Part Four: The Houseguest

Henry was standing in the driveway when they pulled up. He waited until Shawn got out of the car so he could make sure he was still in one piece, and then he turned around and went inside without a word.

"Okay, I can't go in there," Shawn said. "I haven't seen my dad that mad in years."

Lassiter came to stand next to him. "What are you talking about? He didn't say anything."

"Exactly!" Shawn said. "When he's yelling, I can just tune him out, he gets to vent, I don't have to do anything, it's the perfect foolproof system."

Lassiter grabbed him by the arm, and dragged him along behind. "I can't believe it's this easy to get to you," he said. "If I'd known that silence was the one thing that bothered you, I would have started to ignore you ages ago."

"You'd never last," Shawn said positively. "My dad on the other hand, once went almost three years without saying anything to me. Admittedly, he didn't know where I was, but that's hardly an excuse."

Lassiter just gave him a final push inside, before stopping right inside the door. "Something smells good," he said.

Shawn grabbed onto him, clutching desperately at his shirt. "Oh, god," he said. "He's been cooking. This isn't good."

Lassiter shook him off. Henry leaned out the doorway of the kitchen, wearing an apron that said 'kiss the chef.' "Dinner's going to be ready in five minutes," he told them, before disappearing again.

Lassiter turned to look at Shawn. "I can see why you're so terrified," he said.

"We're in uncharted waters here, Lassie," Shawn said. "Be afraid. Be very afraid."

Lassiter rolled his eyes and moved past him into the kitchen. Henry had set the table with three spots. Shawn slipped in carefully behind him, and took the chair that was farthest from where his father would sit.

"You're not sending me to bed without dinner?" Shawn asked warily.

Henry turned to look at him, and pointed at him with a mashed potato covered spoon. "Just sit down, Shawn," he said. "I'm trying really hard to control my anger here."

This seemed to interest Shawn greatly, and he leaned across the table to watch his father work. "Did you really take my advice and join a support group?" he asked. "Because can I just say, I think you've made incredible progress."

"No, Shawn, I have not joined a support group," Henry said, "Much as I'm beginning to think everyone who knows you should probably form one."

"Was that a joke?" Shawn asked. "Did you just make a joke? You're not on drugs, are you?"

Henry sighed, and attempted to ignore him. He brought over a plate, and set in the center of the table. "I made my world famous pork chops--"

"Wait, what? World famous? Don't tell me you've cooked Babe!" Shawn stared at the plate in mock horror.

"My world famous recipe, smart ass," Henry snapped.

"Just because you got it from Aunt Mae in Fresno doesn't make it world famous, and I hate to break it to you, but I'm pretty sure she copied the recipe off the back of a Bisquick box."

"Shawn," Henry said. "Are you trying to make me mad?"

Shawn watched him warily. "This new calm manner is freaking me out," he explained. "You're like a pod person. I think I'd feel better if you'd just start yelling and get it out of your system."

"We have company," Henry said.

"That's never stopped you before, and anyway, Lassie doesn't count as company," he said, stabbing at a pork chop with his fork. "He's just my bodyguard."

"I'm not your bodyguard," Lassiter protested hotly, as he picked out a pork chop for himself. "I . . . I just have to guard you from bodily harm."

Shawn leaned forward. "That's like the best definition of bodyguard that I've ever heard."

"Please excuse my son, detective," Henry said.

"You don't have to apologize for him, Henry," Lassiter said. "I'm sadly very used to dealing with him."

Shawn didn't like this. He didn't like it at all. This bonding thing had the potential for disastrous results. He'd only narrowly avoided it before, in what Shawn had come to label the fishing debacle of 2007.

"I think I'm getting somewhere with my case," Shawn announced loudly, deciding that shop talk might be the best way to keep them from teaming up against him.

Henry and Lassiter both looked interested, and Shawn applauded himself for his skills at misdirection. "You know where Dupree is hiding?" Lassiter asked.

"Dupree?" Shawn said. "What? No, no, the case, Lassiter, the case."

