Disclaimer: I don't own Psych or To Kill a Mockingbird.

A/N: Thank you SO much for your reviews, favorites and follows! I'm so blown away by the response to this story! THANK YOU! As you can tell, I'm updating early this week, as a goodbye-Psych farewell present. I won't give any spoilers, but I will say that I loved the show's finale and felt they ended it beautifully, but even so, in the words of Blackapella ("Quarterblack!"), "It's so hard to say goodbye..." And this is part of my attempt to say goodbye. Psych will live on forever in my heart, and my DVD player, and fan-fiction. Anonymous review replies and extended A/N at the end of the chapter. Please read, review, and enjoy!

The Finch and the Mockingbird

Chapter Nine: Cool Backstory, Bro... But You Can Keep Your Knuckle Sammich

Auto's Truck Stop had partially burned down in 2003, but it had been out of business and withering away from disuse and the elements long before it had caught fire. No one was sure of how the fire started, according to the article. It also seemed that no one really cared.

It was kind of ridiculous to have a truck stop miles miles down a winding, narrow country road that no sane trucker would risk driving on, and it was so far from the main road that there was really no point in its existing.

Lassiter had called the chief to let her know of their plans to check out the ruins of the building. He'd assured her that he knew that it was an extremely thin lead, but it was the only one they had. The chief had had McNab do a search on the place, and, as it turned out, it had been owned by a Jack Tyler, father of Alicia Tyler, Stevens' girlfriend whom Aaron had been convicted for murdering. "Good work, Detective," Chief Vick had said, even though no work had really been involved other than their searching the man's house and finding an obscure article that had more than likely been nothing.

Unless, of course, it was something, which it turned out to be.

Gus tagged along with the detectives during their investigation, promising that if they didn't let him go with them, he'd just follow them and would be in even more danger than if they'd just let him come along.

They drove for nearly forty-five minutes, twenty of which were on a twisted, dilapidated back road that led to the middle of nowhere. In the middle of nowhere was the truck stop, or rather what was left of the truck stop.

Henry's truck was parked out front.

"Stay in the car," Juliet ordered Gus sternly. Lassiter locked him in the car just to be safe.

Inside the truck, which was unlocked, was Henry's phone, lying on the driver's seat. Donning a pair of latex gloves, Lassiter picked up the device and turned it on. A message flashed across the screen: "BATTERY LOW."

He waited for the declaration of low power to bink away, and then went into recent calls. He whistled. "Spencer was on the line for nearly an hour with this unavailable number," he said.

"Prepaid cell phone?" Juliet guessed glumly.

"I'd say so. Damn it!"

This was bad. This was really, really bad.

Still, they bagged the phone to take back to the station. Maybe there would be some way of tracing where phone call had been made from, but if it was a disposable cell phone like they suspected, the chances of tracing the call would be highly unlikely.

The only other clue they found were the barely visible tire marks on the pavement, indicating that the person who had picked up Henry had squealed out of the parking lot and back onto the windy road at a high rate of speed. Once they got back on the main road, they would be impossible to trace.

They got back into the car, grim. "Did you find anything?" Gus asked immediately. His face was scrunched in worry.

Juliet replied as hopefully as she could, "Maybe. We need to get back to the station and try to run a trace on the call that was made to Henry. But chances are, this guy took his precautions. We may be back to square one with this Stevens guy."

Gus didn't respond, only glared stonily out the window of the Crown Vic as they sped back onto the spindly road, heading back toward the highway.

Shawn jerked awake. A foul, strong odor filled his nostrils and forced him into awareness. At first he thought Gus had eaten too much Del Taco, but then the pain caught up with his nerve endings and everything came back to him with startling, sickening clarity.

Smelling salts. Which meant he'd passed out after...

Shawn fought the nausea wallowing in his gut as he remembered the metal gavel crashing into his body multiple times. The pain in his left arm was so acute and white-hot that it felt like someone had taken molten lead and poured it into his bloodstream, searing his body from the inside out with the most excruciating pain he'd ever felt. Being shot in the shoulder was nothing.

