Disclaimer: All publicly recognizable characters, settings, etc. are the property of their respective owners. The original characters and plot are the property of the author. The author is in no way associated with the owners, creators, or producers of any media franchise. No copyright infringement is intended. Don't own references to PT Cruisers or Super 8 Hotels.
Author's Note: Thank you so much for the continued support and wonderful encouragement! I apologize for how long it takes in between updates, as well as for the many author responses I still owe many of you. Trying to get a handle on all the issues of real life stuff, but it seems to only keep working in theory. I'm not going to give up trying to get caught up, and I just want to let all of you know how much I love and appreciate your feedback! Thank you a million times over. :)
Reviews, feedback, and constructive criticism are always welcomed. Thanks so much for reading!
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Chapter Seven: One More Cup Of Coffee Before I Go To The Valley Below
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# # #
Henry pressed his palm against his mouth and leaned against his kitchen counter. The ledge dug into the middle of his back, but he stayed in place, in need of something solid—and pain inducing—to keep him from charging out of the house. After all, he could hardly enlist the help of the SBPD, and it would be, as Gus had already pointed out, a scavenger hunt without a list or a map. But, the GPS in Shawn's phone? still raced through his mind, on occasion. Not without probable cause, another thought reminded in immediate response. He blew out another frustrated breath through his nose.
Everything doing, he still found himself shocked an hour after Gus's arrival and confession that Gus, as Shawn's best childhood friend, had not seen nor spoken to nor heard from Shawn in nearly two month's time. At first, Henry assumed it was a joke and scolded Gus, and Shawn by association, for wasting his time.
"You remember that night, at the hospital?" Gus said, his heart thumping in his chest, practically loud enough for Henry to hear. "That was the last time. Not that I haven't been trying," Gus amended quickly. "I even went to his last known apartment." He was lying to Henry; together, they'd visited the Head Detective's hospital room once, but Gus had felt that Shawn had already drifted away.
Henry raised an eyebrow. "He's gone?"
Gus nodded. He looked very downtrodden, but not especially worried, so Henry wondered if he knew something he wasn't letting on.
"Gus," Henry began with a big breath, "what exactly happened that night I met you two at the hospital?"
"Shawn didn't say anything to you?"
"No." He frowned. "And you left in quite a hurry, as I recall." With no explanation, he added with his eyes. To his surprise, a flash passed across Gus's face. "Did the two of you have a fight?"
Gus shrugged. "I don't know if you call it that," he admitted. "I . . . I got really angry with Shawn, and it took a long time—I hope not too long, for me to get over it." Gus looked really sad. "I know at least that Shawn is still in Santa Barbara."
The eyebrow raise again. "How do you know that?"
Gus explained about the cafe spotting, and deli spotting and other various locales he had checked. He hated that he was always one step or half step too late—he hadn't yet caught up with Shawn, though he'd started staking out these places anyway. Still, a man had to eat, and occasionally sleep, and still go to his other job and be presentable and even friendly. Gus sighed.
"Wait, Gus, I think you're getting ahead of yourself." Henry fixed his eyes on Gus. "You skimmed over what brought Shawn to the hospital in the first place."
Gus cleared his throat, unsure of why Henry worried him so much. He guessed Mr. Spencer might lecture him about the definition of friendship, but he couldn't help the way he'd reacted to yet another (bloody) mess Shawn had created. He sighed again, then started at the beginning, which meant going all the way back to the day that Shawn had brought them to the beach to look at another corpse—another victim of the latest known, or known of, serial murderer. At first, Gus considered omitting things, either out of protection for himself, Shawn or Henry, but knowing his retelling had holes because he was missing Shawn's side of it only made Gus want to put it all out on the table. Let Henry, the esteemed retired cop, make sense of every horrible tidbit.
"I guess it started"—by this he meant their rift—"with Shawn's text message. It told me nothing other than Shawn was going off to do something stupid."
"That's what it said?" Henry rolled his eyes with a sneer.