"This is the case," Lassiter said.

Shawn glanced from Lassiter to his father, incredulous. "Seriously? Does no one listen to me? I'm talking about Amber Delaney."

"The Alice Clothing Amber Delaney?" Lassiter asked.

"Yes," Shawn said. "You haven't found her, have you?"

"I haven't been looking," Lassiter said. "We're a little busy looking for Ingles' Dupree."

"This is exactly my point!" Shawn said. "You're looking for the wrong person."

Henry slammed his hand down on the table. "Enough, Shawn," he said. "I don't care about this Amber Delaney. I care about you. And you've gotten more and more reckless, kid, ever since you started up this little agency of yours. I think you need to stop and think real hard about what's happening right now, because you're not seeing the whole picture, and I taught you better than that. There's no such thing as coincidence, and I think it's time you admit this stalker has more to do with this than you're letting on."

Shawn sat there still, startled. He was torn between being relieved his father had finally just gave in and let him have it, and disturbed by what he'd just been told. But his father was right about one thing.

He still wasn't seeing the whole picture.

"I've lost my appetite," Shawn said, and stood from the table. He was careful not to look at Lassiter as he turned and went up the stairs.

He'd planned to drive Lassiter crazy, he hadn't counted on things tilting on their head, and he didn't want Lassiter to see him this way. He didn't want him to see what his father's words could still do to him.

Shawn went into his room and locked the door, before throwing himself down on his bed. He closed his eyes. Logically, he understood that Ingles' was the best suspect, but everything he knew about people told him that he wasn't.

Still, he had to think of the whole picture, his dad was right, Ingles wasn't a coincidence. The timing was far too convenient.

He opened his eyes when there was a knock on the door, but decided to ignore it. There was another, louder knock, and then Shawn could hear Lassiter take a large calming breath. "Spencer, open this door," he yelled.

Shawn rolled his eyes, but pulled himself to his feet and opened the door. "I can't even be alone in my old room?" he asked.

Lassiter walked inside, glancing suspiciously at the window. "Your father told me about your little trip out the window earlier."

"I'm not going to sneak out in the middle of the night," Shawn said, making a motion over his heart. "Cross my heart, hope to die."

Lassiter grabbed Shawn's old recliner and pulled it in front of the window. "I'm sleeping here."

"You're kidding me," Shawn said. "You're not kidding me? You can't stay here all night! What will my dad think?"

Lassiter dropped down into the chair. "Then you better hope we catch Ingles' soon," he said. "I'm not letting you out of my sight until we do."

"This is ridiculous," Shawn said. "You don't even like me. If Ingles really was some psychotic, he'd be doing you a favor."

"Is that what you really think?" Lassiter asked. "I thought you were psychic?"

"I don't need to use my psychic powers to know how you feel about me, Lassie," Shawn said tiredly, sitting down on his bed. "But I also know that you take your job very seriously, and that I'm probably wasting my breath."

"Shawn," Lassiter said, almost gently. "You drive me nuts, and I think you're a fraud. That doesn't mean I want to see you hurt."

Shawn laughed. "Yeah, I know," he said. "But you just summed up the problem. You think I'm fraud. So you ignore me when I try to explain that Ingles is not a part of this, at least not knowingly."

Lassiter sighed, and went quiet a moment before leaning forward, hands clasped between his knees. "If I've learned anything about you, Spencer," he said, "it's that you never do anything without a reason, even if it seems incomprehensible to me at the time. So tell me. Let's talk it through. I'm willing to listen, if nothing else."

Shawn shook his head. "You don't understand, I can't," he said. "It's all in my head, but I haven't made sense of it yet. It's that break in at Alice Clothing, though, it starts with that. There's something wrong there. It was staged. Whoever broke into that place, they did it for something else."

"But you don't know what," Lassiter said.

Shawn bit his lip. "Amber," he said. "It has to do with her. I'm just not sure how yet."