He almost scoffed when he remembered telling Garth Longmore that his gunshot wound was the most pain he'd ever been in in his life. Looking back, that was nothing. A mosquito bite versus a bee sting. Wait, that analogy didn't quite make sense, because one itched and the other stung.

Shawn decided not to follow his murky train of thought. The debilitating pain was making it hard to think anything other than a vehement "OW!"

His right arm was numb, except for the sharp, breath-stealing pains that periodically shot through his shoulder region. He wondered if the arm would fall off. He kind of hoped it did, because maybe that would make the pain go away.

And his knee... Shawn's chin was still resting on his chest, his head slumped awkwardly despite his being so rudely awakened. From this angle, Shawn had a pretty good view of his lower body, knee included, which was...

He shuddered. His knee was so swollen that he couldn't see past it to the lower part of his leg, and only the toe of his sneaker peeked out from behind the enormous, mutilated joint. Blood matted his jeans.

Agony wasn't even close to describing the all-consuming, fiery hell coursing through his knee.

A hand smacked his face sharply, jarring him into a more wakeful state. He reasoned dimly that he must have been pretty bad off if something as strong as smelling salts had such a minimal effect on him. At the slap, he blinked, tried to lift his head and failed, letting his chin flop back onto his chest. Too much work. A soft moan drifted from somewhere deep inside of him. He just wanted to go back to sleep; the pain was too much.

Another slap. And a voice. "Wake up, Shawn," simpered the voice of the devil. Aaron Stevens. Same difference at this point. "Don't make me break another bone to get your attention... something tells me that your father wouldn't be too happy about that."

Fear surged down down Shawn's spine and this time, his apprehension was strong enough to help him lift his head. He managed to steady his head and search the windowless hell-hole with pain-blurred eyes before they rested on a familiar form sitting on the front row of the jury seats, both wrists handcuffed separately to the seats behind him. Shawn had never seen a look so chilling, so terrifying, and so terrified on his father's face.

It looked like one of those wooden cutouts you might find at an amusement park, with a picture of a clown or a farmer with the face cut out so that kids and spirited adults could stick their faces in and snap some pictures to take home. In this case, the picture painted on the wood was of his father – usual ugly shirt, bald head, big ears, but instead of his normal in-control or pissed-off expression, someone completely unfamiliar had thrust their face through the hole in the cutout, making what should have been his father's face a mask of horror, pain, intense, bone-chilling anger, and... was that guilt? No, that couldn't be his father.

"Shawn." The Henry lookalike stared his son with unreadable eyes. His voice was calm. He didn't struggle against his restraints. He didn't look away from Shawn's eyes. "You okay, kid?"

It was a stupid question, but there was nothing else to be said at the moment. Shawn's answer was just as stupid. "F... fine," he managed to croak, his voice dry and cracked, either from lack of water or screaming, or a combination of both. He realized something then, and without breaking eye contact with his father, he addressed his captor. "Y-you lied t-to me," he stuttered weakly. "I psychic-ed my ass off f-for you, d-didn't get a dr-d-drop to drink. Ch-cheapsteak."

He noticed that his father's eyes hardened at this revelation. Stevens responded dryly, "It's cheapskate. And yeah, I lied. It's kind of a bad guy thing. I also told you that if you said my name, I'd shoot your kneecap. But I hit it with a giant metal hammer instead, which is going to be a helluva lot more painful and difficult to fix, by the way. Sorry about that. Just a moment of anger. Didn't mean to lose my head." The guy was actually apologizing for not shooting Shawn? He was certifiable, that was for sure.

"You didn't used to be a bad guy," Henry spoke up, voice restrained despite the hatred for Aaron Stevens obvious in his eyes and voice.

"We've been over this," Aaron said, exasperation in his words. "I wasn't a bad guy. You ruined my life. I had twenty-five bitter, lonely, hellish years for my perspectives to change. Did you know my parents didn't visit me in prison? Not once. They moved away, ashamed of their son. Haven't heard a word from them since my release, either. That does things to a person, you know? So, now I'm the bad guy, way worse than the supposed murderer who got unlawfully thrown into prison all those years ago."

