You Have the Right to Remain...Dead? Part 10

[musicalluna]

Title: You Have the Right to Remain...Dead? Part 10
Fandom: Psych
Author: MusicalLuna
Rating: T
Characters/Pairings: All the regulars/None
Genre: Gen, Mystery, Suspense
Warnings: Little tiny bit of gore.
Complete: Yes
Summary: When an officer is murdered late one night while on duty, Karen forbids Shawn from getting involved, afraid he won't take the case as seriously as he should. But since when has a little thing like being banned from a case stopped Shawn Spencer?
A/N: I've been working on this story for over three months now. Up until three weeks ago, however, it was coming out really rather crappy. That was when I met my Psych fanfiction soul-mate centipede. She helped me work out all the kinks in my story and helped me realize the full-potential of this story. Thanks to her, this story is the best it can be. She was my encouragement, my grammar-nazi, and my holy-crap-I-have-to-do-that-because-that-idea-is-brilliant girl.

Thanks so much for rocking my Psych world!
Disclaimer: Psych and all related characters are unfortunately not even marginally owned by me. How tragic is that?
More Additional Disclaimers: Disneyland is still not mine.
Google is awesome, but also not mine.
Taco Bell and all food related to Taco Bell do not belong to me, but are super yummy. :D
 

Shawn’s head ached. So did his eyes. And he was so tired he could barely stand up. He needed a break from all of this thinking. Usually this kind of thing wasn’t so hard. He also usually had other people to steal connections and ideas off of. He needed to clear his head; get a fresh perspective.

So he played darts.

All the while, the suspects lurked in the back of his mind, mocking him with their brilliant little alibis. He crossed off Grimsley halfway through the game because honestly, he had heard the kids whining in the background as they talked and that was an obscenely large ruse to pull off every time somone asked him for an alibi. He was shooting the last dart when he crossed Siegfried off too. He remembered seeing on his sheet that he hadn’t lived in Santa Barbara since the time he was in the Academy. That didn’t jibe with the stalking habits he knew the killer had to employ to get his victims alone. So that left Gaines, Collins, and Rhodes.

Collins he hadn’t talked to. He had talked to his wife, which meant the ‘kids and him at Disneyland’ alibi was probably very likely truth.

He felt kind of bad for getting Gaines into trouble and besides, Rhodes had the alibi that allowed the most time for killing.

That was dissatisfying too though. The guy had been dropped from the program because he couldn’t take it, but he worked in business mergers now and judging from his salary, had good reason to be thanking the Academy for booting him, not killing his old classmates one by one.

Shawn flopped back into his chair, his face fixed intensely as he thought, a pen dangling from his lips. There was a sharp rap on the window and he jerked, turning.

Lassiter glared in at him and his eyes widened. He scrambled out of his chair, locking the front door just as the knob started to turn. "Shawn!" came Juliet’s voice, and she sounded peeved.

He ignored her, moving to the window and yanking the blinds down, avoiding looking at Lassiter. "Spencer!" he snapped. Shawn ignored him too, sliding down the wall beside the window and pulling his knees to his chest, closing his eyes. They really were after him. He had really done it this time.

After a minute or two of quiet, he decided to check and make sure they were gone. He pulled back the blinds ever-so-slightly, peering outside and froze when his gaze met the ice cold blue eyes of Lassiter.

He pushed them back in place and scurried backwards, deeper into the office, pretending he couldn’t hear Lassiter shouting angrily and banging on the front door.

He really needed to solve this case.

Shawn hid in the back of the office for half an hour, until he was sure they had gone. He laughed a little, because the idea of being a fugitive was kind of funny, but the sound was a pale comparison to his previous laughter. The more time that passed, the more difficult it became to laugh everything off.

Grumbling to himself about needing Gus around, he moved to the board and let his eyes sweep over the information, waiting for the clue that would break the case to strike him. Still nothing.

Shawn made a face and realized just how dark the office was getting. Behind the blinds, the sun was sinking low in the sky. That made it two full days in which he hadn’t slept. Unless of course, one counted his half-nap on the side of his father’s house. He was pretty sure he didn’t. The first day hadn’t been so bad. He had actually been sort of energized by the time daylight had come around. But now…he was having to concentrate harder and harder to think through the fog invading his brain. Scrubbing his face with his hands, he forced his thoughts back to the suspect list and the aggravation of not finding anyone who could have committed the murders. He had gone through almost a dozen suspects, all of whom were either completely incapable of having committed the crimes, or who were people like the grandfather of four or the honeymooner, who were simply highly unlikely. The one guy with the best possibility for having done it was the one person with the best alibi—he was dead!

It was annoyingly inconvenient.

Shawn sat up suddenly, staring down at the suspect list which lay innocently on his desk. The dead guy was his best suspect. ‘But he’s dead, Shawn,’ he thought pointedly, attempting to be sensible, and his other side did the little head sway of uncertainty.

‘Yeah…but he’s the best suspect.’

‘Dead!’

‘Also psychotic!’

‘Still dead!’

‘Sociopathic tendencies!’

‘Dead!’

‘Oh, come on. What kind of lame alibi is that?’

‘A pretty good one. There are other suspects…’

‘Oh, yeah, like the one on her Honeymoon?’