"Yes, it did. It said he was going to do something stupid to fix something stupider he'd done," Gus paraphrased. "But all day I'd had this feeling there was something important he wasn't telling me. And he wouldn't tell me, even though I asked him five times."
Henry nodded; he understood perfectly what this felt like, and how truly annoying it was. In spite of being Shawn's father, he did not always guess the right "something important", and was too often kept in the dark while Shawn acted on feckless, unguided notions.
Before Henry could ask, Gus continued. "But I found out where he went." Gus clenched his fists then ran both hands across his head. Henry noted that Gus was shaking with a bout of what could easily be rage.
Gus shook his head. He didn't know exactly what had happened while Shawn had been there, but as he replayed Shawn's whispered words in the station, he felt grim. Shawn had showed up at the police station covered in blood. He'd wiped out in the parking lot, tearing his clothes, but the way he'd come in, they way he looked—
Henry whistled to get his attention. Gus shook his head. He explained that his concern for whatever Shawn might be doing drove him to leave work and head over to the SBPD, where he tried unsuccessfully to convince Juliet and Chief Vick to investigate. Meanwhile, he told Henry, he'd learned that Detective Lassiter had been sort of missing, but he hadn't paid much attention to it.
"Missing?" Henry repeated. He recalled, from that night at the hospital, frenzied chatter at a nursing station, but he hadn't paid much mind. Probably because he hadn't heard any names directly, or seen any familiar faces.
Gus nodded distractedly. "I'm getting to that."
Again, Henry looked surprised.
"After I was there for a while, Shawn showed up." He paused, then explained Shawn's entire "routine" while Henry listened, wide-eyed. He told Henry about Shawn's appearance, and Shawn's explanation for it, then admitted to his violence against Shawn, after learning that Shawn's stupid errand had taken him to the hideout of a killer. Henry looked paler with each sentence Gus uttered, and Gus felt so bad he almost stopped. "I'm not sure how he knew—or if it was an accidental find—but Shawn found that the serial killer had taken Detective Lassiter prisoner." Gus sniffed, as if he could smell blood right now. He shook his head. "I didn't see Lassiter until after they'd—uh—I visited him in his hospital room once, but he was all bandaged up." Gus bit his lip. "I know that he was stabbed, in the side. Shawn said that Lassiter was going to die."
Henry felt the sharp ledge pressing him and moved away from the counter. He could no longer stand it, to be upright. Gus, smartly, had already taken a seat, halfway through reenacting Shawn's "vision session". It was draining to listen to, Henry thought. He tightened his fists but his fingers released too quickly; it was draining enough to hold onto anger when fear had a better hold.
Gus frowned. "We didn't talk very much, on the way there. I didn't go in there, the building, with them—uh, Juliet and the two of us were the first ones there."
"Why was that?" Henry's eyes narrowed.
Gus shrugged uncomfortably. He didn't want to speak badly of Vick; she'd had every reason to doubt Shawn after his ridiculous charade. Instead, he told Henry of Juliet's outburst, of her demands of Shawn, and how she'd rushed out of the station with the pair hot on her heels. "They . . . they went in," he told Henry, looking away. "I didn't."
Henry nodded; he knew Gus was very squeamish. "Why did Detective O'Hara let Shawn go with her?"
Gus's mouth twitched. "Because he knew the way."
Henry slammed his palm on the table, causing Gus to jump, and muttered a few choice phrases under his breath.
"It wasn't her fault," Gus said softly. He shook his head for the millionth time. "She was so . . . so pissed when she found out Shawn knew something about Lassiter's whereabouts. I guess . . . wait." His forehead furrowed as he recalled his first glances—before running away—at the beach crime scene. Lassiter was not there, he remembered, and Shawn had even pointed that out when he returned to the car. Still, he didn't know her motives—if her worries over Lassiter had manifested just before he got to the station, or if it had been festering much longer than that. He wasn't about to tell Henry that Juliet would have forced Shawn at gunpoint, if he'd been unwilling, to take her to her partner. But Henry knew Juliet was armed, anyway.
After a few minutes, Henry asked, "Do you know what happened inside?"
