A/N… There is just a TON of exposition in this chapter. The author (that's me! :-D) would like to thank you for your continued patience, latitude and understanding. (At least you get some explanations)

Previously…

Lassiter turned on his heel, already walking as he spoke. "We'll put traces on their cell phones – see if we can find them that way. I'll put a BOLO out on O'Hara's car and call her road-side assistance company…" he frowned as he tried to recall which service she used. "I'll get CSI out to that scene, too, since that's her last known location. Maybe they'll find something." He nodded to himself. "You and I will head out there as soon as I bring the chief up to speed."

Gus nodded his understanding, but Lassiter had one more thing to say before he entered Chief Vick's office. "You call his dad."

oO0Oo
Testing, Testing, One, Two, Ouch!
Chapter 5
oO0Oo

Later that same day, Lassiter and Gus returned from investigating Juliet's abandoned vehicle. Lassiter strode into the station, already shouting for Buzz and Dobson and somebody had better have some good news.

Gus followed more quietly, frantic in his own right. He was not surprised to see Henry just coming out of the chief's office. As soon as Gus had informed him that his son was missing, Henry had, of course, demanded to be part of the investigation. Judging by his expression, he'd just been informed of the current situation.

"What did you find at the scene?" Henry stopped the head detective with a look, and Gus was impressed with Lassiter's ability to stay calm enough to answer – because they hadn't found anything.

"O'Hara's car was there. It was definitely tampered with, one of the radiator hoses had been cut so that it would overheat. They'll go over it for prints, but I doubt they'll find anything. The only clue we found was a water bottle with traces of some kind of sedative inside. The lab will let us know what type exactly, but they were able to give us that much on scene."

He noticed McNab standing nervously off to the side, files in his hands. "Detective Lassiter, this is the preliminary forensic report from the suspect's office building…"

Lassiter snatched it from his hands impatiently. He grimaced at the news he found there. "CSI didn't find anything at the office, but they found the dumpster where this Mallow left his garbage. Only item of note? A nearly empty water bottle," he looked up at the others meaningfully, "with traces of sedative inside."

Henry considered the news. "So Shawn was somehow lured to this office, drugged, and taken who knows where. Our suspect also tampered with Juliet's car and followed her until it broke down. He must have pretended to be some kind of Samaritan. He offered her the water, drugged her, and carried her off too."

Lassiter nodded grimly, agreeing that it was the most likely scenario, the identical water bottles tying the two together. He hated the Spencers and their habit of throwing out wild guesses that turned out to be incredibly logical once he caught up.

Henry continued, "The question is: Why?"

Before Lassiter could respond, Buzz was holding out another file. "Preliminary report on the evidence brought in by Mr. Guster." He offered Gus a small smile which was returned along with a nod.

"Must be a slow day in the lab," Lassiter mumbled as he scanned the new info and reported on it as well. "The business card was clean other than Spencer, but there was a partial print on the check." He squinted at the report. "A Raymond Griffin? It says here he was convicted of–"

"He was convicted of murdering two little girls in Grand Island, Nebraska back in the 70s," Henry interrupted, causing everyone within earshot to stare at him.

"Henry?" Lassiter asked, his voice deceptively calm. "You know this guy?" It certainly wouldn't be the first time that someone from Henry's past had gone after Shawn.

Henry just looked at him for a moment, but everything about his stance was broadcasting that this was bad – really bad. "Nope... But I know who does."

oO0Oo

Juliet stared at Shawn. Her heart and her badge were at war.

She ached for him. Seeing him beaten, bleeding, and trapped when there was nothing she could do to help him was unbearable. But her cop training was trying to dispassionately ascertain his condition. Ironically, it was a good thing Mallow had left the knife in place. It was the only thing slowing the bleeding. His breathing was shallow, but it seemed unimpeded, so hopefully Mallow's punches hadn't done too much damage to his insides. As long as he didn't move too much, his condition, while poor, should remain relatively stable.

