LEGAL A/N: Psych and all characters belong to Steve Franks, Tagline Pictures, NBC Universal Television Studios, GEP Productions and USA Network.

7. The Night of the Hunter

Gus wondered out of the bedroom of his apartment, his eyes in a fog. Exhaustedly, he glanced at the digital clock on the nightstand with confusion. It was a little after 4:30 in the morning and somehow the television set in the living room was left on.

He stumbled down the dark hallway until he came halfway and was hit with a sudden worry. He heard female screams from the television set. A chill went up his spine as his eyes went wide. Slowly, he stepped silently down the hall towards the living room and peered around the corner.

With a frustrated sigh of relief, he rolled his eyes as he saw Shawn sitting on the couch, staring at the TV in a zombie state. "Shawn!" Gus scoffed angrily. "What are you doing?"

"Watching Pet Semetary and some crappy movie about a plane crash and Death killing a bunch of kids," he answered, monotone.

"I went to bed at one. How long have you been there?"

Shawn shrugged carelessly.

Gus shook his head with a sigh, letting his eyes fall to the floor. He had to have been awake most of the night. "You need to get a little sleep," Gus then declared, in hopes to cheer him up. "Jessica invited us to the Montecito party I was talking about. We might get to meet Oprah."

Gus looked to his friend for some sort of hopeful answer, but all he received was this deadened glaze in his eyes as the light of the TV washed over his face. There was a deep sadness inside his eyes, the kind he never showed to anyone.

With a silent sigh, Shawn's only reply was an idle, lonely sentence. "There's nothing I'll ever be able to do…" The sentence drifted off into the disheartened wasteland from where it was born, leaving lifeless silence behind.

Gus stared at him quietly watching Shawn gaze brokenheartedly at the television set. "Shawn," Gus declared, "get off your ass."

Shawn glanced up at Gus with confusion. "Huh?"

"Do you realize how much trouble I could get into if anybody ever found out you were lying this whole time about being a psychic?" Gus asked without any pity in his voice. "It would ruin my whole life!"

Shawn sighed, rolling his eyes. "This is just what I needed to hear. Me ruining more lives."

"Yes, this is what you need to hear, Shawn," Gus declared. "So shut up and listen." Taken aback, Shawn looked up at him, stunned. He was quiet, though, and gave Gus the benefit of the doubt. "You know why I play along with this game even though I know the consequences? It's not for the money. It's not for the excitement. And it's not to impress my dad."

"Dude, what are you saying—?"

"Four people are dead," Gus declared with all the energy of a preacher on Sunday. "More could follow – including your dad." Shawn looked up at him with understanding, listening to every word. "Now you need to start thinking like a detective. Henry Spencer is not your dad right now, he's a potential victim. People are dying, there's a killer on the loose, we need to get to work!" Gus added quietly with a shrug, "As long as we finish before the party."

The sky over Santa Barbara began to turn a pinkish shade as Gus' blue Toyota Yaris drove down the highway. Gus was at the wheel with a Starbucks cup in the holder while Shawn was in the passenger seat with his face in a folder of newspaper articles and notebook paper from 1986.

"Okay, so here's the story so far," Shawn declared, explaining from his knowledge obtained from the past and from the newspaper. "Twenty years ago, Kane Hodder – the Cobra Killer – poisoned fourteen Summerland children and teenagers and three adults from October 2nd to October 30th. Hodder worked as a snake wrangler and put together his own lethal mixture of venom from the Indian Cobra. He goes to a store, buys a bunch of candy, injects it with venom at home and slips it back on the shelf without being noticed. A teenage girl, a middle-aged man, and a seven-year-old boy died as a result of it."

"And where did your dad fit in?"

"My dad was working with a rookie cop named Elliot Craven at the time. They'd only been together for a week before the Cobra popped up. Surprise, surprise: they didn't get along. But together, they discovered another plot the Cobra was working on involving kidnapping children on Halloween and taking them to the basement of the Granada Theater."

"Granada Theater?" Gus repeated. "What for?"

"I don't know," Shawn shrugged in annoyance. "To go all Freddy Krueger on them, I guess. Why else would you take people to the basement?"

"That was a boiler room."

"No," Shawn argued, "I specifically remember it being a basement."

"I don't agree with you," Gus shook his head.

"How do you know?" Shawn asked. "Mr. I-Don't-Know-The-Difference-Between-Freddy-and-Jason. You don't even like scary movies."

"Finish the story, Shawn," Gus snapped.

"Fine," he declared. "Anyway, back to Henry and Elliot. Elliot was replaced by Sean Cunningham on October 30th."

"A day before Henry's big bust," Gus declared.

"Exactly," Shawn noted. "If Hodder kills Craven, that's the last in line for the poisoning. Which leaves his other unfinished great plan: kidnapping the kids. If the Cobra's back, whatever he's planning is going down on Halloween night."

Gus turned to him with wide, worried eyes. "Tonight."

Shawn and Gus strolled down a wooden dock on the Santa Barbara pier a few minutes after the sunrise. They followed Elliot Craven, a tall, well-built man with thinning dark hair in casual clothing carrying a length of rope to a yacht at the end of the dock.

"Is that his?" Gus whispered.

"It would appear so," Shawn shrugged.

"I guess leaving the police force hasn't let him down financially," Gus noted as he examined the expensive-looking day sailing yacht.

"You sail a lot, Mr. Craven?" Shawn asked.

