As the dirt poured into the crate three things went through Carlton Lassiter's mind: first, that within seconds his cell phone would be covered and he would be fighting his way out in the dark. He kept his feet flat against the bottom of the crate so he would be able to tell which way was up. Second, that there was more dirt than he'd anticipated, and it filled the air with a chocking, eye-stinging cloud before it actually filled the box. The shirt over his mouth and nose helped some, and he squinted until his eyes were nearly closed. Finally, he was surprised at how quickly the combined strength of their punches was smashing through the wood. The dirt would be another issue. It was heavier than he'd expected. The light from the cellphone went out and he sucked in a quick breath.
Sometimes, particularly during his separation and divorce, Lassiter had gotten depressed. On occasion, after too much scotch, he'd wondered if his life was worth living. As always, it was his job that got him through to the next day. As corny as it might sound to others, he believed in justice and duty and thought that protecting the innocent was worth doing. As he worked to push himself through the weight of the dirt pinning him in the box he discovered two new reasons for living.
The first of these reasons was Shawn. Initially, he'd suspected that his sexual interest in the psychic consultant was some kind of masochistic impulse aimed at ruining the one thing that kept him going through his darkest moments—work. The eight weeks in which he'd struggled against his libido had been hellish, and Shawn hadn't made it any easier by showing up every week and going into ab-flashing contortions. The discovery that his attraction was mutual changed everything. It certainly explained Shawn's lack of personal space and all the overly familiar touching. His curiosity about where this interest might go could only be satisfied if they both lived. And as he pushed his aching muscles through the heavy soil he realized that he really wanted to know.
His second reason for living was one he hadn't experienced before. As a police officer he'd often been the target of violence. He'd been shot at, stabbed and hit with a car. A suspect had once tried to drop an iron sculpture of a pig on his head from a second storey window. Lassiter didn't take any of these attempts to kill him personally; they were part of the job. But being buried alive evoked an anger that was stronger than he'd ever felt before. Perhaps it was the disregard it showed for Shawn's life as well as his own. Perhaps it was the sadism of the method. Regardless, his body was invigorated by feelings that pushed him past his usual limits of endurance: hatred, and a desire for revenge.
After what seemed a lung-bursting eternity, his right hand pushed through the dirt into empty space. His burning muscles struggled with renewed energy and within seconds his head was free and he was sucking in deep lungfuls of air. He brushed the dirt from his face and opened his eyes. Shawn's head and arm were protruding from the ground next to him. The two men lay there, partly submerged, and tried to regain their strength.
We did it, he thought, feeling an elation close to delirium. We're alive.
Lassiter looked around, hyper-vigilant for any sign of danger. They were in a dirt-floored basement. He could see a shovel and a wheelbarrow and beyond that a water heater and a motley collection of broken toys, furniture, and boxes marked "garage sale stuff." He breathed slowly and evenly, afraid to close his eyes in case their successful escape was all a dream.
One summer he had taken time off and gone to visit his sister in New Jersey. They'd gone to Avon-By-The-Sea and he'd let his nephew, Peter, bury him up to his neck in the wet sand. It had been fun. Being buried in the dirt of Mrs. Montresor's basement was the total opposite of that.
"That worked better than I expected," Shawn said at last.
"If you mean we're both still alive," Lassiter whispered, "then yes, it worked better than I thought it would too."
Shawn grabbed Lassiter's hand and pressed it to his dry, cracking lips.
"Last one out of our unmarked grave's a rotten egg," he said joyfully.
Five minutes of back-breaking work later they stood brushing and shaking the dirt from their faces, hair, and clothes. Shawn grabbed Lassiter and clasped him in a tight embrace. Lassiter hesitated a moment before wrapping an arm around him. It was one thing to lay bare his interest when he'd been pretty sure they were about to die. It might be a different situation now, with his whole life—and career—stretching ahead of him. It suddenly felt like a very risky idea, akin to trying to feed wolverines by hand.
