Shawn's voice sounded unconcerned, which pissed Gus off on principle.
"Really, Gus. Breathe. You don't breathe, oxygen doesn't go in, CO2 doesn't go out, and you die. We learned this in second grade."
If Gus had had bangs he would have looked up at Shawn through them. He sat in the head-between-the-knees position and, as it was, Shawn could see very little of Gus's eyes underneath his heavy brows. Gus glared with all his might, trying to put into practice looks-could-kill.
He sucked in a breath and spoke through his teeth. "I'm so getting fired."
Gus watched his best friend rock back on his heels, grinning like he hadn't just been heavily involved in ruining Gus's career. "Why? You didn't arrest him."
Gus's head snapped up a little farther. "You didn't have to bring the whole Santa Barbara police station down on my head!" He snapped, gesturing broadly to the scene in front of him.
There was no denying it looked as though the entire department had come, hats in hand. Lassiter was barreling around like suspects were hiding behind whatever corner he had just barreled around, surreptitiously eyeing the spots underneath the chairs while Juliet nipped at his heels, following more out of habit than need. She was on the phone, chattering urgently to someone, by the set to her jaw, and she dodged the other people cluttering the area with ease.
On second look, however, there were fewer officers than Gus had at first thought, but the illusion of a hall full of SB characters was upheld by the slowly gathering crowd of coworkers. Zenk, Kathy, and Ice Cold Vanilla were being talked up by different officers with a range of emotions on their faces--Kathy looked thrilled while Zenk and Vanilla shared looks of disdain that this should interrupt their morning, though Vanilla's expression was slightly more evil. One poor rookie was left looking uncertain, visibly gathering his courage to talk to one of the gathering crowd before his eyes flitted to another possible suspect. Gus watched him talk himself out of questioning Fielder, a large man who should have been playing football instead of selling pharmaceutical drugs.
Gus wanted to knead his forehead. Count on the police bursting in right around morning break.
"Dude, you're breathing, right?"
Gust felt his eyebrows drop like dead weights over his eyes, but, in refusing to meet Shawn's amused gaze, he inadvertently caught Lassiter's.
Who frowned.
Lassiter was on them in three long strides, which proved, unfortunately, that the hall was much smaller than Gus had been hoping it was. He couldn't help but stare with widening eyes as the detective descended on him in a fell swoop of toothpick-like legs.
"Guster," the detective said, ignoring Shawn, who was suddenly leering over his shoulder. Juliet, thank God, was still busy on her phone, though she had followed up behind. "We need to talk."
Gus's head was suddenly between his legs, the feel of a strong hand on his neck, before he realized he was hyperventilating. Lassiter's voice came distantly through his oddly muffled ear drums. He didn't like to label the tones of people's voices, but somehow Lassiter's struck him as disturbed.
"Get a hold of yourself, Guster. We're not arresting you."
"You broke him," came Shawn's plaintive voice. Gus could feel the vibration of Shawn talking through the hand on his neck, and it almost made him forgive the mocking tone of his voice.
Gus was getting a grip on his panic, drawing each breath slowly, listening to Juliet talk about security details and checks on the airport, when Lassiter spoke again.
He sounded suspicious. "Should we be arresting you?"
Juliet was in the middle of a sentence "...yes, you should be receiving his picture--" but she still managed to snap out a "Carlton!" before moving on with "--soon, just check with the security department..."
Gus jerked his head up to glare at Lassiter and Shawn removed his hand, but not before Gus heard the very quiet, very amused, scoff from his best friend's throat.
The detective looked irritated in turn. "Would someone please tell me what's going on here?"
Juliet looked like she wanted to pat him on the arm for using the word "please" but held it off with a smile, and the quiet click of her shutting her phone.
She smiled reassuringly, and it was the first time Gus felt a little better. "Why were you in a meeting with Sanchez?"
Gus's eyes widened with disbelief, or possibly relief. "It was Sanchez you were looking for?"
Shawn broke in before anyone could answer. "I'll field this one," he told both Lassiter and Juliet before turning condescendingly towards Gus."You're not a suspect, doofus."
"I haven't said that," Lassiter corrected, sneering at the psychic.
Shawn scoffed again, and Juliet somehow managed to roll her eyes without actually appearing to have rolled them. "Lassiter, I think we can pretty much rule Gus out."
"What have you learned?" the detective demanded. "You can't rule out any--"
"--people with hyper phobias of breaking the law, no matter how innocent they may appear. Gus is secretly a badass. He's Sylvester Stalone in "First Blood," only he vomits at the sight of blood." Shawn filled in, grinning seriously at Juliet.
Lassiter scowled. "Get out of here. I'm questioning the witness."
Juliet ignored the sniping altogether and turned straight to Gus. "So far you're only a witness, and nothing more can we determine at this time. But no one honestly thinks you're involved." Lassiter opened his mouth, but she seemed to have been anticipating this and went on without looking at him, effectively cutting him off. "But we do need to know how Sanchez realized that we were coming to arrest him."
"Financial fraud," Shawn stage-whispered.
"I said get out of here!" Lassiter snapped, attempting to push Shawn out of Gus's line of sight. "I'm conducting a crime scene here!"
Shawn sounded excited, expertly resisting any sort of pushing by leaning heavily into Lassiter's hands. "Conducting, you say! Can I be in the trumpet section? Oh, oh! Give me a solo!"
"Wait, so just because I was in a meeting with him, that makes me guilty by association?" Gus demanded of Lassiter, ignoring Shawn and reading pretty clearly between the lines. With Lassiter, he didn't really bother hiding any of his thoughts behind or between any lines, and his expression and tone of questioning was saying he was ready and willing to believe the psychic's partner-in-crime (and wasn't that just a great cliche?) could be involved.
