was cleared. While he asked completely inane questions about Jules, Shawn suddenly noticed that his fingers were covered in the fingerprinting ink just like hers. Since hers had happened when she was looking through the record books for their missing pages, she realized Drimmer must be the one responsible. She could tell the moment he knew she knew, but she tried to play it off and get back inside to the safety of Henry and Gus. "Well, good catching up with you Drimmer. I better get these peanuts in to the guys before they come looking for me," she laughed. As she turned to leave, she barely caught his movement in the corner of her eye. Unfortunately for her, she was just a tad too slow to avoid his fist to the side of her face.
The next time Shawn opened her eyes, she was on a familiar uncomfortable couch. She groaned, "Really? Cheap shot, Drimmer! And Lassie's place? Can this get any worse?" She rolled her eyes when he indicated the gun in his hand pointing at her. Well, talking was all she had, so she launched right in. She outlined his whole plan, letting him know she had figured out that he had been on the payroll with the Cinco Reyes. As she wound down she did have one question, "Do you really think killing me is going to solve anything?" She could feel the icy fear slide down her spine when he smirked at her. "I'm not going to kill you Shawn. Not yet.
On the other side of town, Lassie sat up when he saw the text that popped up on his phone. 'Break in the case. Meet me at your place. -Spencer" He was out the door of Henry's house in less than a minute. As he walked through his own front door a mere fifteen minutes later, he noticed Shawn on his couch, seemingly sulking. "Get your feet off my table Spencer. How did you get in my house?" She rolled her eyes and nodded to Drimmer standing behind the door, gun in hand. "I can not believe you thought that text was from me. It was completely devoid of emojis!" Lassiter closed his eyes and let out a sigh. "I never figured you for dirty, Drimmer." "Don't try to throw me off with your stupid little insults, Lassiter," he tossed a notepad onto the table. "That's your suicide note," he continued. "It explains how Spencer psychically figured out- ""I believe the term you're looking for is divined," Shawn cut in. Lassiter barely stopped himself from launching across the room to her when Drimmer hit her over the head with the butt of his gun. She whimpered as he went on, "Spencer divined that you were the one to kill Chavez and she was going to go to the chief with it. So you shot her. You two being former lovers and all, you were overwhelmed with guilt and offed yourself to get away from it all."
"Former lovers? Really?" Shawn managed through her pain. "It's called misinformation, Spencer. He's hoping they won't look into it too closely," Lassie explained. Drimmer smiled and shrugged. He turned his gun towards Shawn. "Time to get on with it," he said. Shawn jumped into what she did best. She rattled off anything that popped in her head. It was complete nonsense, of course, but it didn't matter what she said. She just needed to distract him long enough for Lassie to come up with a plan. "Do you ever shut up?" Drimmer asked in exasperation, noticing Lassie's movement from the corner of his eye. "What're you doing there Lassiter? Going for one of your guns? Too bad, police sweep got them all." He looked mildly worried when Lassiter held eye contact and walked towards the island in the kitchen. "Stop that, detective. You'll only make this worse." While he was distracted with Lassie, Shawn suddenly lunged at him. He was much bigger than her, but she caught him off guard just enough to throw off his aim and let Lassie get a shot in. She grabbed Drimmer's gun and hurried to Lassie's side just as the door burst open and Jules ran in with Henry and Gus.
Lassie took the gun from her and let Jules cuff Drimmer, turning to meet Shawn's eyes just in time to catch her around the waist before she fell. "Probably should get that head looked at, Spencer," he was uncharacteristically gentle when he handed her off to her father. "Don't worry, Lassie. I've had worse. I'm sure I have," she was still talking as Henry half-carried her out of the house. "Can't really think of anything right this second, but I'm sure it's thereā¦" her voice trailed off and he watched as Henry loaded her into his truck for the ride to the hospital. That girl really was something else.