"Listen, Shawn. Things were kind of… Down there, I thought we were…"
Oh God, he thought, how do I say this without sounding like a complete asshole?
"I'm still interested if that's what you're dancing around," Shawn said. "Just let me loose in a bathroom for half an hour first. I must look all Night of the Living Dead here."
This is not the time to have that discussion.
"We are pretty filthy" he said, changing the subject. His suit was rumpled, covered in dirt, and torn in a few places where it had snagged on the wood. It was a write-off. Lassiter pulled his gun and wiped it down with his handkerchief.
"Dude, who carries an actual cloth handkerchief?" Shawn whispered.
"What?" Lassiter shrugged his shoulders. "It's useful."
Shawn pulled out his iphone and called Juliet.
"Hey, Jules. It's Shawn. Listen, we've got a situation here…"
While Shawn called in backup Lassiter looked down at the hole from which they'd crawled, now an indent filled with dirt and rotting wood. He grimaced. His phone was down there somewhere. There'd be time for digging it up later. The hole was now a crime scene.
"Backup is on the way," Shawn said. "Do we go up there or wait down here?"
"Good question." Lassiter dragged a hand down his face, removing a layer of dirt. "If we assume she didn't dig that hole herself we're probably dealing with two perps, one of which is pretty strong." He sighed. He was physically exhausted.
"I'm wiped," Shawn said, as if reading his mind. "But I'm not going to feel right again unless we've handcuffed that psycho."
"You're right." Lassiter looked at the floor. There was a second area of fresh dirt and he was pretty certain they'd be pulling the body of the missing neighbour, Mrs. Fortunato, out of that one. It reminded him of a Cary Grant movie he'd seen on television late on night—Arsenic and Old Lace. "She's like one of the Brewsters."
"Would that be Brewster's Millions or Punky Brewster?" Shawn asked. He had picked up a baseball bat from a pile of old toys and was hefting it tentatively.
"Abby and Martha, actually." Lassiter led the way up the stairs, stepping on the edges of the treads to avoid making noise. He grabbed the doorknob and began to turn it.
Shaw placed a hand on his arm. "What's the plan?" he asked. "Do we just arrest her?"
Lassiter furrowed his brow. "Of course we do." He looked at Shawn's bat. "Vigilante justice is an oxymoron, Spencer. Besides, as much as I'd like to pound the snot of out her right now, she is an old lady."
"Frankly," Shawn said, "after clawing my way out of my own shallow grave I'm willing to overlook that. I hope she goes for a gun and I have to subdue her."
Carlton hated to admit it, but part of him hoped that too.
When Lassiter and Shawn burst into the room they saw Ms. Montresor sitting in the living room with four other women, drinking sherry and eating almonds, biscuits and cheese. It was so incongruous with their expectations that they just stood there a moment, gun and bat in hand, frozen.
"Oh, hello gentlemen," Ms. Montresor said, as if they'd just dropped in for tea. "I didn't think we'd be seeing you up here again."
"I bet you didn't." Lassiter stepped forward, covering her with the gun. The other guests looked bewildered and frightened. "Ms. Montresor," he said, placing a dirty hand on her shoulder, "I'm arresting you on attempted murder and on suspicion of murder."
"Very well," Mrs. Montresor said placidly. "Although I hardly see it as a crime. Mrs. Fortunato was quite obnoxious, you know."
As Lassiter was handcuffing her, to the shocked murmurings of the assembled tea party, the door to the kitchen opened and Detective O'Hara and Officer McNab entered, escorting a large glum faced man in his forties. Mrs. Montressor looked angry.
"You can't arrest my baby!" She wailed. "He just did the digging for me. You can't arrest a boy for listening to his mother."
"Just watch us," O'Hara said. She turned to Shawn and Lassiter. "I'm so glad you guys are okay. Wow. You look—" she didn't finish the sentence. "We can take it from here. You guys go home. Shower. Get some sleep. You can make your statements tomorrow."