He put all the agitated affront he could muster into his voice. "That's a fallacious appeal! It won't hold up in court!"
"GO!" Lassiter snapped one final time, finally succeeding in pushing Shawn out and away. Shawn took the opportunity to bark out an unconvincing cough, undoubtedly to earn himself some pity, which failed as he doubled over and became an easy target to push away. Eyes squinted shut, he stumbled on the chair next to Gus and towards the vicinity of the secretary's desk.
Juliet shook her head, but shifted so that her back was effectively blocking any sort of return. The head detective was on her other side, and both stood close enough to give Gus claustrophobia, and privacy. Their bodies blocked the craning necks of his coworkers, the half-glances that kept drifting his way, and the view of every person trying to get a glimpse of just what was going on. It felt a little bit like "I can't see you, you can't see me" but he was grateful for the reprieve it afforded him.
"What happened?" Juliet asked. "How did Sanchez know we were coming?"
Lassiter narrowed his eyes, and Gus focused directly on Juliet. "He got a phone call. I have no idea who it was from, but it was about five or ten minutes before you guys showed up."
Lassiter, in Gus's periphery, looked like he was about to rip this apart, Gus wasn't sure how but he was sure he could do it, but Juliet slid in her next question neatly, while he was drawing a breath to let his suspect/witness have it. "Did he say anything about where he was going?"
Gus shook his head. "Nothing. It sounded like someone was yelling at him, and I only got that because they wouldn't let him get a word in. It was like he was trying to explain himself, but they hung up and he just went running out of there."
"And you didn't think to follow him?" Lassiter demanded.
The expression that Gus turned on the detective was fierce, and perfectly fit the angry scowl that had taken over most of his face. "That's Shawn's deal, detective. Not mine. I'm not stupid like that idiot."
Gus waited for a "hey!" or some other protestation to drift over them, but there was nothing. Both highly suspicious and somewhat concerning. It meant Shawn was wandering around, up to something, which was never a good direction for the fake psychic to take. He craned his neck surreptitiously, trying to catch a glimpse of Shawn, and instead spotted Frankjim Ogletree. He was sneering at people in his general vicinity, eyes darting this way and that, and obviously looking for something. Or someone.
Gus crouched down in his chair.
"Why were you in a meeting with Sanchez?" Juliet asked. Gus shook off his anxiety (mostly. Well, mostly not) and figured he'd have to have done damage control sooner or later anyways.
"I wanted--" he hesitated, suddenly thinking of Shawn again, and sighed, knowing that he couldn't pull off his secret now. "We've been preparing for this for awhile. Every year the bosses from the different branches of our pharmaceutical company have a conference. Usually they have it in Las Vegas, or Seattle, or San Francisco, but this year Santa Barbara is hosting."
Lassiter looked irritated. "I don't care where your corporate bosses take their vacation, Guster." He winced suddenly, and Gus caught Juliet rolling back on her heel, as though she had just smashed one of his feet with her own.
She smiled sweetly. "Go on."
Gus glanced to the left, as though for escape. "Uh...right. They decided to have it here because they're doing some personnel shifting. Someone at the home office retired."
Lassiter frowned. "And they're here to see who they should hire?"
Gus's face soured. "No. They've already picked my boss to fill that position. Since they had to have the conference here, someone decided they could have some of their bosses from HO interview the rest of us for Tom's job."
This time Juliet frowned. "Isn't that something they usually do within the company?"
Gus shook his head, and tried not to look irritated. "The president of the company is known for 'shaking things up.'"
"And they're probably doing it to make sure that Tom will be good for the new position. Not the brightest crayon in the box."
Gus couldn't stop the amused/unamused snort that escaped him. "That's probably true to--"
He started suddenly, realizing who had spoken, a moment before Lassiter and Juliet did, one half-jumping and the other turning her face with an expression of prettily contorted surprise on her face.
Shawn held his chin in his hand, looking contemplative, and sitting on one of the chairs that had been shoved up against the other wall. He had obviously commandeered it, scooted up behind the two-man blockade, and was sitting about three inches from Lassiter, who nearly, in his half-jump, tumbled into him.
Shawn cleared his throat, casually grabbed the off-balance detective by his coat, and had him sitting in his lap. "Nor the sharpest tool in the shed. The tallest tower in the castle. The longest book on the shelf with the least amount of pictures."
Lassiter leapt to his feet, face contorted with impotent rage and angry embarrassment. "I told you to get away from my material witness!"
The fake psychic patted his lap, smiling mockingly up at him. "It's okay if you liked it."
Juliet, over Lassiter's snarl, looked up at the ceiling, as though it could possibly answer her: "Why me?"
Shawn was smirking around both of them. "So that's what all those phone calls were about. You've been sucked into the world of brown-nosing, Gus. Sneaky, sneaky jackal, and here I'd been hoping it was a girlfriend who needed breaking in. The neglect of your best friend could have been forgiven for that."
"Shut up, Shawn," Gus snapped, feeling embarrassed and found-out, but there was something exceptionally like hurt that had snuck into his friend's smile.
"You couldn't have told me?"
"No," he said flatly, ignoring his discomfort. "I want a promotion. I didn't want to get fired."
The smile grew wider, and Gus convinced himself he'd imagined it. "And see how you've managed to do fine on your own. Oh, that rotten Sanchez, he'll ruin your chances for sure."
"So you were just in the right place at the right time?" Lassiter demanded, jumping back into the conversation.
"Wrong place, wrong time," Gus shot back, "but yes, pretty much."
"Hmmmmmm," Lassiter determined, which seemed to suggest that he didn't believe him.
"We're going to go now," Juliet said, smiling through her teeth. She pushed Lassiter away, his eyes to focused on being narrowed suspiciously to really protest.