‘He’s dead! Meaning, ‘couldn’t have possibly done it’!’

‘Now that’s not very creative. What did Dad teach you?’

‘I don’t want to talk about Dad.’

‘’Never take anything at face value.’ That’s what.’

‘…Oh, fine. Check the guy’s obituary.’

‘Thank you!’

Shawn smirked triumphantly at the list and woke his computer up. It was time to see exactly how dead Mr. Bell was. He Googled, ‘Humphrey Bell, death,’ and immediately got several results. One headline in particular stood out: ‘Mentally Ill Man Dies in Car Crash’. He raised an eyebrow at the screen. That sounded like his guy.

He quickly skimmed the beginning of the article and the age confirmed the identity for him. It was his guy. Scrolling down, he spotted an image of the wreck and almost laughed. Which was totally inappropriate, but come on.

The wreck was a disaster, the car completely totaled, and it had apparently exploded. It was completely charred, and in the front seat was a blackened figure. Reading the article, Shawn discovered that the body had been burned beyond recognition, but they had attributed it to Humphrey Bell, owner of said car.

The date of the crash was the clincher. Humphrey Bell had died just twelve hours prior to the murder of the first cop.

Shawn shoved his chair back, jabbing a finger triumphantly at the computer. "You did it, you sneaky bastard! You’re the killer!"

He pulled his cell phone out of his pocket, hitting the number two for Gus’ speed dial without thinking. The phone rang twice and then—

"Hello, Burton Guster."

"Gus! You won’t believe what I found!"

"Shawn?"

"I figured out who it was, Gus! I snuck into the police station and got the suspect list for the case, because, you know, I needed it, and holy cow, Gus! The stupid list was full of dead ends! But then, there was this guy, and get this—he’s dead, but dude, he totally did it."

"Shawn!"

"There was this really suspicious car wreck, and the body was burnt to a crisp. But dude, it was the day before the first guy died, how convenient is that? And—"

"SHAWN!"

"Dude, what?"

"Shawn, what is wrong with you?!" he demanded and there was a stunned silence on the other end of the line, so he barreled on. "They want to arrest you Shawn! Chief Vick almost called your dad. Do you even understand how badly you’ve screwed up this time? What the hell were you even thinking? I can’t even believe you called me after what you did today! I sure hope you have a remarkable apology in mind, because I can’t see how you’re going to get out of this right now."

"Gus…I…"

"Call me when you’re ready to make amends," he said harshly and hung up.

"…Crap." Shawn smacked himself in the forehead with the phone. He had gotten excited and had forgotten that he was still in exile. He sat still for several minutes, tired again after remembering that he had figured out who had committed the murders, but that he now had to prove it, beyond any doubt, or he would never get the police to listen to him.

Deciding to start fresh, he took everything off the board and wrote in block letters at the top: HUMPHREY BELL. Following that came the list of aliases and then the names of the victims, the states and cities they died in, and then a list of questions.

Where is Bell?

What alias is he under?

When will he strike again?

What evidence do I need?

Will I get a Chimerito or a Burrito from Taco Bell?

…Or Both?

He stepped back from the board and picked up the smiley face stress ball from Gus’ desk, tossing it from hand to hand idly.

All right, that would do. Now for dinner.

He grabbed his keys (after peeking out from behind the blinds to be sure Lassiter and Juliet weren’t still waiting outside to jump him), headed out, locking the door behind him. He couldn’t stop himself from glancing around nervously as he turned toward his—his bike. His bike was gone. He froze, heart sinking in his chest as he stared forlornly at the spot where he had left his bike, realizing that they must have taken it. It was so unfair he wanted to scream, but there wasn’t a damn thing he could do about it. He’d be arrested if he even tried to put up a fight over it. He growled, planting his palms over his eyes and pulling at his hair. And he’d been so sure that things couldn’t get any worse.

Sighing heavily, he started the journey to Taco Bell.

~ * * * ~

The answer to the last two questions he’d written on the board turned out to be "Both."

Shawn stood at the counter of the Taco Bell (the place was empty except for himself and a couple of teenagers lurking in one of the back booths) drumming his knuckles idly on the counter as he waited for his food. He was re-reading the large advertisement hanging beneath the menu that read, "Mix and Match: Two Tacos, Two Burritos, and/or Two Enchiladas for Five Dollars!" for the fourth time when the bell on the door rang and he half-turned, glancing at the new patrons out of the corner of his eye. He was already turning back toward the counter when he froze, his brain finally processing what he had just seen.

His head whipped back around so fast his neck hurt and for a split second he simply stared in horror at Juliet and Lassiter, who were staring right back at him, their looks of astonishment quickly dissolving into something much more hostile. Lassiter’s eyebrows began dipping, his mouth starting to open, and Shawn decided that was his cue leave.

He bolted, the sound of Lassiter furiously yelling his name muffled as the door swung shut behind him.

At the counter, the cashier held up a bag and called, "Thirteen? Order number thirteen?"

Part 1  Part 2  Part 3  Part 4  Part 5  Part 6  Part 7  Part 8  Part 9  Part 11  Part 12  Part 13  Part 14  Part 15  Part 16