Gus knew Shawn better than anyone else he could possibly think of. He figured that he even surpassed the one and only Henry Spencer in terms of understanding Shawn. But then again, maybe fathers weren’t always meant to completely understand their sons, and vice versa. Gus knew that through all the jokes and silliness Shawn was a highly intelligent and sensitive person, even if no one else seemed to notice. Shawn had always been good at portraying whatever emotion he wanted people to see. Gus hadn’t been able to see through Shawn’s act until the end of high school when his best friend’s life seemed to spiral out of control. Shawn wasn’t quite Shawn back then, and Gus was almost glad he left. Since his return, Shawn had been pretty much back to normal. When they started Psych, Gus thought that he would never see Shawn’s act slip again, he was more put together, and Gus made the logical assumption that something good had happened during the years after high school that caused Shawn to – dare he say it- grow up a bit. But little did he know he was mistaken. There was something that Shawn didn’t talk about, that he had buried almost too deep to be able to find, and Gus couldn’t believe that when he learned about it, he was in an interrogation room, sitting next to Shawn as an angry head detective stared at them across the cold metal table, and that he found out from none other than Detective Carlton Lassiter.
“Care to explain this to me Spencer?” Lassiter said angrily as he stared Shawn down.
Shawn merely stared back at him, with an expression of cold detachment and amusement on his face. He didn’t say anything for a long time. Watching Lassie’s face slowly get increasingly red with anger at every passing second without an answer to his question was more amusing.
Then just as the detective’s patience ran out, Shawn said “It was a long time ago Lassie, I wouldn’t expect you to care, but that’s a chapter of my life completely void of interesting events and surprisingly, a rare lack of pineapple consumption. This being the case, I vote to skip over it and pretend that it does not exist. Who is up for smoothies? All this talk about pineapple has got me craving one.”
Gus was pretty sure that Shawn’s lame attempt at making a joke was a front to hide whatever he was really feeling. It appeared that Lassiter knew this too.
“Look, Shawn. I have the records here that tell me all the pertinent details of events that occurred. I’m only asking for your side of the story because O’Hara thought that it would be a good idea. I’m not against throwing you behind bars at least for a while for hindering a police investigation.” Lassiter said as he shoved a rather thick file across the table.
Shawn ignored the file because he already knew what it said. He had been there when everything went down, and his memory wouldn’t let him forget, no matter how many shots of anything he drank. Gus, on the other hand, was intrigued. He didn’t understand why he was here, other than Shawn’s refusal to enter the interrogation room alone with Lassie. Lassiter knew he wasn’t going to get anywhere fighting with Shawn so he agreed.
As he glanced at the first few pages he encountered Gus began to understand what exactly it was that Lassiter wanted Shawn to talk about. Gus remembered reading about this in the papers when it happened a few years ago. A little girl had been kidnapped right out of her bedroom in the middle of the night. Her parents were devastated and any notion of a lead was gone by the end of the week she was taken. Whoever did it was good. They didn’t leave any real evidence and had the police running around in circles following the fake evidence trails that they set up. They looked for her for weeks, but after two months the trail went cold and they had nothing left to go on. Everyone figured that she was probably dead. The kidnapper never made any demands and they couldn’t find the girl so that was the logical conclusion at the time. It was only after the family had buried an empty coffin that the letters started arriving. Every once in a while, the SBPD would get a letter with the words ‘Found her yet?’ written on it. They were always sent to forensics, but nothing was ever found. Everyone knew who was sending them, but no one knew how to catch them. A lucky break came a few weeks later when a man with a young girl was caught shoplifting at a small convenience store just outside of Santa Barbara. The cashier had caught them and recognized the girl; he secretly called the cops and tried to get the man to stay in the store long enough for help to arrive. But when they finally arrived the kidnapper had caught on to the cashier’s plan. As soon as the cops showed up they saw the cashier being held with a gun to his head through the window of the store. The kidnapper walked out with both the cashier and the girl. A few days later the cashier who was a young man walked into the police station with blood on his shirt and the little girl by his side. He had been shot in the abdomen and had been rushed to the hospital. His name was kept out of all reports per his request, and he was given an award for his bravery.
Gus remembered all this too well, he had felt so bad for the family, and it was amazing that they got their daughter back alive after so long. No one ever found out who the young man was. The surveillance video was grainy at best and kept mostly out of the public eye, and all employment records were redacted.
It was left at that, the young man said that the kidnapper was dead, but he didn’t know where. They had walked for a long time to get to the station and he couldn’t remember where the place was that they had escaped from. He was probably running on adrenaline after the escape and didn’t think to check for an address or street name. Eventually it became enough that he and the girl made it out alive, and the case was closed with the kidnapper presumed dead. Until today, that is.
