Gus was behind him as he tried to open the door, practically buzzing with concern. Shawn was pretty sure that Gus had gotten over their disagreement the same way that Shawn had taken his anger towards his father and filed it away under the been there, done that portion of his brain.
"Do you want me to get that for you?" Gus asked, his voice was soft and sincere and it was getting on Shawn's nerves.
Shawn stared resentfully down at his uncooperative keys. "Don't you have to be at work?"
"Well, let's see, Shawn, my best friend was kidnapped last night, and I spent the whole morning in the hospital, so, oh, yeah, that's right, I took the day off," Gus said.
Shawn shook his head. "Gus, Gus, Gus," he said. "Why is it you never take the day off for anything fun? You've always got to have a reason." He finally managed to turn the key in the lock, and led the way into his apartment. Gus followed in closely on his heels, and locked the door behind them.
"Can I get you anything?" Gus asked. "Do you want some pineapple?"
Shawn looked down at his bloody jeans and mummified hands and shook his head. "I think I'm going to take a shower."
Shawn didn't bother to tell Gus to make himself at home as he went down the hall. They had the kind of relationship that didn't require the pleasantries, and Gus had already settled onto his couch to watch a Magnum PI marathon. Shawn closed the bathroom door behind him and pulled off his ruined clothes, before unwinding the gauze from his hands. The skin was still irritated and pink, more than a few cuts and scrapes crossing over the lines of his hand, but he didn't want to keep walking around looking like an extra from The Mummy Returns.
Shawn leaned back against the marble of his shower wall as he turned the water on full blast. He remembered the shower he'd taken after coming home from the hospital this last time after Drimmer, and he'd hurt all over then too.
But that time it had been a lot harder to pinpoint the source.
Shawn reminded himself that this was totally different, and that Cyril was counting on him, before finishing his shower and heading back into his bedroom to get dressed. He threw on a blue polo shirt and a pair of non-blood splattered jeans before searching under the bed to find his pair of Kangaroo tennis shoes.
Shawn came out of his bedroom feeling refreshed and ready to investigate, but he came to a sudden stop when he saw Gus standing over his sink. "Gus? What are you doing!" he demanded.
"I'm pouring all your Red Bull into the sink," Gus told him, like it should be obvious or something.
Shawn was heartbroken. "Do you have any idea how expensive this stuff is? It's like liquid gold!"
"Good," Gus said smugly, and tipped out the last dregs of the final can of Red Bull. "Then you're not going to be able to afford to buy more. I'm cutting you off."
"I can't survive without Red Bull," Shawn said. "That would be like Popeye without his spinach, or Amy Winehouse without hard liquor!"
"You've solved every case we've ever had perfectly fine without ingesting lethal amounts of caffeine," Gus said. "And this isn't even a case."
"What do you mean?" Shawn asked. "Of course it is!"
"No one's hired us to work on it, and in fact, the police have expressly asked us not to," Gus said. "Ergo, not a case."
"Okay, first off, 'ergo'? When did you turn into an aging literature professor? And secondly, we have so been hired, so back away from the Red Bull."
Gus crossed his arms. "By who, Shawn?"
"By Cyril, if you must know," he said. "Admittedly instead of coming to the office and being charged for our services, he said if I did it he wouldn't kill me, but I've entered into an agreement nonetheless."
"I thought you said he wasn't ever going to hurt you, Shawn!" Gus snapped.
"I said he threatened to kill me, but words will never hurt me," Shawn explained. "And you might have noticed I'm not actually dead."
"We're staying out of this," Gus said. "I'm putting my foot down."
"Down where?" Shawn asked. "You know, I don't think I've ever quite understood that expression, because you're perfectly welcome to put your feet wherever you'd like."
"It means I'm gonna stand firm, I'm not going to waver from my position," Gus explained.
"Okay," Shawn said, and turned around. "You stay there then."
"Shawn!" Gus shouted, following after him.
Shawn glanced back at him as he made his way into the living room. "Gus, you wavered!" he said, giving a fake gasp. "That's got to be a record. It only took you like 2.5 seconds to cave."
"I'm serious," Gus said. "If you want to try and help your buddy Cyril, that's fine, but no more of this running off into the middle of things and getting taken hostage."
"Well, I'll try my best," Shawn said. "But I can't make promises on behalf of the hostage-taking portion of the population."
"I guess that's fair," Gus said, after a moment. "But if we're going to do this, we're going to do it the right way."