"Not everything, but I know the killer was shot dead, and Lassiter rushed to an ambulance shortly after Vick and a bunch of officers arrived. Shawn walked out with Juliet and Chief Vick, and then found me waiting in the car. He threw up," Gus remembered, on the drive.
Henry gasped softly. "Shawn threw up?" Shawn never had a weak stomach; as a boy, he'd seen plenty of inappropriate things, from scary movies to crime scene photos to actual crime scenes—though Henry often did his best to keep Shawn shielded. Still, even as a child, Shawn hardly puked over gruesome sights; it was more likely from overindulging (gorging) himself on picnic food or pizza or sweets that led to a queasy stomach. Henry wished he knew more; he cursed himself for not prodding Shawn on the night he'd brought him home, stitched up and bandaged and tight-lipped. Something struck him.
"Gus, did you—you didn't come pick him up then, a few days after that? To go get his bike?"
"No, Mr. Spencer," Gus said. "Like I told you—"
"Yeah." He looked grim, hating that he had made an assumption that Shawn was not "lost", that he had just gone off with Gus—that he'd had someone to talk to, at least. What he should have been doing was making up flyers, handing them out around town, with the most decent looking newspaper clipping he had of his son's face. Have you seen this psychic? Henry rubbed his eyes.
"I came to you because I figured there was a chance he might have contacted you—"
Henry smiled humorlessly. He could remember plenty of times that Shawn and Gus had had their childhood disagreements, choosing not to speak for no more than a week; but even when they were apart as Shawn traveled the world and Gus went to college, they managed to keep in contact. Henry felt a little bit sick; he could hardly imagine what could have occurred that drove Shawn to uncomfortable silence, that kept him from reaching out.
Still, for Gus to shoulder his rage for several weeks as well as he lugged around that pharmaceutical case made Henry very curious to learn more of what had gone on. He made a mental note to do some investigating—wondered what he could say to Vick to get her to spill all that she knew. Maybe he could get some information from Detective O'Hara—or perhaps that giant puppy-looking fellow of a rookie who always greeted everyone with a smile.
Gus had caved first; his anger—rare to make appearances, hold on, a slow burn—had cooled within the last few weeks. He had, Henry understood, been making the best attempts. Phone calls, asking around, seeking last known residences, and now having a discussion with Henry. Henry . . . he'd been giving Shawn space, or so he thought. He wished he'd pressed Gus, or Shawn, for more details that night.
So, where were they supposed to go from here? Henry understood that Gus hadn't come here expecting Henry to fix everything; he wanted a partner, a team effort, because that's what he needed to find Shawn. That's what was needed.
Please, Shawn, Gus implored silently, looking around Henry's kitchen, wanting to believe that his friend could somehow hear him. Would somehow forgive him. Answer the phone the next time I call.
# # #
Carlton navigated his rental car down the dusty, desolate stretch of highway towards Norton—a one hundred mile trek from the nearest major International airport, in Clovis. As it turned out, the airport closest to Norton—a mere eighteen miles from the center of the town—was the most expensive to fly directly in to; it was cheaper, his travel agent assured him, to fill up his tank a few times on the long journey through the desert. After economy seating, and the smallest economy rental car he could ever remember being assigned—nearly comparable to that PT Cruiser imitation Guster's company had allotted him—Carlton wanted nothing more than to stand in a cold shower with its pressure hard enough to bruise.
Hell, he should have just taken a room at a hotel close to the airport if he'd really wanted that. The best thing he could hope for in this upcoming hick town's Super 8 was a lukewarm flow that was mostly free of debris, and a couple of thin towels as comforting as sandpaper.
The center of the town—both terms were up for debate in relevancy, as well as the actual definitions usually applied to these words. Though, for all his research, it was impossible to tell just what he would be walking into when all the pictures he saw were the size of postage stamps, from aged, out of date brochures, many for booming attractions just outside of Norton.