At the same time, about fifteen different questions were screaming around in her mind. She grabbed the most comforting one. "Isn't your mom in New York? So even if you tell him, we'll have time to–"

Shawn barked a short humorless laugh and coughed. "She gets in tonight. She's working with the LAPD next week, but she's flying in a few days early for a visit. Dad's picking her up-. Oh, sweetheart, I forgot to tell you, we're invited for dinner Saturday night." Then he realized it probably was Saturday night. He laughed ironically, then moaned as his ribs protested the movement. "I guess we're going to be late."

"Shawn," she whispered. "How do you know all this?"

He knew she wasn't asking about his mom's travel plans. He knew what she meant, but his brain and his mouth weren't getting along very well at the moment. "That wasn't in there."

"What?"

"How tight are the cuffs?"

"Shawn…"

"Can you get any leverage on the ring? How's it attached to the wall? It's screwed in, right? Not driven like a nail… Can you twist it at all?"

"Shawn!"

"Please!" His voice was softly desperate. "Please try."

She hesitated. She couldn't leave him! But he was right; being free from the wall would be an advantage no matter what, so she turned on her knees and faced the ring. She wrapped the chain around it to give herself some leverage and began to twist with all her strength.

"Righty tighty, lefty loosey," Shawn whispered. "He won't be gone long."

Grunting with the effort, she continued with her line of questioning. "What wasn't in there?"

He relented. "The RC car. That wasn't in the scrapbook. There's no possible way that he could know anything about my fifth birthday that wasn't in that scrapbook... unless..."

"How do you know it wasn't? You told me you hadn't seen that book in twenty years." She strained to see any movement at all. "And if it wasn't, how did Mallow know about it?"

Shawn sighed, and coughed. Deep breaths seemed difficult for him. "I saw the book. I know what's in it. It doesn't matter how long ago." He swallowed. Since he couldn't watch what she was doing, he absently watched his blood. It was dripping down the arm of the chair from the cut in his wrist and the puddle under his thigh was growing. He wondered idly how long it would be before the blood loss would actually affect him, or if it already had and he just didn't know it. "I know where that story was, though… The only place he could have seen it. It explains everything."

Juliet readjusted her grip and tried again.

Shawn continued. There was nothing else he could do. "It was in an academic paper my mom published when I was five. She included the story about the toy car because it demonstrated my abilities."

"Your… abilities?" Juliet grunted. Her wrists were red and raw where the cuffs dug into them, but she kept trying. It was their only chance.

"There were three of us she researched for that paper." Shawn voiced a shuddering sigh. "That's who the 'others' were." He imitated Mallow's voice. "'I didn't spend nearly this much time with the others. They had nothing to give me.' He went after each of us one by one trying to find her… Research!" he huffed out as if to himself. "Why didn't I think…? That's what he meant!"

"Wait. If it was your mom's paper, wouldn't her name be on the front page? Wouldn't he know who the author was? He'd be after her already. And you still haven't explained why he's after her in the first place."

"Any luck?"

"No!" Juliet said with frustration. This ring had to turn!

Shawn closed his eyes, laid his head back against the chair, and began his story with, "Guess you'll have to do the reveal, Jules." because he was pretty sure that he wasn't getting out of here. But if she could, then both Jules and his mom would be safe. And that was all that mattered to him.

He continued. "In the mid 70s, there was a double homicide that shocked a small town in Nebraska. Two young girls were horribly beaten and stabbed multiple times." He'd come across the file including the crime scene photos while searching his mom's closet for Halloween costume materials for himself and Gus. He'd been only eleven at the time.

His curiosity had gotten the better of him and he'd opened the file. They had been the first photos he'd seen that had been quite that graphic. He kept every memory, but those had been seared into his brain. He grimaced and opened his eyes trying to dismiss the images. "Long story short, cops would never have caught the guy if not for a criminal profile done by a young and talented psychologist. It was the proverbial nail in the coffin of his capture and his conviction."