"Don't skip town," he finished, and Juliet snapped "Carlton!"
Gus and Shawn were left, staring at each other at eye level, sitting with about a foot between their knees.
"Recap," Shawn announced. "You pretend you're more interested in work than you are, probably been helping to set up accommodations for the entire party of big, small, and blue cheeses, you show up for your interview, your interviewer gets a phone call, runs out the door, and Lassiter tries to arrest your ass, save for the lovely warrior princess, Juliet."
"You know how to make my life sound stupid, don't you?" Gus groused.
"Okay," Shawn concluded. "So now tell me what really happened with Sanchez."
Gus blinked, and finally managed a: "What?"
Shawn was nodding, hands folded in front of his mouth, fingers pressed up pensively against his lips. "He said the name of who called him, right? Or maybe where he was going."
Gus gave Shawn his flat-face. "I already told you exactly what happened."
"What?" Shawn demanded. Gus slumped in his chair, catching a few coworkers glances at Shawn's louder-than-necessary exclamation. "How are we supposed to do this psychic thing if you don't cooperate?"
In response, Gus's eyebrows took up residence further down over his eyes. "I'm going now."
"Gu--" Shawn started, jumping up after him. He broke suddenly into a cough from deep within his chest, which Gus didn't feel like humoring.
"I'm not going to stop and see if you're okay," he announced, stopping with his back to Shawn. "You're not convincing at all, and I don't feel sorry for you."
"That's fine," wheezed Shawn, draping an arm over his shoulder. "Since you suck at knowing when to keep stuff to yourself so we can use it later, we'll have to talk to the other guy."
Gus ignored the weight of Shawn putting as much effort as he could manage into using Gus as a prop. "Other guy?"
"Other guy," Shawn repeated. "You know, the other one in the room."
Here Gus's eyebrows shot to the middle of his forehead before flat-lining again. If he'd been a heart monitor, he would have been coding. "How could you know that?"
Shawn turned Gus's face towards the young man that he'd shared an almost traumatic arrest scene with. "Clipboard, hipster business man hair, looks lost without someone to tell him what to do. Sanchez's secretary, or am I wrong?"
Gus frowned, watching the brunette consult his the sheets on his clipboard as though looking at a map. The police questioning him had moved on to crowd control, keeping Gus's coworkers from exploding all over the hallway, and the kid, stiff hairstyle still intact, looked like he needed to ask someone for directions. "I think they prefer 'personal assistant.'"
"Assistant Shmassistant," Shawn waved off, "either way, he should know more than you about Sanchez."
"Yeah, but you can't have known just from his clipboard--"
"I was right behind Lassiter when he tried to arrest you, boy wonder," Shawn cut in with a smirk.
Gus claimed traumatic memory lapse, and corrected the only thing he could think of. "I am so batman in that scenario."
"We're missing our window of opportunity, boy wonder," Shawn ignored him, pushing Gus towards the PA. He caught Juliet and Lassiter making their way around the room out of his peripheral vision, but by then Shawn had already pushed Gus into the PA, who looked at them both with a surprised, I've-just-been-accosted-by-two-men look on his face before he was dragged unwittingly into the conference room.
The door clacked closed with an ominously heavy sound, and the PA was left blinking in the sunshine coming in through the windows.
"So," Shawn began. He sniffled loudly, ruining any sort of dramatic delivery he had going. "You're Sanchez's secretary."
On closer inspection, the PA was actually younger looking than at first appearance, and at this range Gus couldn't miss the smattering of freckles across his nose. It made the young man look guileless, like a short, almost chestnut brown-haired Buzz McNab. The likeness stopped at the end of his nose however, which was sharp and business-like, and suggested someone who was quietly competent and knew what was what.
"We prefer personal assistant, actually."
Gus smacked Shawn on the elbow, because it was the only body part he could reach without moving.
Shawn's "owch" face surfaced for a second, and disappeared. "Right. I'll remember that. My name is Shawn Spencer, psychic consultant with the police and currently extremely sick but working through my pain" here he got another smack to the elbow "and this is my associate, Bartholomew "Quite Contrary" Mary, of mother goose fame."
The PA looked like he wasn't sure if he should smile. "I'm pretty sure I have him written down as Burton Guster."
"His friends call him Bartholomew," Shawn assured him.
"My friends call me Gus," the pharmaceutical salesman amended with a tight smile.
The PA let loose one very small, very tight sigh. It was short and conveyed a desire to find himself. He managed to smile. "I'm Flet Johnson. I work as Mr. Sanchez's personal assistant, but I don't really know anything. I've been with the company for awhile, but I've only been with Sanchez for about a month. We don't exactly get together and have drinks after work."
Shawn narrowed his eyes, but the PA must have missed the amusement in it, because he was still smiling but it had turned defensive. "I keep Mr. Sanchez's schedule, but I certainly don't know who called him on his cell phone. The rest Mr. Guster knows as well as I."
"How very glib," Shawn decided.
Gus could feel this quickly spiralling out of control. Flet--okay, seriously, how honestly named their kid Flet?--didn't deserve the drive-by shoot-out of an interrogation that Shawn was about to gift him with. "Give him a break, Shawn."
"Thanks," Flet said, frowning a little through his smile. "But it's fine. It's a little frustrating that people seem to think I ran his life, but I didn't pick up his phone and that's the only way to know who had called him."
"Is it common for secretaries to get passed around?" Shawn asked.
"Personal assistants. And not to boast, but I'm really good at my job. I was requested by Mr. Sanchez, and the better pay was attractive."