Outside Lassiter paced back and forth in front of his car. Handcuffing a perp usually came with a thrill of accomplishment. He was proud that he'd never crossed the line into brutality, but some felons had brought out his more aggressive side. Like Spencer did. Any anger he felt toward the criminals he arrested usually dissipated with some forceful manhandling and the sweet beauty of the criminal justice system. Today was an exception. Arresting Mrs. Montressor felt good, but it didn't come close to sating the anger that had got him out of that crate. He still felt furious, and his mind was weaving revenge fantasies that alarmed him. He turned to Shawn.
"Give me that bat," he said.
Shawn shrugged and handed it over. Lassiter hefted it in his hand a moment and then, with a roar of anger unlike any Shawn had ever heard, he began smashing the hell out of a series of decorative wooden daisies stuck on the side of the little house. Shawn was surprised. Such a display of anger was uncharacteristic of Lassiter; he was more the type who worked his feelings out on the gun range. He'd heard the rumours about what had happened to the figurines the detective had ordered for his ex wife's birthday a few years ago. Shawn stood by the car and waited. O'Hara came to the door, alarmed by the sound, but Shawn raised a hand to assure her that everything was under control.
Lassiter couldn't remember having felt so angry. The little wooden flowers were so fussy, so frilly, and so non-threatening, they seemed obscene to him when contrasted with the mind of the woman living in the house. They just couldn't belong to someone who would bury people alive. They had to go. The same went for that obnoxious wooden cut-out of a child gardening. Screaming a mantra of swear words he smashed into them with the bat, enjoying the feeling of destruction that reminded him that he was alive. The splintered wood flew in all directions. Finally there was nothing left of the tacky ornaments but a few pieces of colourful scrap. A garden gnome in a red pointy hat seemed to be looking at him tentatively. He set the baseball bat gently on the ground and stood there, his chest heaving from the exertion.
Shawn looked up at Lassiter, searching his eyes.
"Good to go?" he asked.
Lassiter took a minute to catch his breath, then nodded.
"Yep. I'm good to go." He strode toward the Crown Vic, still where he'd parked it in the Montresor driveway.
Shawn climbed into the passenger seat. Normally Lassiter would have been concerned about getting his car dirty, but under the circumstances he didn't care. He had bigger things to worry about. Topping the list was the emotional tsunami he could feel building inside him. When he'd been in the crate, his focus on Shawn, and on survival had staved off the panic. But that didn't make the panic go away; it just pushed his anxieties down into his gut. Now that the danger was past all his emotions were bubbling up, threatening to overwhelm him. He needed privacy and scotch, and he needed it soon, before his professional demeanour broke in front of everybody in a way that was more embarrassing than smashing a few wooden daisies.
He pulled the car out of the Montresor' driveway and headed in the direction of Shawn's apartment. He thought back to a class he'd taken in university where they'd memorized Elizabeth Kubler-Ross's stages of grieving: denial, anger, bargaining, depression, and acceptance. It had been denial that had gotten him out of the crate without completely losing it. His escape plan had been ridiculously optimistic. By all rights, they should both be dead. The realization pissed him off, and he suspected this was just the tip of the angry iceberg. He wasn't a safe person for others to be around right now. If he could just get Shawn to his place then he could go home and sort through this mess inside his head.
"So…" Shawn rocked slightly in the passenger seat, as if his boundless energy had returned. "I don't know about you, but it occurred to me in our coffin that I haven't eaten nearly enough pizza in my life. Let's order in."
"Don't call it our coffin," Lassiter said coldly. "I find it creepy." And it makes it sound as if we belonged there—a thought that might make me have to pull over if I dwell on it at all.
"Come on. How often do you have a perp go all Vanishing on you?" Shawn noticed Lassiter's clenched jaw and blank expression. He tried another tactic. "Dude! We just emerged from our own grave. Face it, we're zombies now." Shawn sang in high pitch, "Cause it's a thriller…thriller night…" When Gus was giving him the cold shoulder humour and an eighties song always did the trick.