"You mean we're going to Google the hell out of this thing?" Shawn asked.
"You know that's right," Gus said. "Information from the comfort of your own home, and we can even leave Magnum on."
As Magnum was initiating a car chase on screen, Gus and Shawn settled down onto the couch and opened the laptop on the coffee table. Gus worked out a crick in his neck and then cracked his knuckles, before letting his hands hover over the keyboard. "Okay," he said. "What do we want to know?"
"Let's look into the original murder first," Shawn said.
Gus nodded. He typed "Murder at the Dah-Ling Store-it-Yourself" and got about three thousand hits. Gus clicked on the article by the Santa Barbara Herald first.
_
The Murder at the Dah-Ling Store-It-Yourself, by Betty Bertworth.
On May 25, 2007, Avery Daily was shot and killed during the nightshift at the Dah-Ling Store-It-Yourself. Daily, a 49-year-old security guard, was reportedly a dedicated and trustworthy worker, who gave his life in an attempt to stop a robbery. Ava Dah-Ling, the 26-year-old daughter of the proprietor, took her father's shotgun from behind the reception desk and managed to keep the suspect on the scene until help could arrive. The accused is Cyril Riner, a 36-year-old man with no criminal history. The police have said the case is open and shut. "I think it's obvious what happened here," Det. Carlton Lassiter said in a recent interview. "He was trying to rob the place and he panicked. We see it all the time." The SBPD plans to prosecute Riner to the full extent of the law, and the trial—
_
"Okay, okay, let's move on," Shawn said, shoving Gus out of his way to return to the Google homepage.
"Watch it, Shawn," Gus said. "I've got this." Gus shoved him back over, and Shawn went limp against the back of the couch.
"You've got issues, is what you've got," he said. "Fine. You can control the search engine. I bow to your mad skills."
"What do you want me to look for?" Gus asked, rearranging the laptop in front of him.
"Oh, now you want to know?" Shawn asked.
"Stop playing, Shawn," Gus said. "I'm ready to search."
"I'm not exactly sure what we need to be looking for yet." Shawn frowned, and leaned forward again. "But the Dah-Ling Store-It-Yourself isn't exactly in the best part of town."
"So?" Gus demanded.
"So just because nothing was ever reported missing doesn't mean nothing was," Shawn explained. "We need to see if there were any other robberies that took place right before the murder."
"You think they were stealing from thieves?" Gus demanded.
"Gus, what do you take to a Store-It-Yourself?" Shawn demanded. "You take your old sofas and your analog televisions and all that other stuff you aren't ever going to use again but can't bear to get rid of. You don't take anything there that's worth stealing, not unless you're a criminal, looking for an easy place to stash your stolen goods."
Gus's eyes went bright. "You mean that Cyril was robbing stolen goods, because they wouldn't ever be reported stolen! That's smart. If he hadn't killed that guard, he might have gotten away with it."
"That's just it," Shawn said. "He didn't kill that guard, and whoever planned this? They have gotten away with it. At least so far. Clavor's got more aliases than Sydney Bristow, so we still don't know who he really is. For all we know he got away with millions. Except--"
"What?" Gus asked.
"Except he seems like kind of an idiot," Shawn said. "Cyril said it was Clavor that came after us, and the guy seemed drunk, couldn't hardly shoot straight. And killing that guard? That was unprofessional. If he'd just knocked him out they would have all gotten away clean."
"Maybe he got lucky," Gus said. "Maybe it's not so much that he had a great plan as things just kind of went his way."
"Maybe," Shawn said. "But I have a feeling Lassiter isn't the only one going after the wrong guy. I don't think Clavor is the only accomplice we should be looking for."
Gus nodded and started another search for robberies in May 2007. He found another article with the Santa Barbara Herald right away.
_
Jewel Heist on High-Land Street, by Betty Bertworth
Last night, on May 23, 2007, $700,000.00 worth of loose diamonds were stolen from the safe of the High-Land Jewelers. The Jewelers were holding the diamonds for three days only while they were being cataloged for insurance purposes, and they were taken the night before they were scheduled to be transferred back to their owner, all without setting off any alarms. When the High-Land owners, Jeremy and Deacon Meyers, went to open the safe in the morning, they found the contents of the velvet bags meant to hold the diamonds had been replaced with rock salt. It was a familiar MO to the FBI agents that had been called in to investigate the case. Though the FBI was unavailable for comment, Det. Carlton Lassiter with the SBPD stated they were connecting the robbery to at least four other similar cases from the last five years. "This is the one," he said. "We're going to get them."