It was, Carlton guessed, a tight knit community—as small as those postage stamp thumbnails he'd been treated to online. (Or the one time he'd used his monocle to read an Atlas.) Turned out the town was so small it was barely a dot bigger than a period at the end of a sentence among the long stretches of deserts on the way to Roswell or Albuquerque. Not a place you stayed, if you had plans.
Lassiter swallowed. Not a place you could kill in—or make a killing in—without drawing attention; even business success might be frowned upon. All men there could be on some equal playing field—poor as dirt or as rich as a ranch's lands. He had a horrible feeling he'd stick out like a sore thumb. But it was fine; he wasn't treading ground to make friends, or gain trust, or be flashy about his fancy job title back home.
Back . . . home. Lassiter ignored a dull shudder that echoed through his bones.
As much as he despised O'Hara's stumbled glimpse at his hidden scars, Carlton felt a twinge of gratefulness that she'd been too distracted to notice his boarding pass, left somewhat carelessly on the top of his dresser. It was, he'd decided with little hesitation, a one way ticket. He'd given Vick a timeline because she'd needed it or she wouldn't have allowed the trip at all; sooner or later, his vacation time would run out. He'd told himself that it had been the relative expense of the ticket alone that had had his travel agent haggling him to fly into such a faraway airport. "Let's face it, Detective, your salary is paltry," she'd reminded him dryly. "You're not a millionaire."
The truth was—besides that he wasn't a millionaire—he hadn't argued as much with the travel agent as he should of because, in literally driving the distance to Norton, he gave himself the leeway to change his mind. Just ten miles from the airport, he could turn back, or thirty miles; even an 99 miles he could . . . Carlton closed his eyes, reassured by the growl at the back of his throat. What was he really going to do, get back on plane? Go home?
Again, the word echoed dully.
# # #
Just who am I . . . without you? The thought, its shell and all of its glittering shards ricocheted through her, on her way out of his doorway. Juliet. Still whole, she told herself, she'd managed to get outside, with forward thinking intended. And she wondered, later, her stomach twisting, if her partner thought that same thought . . . about Grant.
She'd navigated the streets by rote, her mind replaying their hushed conversations—her own voice cutting into him with accusation, and his return fire. Friendly fire, which the killer had put him up to.
They hadn't exactly ended on a high note—not even the highest note Juliet thought Lassiter could handle in this situation—E flat—and it left her emotions in a restless limbo. She furiously wanted to understand—though her personal reasons of why were murky at best to her—the psychological reasoning behind Lassiter's words, because any inadvertent spilling of descriptive language that made the action of his torment come alive for her was nearly useless for her to process otherwise. Juliet ran Lassiter's declarations through a shredder, hoping that, if in pieces, she could make sense of what he had said.
And she wanted to know, no matter how brutal or personal, every last thing: what he had seen, heard, said, thought, touched, tasted, how much he'd rattled Grant with his own words or weapons, how much he fought back.
Juliet had unlocked her door stiffly, entering her darkened house, her thoughts still wild.
Her memory of him, their faces bent close together, his shoulders hunched to be level with her eyes. A few seconds before they were snarling at each other, eyebrows sloped, eyes lit up with anger. So close. They hadn't left things well, but how was that possible? She had seen his scars, heard him deny his sickening attachment to his torturer-abductor, and believed he was running away without her. And it left her furious—and empty, questioning everything she knew, or thought she knew.
"Carlton, this sounds like Stockholm Syndrome! Why not let a therapist—"
Exasperated, he'd lashed back at her, "Did you ever think he had Stockholm Syndrome with me?"
It was more than simple misspeaking; Juliet was chilled that Lassiter could actually mean what he had mangled in saying.
Perhaps, she had misspoken too; it was utterly delusional for her to believe he would tell a police sanctioned therapist a single unnecessary detail. And this—this was not something he meant to say aloud; to anyone else, it would have been a life-altering, career ending mistake.
But said to her . . . Juliet closed her eyes. It was a real question that Carlton wanted her to answer.
Juliet tried to fill in the blanks of what she didn't know of what Lassiter had suffered. His words left her with cryptic clues, pieces that didn't fit together, and to top it off, he was not a man who shared much.