"Okay, thank you very much, you can go now," Gus interrupted. Personal assitant or not, this guy was currently holding a clipboard with his name on it, and an interview evaluation attached. Or maybe a record of everything that they'd been saying. Maybe he was a stenographer. Regardless, the ideas just kept on getting more disastrous the more he thought about them.
"Don't be a wet paper bag!" Shawn cried. "We were just getting to the good part!"
The PA looked at him, expecting the "good part."
Shawn seemed to think about it, absently wiping at his nose with his sleeve. Gus choked off a gag, and Shawn seemed to come to a decision, frowning. "Okay, so no good part."
There was absolutely no way to tell, from the look on Flet's face (seriously? Flet? Who were this kid's parents?) if that was going to go down well or not, and Gus was spared finding out when the door smacked him in the back with enough force for him to bounce off.
"Whoa! Sorry!" a voice cried. "I thought I saw some people come in here, but I really wasn't expecting you to be standing right in front of the door!"
Gus turned, rubbing his back, and really wished he hadn't.
Tom looked like he was ready to offer Gus a massage for slamming the door into his back, and behind him the hall could be seen to have gotten even more chaotic as time went on. The police officers weren't even attempting to keep things in order anymore, and from what Gus could see of Lassiter's face, he was about to be either drowned in a sea of curious drug dealers, or was going to be shooting his way out of it in a second. Tom was leaning into the door, the clammer swelling and falling behind him, but he had lost the expression that said he wanted to make it up to Gus and was frowning at Shawn instead.
"Do I...know you?" he hazharded.
Gus suddenly realized his life was about to fall apart.
Shawn's smile, on a good day a toothy, despiccable thing, suddenly looked slightly bucktoothed, and completely retarded. "The spirit stick? Bonding? Gymnast Grandman?"
"Jerry!" Tom cried, like he was greeting a lost brother.
And damage control was quite abruptly, and irrevocably, thrust upon Gus's shoulders.
"Okay thanks goodbye," Gus nattered, pushing Flet out the door. He bumped a surprised Tom, who didn't let go of the door, but scooted out of the way so that the PA was shoved under the bridge his arm had created. "Go talk to the police," he finished, and the bewildered, be-freckled Flet was gone.
"Wow," Tom concluded, grinning conspiratorially at Shawn. "Someone's stressed."
Shawn bobbed his head to his reply. "I know, Tom, RIGHT?"
"I haven't seen you in ages, Jerry!" Tom declared, talking much too loudly for Gus's nerves. He ached to shove Tom out of the way and close the door. People were going to find out. They were going to find out that Gus was a big fat liar and then, goodbye promotion. "What, it has to have been since that bonding weekend! You were such a riot."
"Not as much as you!" Shawn replied excitedly, punching Tom a little too hard on the arm. Gus smacked him when Tom turned away for a second to smile and rub at his bicep. "You're going to be the new big cheese!"
"Ohhh, it's not official yet," Tom aww-shucksed. "And you! You need to come to more office parties." He turned on Gus, who'd been hoping he wouldn't. "And so do you! What a couple of party poopers, eh?" He laughed, and Shawn joined in, guffawing loudly.
Gus leaned forward, so that he was practically laying across Shawn's back. "I hate you," he hissed.
Shawn started to snort as he laughed, but the the attempt to sound even stupider than he was caught in his throat. He broke into another coughing fit, which went on for too many awkward seconds. He sounded like a dog.
"Well that doesn't sound good!" Tom announced.
"I know!" Shawn exclaimed, grinning, once he'd gotten his breath back.
Gus wasn't exactly sure how long Shawn and Tom could continue talking about nothing and laughing themselves ridiculous over it, but it wasn't a statistic he was particularly interested in finding out. He waffled on whether he should actually try to break this up with some tact, or simply grab Shawn and bolt, but his decision was made for him.
Ogletree, with a narrowing of eyes, spotted him from the hallway behind Tom's back. Their eyes met, and the anal-retentive coworker started to stride forward, pushing into people. The thirty feet of safety distance him and Gus started to shrink.
"Goodbye, Tom, time to go!" Gus announced hysterically, shoving Shawn under Tom's arm. Tom half-clotheslined him before dropping his arm, and Shawn went stumbling out the door with a Jerry-like "Whoa!"
Gus thought he was home free for one very sweet moment of victory, when Tom's hand suddenly found his arm.
"Listen, Burton," Tom said quietly, swinging Gus around with more strength thant the pharmaceutical sales rep had realized he had in him. "Jerry looks absolutely terrible. Take him home, would you?"
Gus blinked. That had not been what he was expecting.
"What?" he asked stupidly.
"Jerry," Tom insisted, a frown between his eyes. "I don't know what he's come down with, but I think he could really use the sleep. And I don't know if he gets a ride to work or maybe drives himself--" Tom actually had the decency to look ashamed that he didn't know one of his employee's work habits, and Gus felt like a cad, "--but I don't think it's a good idea to put him behind the wheel of a car. You're his friend, you wouldn't mind, right?"
There was absolutely no way to answer that question with a negative, and regardless, Gus knew Tom wouldn't let him get away without saying "yes." Worse, Gus could practically feel Ogletree breathing down his neck.
But still. Yeah, Shawn was a little pale, maybe, but he didn't look terrible. Gus sighed internally, putting all his irritation into the inaudible sound. You listen to a guy moan for two weeks straight, and you stop believing it once science proves that you cannot have a cold for more than that amount of time. He'd been played like a violin too, answering to Shawn's every whim, mostly on an act of good faith--he kept Shawn happy, Shawn didn't ask what he was up to. He'd manage to make you feel sorry for him, and then show up healthy and smiling when he wanted to do something that a sick man couldn't do.
Manipulative bastard.
"Yes, sure, sounds good," Gus declared, swiveling away from Tom's smile as his boss let go of his arm.