"Okay," Lassiter said. "Now let me tell you what I know. You have a stalker. You admit to this. And since you've had a stalker, you've had your agency broken into, and you've been run off the road. You're smart enough to know you're in danger here."

"I never said I wasn't," Shawn told him. "I just don't think I'm in danger for the same reasons that you think I am."

"Even if I believed you, it wouldn't change anything," Lassiter said. "You admit you could be in danger. I'm not going anywhere."

Shawn was just trying to think of something he could say to that annoyingly reasonable response, when his phone started ringing. He answered it without glancing at the caller ID, thinking it was Gus calling to apologize.

"Hey, Shawn!" Ingles greeted him, instead.

Shawn sat up straighter. "Ingles!" he said. "Hey, are you okay?"

"Did you call the police on me, Shawn?" Ingles asked. He sounded like he'd been crying. "I tried to go home, but I couldn't. They were there."

Lassiter had jumped to his feet, calling Jules on his cell. "Dupree just called Spencer. I want a trace."

"What? No, Ingles, I didn't call the police on you," Shawn told him, ignoring Lassiter's frantic hand motions telling him to stay on the line. "My friends are just a little overprotective."

"Who was that man you were with?" Ingles demanded. "The tall lanky one."

"Oh, him? That's just Lassie. And I feel like I should warn you that he's tracing your call," Shawn said.

"Oh, okay," Ingles said. "I should probably go then."

"Spencer!" Lassiter snapped, trying to grab the phone from him. Shawn pulled away, sliding over to the opposite side of the bed.

"He already hung up," Shawn told him.

"He knew I was here, Spencer," Lassiter yelled. "He's watching us."

"He's a stalker, that's kind of what he does," Shawn said.

Lassiter pointed at him. "I will deal with you in a minute," he said, before dialing Juliet again. "Did we get anything?"

"It was a payphone. A unit was nearby, but he was already gone when they got there," she told him. "And Lassiter, it was just a couple of blocks away from Mr. Spencer's house."

Lassiter hung up the phone and glared at Spencer. "I hope you realize that you're gambling with your life," he said.

"You had time to get your trace," Shawn said.

"We would have had time to get him, if you'd kept him on the line," he said.

Shawn looked morally outraged. "As a psychic," he said, "I have a code of honor to uphold to. I don't like to lie."

"Really?" Lassiter said, moving around the bed so he could look him in the eyes. "Cause I'm pretty sure you're lying to me right now."

Shawn didn't say anything else, and Lassiter called the station again as he left the room.

xxxxxx

Lassiter snored.

It was pretty much the perfect ending to his really bad day. Shawn flipped over on the bed, trying to ignore the feeling he had that he was being watched. Lassiter was asleep, and anyway it was dark. No one could see him.

He'd changed into his old SBHS P.E. sweat pants, and they ended a few inches above the ankle, which Shawn thought made him look a little like the Hulk. He'd also had no choice but to put on the Ace of Base t-shirt, but it was worth it, because he'd finally made Lassiter laugh.

He couldn't, however, seem to sleep. He hadn't slept in this room since he was eighteen. He hadn't slept in the same house as father in just as long. He'd slept in the same room with Lassiter pretty much never, and that was a whole other thing he didn't need.

And there was the fact that Shawn couldn't stop thinking about Amber.

He didn't even know what she looked like, all he could see was her name on that board, crossed out with a red marker straight through the center. Shawn's worked a lot of places. He knew what it was like to just disappear.

But he didn't know what it was like for no one to come looking, because he had Gus. Amber didn't have anyone. Not even her husband, not really, and Shawn had a really bad feeling that the person that was missing her the most had probably killed her.

Shawn was just about to flip over onto his other side when he heard someone creeping outside the door. He sat up quietly, and kicked Lassiter with his foot. Lassiter was on his feet with his gun aimed at the door before he was even awake.

"What? What is it?" Lassiter hissed.

The door swung open, and Henry was standing there in a fluffy white robe, with a rifle resting on his shoulder. "There's someone in the house," he whispered, before doing some kind of complicated hand signal thing at Lassiter.

