A/N: We've got a little bit of that Shawn/Lassiter action going on with this chapter. And if this merely whets your appetite, there's some really juicy stuff coming up within the next few chapters. Think of this as the 100-calorie pack snack.

And once again: thanks for the reviews/alerts/favs. It's nice to know that you folks are enjoying it!

"How long have you worked at the museum?" Lassiter asked, looking down at the file in front of him. The kid's resume was there, of course. But he had to ease into the real line of questioning with this one.

Mark looked up, his eyes watering so slightly that if he wasn't being interrogated, it's likely it would've been missed.. It was hard to see him as anything but a kid, even though he was apparently 24.

"I uh, I got a job there about a year ago." His voice was rough.

"Is that where you met Ms. Roma?"

Again, he stared down at the table in front of him. "No."

"Where'd you meet her?"

This must've struck a nerve with him. He looked towards the two-way mirror and then back at the table. He was avoiding eye contact in whatever way he could. "I don't know how to answer that without it making me look bad."

"We're filing charges against you for first degree murder. It's hard to look worse than that," Lassiter replied bluntly.

"I saw her work…at the museum. It reminded me a lot of another artist, so I wanted to know what the influences were for it. I-I looked her up and went to her studio."

Lassiter raised an eyebrow. No wonder the kid didn't want to say anything.

"When was this?"

"I didn't work up the courage until about four months ago," he replied, wiping his face.

"And then what happened?" Lassiter wasn't entirely interested in this backstory, just in whether the two had a relationship. There was still no real motive, despite his prints on the palette knife.

"She uh, she said that she didn't usually get a lot of notice for her work, despite the museum having acquired one of her pieces. We got to talking and she ended up hiring me as a studio assistant."

Lassiter nodded. "How would you describe your relationship with Ms. Roma?"

"Relationship?" Mark looked confused.

"Platonic? Or was it something more?" Lassiter was hoping for a spurned lover sort of deal. Those cases always made things more interesting.

Choking back a laugh, the kid shook his head. "It was platonic. Sidney is--was gay."

"Doesn't mean she didn't sleep with men every so often," Lassiter replied, almost too quickly.

Mark looked at him seriously. "I don't think you know what gay means."

At this, Lassiter rolled his eyes. He didn't need a bleeding heart lecture from a kid who barely looked old enough to drive. "Fine. So, you worked for Ms. Roma at her studio. How often?"

"She hadn't been working there very often. She said she was working on other things, sort of bigger projects that couldn't be contained in that space. She told me I could use the space for free if I just cleaned up after myself."

"So why kill her?" Lassiter snuck it in finally, hoping that the simple line of questioning had calmed the kid enough to get into the real purpose of the interrogation.

Mark looked near tears again. "I didn't kill Sidney. Why would I? She gave me a place to work, she supplemented my income…she even put me in touch with a few of her gallery contacts. They didn't pan out, but she was helping me."

"I think you were jealous of her success. She wasn't much older than you, but she was already part of a museum's permanent collection. Why not kill her? That's one less person for you to compete with," Lassiter supplied calmly, with a small smug smile on his face.

Shaking his head furiously, Mark slammed his fist down on the table. Lassiter hadn't thought the kid had it in him to get really riled up, but apparently this had done it. "She told me she was working on something big. Something that she wasn't sure people were ready for yet. Why would I kill an artist before they'd released their masterpiece?"

"To take the credit for yourself?"

"I didn't even know what it was!"

Lassiter remained calm. "So you say. Now tell me, if we search your apartment, are we going to find that missing painting?"

"You're charging me with theft, too? One bogus charge isn't enough? I want a lawyer."

Lassiter frowned. He was hoping he would be able to go longer without the legal request, considering the kid's age and apparent naïveté. He merely nodded, frustrated. Then he picked up his folder and left the room.

Juliet was waiting for him in the hallway, having just come out of the observation room. "They just did a sweep of his apartment. No sign of that missing painting. Why'd you even bring that one up?"

Lassiter shook his head. "He's poor, young and smart. He would've seen that the Roma painting was misplaced and taken the opportunity to walk with the much more valuable piece."

"It seems sketchy at best, Carlton," she replied, looking back at the door to the interrogation room.

"If that was a pun, O'Hara, so help me--"

Juliet shrugged. "Completely unintentional. Something about this doesn't seem right."

"His prints are over the entire studio. The murder weapon. His motive may be flimsy, but there's still motive there," Lassiter replied, handing over the folder. "If you think you can get something better out of him, you can deal with the lawyer."