"We're not zombies," Lassiter said firmly. "Zombies are the reanimated dead. We didn't die." We just almost died. Like within minutes of suffocating kind of almost. He took a deep and calming breath. He could feel the panic welling up and his eyes started to glisten. He bit his lip, hard. Pull it together, he thought. Do not cry in front of Spencer.
"I think I died a little when you kissed me," Shawn said. "But I thought we'd decided on your place for celebratory sex and this direction has 'my place' written all over it. What gives?"
"Actually, if you don't mind, I'll just drop you off." Lassiter said, trying to keep his voice steady. It took all of his willpower to say the words. He was pretty sure that watching a grown man cry and punch things all night was not what Spencer had planned for the evening.
"Exsqueeze me?" Shawn looked at him with a mixture of hurt and confusion on his face. "You're ditching me? Was it something I said?"
"I just want to go home, shower and get some sleep." And drink a lot of scotch and work this awful feeling out of me.
"You're seriously dumping me off at my place?"
Lassiter felt torn. His attraction to Shawn was still there, taunting him. The memory of those few moments of intimacy in the crate was intoxicating. Part of him wished he could just lose himself for the evening in outrageously wild sex. And the few times he'd thought about it, he'd been pretty sure that Shawn would have few inhibitions in that area. But he didn't want to use sex to work out his aggression. That wasn't the kind of man he wanted to be. And despite his ambivalence about starting some kind of same-sex relationship, he felt that Shawn deserved more than some angry sex.
"I need some time to think."
"What about?" Shawn asked. His pushiness was great for solving cases, and sometimes Lassiter even found it endearing. But right now it was infuriating.
Why isn't he freaking out? Lassiter wondered. Doesn't he have normal feelings?
"Listen," he said, in what he hoped was a considerate tone, "I'm not feeling so great." Nice understatement. "I need some time to calm down. I think you might too." Or you would, if you were normal.
He glanced over at the fake psychic, feeling a mix of jealousy and annoyance. Spencer would probably spend an hour shooting people in some video game and feel all better. He, on the other hand, had an adult life, and in the adult world things like this had more unpleasant consequences. He wasn't looking forward to the mandatory sessions with the departmental psychiatrist that were sure to come once Chief Vick heard about the incident at the Montresor house. He wasn't interested in talking about his feelings—not with Spencer, and certainly not with some stranger who was going to write it all down and report it to his boss. If the shrink thought he had mental problems his career was over. He grimaced. Montresor had tried to kill him, but he'd be damned if he'd let her kill his career.
"Is this about my not being psychic?" Shawn asked, his voice slightly higher than normal. "I can explain that."
"No. It has nothing to do with that." I have so much crap to wade through right now that's not even on my list.
"See, I knew that you never believed me about the psychic thing, and I thought it would make you feel better, so I said I wasn't, but really it's…." Shawn was talking fast, back-pedalling on his confession as much as he could. Lassiter had seen criminals do it dozens of times. It was pathetic. More, it was insulting. "So we can go back to normal, right?" Shawn was saying. "Me solving all your tough cases and you being impressed but afraid to say so. Sound good?"
Lassiter pulled the car to a stop a block from Shawn's apartment. He was having enough trouble controlling his anger right now. He didn't need to get into it with Spencer about all the years he'd been misleading the Chief, lying to everyone he worked with, and defrauding the department.
God, how could I even have considered having any kind of a relationship with someone like that?
"Get out." Lassiter sat staring straight ahead. He couldn't look Spencer in the eyes right now.
"Why?" Shawn sounded like he knew exactly why.
"Get out of the car, Spencer. Now!" Lassiter put all the force he could muster behind it.
"Fine." Shawn opened the door and stepped out of the vehicle. "Happy now? I'm out."
Lassiter leaned over, and pulled the door closed. As Shawn watched incredulously, the Crown Vic pulled away.