And yet he had already shared plenty, out of remorse or suspicion, she couldn't be sure. At the outskirts, she wondered if he secretly feared that she would tattle on him to the Chief if he failed to be clear. Was that the reason why he had told her anything at all? Not out of trust for their working relationship? Not because he knew that she'd always have his back?
# # #
No more, Juliet thought. No more . . . feeding him, getting him through the day. No more physical contact, no more on-sight assurance that he was here, that he was . . . as "all right" as could be expected. She sat back in her chair, unable to really believe it. Understand it. Lassiter's desk chair was empty, his computer off. Stacks of papers and writing utensils had been arranged neatly on the desk; his stapler was at an angle to his keyboard. His coffee mug sat next to his wire inbox, while it held only empty file folders.
She wasn't . . . so sure what to do with herself now.
And what was the reason given for his leaving? That he wanted closure? Juliet turned it over and over in her mind, twisting every which way to bring it any degree of sense. Her partner didn't take vacations. He never took personal time, unless it was ordered of him. Even on suspensions pending, he still found ways around to do his work, doing as much as he could without a warrant or a badge to get the perp clean.
But since he'd come back from forced personal time off—due to his inability to pass physical clearance—they hadn't gone out into the field together once. No. Lassiter had been "fine" enough with staying at his desk, staying inside the station. Is that why she'd assumed . . . he was going to stay?
Except that his leaving the state had not meant that he was leaving the force, or that he had abandoned his career, his arrest record, his job title, his parking space, his Sweet Lady Justice—
Juliet smiled bitterly to herself. No, her partner had only abandoned her. Which, she knew as she thought it over, could not be entirely truthful, but she couldn't ignore the sting of it, the notion of it, how it felt too true.
Juliet thought back to almost a week ago, to that last awkward visit to her partner's apartment; she was still going over it, trying to sort it all out.
Sometimes, she thought she was close.
In a way—in his way—he'd apologized to her. He'd caught up to her in the hallway of his building, and had let it slide that his outburst inside hadn't been directed at her. She'd stared back with glossed eyes.
"Him?" she asked quietly after a little while. "The killer?"
"You . . . you saw them," he replied, not looking at her. He touched his chest briefly.
"Carlton, I'm—I didn't mean—"
Lassiter shook his head, frowning. "I'm not leaving because of you."
"It's because of . . . the killer," Juliet filled in. "Everything you do is because—"
"It's not like that," he'd told her, his eyes hooded with shadows. But he looked guilty, almost ashamed. And it was after this that she'd incited his misrepresented words. She had demanded, as soon as she thought she'd understood, what the hell he meant.
In his haste to catch up with her—funny, really, since he had longer legs—his left hand had found her wrist; he'd pressed his palm against her sleeve.
She'd walked to her car, absently pressing her own palm against that sleeve.
"Come on, it's not like you'll miss me," Lassiter tried to joke with her after the heated silence where he'd refused to explain the Stockholm Syndrome comment. His voice was level, but a few volumes lower than its usual booming—well, what she knew he was still capable of—as if he was speaking this way in consideration of others who might be sleeping nearby.
Juliet frowned, uneasy. Sometimes, when she looked at him, she wasn't all together certain who she was looking at. It made her want to smack him in the face to goad his old personality out of hiding. "I already miss you," she said under her breath.
Either Lassiter didn't hear her or pretended he hadn't. "Come on, you'll be too busy to even notice." He gave a wrinkled smile, seemed to be waiting for her to say something—one way or the other—but Juliet couldn't figure out which version would hurt less.
But eventually she offered something he might want to hear—a confidence that she could handle anything that came her way. She could do it with a smile too.
# # #
Juliet shook her head and tried to refocus on a current case. She was still here, still needed as a helpful authority for the many as of yet faceless victims in her very own jurisdiction. And Lassiter had left her—in charge. She sighed bitterly, and her thoughts drifted off again.