Juliet watched her partner walk down the hallway. She couldn't prove it, but from that last look he'd given her, she was pretty sure that he wasn't convinced the kid did it either.

----

Despite the fact that Gus claimed he had to "work" or whatever it was that he did when he wasn't solving cases, Shawn went back to the museum to see if he could finally link Roma and Dante together somehow. He wasn't sure exactly what it was going to prove yet, but he knew that it would make things a whole lot easier if he could. Or, at least, he felt like it could.

The only problem, of course, was that while Shawn was really great at picking out clues and anomalies, comparing two pieces of art wasn't really his strongpoint. In fact, without Gus's odd fascination and reverence for art, he wasn't entirely sure that he'd be able to link the two artists on his own.

Once again walking with a sense of purpose, Shawn slipped by the guard at the entrance again and made his way up to the contemporary gallery. He hoped that the supposedly missing Roma piece had been hung up.

What Shawn didn't expect was once again stumbling upon his favorite surly detective. It was like Christmas had come early.

Shawn noticed Lassiter was in front of a large painting with muted colors that blended into each other this. The detective was closer to the painting than Shawn thought was allowed (at least, he was always yelled at whenever he got too close to something). He couldn't help himself, he needed to talk to him. Even if it was to simply give Lassiter his daily recommended allowance of Shawn Spencer.

"Do you get this?" Shawn asked. He noticed he had pulled Lassiter out of whatever mellowed state he'd been in and instantly regretted interrupting him. Shawn didn't see Lassiter calm like this often. It was almost as if he'd been meditating.

Lassiter looked over and Shawn saw that he had absolutely ruined the experience for the detective. "This is Rothko, Spencer. But I don't imagine you'd appreciate it."

"I must've been the only one who didn't take art history in high school," Shawn muttered, looking at the blobs of color on the canvas and still not understanding the appeal.

"I almost minored in it during college," Lassiter replied softly and Shawn looked over at him to see if the detective's face would confirm the admission he just made. Much to his shock, it did. "I was three classes away from fulfilling the requirements for the minor. But…I decided it wasn't pertinent to my career goals and I dropped it."

There was a longing in Lassiter's eyes, in his entire being really, that Shawn instantly knew meant the man wasn't being entirely honest. He knew Lassiter was a bit of a history buff, but he figured his Civil War reenactment excursions were more thanks to the fact that he got to ride a horse and fire antique weaponry than because he had a passion for the historical significance. Sometimes he really didn't give Lassiter enough credit.

"So, what about this is so great?" Shawn asked finally, hoping that he could draw Lassiter outside of himself.

"You have to stand really close to it…close enough that it engulfs your entire scope of vision." Lassiter moved out of the way so that Shawn could stand where he'd been.

Shawn shuffled into position and got as close as he could. "Look out for the guards, they don't like it when I get too close."

"Probably because you're also reaching out at the same time as you move forward," Lassiter replied, a faint edge of levity creeping into his voice. "Now stand still. And just…just look at it."

Shawn looked at it. The hazy edges of the black, white, and maroon fading into the softer red background. Suddenly he saw its depth. He knew the painting was flat. There was no attempt at perspective. But there it was in front of him, an endless plane. "Cool," he said finally, smiling slightly as he stepped back.

He glanced over at Lassiter and caught the briefest ghost of a smile on the other man's face before it disappeared and was replaced by that pinched look of annoyance he donned whenever Shawn was around. He enjoyed looking through the cracks when it came to Lassiter. It was really the only reason he teased him so mercilessly.

"Sometimes the painting's not about what it's supposed to be. Sometimes it's just about how it makes you feel."

Shawn watched intently as Lassiter looked fondly at the massive canvas in front of them. There was something vaguely intimate about this that made Shawn slightly uncomfortable. This was something Lassiter was passionate about. Apparently really passionate about, in a different way than Gus was. But it was ultimately a private experience that he'd barged in on. Guilt wasn't an emotion Shawn came by naturally, as hard as the Catholic church had tried to instill it in him as a kid. But right now he felt guilty that he was witnessing this intense personal experience that Lassiter was having.

Though, from the looks of it, even though Lassiter was trying as hard as he could to make it seem like he was really annoyed by Shawn's presence, there was something in the softness of his features that told Shawn that he was more than happy to have the intrusion. Shawn figured Lassiter couldn't tell a whole lot of people the correct way to look at a Rothko painting without them completely missing the point. The fact that Shawn had experienced that brief flicker of understanding had obviously given Lassiter a bit of joy, even if it was fleeting.