"Your mom." Juliet ignored the pain in her wrists and kept twisting. Had she felt some give?

"Yup. He was convicted and sentenced to life. Of course he blamed her. He threatened to get revenge on her for years: letters, emails, phone calls… all kinds of threats. She tried every legal means to get him to stop but nothing worked. Somehow they kept coming. Finally she was so affected by them she quit. She gave up a promising career in profiling, changed her name and moved to California to try to get away from him. She was that desperate. And it worked. The threats stopped. Any movement yet?"

"Maybe. It seems looser."

"Keep going."

"You, too." His story was distracting her – it was helping.

"So after about what – thirty years in prison? He gets out on parole… Must've been last year…" he said softly to himself, then continued with his story. "The only things he could've known about my mom were her name - her birth name which wouldn't be any help to him since she'd legally changed it - and the fact that she had a tonal eidetic memory."

"A what?" Jules asked, breathing hard.

Shawn smiled softly. "It's like a photographic memory, only with sound."

"She remembers everything she hears?"

Shawn nodded. "She was kinda famous for it at the time of the trial. Never took notes. Remembered everything."

Juliet kept working; there was definite movement. "So why couldn't he find her?"

"She changed her name when she moved to California. Then she changed it again when she got married." He smiled again. "Took my dad's name. Moved again to be with him. But she still used her birth name for professional stuff 'cause it was better known, at least in those circles – more likely to get published - to get noticed…
That was a mistake.

So, years later, probably without even thinking about it, she published her research on eidetic memory under her birth name: the name he knew. It was that paper that she published under that name that he found. Has to be."

She'd turned the ring a quarter turn. "You mentioned that. Tell me about the paper."

"She did a research paper on eidetic memory. Not just tonal like hers but full photographic memory. She studied three people: a guy in Oregon, a woman in Wisconsin, and her own five year old son."

"You."

"Me."

"You have this… eidetic memory?" She grunted with effort.

"I can't ever forget anything, Jules, even when I want to."

She paused in her work, thinking about that. "Wow," she whispered. And suddenly a lot of things she'd never understood about Shawn - the way he made impossible connections, saw things that no one else could see, understood facts instantly that took her hours of research - it all made sense. But he wasn't paying attention to her reaction.

"Research! Why couldn't I see? Why didn't I make the connection?" Shawn was furious with himself. If he could have figured out who Mallow was sooner, maybe he could have avoided all of this somehow.

Then he answered his own question. "Because it didn't seem like research. What she did with me… I was five... it was more like fun and games. I had no idea she was studying me at the time. It was only later – years later – when I actually read her paper…"

"Wait-" a thought had occurred to Juliet. "Research papers don't normally contain names of the subjects. How did he find you?"

Shawn shrugged. "When he found the paper, he must have gone back to the university. They would have had her notes on file. That's what I would've done."

He forced himself back to his story. "Since that was his only lead, he must have checked us out one by one. I remember reading a few months ago that the woman in Wisconsin had been killed in a home invasion, but I never thought anything of it. There's no way she would have know where my mom was. She never stood a chance with him.
I don't know about the Oregon-ite… Oregonian? Guy from Oregon. But I'm guessing he's dead too. And now me."

"But if he knows it's your mom…"

"I don't think he does. That wouldn't have been very professional, so she made no mention of our relationship in the paper. I don't think he's figured that part out yet. I think that's why he's using you: He doesn't believe I would sacrifice the woman I love for some researcher I met once when I was five. He didn't even know if I would remember – that's why he tested me… But now? He expects me to sing as soon as he comes back in here… And then he'll…" He scrunched his eyes shut, trying not to see the crime photos again. 'That's what he'll to do to Jules.' He clenched his fists, causing his wrists to bleed again.

Juliet, finishing the first turn, didn't notice. "It's working, Shawn! I think it's getting easier to turn."

"Great work, sweetheart. Keep going." But his voice contained none of the enthusiasm it should have.

TBC...