_
"But I bet they never did," Shawn said, reaching over Gus to return to the Google menu and search for 'High-Land Jewel Robbery.'
"Shawn, what did I say?" Gus asked, smacking his hands away. "Yeah, it doesn't look like the case was ever closed."
"No, it wouldn't have been," Shawn said, standing. "Because those diamonds were probably at the Dah-Ling Store-It-Yourself, taken by Clavor when he fled the scene."
"How can you be so sure?" Gus asked. "I'm sure there were lots of other robberies before the murder. You haven't even looked at these others yet."
Shawn shook his head. "No, this is it, Gus! Cyril told me Clavor used to belong to a group of jewel-thieves. This was an inside job. He was ripping his buddies off. He knew where they were keeping the diamonds, so he stages it like a robbery, and he gets away with everything. Meanwhile, Cyril, he takes the fall, so Clavor's old crew never even comes after him."
"But you said that this Clavor guy is still hanging around that strip bar right?" Gus asked. "He doesn't exactly seem to be rolling in dough."
"Those diamonds are hot, right?" Shawn asked. "How hard is it to sell stolen diamonds?"
"It can't be easy," Gus said, with all the self-importance of a man that subscribes to Safe-Crackers Monthly. "They've got the technology to fingerprint diamonds these days. High-Land is one of the few jewelers implementing it. I'll bet that's why they were holding those diamonds in the first place, to insure them against theft."
"Well, they did the worst job ever," Shawn said.
"I mean they were fingerprinting them, taking pictures of the flaws within the diamonds and cataloguing them. Each diamond has a unique print on it. If these diamonds ever turn up, I bet they could identify them," he said.
"How do you know so much about this?" Shawn asked him. "Diamond fingerprinting? Really? This is how you spend your time?"
"It's an amazing technological advance in the fight against crime, Shawn," Gus snapped. "Most people would be interested."
"Whatever, the point is that Clavor, or whoever hired him, is probably having trouble getting rid of the goods," he said. "Otherwise Clavor wouldn't still be here, not with that kind of money."
"How does any of this help us find the murderer?" Gus asked him.
"Because if we find those diamonds, we'll find our murderer," Shawn said. "Do you know anything at all about fencing diamonds?"
"Sorry, no," Gus said. "It's yet to come up."
"Yeah, I was afraid of that," Shawn said. "And I don't think Lassie's going to be very forthcoming on the subject if I ask him."
"You could ask your father," Gus told him.
"The last time I saw him he was threatening to out me as a fake to the police, so I'm thinking showing up now to hit him up for advice on a case probably wouldn't go down well."
Gus went still. "Your father's going to tell the police about us? And you didn't tell me?" he demanded. "Shawn, we're going to prison!"
Shawn snorted. "Please, he's not going to tell them."
"That's what you said when you stole that car," Gus protested.
"I did not steal that car, I borrowed it, and okay, I admit, that was a slight misjudgment on my part," Shawn said. "But my father is much more mellow these days, and I'm not going to admit to anything anyway. I'd just tell the police that he's trying to get me fired because he doesn't want me working cases anymore, and he knows it."
"I didn't realize things were this bad with him," Gus said.
"It's fine," Shawn said, turning away. "It's about time I remembered not to rely on him."
"Shawn—" Gus started.
"There's something else I've been wondering about," Shawn interrupted, shamelessly changing the subject. "How did Cyril escape?"
Gus sighed, but let him do it. "I don't even need to look that up," he said. "I've been following this from the beginning, and I know as much about it as anyone."
"Well?" Shawn prompted.
"Nobody knows," Gus said. "One minute he was in his cell, the next, poof, he was gone."
"So magic then? Really? That's your explanation?" Shawn sat back down beside him, pulling the laptop towards him to enter a search.
"That's all anyone knows," Gus said, letting Shawn look for himself this time.
Shawn scanned the articles briefly before closing the laptop and getting back to his feet. "No, that's just all the police are saying," he said. "It's not all anyone knows, because people can't just magically dematerialize from prison. Nobody would stay there."
"I guess we're not going to find out then," Gus said. "Because I seriously doubt the police are going to tell you anything about this case right now. They want you out of it."
"So we'll have to find out for ourselves, as usual," Shawn said, grabbing a jacket off the back of his couch and heading towards the door.
Gus moved in front of him to block his way. "Shawn, I thought we talked about this," he said. "No more jumping into situations blind."