He ran smack dab into Ogletree's chest.
"OW," Ogletree snapped from somewhere back in his nose.
"Oh hi, Frankjim," Tom smiled, walking past them both.
Ogletree smiled, face following Tom's progress until their boss started to chat up someone new. He turned back to Gus and sneered down his nose. "Get your little psychic buddy out of here."
"I'm trying," Gus muttered.
"Yeah, RIGHT," he scoffed, looking mean. Ogletree's face seemed to have been made for looking mean, and here he pulled it off with just the right amount of schoolyard nerd-bully. "I know you have some sort of deal worked out with some of our superiors here, but don't think I don't see what you're doing."
Gus could not have cared less as to what it was that his greatest work enemy thought he was doing, because like as not it had something to do with getting a promotion.
"I'll report you if you try and use your little partner to get an advantage over me. Just because I intimidate you, doesn't mean--"
Gus threw his hands up in the air. "I don't even have time for this," he snapped, and side-stepped Ogletree, nearly running down Kathy, who declared, with an enthusiastic amount of aplomb: "OH, well isn't that just coffee for you!"
He was so utterly, completely, and royally screwed if he didn't get Shawn out of here right now. This whole thing was just setting up to crumble, all over his promotional opportunities. He dodged "good morning!"s, curious "what's going on?!"s and a single "Come on, guys, isn't break over already?," hissing out, as loudly as he could, "Shawn" every few steps.
He was just rounding the corner when, for the second time that day, a hand grabbed him without warning. Gus swung around the corner, nearly careened into Shawn, and they both disappeared into the janitor's closet without so much as a by-your-leave.
"WHA--"
Shawn smashed his hand against Gus's mouth, forcing him into the door. Gus could see him by the sliver of light coming through the small window on the door, his eyes almost pale blue in the streak of fluorescense, and staring out the plexiglass. For a moment Gus was taken aback by the heavy gouges trenched under his eyes, but Shawn shifted and the shadows drew back and receded.
"I know this has to be exciting for you, never having any closet escapades yourself," Shawn whispered, "but be quiet. I think we lost her."
Gus grabbed Shawn's wrist, bending it with a little more force than necessary to get his hand off his mouth. Shawn made a whining noise that turned into a cough he had to bury in his shirt while Gus scowled.
"Who?"
Shawn rubbed his wrist with a sad expression on his face. "Way to thank a friend. I was talking about Raccoon Barbie. She was following you."
"Racoon--" Gus was suddenly struck by the mental visual of a pair of eyes ringed by nothing but a black circle. "You mean Ice Cold Vanilla?"
Shawn's eyebrows went up. "And you didn't like 'Racoon Barbie'?"
"Why was she following me?" Gus demanded.
"I don't know." His best friend spoke like it was the most obvious answer in the world. "Maybe she likes the way your butt looks in those pants. I'm not psychic you know."
Shawn wasn't whispering anymore, so Gus assumed the coast was clear. "You're also not Jerry," he snapped. "What am I going to do?"
"Take me home?" Shawn suggested. "I look really terrible, you know."
"You heard that?"
Shawn gave him the puppy-eyes, complete with pursed lips. "Feed me chicken soup?"
Gus started to pace back and forth in front of the door. "I wouldn't feed you anything but to a piranha. We've got to get you out of here."
Shawn had started playing with a squeedgie brush on one of the shelves, but he turned to give Gus a grin, still squeezing the sponge like it was going to start squeaking. "Oh good. We can go look for Sanchez then."
"NO." Gus crossed his arms, taking a stand. "I'm not going on a wild goose chase. I have work. Important work. You can either accept a ride home from me, or spend the rest of the day in this closet."
"But--! But!" Shawn whined. "We need to look for Sanchez! Isn't that more interesting? Jules and Lassy aren't finding anything, they're just trying to block off some roads or print off some 'Lost Pet' signs or something. I think they'll be stapling them to telephone poles later. They need us on this!"
"They do not need us, Shawn." Gus suddenly snatched the squeedgie from Shawn. He started to absently go to work on it, stress knuckling his hand over the irritatingly yellow sponge. "I need to get back to work. This is really important to me."
"Not as important as crime!" Shawn gasped.
Gus scowled.
"Besides," he continued, "with all the chaos now, no one will even notice you're gone. And this Sanchez seems pretty--oh wait, this is our cue," he finished suddenly, watching out the door window.
"What?" Gus tried, but Shawn had already fallen onto the door handle. Gus, still supporting himself against the door, tumbled out with Shawn, the sponge, and a mop that he'd knocked from its corner.
Lassiter received the full brunt of Gus and the mop, with Shawn providing encore falling-humor by angling himself to bang into Lassiter's knee. It buckled for a second, held, and Lassiter was left cursing, trying to hold up and pull off Gus from him.
"Spencer! If this is illegal coercion of a material witness--"
"As I was saying," Shawn continued, "This Sanchez seems pretty wiley."
"The man's about 5 foot 6 and overweight," Gus interrupted sourly.
"--and I think you're going to need to spare this afternoon time just to track him down," he finished.
Lassiter's phone rang as he was about to go off on his opinoiin about the fake psychic's opinions, and they were all spared the recap of nearly three years worth of monologues condensed into the same packaging for the same price. "Detective Lassiter."
Shawn remained standing with his body turned so that it looked like all three were having a conversation together. Lassiter tried to move out of the way and continue on, but Shawn kept shifting, Gus following to keep up with the both friend and vaguely intriguing conversation, so that no matter which way he turned, the head detective was still the right angle in their triangle.
"Okay, so the guys got a lot of money, and some obviously good connections if he disappeared that fast. He's going to be a hard one to find."