The police had received another letter with the same words on it just that morning. And Shawn and Gus were immediately called in. The most important thing to do now was to figure out if they were dealing with a copy cat or if the kidnapper was back.
Why they were in the interrogation room now was still a mystery to Gus. Lassiter had completely out of the blue dragged Shawn down here only an hour after they had arrived at the station. He obviously knew something that Gus didn’t, and when he had asked Juliet about it she wouldn’t tell him what was going on.
Lassiter sighed, “Listen Spencer, I know. Okay? There’s no point in playing dumb. I know about your involvement in this case the last time and I need you to tell me what you remember. Otherwise we may not be able to catch this guy.”
“First of all, I’m not playing. I don’t play dumb. Confused perhaps, naive maybe, but never dumb. And secondly, there’s no way you could know anything. All those records were sealed, confidentiality agreements were signed, and words were redacted. Even if you think you know what you know, it’s not possible to know and therefore I can’t tell you what I know because you don’t know what you know.” Shawn replied with a playful smirk.
Lassiter was onto him, and he knew it. He was only playing this out for the fun of it. There was no way that the kidnapper was back. Shawn was certain that his shot had killed him. That was how he had managed to escape. It must be a copycat. It had to be.
Shawn fought off a shudder that threatened to course through his body. There was a chill in the air in the interrogation room, and the memories that came flooding back with his current train of thought gave him goose bumps. He didn’t want to think about the few days that he spent trapped in that man’s basement when he was 19. That had been before he returned to Santa Barbara the first time. He stayed with Gus for a few weeks then he was gone again. Off to another state, to another job, and to another chapter of his life.
Things were starting to fall into place for Gus at that point, he was starting to see what Lassiter was trying to get Shawn to admit, and the look on Shawn’s face only confirmed Gus’s suspicions that Lassiter had been spot on.
He began thinking back to the time when Shawn had shown up on his doorstep looking more than a little tired. Gus had almost not even recognized him at first. His hair had been a mess and he was way too thin, and his eyes were sunken and emotionless. Even the smile that he had given him as he opened the door seemed hollow and lifeless. Gus knew better than to ask questions though, and after a week or so Shawn started to get back to normal, and then a few weeks later it was like nothing happened, and then he had left. Gus should have put two and two together a long time ago, but it was all a little too much like a television show for him to consider at the time.
Lassiter said nothing, only stared. Shawn stared back but Gus could tell that the pressure was getting to him, and so could Lassiter.
Carlton steeled his gaze and looked at Shawn. It was the same look he used on all the criminals who were unlucky enough to end up in an interrogation room with Head Detective Carlton Lassiter of the SBPD. It didn’t take long. Shawn’s memory was bombarding his brain with too many images of the horrors he had witnessed all those years ago, and that along with the knowledge that Lassie had figured him out had caused him to start to crack under the intense gaze of the head detective. As he stared back, his smile faltered and before he knew it, his smile became a grimace.
“Alright Lassie, if you know as much as you think you do why don’t you tell me what you know and I’ll fill in the blanks.” Shawn said emotionlessly.
Lassiter nodded and said “I know that you were the guy working at the convenience store, and I know that you were the one who shot that bastard and saved that little girl’s life... What I don’t know, is how and why it’s been such a secret. I mean the guy’s dead. What’s there to hide from?”
Gus studied his friend’s face as Lassiter spoke. Shawn didn’t move, he didn’t even appear to be breathing. No one had any idea what went on when they were held captive by the kidnapper, whom the media had come to refer to as the ghost because before the convenience store security tape, he had never left a trace of himself anywhere.
Shawn took a deep breath, and shifted in his chair. Then he said “Good work Lassie. I’m actually a little impressed that you figured that out. As for the secrecy, I didn’t want to talk about what happened there. Not one of my favorite memories if you know what I mean.”
“Why? You’re supposed to be ‘psychic’, couldn’t you have, I don’t know, divined the location of the place even if you couldn’t remember where it was? And I would be really interested to know the details of your escape because frankly, I’m a little confused as to how an idiot such as you managed to get a gun and shoot the guy then proceed to escape with the girl and make it to the police with a bullet wound. You just don’t strike me as the Bruce Willis type.” The detective said somewhat condescendingly, seeming to imply that maybe Shawn lied about the events of that day.
Shawn looked more than a little angry at those words. He replied “You know what Detective? I didn’t want to talk about what happened because he tortured me. I was there for 3 days before I got the chance to escape, and I didn’t want to have to come home and deal with my father and everyone I love knowing what had happened.”
The room went silent. That was it, the one detail that no one knew but most suspected. Shawn’s admittance of this fact changed the game. A lot. The ghost had just gone from kidnapper to sadistic psycho, which made it ever more important that either the ghost himself, if he was somehow alive or this copycat be found ASAP.