"It's the police station," Shawn assured him. "What could happen?"
"The police station?" Gus said. "You want to read the case files? Are you nuts? We could get arrested!"
"Exactly!" Shawn said. "And honestly, when that's the worst case scenario in one of my
plans, we're kind of ahead of the game."
"Sad but true," Gus admitted. "I don't know why I let you talk me into these things."
"Because under all those neatly pressed shirts and that deeply ingrained desire to follow the rules, you, Burton Guster, are an adventurer at heart," Shawn said.
Gus gave a sly little grin, and touched up the collar of his shirt. "That's true," he admitted. "But still, I'm not sure I want to commit a felony."
"Don't be ridiculous, Gus," Shawn said. "I'm sure we'd only be charged with a misdemeanor."
x x x x x x
"This is a bad idea," Gus hissed, for what was probably the four billionth time.
"Be quiet," Shawn whispered.
"Don't you tell me to be quiet, I'm like the Jackal, I—"
"You're amazing, I know," Shawn interrupted. "Just stop talking."
They glanced around the corner. Buzz was pushing a chalkboard out of the bullpen, and there weren't a lot of others around. Shawn figured they'd probably been working double shifts during his abduction, and now most of them had been sent home. He motioned for Gus to go and they darted across the hall into the next one, and then down the stairs.
"Where are we going?" Gus demanded.
"Lassiter's command center," Shawn said.
"His what?"
"Lassie doesn't have the big office yet," Shawn explained. "So he uses one of the lesser-known interrogation rooms to store his notes."
"How did you find out about it?" Gus asked.
"Please, as though Lassie has any secrets from me," Shawn said, and at Gus's look he shrugged. "Okay, so I stalk him in my spare time. It was getting to easy following you."
Shawn opened the next door they came to. They both rushed inside and Shawn closed the door behind them before turning around.
His mouth dropped open. "Woah," he said. "This is a little more Mahone than Gerard."
"This is creepy," Gus said, as he glanced around the room.
Shawn looked around the room. There was a white board that had been set up, pictures hung up with magnets covering almost every inch. Cyril's mugshot, Cyril's cell, the Dah-Ling Store-It-Yourself. Notes had been written in the few bare spaces with red permanent marker.
He moved to the table in the middle of the room. There were at least as many pictures there, arranged in different sequences. More of the prison as well as the Store-It-Yourself.
Shawn slid a yellow notebook towards him. Lassiter's almost undecipherable cursive ran straight across every line there was on the first few pages. They were notes on the interviews that Lassiter had with each of the on-duty guards. Only one of them caught Shawn's eye.
_
Reed-Fry checked out at 9 PM at the end of his shift the night before the escape, and drove off the premises in his jeep at 9:06. Fry was scheduled to work the morning shift the next day though he typically works nights, and he reported Riner missing at 6:44 AM. He was first on scene.
Fry did not have his jeep the next day. Did not clock in. Claimed to have left badge at home when questioned. It was found in kitchen when home searched.
Says dropped off at work by one-night stand. Does not remember her name. Warden assures us Fry can be trusted. Has worked at the prison without incident for almost a year.
Will keep an eye on him anyway.
_
Shawn took his eyes away from the notes and picked up a manila folder labeled "personal effects." He opened it up and dumped it across the table. Gus glanced up, angrily holding a finger to his lips, and Shawn just rolled his eyes.
He pushed his way through Cyril's personal effects. There wasn't much to see. The wallet was empty, the clear plastic photo cases all unused. There were two keys on a key ring that had a snapshot of a beautiful snowcapped mountain. Shawn vaguely recognized the mountain, but couldn't quite place it. He knew he'd seen the same photo somewhere before.
"Did you see this?" Gus asked him, walking over to join him with a print out of some kind. "It looks like a roster of all the guards on duty during the escape."
Shawn was about to dismiss that as useless since he had already read over Lassiter's interviews, but he frowned when he saw the last name on the list and snatched the paper out of Gus's hands, before spreading it out on the table in front of him.
Glen Reed-Fry.
"What is it?" Gus asked.
"Shh," Shawn said. "Give me a sec."
Shawn stared at the name on the page for a moment, before the letters started to rearrange themselves in his mind. They coalesced with a snap: Fred Greenly. Shawn broke out into a grin. "Gus, I know how he did it!"
Gus looked smug, as though by finding the paper he'd solved the case himself. He leaned down to look at the name Shawn was pointing to, and frowned when he didn't find it recognizable.