Shawn liked that he was able to make Lassiter smile a genuine smile, even if it was one that he attempted to hide.

"So this is the second time you're just hanging out in the museum for seemingly no reason," Shawn said finally, raising an eyebrow.

Lassiter looked over at him. "This time it is actually work related. I just got…distracted."

"So that other time wasn't a stakeout?" Shawn had figured this out, of course. But hearing verbal confirmation of it was also nice.

"No. Sometimes I go to museums. That's what normal people do."

Shawn opened his mouth to give his dissenting opinion.

"No, you're not a normal person. So whatever you were about to say isn't relevant." Lassiter gave him a quirky half-smile. "I came to take a look at the Sidney Roma painting to see if there's any connection to the Johns painting that was stolen."

Shawn nodded. "Is there?"

"Vague references. I see more Rauschenberg in her work than Johns."

"Like those ink blot tests that psychologists give you?"

Lassiter cocked his head to the side. "Rorschach tests?"

"No, he's that guy from Watchmen," Shawn replied.

Lassiter shook his head, looking like he was beginning to get vaguely frustrated. "Rauschenberg was one of Johns' contemporaries. They were…Neo-Dadaists. Among other things."

"Oh, like that urinal guy?" Shawn asked, smiling.

At this, Lassiter merely shook his head in defeat. "Of course you're familiar with The Fountain and Duchamp. Of all the art movements of the last century, it's the most Shawn Spencer-friendly."

"What can I say, I like toilet humor. He did the Mona Lisa with a mustache too, right?"

Lassiter nodded. "Yeah, L.H.O.O.Q. But Rauschenberg and Johns weren't Neo-Dadaists in that respect. It's more about their use of found objects as opposed to solely canvas like the modernists. Rauschenberg worked with a lot of collage, like Ms. Roma's work."

Shawn suddenly realized that Lassiter was an even better resource for this case than he'd initially thought. The guy apparently knew his stuff. Gus might've been fond of Dante's work, but he wouldn't necessarily know how to connect the two artists (if they even could be connected). "Are you familiar with Dante's work?"

Lassiter shrugged. "Not incredibly. I don't really have the time to keep up with contemporary movements."

"But…could you compare two different works to see if there's any connection?"

"Spencer, what are you getting at?"

Shawn sighed. "I think Dante was an alias of Sidney Roma. I think she hadn't been actively exhibiting work because she was developing the Dante stuff."

Unexpectedly, Lassiter's eyes widened as if a connection had just been made in his head. "The pitchfork symbol."

Shawn grinned widely. "Don't tell me--"

"It's…it's small, but there's a clipping from a newspaper in the Roma Three Flags that had a picture of a pitchfork. The piece is apparently third in a series of works and the last one that Roma produced before she stopped producing new work." Lassiter smiled now too. "But all that does is connect Roma and Dante…and there's no motive here to steal the Johns piece nor is there motive to murder Roma."

"There is," Shawn said. "It's just not impersonal like we think. And the stolen painting isn't the motive…it's a message."

"So it's not the guard," Lassiter replied, saying aloud what Shawn had been thinking almost since he'd pretended to have a vision about the security guard.

Shawn shook his head.

Lassiter frowned. "I can't let him go just because you say it's not him, though. We've got evidence. We can piece together motive with his being an aspiring artist."

"So you're just going to give up on him like that? Because there's no better alternative?"

"Shawn, I have a job to do. And part of that job involves rules. Which I know is hard for you to comprehend--"

"Only when it involves charging an innocent kid with murder. Do you ever think about how many innocent people you've sent to jail?" Shawn hadn't meant to become so accusatory towards Lassiter, but this attitude towards his job was the exact same attitude that Henry had approached his lessons with. There was no room for grey in their world of black and white. Shawn preferred to live in the grey areas.

Lassiter looked away from Shawn's harsh gaze. "It's easy to be righteously indignant when you're looking at things from the outside," he said finally. And, unwilling to take the conversation any further, he turned and left the gallery.

Shawn watched the detective go. How easy it was for things to turn from good to bad. Sometimes he wished it wasn't so easy for him to voice his opinions with no regard for the consequences.

Now that he had some stylistic confirmation that Dante and Roma were connected, he needed to find out what it meant that the Johns work was missing. He needed to have a chat with the museum director somehow.

tbc