She had tried to imagine it—through reading the words he put on paper, and from what he'd told her—in and out of context—but the true horror of Lassiter's experience escaped her. Even after she'd seen the pictures, even after she saw his scars up close, in person. There were days, few and far between, when he'd come in without a tie—or had removed it after a long shift; she had seen part of the scar on his sternum, an angry, bulging band of white.
"He'll need stitches." Juliet clicked her tongue. Unbidden, Shawn's panicking voice flooded her mind. She could realize now that Shawn had sounded like he was on the verge—a tad hysterical, almost in tears. There had been an absence of good-natured teasing; in its place, a mess of words when five would have sufficed: "I know where he is." Had it been fair to place so much blame on him? Way to shoot the messenger, right? Juliet frowned and traced a coffee ring on her desk with two fingers, following the perfect, muddy circle around and around. A little bit of an ache was forming in her; before, she hadn't let herself miss Shawn's sporadic and unannounced presence. In fact, she'd pushed all of her emotions—or most, anyway—regarding his behavior on that evening away—keeping dust bunnies and half-started childhood dreams company in the back of her head. She had been refusing to feel.
Juliet licked her lips. She needed to get Shawn to come in, or venture out to the Psych office, sit down and have a talk with him. Get back on stable ground with him. He might be . . . all she had left.
Or she could . . . unravel herself, thread by thread, the whole time still clinging to something? Hell, but where was the sense in that? People who used to talk to her all the time now barely said two words to her. As if she was no longer worth it—worth the exertion or energy. But were some of those people—fair weather friends? Maybe . . . they were the ones not worth it, and she should know better by now—she needed to let them go. And for cops, they were terrible at truly reading people. Well. Not everyone could be a psychic, she reasoned. If she started pulling at the loose bits of herself, how was she supposed to put herself back together when it was done? Because, one day, it had to be done. Didn't it?
So . . . reconnect with Shawn. It was at its best when it was on paper, or less, when it was a burst of thought spiraling vaguely in her head. Juliet had done her best to piece together all the moments she remembered of that night when Shawn was present; even she remembered him leading her into the darkness of the structure. They were like two children, following a trail of blood; it made her almost sick enough to retch or dry heave just halfway in.
He knew the way, his path more clear then hers. Something leading him. If she hadn't been holding her gun, ready to brace it, she might have taken his hand. They'd moved quickly, in sync, absolutely no hesitation. Still, her thoughts had raced; Shawn's words had painted awful pictures in her head. Nightmares, she had heard in the station, before Shawn had spoken the word "stitches," a word that faltered terribly, as if it were an effort just to breathe it.
She remembered, with a bitter taste in her mouth, Shawn squeezing his fingers around hers, pressing his palm to hers. It was after . . . she had literally been forced to stand up and once she was standing she thought her knees might buckle.
But Shawn . . . he'd held onto her, even when she'd . . . Juliet closed her eyes. Dug her fingernails into his arm, dragged him with her.
Then he'd slipped through her fingers. She couldn't find him again. Not in so many months.
Was it, really? Absently, Juliet ran a hand through a tousle of blond curls that had fallen out of her clip. Was it, that night? The last time?
No, no, that couldn't be right. Juliet recalled seeing Gus at the hospital once, dropping by to check in on Lassiter. But . . . but Shawn . . . ? Why hadn't he . . . Juliet covered her eyes, sick at all that she had lost, in spite of any noble actions. Where is Shawn? What could have happened to him?
# # #
The drive, however, gave access to thoughts Lassiter had tried hard not to entertain. On the plane, he'd been able to study his notes and make plans for everything he wanted to accomplish in the first few hours he got into town. At first, he'd tried the AM radio, but the farther he drove from the airport the less signal he got for anything besides static. And he'd considered that it wasn't the safest thing to lose himself to his extensive plans and theories as he needed to focus all his attention on staying on the correct side of the road.
So that left too much space for Saul to slink in, to plop himself, unwelcome, onto the passenger seat. He was tight-lipped, as if he were purposely giving Lassiter the silent treatment, staring ahead out the windshield, waiting to reach their destination.