"Who's Glen Reed-Fry?" he asked.
"It's an anagram for Fred Greenly," Shawn explained.
"So what?" Gus asked.
"So this Glen Reed-Fry has been a guard at the prison for a year, and that just happens to be around the time Cyril told me his friend Fred Greenly died," Shawn said. "And I guess in a way he did. He died and became Glen Reed-Fry."
"Even if he had a friend on the inside," Gus said, "that doesn't explain how he got out."
"Yes it does," Shawn said, glancing through Lassiter's notes again until he found the one for Reed-Fry. "And I think that Lassiter's actually figured this one out for me. I just don't know if he knows it yet."
The door behind them flew open, and Shawn spun around, dropping the notes. He stepped back, looking wide-eyed and slightly panicked. It was so unlike Shawn to show so much reaction that Lassiter's accusations died on his lips and it was a moment before he even stepped into the room. "Spencer—" he started.
Shawn caught his balance in record time and flashed him a grin. "Lassie! What a surprise, seeing you here."
Gus looked like a deer in the headlights, and he reached out to grab Shawn's sleeve and pull him further back. "Detective Lassiter," he said, his voice wavering only a little.
"Guster, out," Lassiter snapped.
"I don't think so," Gus said, staying beside Shawn.
Shawn was impressed. Usually, Gus would have been halfway to the door already with an offer of a get-out-of-jail-free card like that. Then he started to worry just how bad he must look that Gus didn't want to leave him there alone. He swallowed, keeping his eyes on Lassiter. "It's fine, Gus," he said. "He's not here to get me in trouble. He's just trying to work up the courage to ask for my help."
Lassiter shook his head, stepping closer. "I don't think so," he snapped.
"Shawn," Gus started nervously.
"Go ahead and go home for awhile," Shawn said. "Can I call you later for a ride?"
"Of course, but, Shawn—"
"We'll be fine, won't we, Lassie?" Shawn asked.
"I'm not going to kill him if that's what you're worried about," Lassiter said dryly. "Not today. It's too much paperwork and my schedule's full as it is."
"You're very snappy today," Shawn said. "I think someone forgot to have his Wheaties."
"Be nice," Gus whispered frantically, before carefully sliding along the wall around Lassiter. "I'll just be going then. I expect you not to let Shawn end up kidnapped this time."
Lassiter turned around to yell at him but Gus was gone. "He's like a Jackal," Shawn explained. "His stealth knows no bounds. One minute he's there, then he's gone. Kind of like a certain other person we both know."
"You shouldn't be in here," Lassiter said, turning back around. "I thought you were in the hospital. You still should be."
Shawn laughed. "Thanks for the concern, but I'm fine," he said.
Lassiter pushed him gently against the wall, holding him in place. "No, you're not."
"I see after years of my subtle conditioning, you've finally lost your sense of personal space," Shawn said, backing up as far as he could against the wall.
"What the hell was that a minute ago, Spencer?" Lassiter asked. "You looked like I was going to kill you."
"Well, you threaten to all the time, so who can blame me?" Shawn asked. "Really, I don't see why you're all so mad at Cyril, he only did the same thing."
"Don't you compare me to him," Lassiter said dangerously. "I'm not him. And I'm not Drimmer."
"I never said you were," Shawn said slowly.
"And despite whatever I may say, I wouldn't ever hurt you," Lassiter snapped.
"I know that," Shawn said.
"Okay, good," Lassiter said, and finally stepped away. "I want you to tell me what you see."
"A dashing police detective in a very sporting tweed suit," Shawn said.
"You know what I mean," Lassiter said, long-suffering. "I know you've figured something out."
"I didn't figure out anything you don't already know," Shawn said easily. "All I did was glance at your notes. You've got all the information right there already."
Lassiter tried to stare him down, but gave up after a moment and shook his head. "I need you to come with me," he said.
"I don't know," Shawn said. "The last time you said that I ended up alone, handcuffed, and unsatisfied."
"There's been another murder," Lassiter said stiffly.
Shawn went still. "Cyril—"
"It's not Riner. We think it's the guy that shot at you the other night. He matches the sketch we got of 'Dave' from your friend Amelia, but Vick wants you to go down there and identify him," he said. "I'd like to go on record as being against it."
"I'd like to see that record sometime," Shawn said. "I bet your name's on it a lot."
Lassiter sighed heavily. "You know what I just said? About how I would never hurt you?"
Shawn grinned and walked past him. "No take-backs!" he called behind him.