Shawn let his head sag forward a little bit, but he managed to keep his neck relatively straight despite his exhaustion, pain, and strain. He knew the basics of this whole thing, that his dad had seen something on one of his patrols that had implicated Stevens in a murder, and even though Henry hadn't been involved in the investigation at all and had only given his testimony about what he'd seen that night, whatever twisted logic lived inside of Stevens' head had decided that it was Henry's fault that he'd been falsely accused, because without that testimony... blah, blah, crazy, crazy, blah.

Shawn was finally able to get his mouth into semi-working order and brought the attention back to himself, hoping that if he knew the whole story, he might be able to talk Stevens down better than his dad would. All of the man's anger – well, a great deal of it, anyway – was focused on Henry, not Shawn, and while his dad's words would probably just ire him even more, maybe, just maybe, Shawn could talk enough sense into him to... to what, he wondered hopelessly? To get him to apologize, let them go? Not likely.

But still. "Wh-What happened? What'd my – mph – my d-dad do t'ya, man? C'mon, t-tell me the st-story, 'nd I'll t-tell you 'bout all the times h-he tried t-to take 'way my childhood." He gave a weak chuckle, trying to connect with the man like he had been able to with Garth Longmore, but it seemed that he was just exhibiting for all to see how weak and disoriented he really was. He snuck a look at his dad, who surprisingly didn't look irritated at Shawn's jab at all. He actually looked kind of scared. Man, he must look really bad.

"Your father didn't tell you the story? Surprising, since that was one of the biggest cases of the year."

"D-dude, I was... I was eight. Y-you really think – ah, ow, ow – think my d-dad t-told a gritty mur-murder story to his eight-year-old kid?"

Maybe reminding this psychopath that he'd been a little boy at the time would help him see how convoluted his thinking was, would reveal to Aaron that Shawn was completely innocent in all of this.

It didn't.

"I can see what you're doing, Shawn," said Aaron silkily, and any small reserve of hope that might have remained inside of him quickly began filtering away. "And it's not going to work. Just like in the novel, I'm not concerned that my means to revenge is innocent in the whole ordeal. And you're not a kid anymore, even if you do act like it, and I can assure you that in the eyes of many, you're far from innocent – there are some people I've met recently in prison that would like nothing more than to tear you limb from limb for getting them sent to prison. You could actually think of it as a good thing that I got to you first, actually."

Shawn swallowed heavily. He'd briefly entertained the idea of people he'd put in jail wanting to get revenge, but the idea had always been cool, like getting an awesome scar to show off after a daring misadventure. Something to brag about. Not so.

"Henry, would you like to tell the story?" Aaron asked, spinning to his other captive, his eyes glinting darkly. Shawn's dad had been unusually quiet throughout this whole conversation.

"What, and then watch as you hurt my son for saying something you don't like?" Henry snorted, and Shawn's eyes widened marginally as he realized why his normally loud and demanding father had been so quiet; he was trying to protect Shawn. "Not likely."

Shawn couldn't help but think, But what if he doesn't like you saying that?

Thankfully, though, Stevens just seemed to find Henry's comment amusing. He turned to Shawn, hands behind his back. Shawn struggled to keep his vision in check as the world continued to swim strangely around him. Everything seemed to be filtering through between stabs of pain. He realized that he was cold, shivering. Probably had been for a while now. He might be going into shock.

"Twenty-seven years ago, on April 2, 1983, I was convicted for the murder of my girlfriend, Alicia Tyler. Lead investigator was Jim Morton – good man – he never thought I did it, and even after the conviction, he worked as hard as he could to get me set free, even working some on his own after the case was closed to try and implicate the real killer, this spineless belly-crawler you see before you." He roughly kicked O'Dell's body again, turned, and paced away from the body, agitated, hands still clasped together behind his back. He was shaking.

"I'm not so sure that his accidental car wreck all those years ago was much of an accident, to be honest. I always thought that maybe he got a little too close to the truth. When Morton stopped visiting me occasionally, giving me updates, and I heard about his death, I was upset. He was the only friend I had."

He fell silent for a few moments, then continued.