"Good," Lassiter said, with such finality that it stopped Shawn's one-sided analysis. "Bring Sanchez to the station and I'll interrogate him there."
Gus looked at the psychic for a long second.
"Well," Shawn said. "Or not."
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
"They're not going to just let you waltz into the interrogation room."
Shawn wasn't precisely certain the type of tree that had been involved, but he still had to come to the somewhat disturbing conclusion that some sort of stick had gotten lodged up the back end of his best friend's posterior. It might have had to do with the stress of the interview, or maybe something to do with the fact that he had faked the beginning of an incredibly bad coughing spell in front of Tom, moaning about no one willing to take him home. That had actually earned Gus a glare from Tom, which had been a thing of pathetic beauty.
The faked coughing spell had gotten what he wanted, but it had also stopped being fun after the first hack. The fake cough had ended pretty well real, and with the taste of iron.
It was a warning sign he was willing to ignore, because it was more fun to be well when things were begging to be detected and put to rights.
"By the end of the day," Shawn predicted to his best friend, "they'll be begging me to interrogate him. But we don't have that time to kill, so we'll just wait--" He consulted his watch. "5...4...3...2..."
There was the sound of glass smashing into something hard, and Gus jumped.
"What did you do?" Gus demanded.
"Helped things along a bit," Shawn smiled, grinning with a suspicious amount of teeth showing.
Buzz went rushing past, and thirty seconds later he returned, followed by Jules and Lassy. Lassy looked like he'd been chewing glass, while Jules followed with a look on her face that said she'd be reigning him in for the rest of the day if this kept up.
Shawn pushed himself off the decorative pillar he'd been leaning against, hiding the shiver that tingled through his arms momentarily. He shuddered, and tried to pull his long sleeves tighter over his wrists, clenching his arms over his chest.
"So who do you think I should be?" he asked. Gus, now that he was away from work, looked as though he were relaxing a little. It was a good sign, and assured Shawn that he wasn't going to be accidentally breaking something in his back while trying to walk down the hall. "Shawn, psychic consultant? Jerry? I'm sure there are other options--"
Gus suddenly tightened up again. "I. Don't. CARE. No, wait, you know what? Don't be anybody. I will be conducting this interrogation."
"Bad cop?"
"NO!"
Shawn grinned hopefully, watching Gus's strides even with anger. "So I get to be bad cop?"
"YES." He caught his friend's sudden falter, then mid-stride hesitation. "Actually no. We do good cop, bad cop, I'm bad cop."
"Fair enough." They stopped at the door to the interrogation room, Gus checking with a suspicious amount of head jerking to the right and left, which Shawn allowed, only because it was an empty corner of the station. He swept an arm towards the door. "Would you like this waltz?"
Gus huffed, and strode in.
Robert Sanchez was an abject pile of human misery. He looked like he'd bite off the nose of the first person who touched him, and yet utterly like he'd been defeated. It made him look fatter than in the pictures Shawn had seen sitting in one of the station's printers.
"So--" Shawn watched as Gus suddenly lost steam. "Uh...I'm very decisive in my work. I also have a good work ethic and a moral code--"
"--which says that stealing money from the company is bad," Shawn cut in. He ignored Gus's glare and attempts to restart his interview, and suddenly sneered. "Eh, Roberto?"
The overweight man pulled himself up, crossing his arms. "Don't you mock me," he snapped. "I can have you called up on charges of discrimination and racism, blue boy. Okay, fine, my name is Sanchez, I'm from Tijuana, but you've got no right to assume my name is Roberto."
Shawn glanced over at Gus. "It's not Roberto?"
Gus shook his head. "It's not Roberto."
Shawn conceded it with a sharp incline of his head. It made his headache push up against the sinuses above his eyes, like water sloshing too far into a well, and he squinted for a moment, tearing a little. He sniffled, and tried not to look like he was about to start crying. "Alright, Bob, you wanna explain how you knew the coppers were coming for you?"
"You know, Mr. Sanchez," Gus smiled, "I'm personally a very big supporter of the moral code in the workplace."
"I didn't know!" the boss snapped. "What kind of idiot criminal do you think I am? I escape from work, but then I stop to rent my car for another couple of days?"
"Wow," Shawn conceded. "That is stupid."
"I'm not a criminal!" Bob snapped. "I can't tell you that enough! This is because I'm Mexican, isn't it?"
"That's right Bobbo," Shawn said absently, distracted by Gus's manic smile. "Dude," he said, trying to get his attention, ignoring Bobbo's newfound dislike of another nickname, "Dude, is that what you looked like when you interviewed? No wonder he ran away."
Gus shot Shawn a glare that said he'd get him to drop-dead soon, but he turned most of his focus on Mr. Sanchez, and making sure his smile was professional, not to mention damn well creepy.
"Mr. Sanchez," he said in the warm voice that convinced people to buy legal drugs in large quantities. "The police have the financial records concerning your extracurricular activities." Gus shot Shawn a look that asked if that was right, having never seen the documents themselves, and Shawn shrugged imperceptibly. He didn't understand those fact sheets. "You're not helping yourself by refusing to talk with us. We've got all the time we could possible need, and it's honestly just a matter of helping yourself."
Shawn stared on with something akin to amazement, though on Shawn's face it registered somewhere between impressed and amused. Bobbo's face had cleared somewhat, and though he'd drooped back into the cold metal chair, it was with an expression that was willing to listen. Shawn figured it had something to do with one kind of wild animal talking to another--though in this case "wild" should be replaced with "tame" and/or "domesticated", with a reference to the act of neutering and/or castrating. One sales rep apparently recognized another.