"Please," Elliot glanced back. "Call me Elliot. And I try to sail when I can. It's better in Fort Lauderdale, though." The three of them came to the end of the dock and Elliot turned towards Shawn and Gus. "It's very nice of you to ask, but I know why you're here. I already got the warning from Chief Lassiter about Hodder's escape." Elliot glanced down at the ground, shaking his head in puzzlement. "I gotta tell you, I'm a little surprised that I would be a target. I was only Henry's partner about a month."

"True," Gus shrugged. "But you two covered the Cobra from beginning to end. You did most of the work."

With a humble smile, Elliot turned away towards the water, then glanced back at Shawn and Gus. "That's very nice of you to say, but I was only a rookie. I probably was in the way more than I led the way." He looked at Shawn with a small amount of gratefulness. "Leading was always your father's job."

Elliot stepped over and tossed the rope down on the wooden dock with a relaxed tone. "I'm happy the way things worked out," he said, matter-of-factly. "I know that police work just wasn't my calling. And I feel more… free because of it. Besides, I make more in Mergers and Acquisitions."

"Ooh," Gus answered with a pointed amount of personal interest. "Now that's a job I'd like. Where does it take you?"

"All over the country," Elliot declared with a proud tone. "New York, Boston, L.A. I made a major deal in Phoenix two weeks ago, in fact."

"Congratulations on that," Shawn nodded. He glanced over at Gus, then turned back to Elliot. "Look, it's probably best that you not be alone tonight and—"

"Don't eat anything?" Elliot added. He scoffed, "Trust me. I won't."

Shawn and Gus turned to each other once more. "Well," said Shawn. "We'll leave you to your… yacht." Both of them turned around to the other end of the pier.

Elliot called after them, intrigued. "Hey, I didn't know that Henry Spencer's kid was psychic," he declared. "I don't really remember him saying anything about that when we were partners."

"Yeah," Shawn explained, "well… he's, uh… never really one to bring his home life to work."

"You got that right," Elliot laughed as he reminisced. "Good cop, Henry was. How is he, by the way? Haven't heard from him in years."

Shawn turned back to Elliot in contemplation. "You mean, at all? Not even recently?"

"Nope," Elliot replied.

Shawn looked at Gus with a sudden expression of alarm. "Dad hasn't been to see him," he calmly declared. Shawn quickly paced back towards the car.

Gus turned to Elliot, struggling to explain the sudden departure. "Uh, thanks for your time. We've… got to go."

Gus' car skidded to a stop in front of Henry's home. The truck was vacant from the driveway and Shawn's feet touched the ground before the car stopped completely. He bolted across the front lawn towards the door. Behind him, he could see a police cruiser parking behind Gus.

"Shawn," Gus called out. "Wait up!"

Shawn rushed to the door and pushed it open. He immediately bolted to the kitchen, afraid of what he might find. He found it empty instead. "Dad?" Shawn shouted, his voice echoing through his childhood home. The entire house was vacated.

Shawn stood in the foyer and glanced over to see Juliet, Jessica, Gus and Lassiter appear in the doorway. "Is he not here?" Gus asked.

"Damn it, we missed him," Juliet sighed.

"What are you talking about?" Shawn asked, unsuccessfully trying to mask his worry the best he could.

"Henry called the station about twenty minutes ago," Jessica explained, nearly out of breath. "He sounded crazy. He went on about 'getting on offense' and 'being the hunter.'"

Shawn's eyes fell to the floor as he shook his head at his father's predictability. "He has this theory," he explained with a frustrated scoff, "about how protecting the vulnerable shows weakness. The proper way to win the fight is to hunt the killer instead."

"We need to defend ourselves first," Jessica shook her head. She turned to Juliet and Lassiter. "Hodder will seek out his victims in solitude so we must stay together in populated areas."

"Like that party tonight," Gus offered.

Shawn turned to Gus. "Is that all you can think about, honestly?"

"I'm just saying," Gus replied apologetically.

"Wait a second," Shawn declared. Gus noted the look in his eye, the kind he had when he made his acute observations. "I'm getting something," Shawn explained. He closed his eyes and remembered walking out of the arcade twenty years before. The flier on the street. "There was a big party on Halloween night twenty years ago in the Granada Theater. The Santa Barbara Monster Mash."

"So?" Lassiter spat.

"That's where Hodder was going to take those children!" Gus explained.

"To Granada Theater? It's closed for renovation," Juliet explained.

"It's not the place that's important," Shawn answered. "It's the impression that's left. It was the biggest party in town. Just like the Montecito Mash twenty years later." Shawn turned to Juliet and Lassiter. "What if Hodder is reenacting his final plan – kidnapping children and taking them to the Montecito Mash?"

"That means Hodder will have to be at that party tonight," Juliet followed.

"We've got to be there," Shawn declared with finality.

"No," Lassiter objected. "Uh-uh. Spencer, I do not want you there."

"Too bad," Shawn grinned, pointing at himself and Gus. "We've got invitations. What do you got, Lassy?"

"We don't need invitations," Lassiter sneered.

"Um, actually," Juliet whispered to him. "Sir, it's private property. We don't have the authority." Lassiter turned to her with frustration, then looked back to grinning, victorious Shawn and Gus. With a sigh, he silently admitted his weakness.

"Don't worry," Shawn said, placing a hand on Lassiter's shoulder. "You can be my date."