"I had found out a couple of days before Alicia's death that she'd been cheating on me for the past several months with Herman O'Dell. She worked in his household as a housekeeper. It was actually a pretty well-paying job with flexible hours that allowed her ample time to work on her degree. I'd never quite liked her working for another man, especially one that had had his hands in some pretty shady business as far as I was concerned, but it was a good job for her.

"But when I caught them together one day when I came by to pick her up after she'd finished her day's work, I was angry. Who wouldn't be? I didn't let on that I'd seen anything, and we walked the few blocks to my house before I brought it up to her in the alley we always took as a shortcut. I asked her about it, she confessed. I got angry, I..." He paused, the look in his eyes sad. "I pushed her. Shook her. She hit me, I shoved her again. It was the only time I'd ever physically hurt her, hurt anybody, and I felt horrible about it afterwards. I hated myself. She was screaming at me, telling me that I didn't understand. A police officer," he sent Henry sidelong death-glare from where he stood, positioned between father and son, off to the side so that he could see both of them and they could see each other, "was doing his nightly patrol, came and broke up the fight. Brought us both in. Neither of us pressed charges against the other. We broke up, I went on with my life.

"A few days later, she was found dead in the same alley that we fought in." His voice was soft. Barely restrained fury danced behind every word, sending spine-tingling chills down Shawn's back. From across the room, he could see his father staring encouragingly at him, ignoring their tormentor. His gaze was steady, telling Shawn to hang on. Be strong. How many hats, anything to keep his mind grounded. They were going to get out of this.

Shawn drew comfort from the connection, but unfortunately, it did nothing to alleviate the pain.

"As it turned out, she hadn't been cheating on me with O'Dell, but she'd been cheating on O'Dell with me. They'd been sleeping together for years. This, too, came out in the trial, but it was used for his advantage, and instead of revealing the truth – that he killed her for being with me, that he forced her to the alley where we'd gone together, that he'd strangled her and implicated me for the murder – this information was damning to me, because apparently it was the other way around." His voice was raising with every word. "Apparently, when you have money, you have the power to make it make sense that I was upset that I'd been the other man without knowing it, and that we ended up fighting in an alley, got picked up by a patrolling officer that had nothing to do with the case, parted our ways on amiable terms, and then a few days later I came back to kill her, leaving her body in the same alley I'd 'attacked' her in, because apparently I'm too stupid to take her somewhere else so that I don't implicate myself!"

He was yelling now. "They took a minor domestic violence report, one that wasn't even acted upon, because neither of us pressed charges, and turned it into a murder conviction! Who wouldn't have been angry after finding out that their girlfriend, the one they'd been planning on proposing to when she finished college in a couple of semesters, had been sleeping with another man, especially a weasel like O'Dell? But suddenly Henry Spencer testifies, and everything comes together. Never mind the fact that the evidence was circumstantial. That O'Dell's DNA was on the body. They were sleeping together, of course his DNA would be on her, they said! Not to mention the fact that a couple of weeks before the trial, one of my neighbors who had seen O'Dell and Alicia walk into the alley and had finally been convinced to testify against him, had an unfortunate 'accident' and wound up dead, and though they never proved it, it was O'Dell, just like Jim's death, just like Alicia's, and he got away with it because he's been pulling the strings with his money for years.

"It was crooked, it was unfair, and if your father, who claims to have thought I was innocent, if he hadn't testified the way he did, making me look guilty, I very well would have gone away a free man, the real murderer would have been behind bars, and this new incarnation of Bob Ewell would have never been born!"

Shawn's eyes had drifted closed halfway through Stevens' speech, his ears still picking up most of the enraged psycho's rantings, but unable to hold his head up or his eyelids open any longer. He could see, in a very convoluted way, Stevens' reasoning, and he knew that being sent to prison for something you didn't commit would be enough to drive anyone a little crazy, but this was... extreme.

Suddenly a fist struck him in the gut, stealing the breath from his lungs and causing him to swing back on his arm again. He cried out in pain. He heard his dad cursing somewhere in the background, but he didn't register everything he was yelling through his agony. Stevens was yelling at him, up on the platform, right up in his face. "I'm sorry, Shawn, is this not interesting enough for you? You ask my story, you ask for the truth, and you're too good to hear me out? You think you can just sleep through this? Think again!"