Bob's fingers skittered along the surface of the table, drifting over the metal as though unsure as to what to do with them. "I got a call from the airport car rental. They said I needed to return my car or extend the rental within the next half hour, or I'd be arrested for stealing. Some idiot secretary kid screwed up my rental."
"They threatened to arrest you?" Gus asked incredulously.
"No, no," Shawn agreed, putting up his hand to stop Gus's skepticism. "I've had to deal with these people before. Lose the hubcaps to your rental once, and they'll never forgive you. They're like the devil, only less cute."
"You lost the hubcaps on a rental?" Gus asked, only more dubiously.
"What can I say? It was a bad part of town."
"Do you cops even want to hear my story?" Bobbo demanded.
"Cop?" Shawn asked, sounding like he'd never heard the word before.
Gus was staring at him. "You don't remember me?"
Sanchez folded his arms into himself, peering at Gus. "Did you bring me coffee?"
"NO!"
The fake psychic pursed his lips, taking in Bob's badly covered bald spot, and surprisingly thin neck. He watched the boss roll up his sleeves with chubby fingers, not watching either, and came to a decision. "Sorry. You're being downgraded to Bobble."
"What?" he demanded.
Shawn turned to see Gus examining the boss, his own shirt coat gone and left in his blueberry-like car, though his rich purple sleeves were still buttoned down at his wrists. "Oh," he finally said, nodding his head. "Bobble-head. Nice."
"Wha--"
It took a moment of thinking through the headache, but Shawn picked up the thread of the interrogation easily enough. Probably. For normal people. "So you got to the airport and...what?"
Bobble sighed, long and loud and full of self-pity. "I was trying to extend my rent date and I was arrested. Arrested. And then some crazy detective nut starts yelling financial fraud when I still think I'm in jail for stealing a car that I was trying to pay for."
"So you're not a part of the financial fraud at Central Coast?"
"Is that or is that not what I have been saying for the past hour?"
"Ehhh..." Gus and Shawn looked at each other. "Mostly not." "Not, you took too long to get to the point."
Bobble threw up his hands, supplicating the ceiling. "Fabulous."
"...and if I catch the idiot who didn't make sure the ceiling light cover was fully screwed on I'll SPENCER! Get out of my interrogation room!"
"And that's us," Shawn smiled, bowing out. He swept past Lassiter, swiveling on his heel with a smile for Juliet.
"Oh, and I finish my route in perhaps some of the best times for the company--"
"Guster, OUT!" Lassiter demanded.
They were both summarily kicked out, left standing outside an interrogation room, one with a cough tickling at the back of his throat, the other pretty sure he was going to be fired. But the case was too fascinating to let go.
Gus shook his head. "He's lying. He has to be."
"No he doesn't, cause he isn't," Shawn answered, rubbing at his forehead. "Now should we check out the airport or go back to work?"
"You can't know that!"
"I can, I do." Shawn let his hand drop, and he opened his eyes to meet Gus's irritated gaze. "So, airport or work?"
Gus crossed his arms. 'No! I have work!"
"Okay, work then. Which is actually a good idea, I don't think we're going to get much out of the airport people."
"No!" Gus insisted, the silly man. "I just brought you home, remember?"
"Ah," Shawn smiled. "Actually, you brought Jerry home."
For a second Gus only stared with incredulity in his brown eyes. "What?! They're the same person!"
"Ye, but no one knows that except--"
Gus's phone rang and he answered it, pulling it from his pocket as he stepped away from the wall. He nearly walked into a rookie, but his scowl won that fight. "Burton Gu--"
Gus's face, had it been able to, would have gone white. Instead it went a grayish puce. He snapped the phone shut.
"I'm going," he said without any snap. "I've got to get going. This is your fault, this is all your fault, I'm never getting hired."
"You're already hired," Shawn pointed out.
"They started the interviews without me. I'm supposed to be up, but they're pushing me back and who knows if they can fit me back in--"
"Breathe."
Gus just made an "nnnnn" noise, and went bolting towards the station's exit.
"If you collapse," Shawn called through the station, "don't say I didn't warn you!"
~~~~~~~~~~
Shawn stood at the vending machine, carefully examining his choices. He'd realized awhile back that he was supposed to be hungry, and was now poised over the implications of getting peanuts over MnMs. He was also contemplating the 50 cents in his hand, and cursing the twist of fate that had brought him here, along.
"Gus," he moaned. "Where are you when I need to mooch off of you?"
"Sometimes I wonder why he's friends with you," Juliet's voice came from behind him.
"I don't," Shawn grinned, taking in the expression on her face, which was mostly amused. "It's because I'm so much fun." He coughed suddenly.
"Don't go there," she said, smiling like they were sharing a joke.
"I can't win with you people, can I?" he asked.
"No," she said. "Not when you've already manipulated as much as you can out of us. And if you were feeling as bad as you say you are, what are you doing here?"
Shawn had no real good answer for that one, and he simply tried to clear the soreness out of the back of his throat, which did nothing but make his swallow feel like a knife going down. He looked down at the money in his hand and tried to remember what he was doing with it, feeling stupid in the next moment when he realized he wanted snacks. In the relative term of "want."
Juliet took the change from his hand, examining the machine. "Why are you still here?"
"I was abandoned," he replied, watching her feed the quarters to the machine. Her own change joined it a second later and she selected the peanuts, which coiled out from the vending machine holder, dropping to the bottom with a quiet "flunk" of peanuts in plastic.
She handed the package to him. "Don't get me wrong," she said, regarding him seriously. "I don't think you're as sick as you say you are, but you are least getting over something. Peanuts are going to taste better. Better than chocolate or sour patch kids, anyways."
He looked at her with surprise. "How did you know what I was thinking about getting?"
"That's what you always get. Or at least, statistically speaking. I went with the odds on this one." She smiled, walking cheerfully away, not realizing that she'd just made his day.