Lassiter nodded, shaking his head, pointing at his eyes and back at Henry, and Shawn watched them go back and forth at this for awhile. "You don't honestly expect me to know what any of that means?" Shawn asked in a whisper.

Lassiter glanced at him. "Stay here, Spencer," he demanded, before following Henry out of the room.

Shawn waited about ten seconds, and then grabbed his old bat out from under his bed and followed them out. Henry and Lassiter both glared at him, but they had to keep quiet, and so they just pointed at the floor a lot, which Shawn supposed they thought would get him to stay where he was.

Shawn moved towards the stairs, and Lassiter grabbed him by the collar of his shirt and jerked him back. Shawn sputtered indignantly, but Henry and Lassiter had already gone ahead, creeping down the stairs. Shawn could hear what his father must have heard, slight footsteps coming from the living room.

When they made it to the bottom of the stairs, the back door was wide open.
The three of them made their way silently into the living room, but they couldn't see anyone. Shawn squinted in the darkness, and just as he caught sight of a shadowy figure lurking behind the couch, there was a sudden gunshot.

Shawn barely had time to register this, and then he was hitting the ground hard, his father's fluffy robed body covering him. Shawn felt all the air leave him as the impact hit.

The assailant took off running back towards the back door, and Lassiter followed hot on his heels.

Shawn felt his father roll off him, and saw him stand to turn on the light. He looked down at Shawn to make sure he wasn't hit, and then turned to look at the wall. His favorite mounted fish had not been as lucky as Shawn and Henry. There was a large bullet hole right smack dab in the middle of it.

"That bastard shot my fish," Henry shouted.

Shawn was still on the ground, cradling his cast, and he looked up to glare at his father. "I'm fine by the way, thanks for asking," he said. "Aside from feeling like I was tackled by the White Rabbit. Seriously? What is with that robe? Did you steal it from your day spa?"

Lassiter came running back in, already on his phone. "Get here fast, O'Hara," he said, before hanging up. "I lost him, he drove off before I could get a shot." Lassiter looked over at Henry and Shawn. "You two okay?"

"We're fine," Shawn said. "But it doesn't look good for the fish."

Lassiter held out a hand to help Shawn up. Shawn looked at it for a moment, before reaching out and accepting it. Henry was quick to get to his other side, having finally pried himself away from his fish. "You okay?" Henry asked. "You don't look so good."

Shawn was a little unsteady on his feet. Getting tackled by Henry was like running full speed into a wall, and Shawn should know, he's experienced both. He decided to use the disorientation to his advantage, and spun in place, falling backwards onto the couch as if in a faint. "The car!" he said. "I see the car! It was the BMW, a brilliant midnight blue."

Henry rolled his eyes. "He's fine," he said.

Lassiter was nodding. "Yeah, it was," he admitted. "I didn't get a chance to read the plates."

Shawn nodded. "I wasn't able to read them psychically, either, but how many of them can there be in Santa Barbara?"

"Twenty-eight," Lassiter said. "I had Juliet check earlier when you thought we were being followed. They might be able to narrow it down, if we had the model or a partial license."

"I bet Ingles Dupree doesn't drive a BMW," Shawn said.

Lassiter sighed. "You're assuming it isn't stolen," he said.

"It's not him," Shawn said, sitting up. "I just had a conversation with him. He said nothing about coming to kill me."

"Who else would it be?" Lassiter asked. "Wait, nevermind, there's probably entire lists of people that want to kill you."

"Lassiter," Shawn said softly, using his full name to get his attention. It worked. "Are you telling me there's nothing strange about this?"

"You give me something then, Shawn," Lassiter snapped. "Something aside from some vision or your 'feelings.' Because right now, this is the only lead we have."

Shawn could hear the sirens coming already. He knew whoever had been here was already long gone. His father was watching him closely, impatiently tapping a foot. "You ready to admit you were wrong?" Henry asked.

"Actually," Shawn told him. "I'm more convinced than ever that I'm right."