A stinging blow landed across his face. Shawn's head snapped to the side. He grunted. His dad was still making a ruckus in the background, the handcuffs around his wrists clattering as he tried to pull free from his restraints. Dazed, Shawn forced his head up, making himself meet Stevens' eyes. "S-somehow," he croaked, "I don't think hitting m-me's gonna help me st-stay awake."

He heard his dad break off his yelling and swearing and groan. Damn his big mouth. Even beaten half to death and hanging from the ceiling, Shawn's wit and sarcasm apparently could not be contained.

Stevens didn't react angrily, but it probably would have been less scary if he had. Instead he just smiled. Shawn watched him warily through slitted eyes, barely clinging onto consciousness. He was still cold, still shivering. And the pain wasn't as bad anymore. That was good, right? Or bad? He didn't know. He didn't know much of anything right now, except that his arm was about to fall off. And if it did, then good riddance. Right?

He was not thinking straight.

Aaron Stevens was talking again, but everything was muffled. Shawn felt like his senses were filtering in through a funnel. Flickers of movement flitted in his swimming vision, but nothing made sense anymore. He almost laughed; it was like the world had turned into a fun-house mirror, where up was down and left was right, and colors were inverted and...

Ooh, his head.

His eyes slipped shut.

Something rough slipped around his neck. Pulled tighter. He should probably be concerned, he thought.

But he wasn't, and he was out before his head thumped onto his chest again.

Reply to Anonymous Reviewers:

To Hope: Thank you so very much for your awesome review! It's great to see that the story is still keeping you hooked, and that you're excited about what's up next. Hope you enjoyed this chapter as well! :)

To PsychO99: Thank you so much! Your review was so amazing that I read it the other day and I'm still swooning with its awesomeness! I'm SO glad you're enjoying it so much, and I hope the rest of the story continues to please! Don't worry, no spoilers here! :D Thanks again for reading and for the review! :)

A/N: Ginormous thank-yous to everyone who reviewed chapter 8: Said The Liar 13, Vinividivinci, Polaris'05, thewarpedmind1, Hope, Leahelisabeth, ChigauBakemono, H0llyw00d-Heather, ZeDancingHobbit, Clara Brighet, lazybum89, PsychO99, Liberty Hoffman and bigbangtheoryk8! I also want to give a special thank you to Clara Brighet for pointing out my spelling Stevens' name two different ways in the last chapter (it has been fixed!). Also, Said The Liar 13 and Vinividivinci left some extremely encouraging and heartwarming reviews, and I want to take a moment to thank them yet again for the time they took in doing so! And thank you to ChucKelise for PM-ing me with some amazing encouragement about the last few chapters! It means a lot, EVERYONE, that you're taking the time to read and review and that you're enjoying the story, so I give you all once more an emphatic and humble THANK YOU! :)

So, Psych is over. I can't believe it. I'm still in shock. But personally I adored the finale and believe that they handled it very well! If you want to discuss the show's ending, feel free to PM me. I'd love to gush, or gripe, or fangirl, or whatever about the show's ending! :)

So in this chapter we got Aaron's backstory... hopefully it was believable enough and up-to-par. I had the hardest time grinding that dumb thing out. I wrote and re-wrote and thought about it way more than I probably should have, and even upon completing it and hearing my sister (my fan-fiction guinea pig, lol) tell me that she loved it and that it was an awesome background, I still wasn't entirely satisfied with it. But hopefully you all will be! :) Definitely would love some input about that!

As for Shawn, oh-noes! What's happening to him NOW?! Sorry for the evil cliffie, but at least you'll only have to wait about 4 days to find out what's next for the poor guy. And poor Henry! :'( Who'm'I kidding? As much as it hurts me to write sometimes, I love the whump, and I love the angst! Does that make me a bad person? Ah well. XD

Next chapter, guys, we'll get more Shawn whump, WAY more Henry angst, the beginnings of a trial, and more investigating on the SBPD&G's part. (Haha, SPBD & Gus).

Please stay tuned, and let me know what you thought! And thanks again for the amazing support for this story! ;) I love you all, really and truly! Have a fabulous weekend!

~Emachinescat ^..^