He followed after her, lengthening his strides to catch up. "So you do feel sorry for me!"
"No, Shawn." She waved at a couple of officers, who waved back, and continued. "You got way too much out of me already for being sick. I can't believe it anymore."
He moaned in mock pain. "Why? Why me? I don't get it! What do I have to do to make you guys believe my pain is real?"
Juliet scoffed. "If it was real, for one thing."
"It's real!"
"Shawn," she said, rolling her eyes affectionately at him, "you say everything that's bothering you. If it hurts we know, if you're miserable, you let everyone else feel miserable too, until they make you feel better. You've been doing it for the past two weeks, and it gets a little old. You're not even pulling it off quite as well."
Shawn sighed at her back, following her to her desk. She swung into her chair, pulling open the bottom cabinet with a smooth movement of her right hand while she pulled out an orange with her left.
"Ohhh," she said, bringing it to her nose. "I love that smell."
Shawn sighed, but it wasn't in contentment. He couldn't smell a thing.
"You win, universe," he said, leaning against the edge of her desk, crossing back into his long sleeves and disappearing under his polo, "this round."
"What?" she asked.
He shook his head, lips pursed. "Nothing."
"O'Hara."
Juliet and Shawn both looked over to see Lassiter headed their way, a file folder in his hands. He scowled when he saw who was hovering around the younger detective's desk, but didn't hesitate, which meant that the treatments were working. Shock value really did lose its charm over time.
"O'Hara," Lassiter said again, as though making it clear exactly who he was talking to. He paused for a moment and studied, with some disapproval, the plastic fork she was trying to peel the orange with. Apparently it was a capital offense, and he went on without comment. "I wanted you to look over some more of these."
Shawn took the folder mid hand-over. "What are they?"
"More financial information. We were hoping to trace what he was doing
"Yeah," she said. "We were noticing some discrepancies that could be more of this. We're not sure how deep it goes, or how far."
"Huh." He studied them noncommittally, fingers darting just enough to keep them out of Lassiter's greedy little hands. He suddenly leaned forward, and his "Huh," was more interested.
"What?" she asked.
"This is fun," he said. "This looks like the same pattern from Bobble."
Juliet mouthed *bobble?* at Lassiter, who looked irritated but didn't have an answer for her.
"Look, we know Sanchez isn't behind it--"
"We do?" Lassiter interrupted, not at all like he was asking.
"--and so it stands to reason that there are other people. There has to be. Like this woman here, the Pharmaceutical Sales & Strategies, heh, just like Bobble--"
He cut himself off with an abruptness that caught even the person next desk over off guard. Shawn did not simply just stop talking. But here he stood, pulling a cell phone out of his pocket, finger pressed down on the 1, and not saying a word.
Juliet stopped peeling her orange, giving the ill-equipped fork a break. "Shawn--"
He put up a finger to stop her, said "Just a moment," and brought the cell to his ear.
"Quick," Shawn demanded after the call made it through. "Who's your interviewer?"
"Shawn--"
"No, seriously, Gus, now who is it?"
"Bella Montaigne. Shawn, I've gotta go, I'm up."
Shawn looked at the document in his hand for a moment. "Ah, Gus--"
"I told you," Gus's voice came, sounding antsy. "I'm going now, good--"
"Interview fast," Shawn said.
"Shawn, wha--"
He snapped the phone shut one handed, and turned back to Lassiter and Juliet, who were watching him with looks ranging from confused to angrily confused. He started to snap his fingers, windmilling his arms a little to add depth to the sudden vision.
"I'm getting uh...ah...." Shawn fought with his brain to come up with the words, "vampires! But not vampires, only the conference calls..." He snapped his fingers in Jules direction.
"Uh, um...interviews! Interviews?" She asked. Lassiter grumbled something about the phone call having been a give-away.
"That's it!" he exclaimed, ignoring Lassy. Okay, whoops, that was a little sloppy of him but oh well. "Interviews, meetings, drug deals. Blah blah blah! Also, a very angry black man!"
Lassiter found himself on the end of Shawn's pointing finger. "Mr. T?"
There was a good moment of silence, where Shawn could only stare. "Really?" he finally asked. "Mr. T? Really?" He looked over at Juliet, and found her at more of a loss than Lassy.
"Gus," he said. "I'm getting Gus, guys."
He sighed. "Oh forget it. I've got Gus at work and another interruption."
Juliet and Lassiter exchanged a look as Shawn looked at the ceiling with another sigh.
"He's going to be so pissed."
~~~~~~~~~
Gus sat with his head in his hands, but he wasn't hysterical. Not this time.
"You arrested another of my interviewers," he said quietly, almost calmly into his lap.
"Well, she was a fraud anyway--"
"While I was interviewing with her."
Shawn shrugged, sniveling mucus into his nose. "I told you to interview fast."
"I can't believe you," Gus shook his head. "I really can't."
The fake psychic tried to play it off with a grin, which was lost on the bowed head, and a shrug, also lost, though a very nonchalantly played shrug all the same. "Hey, you know I'm just--"
Gus's head popped up, and he didn't look angry, didn't look sad, just looked sort of disappointed, and inexplicably resigned. "Don't. I really can't right now. Just...don't follow me. I can't do this right now."
Gus stood as suddenly as he'd looked up, walking to go...wherever it was that angry pharmaceutical reps went to blow off steam. His route maybe.
Shawn was left, sitting in the chair that Gus had vacated, surrounded by a room full of thrilled pharmaceutical sales reps, watching the parade of Bella Montaigne with Juliet at her cuffed wrists and Lassiter reading her rights, and suddenly remembering his headache.
He grimaced at the wall opposite him.
Whoops.
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