CHAPTER FIVE—This Only Happens in Bad Movies

By

Oni-Baka

Nota Bene—Since the episode "Lassie did a bad, bad thing," I now know the correct way to spell our favorite detective's nickname. Consider me informed.

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The squad car clinked lightly as it sped over the uneven, constantly-being-repaired roads of Santa Barbara. The noise was audible only because of the uncomfortable silence within, disturbed by neither word nor radio.

In his head, Shawn murmured the chortling lyrics of some pop princess's torch song. He'd momentarily waved a white flag at the silence; his first attempts to break it had been unpleasant, to say the least. His fault. Lassiter had looked—normal, the kind of normal that put up with the everpresent chatter that made up Shawn's world. He'd looked ready enough for the kind of jibes that would loosen everyone up, that had done so much good throughout Shawn's life in unclenching the asses of those around him without actually saying anything directly soothing or sentimental. His first comment, something small (flirtatious nothings, shot in Juliet's direction), and Lassiter brought the squad car to a screeching stop.

Nothing else. Just stopped. His face was neutral, lacking even that everpresent scowl, and they'd sat there in silence until Shawn had stopped, and then for a few minutes more. Juliet, apparently knowing the drill or being somewhat better at reading the mild cant to Lassiter's lips, had stayed just as silent, her cheeks red. And eventually the car had started again toward the crime scene, driving just a bit too quickly, taking risks Shawn wouldn't have expected.

And so he'd stayed silent for the better part of twenty minutes before his inner voice began to snarl at him, asking what exactly he thought Lassiter was going to do, turn this car around like this was a family vacation and Shawn the naughty son?

Unwilling to be intimidated (especially by Lassiter, of all people), Shawn switched tactics, turning similar phrases on Lassiter, inviting the man to take out his frustration on him, release it so the three of them could get on with their lives—nothings, flirtations, shameless compliments.

Shawn was notably relieved to find that –these- the detective would react to, first with the dripping insults that marked their relationship (and to which Shawn responded with relief and even more overdone flirtations). It developed into a kind of banter, Shawn leaning forward in his seat, cooing near-obscenities at this point to match the tempo of Lassiter's increasingly more violent threats and promises.

He leaned more pointedly forward, scooting up to the edge of his seat and against the driving detective's, far enough to lay his arms on the detective's shoulders. Knowing the man was of uncertain temperament, Shawn played a kind of chicken with himself as he kneaded lightly, grinning and murmuring something inane like "promises, promises" in response to Lassiter's promise to eviscerate him if he didn't stop talking –right now.- The car jumped slightly over a bump in the road, and lips brushed against the detective's ear, catching there momentarily.

In the midst of answering verbally, Lassiter stiffened impossibly under his fingers, a stone caricature of a man, and the words melted from him. Indeed, from that moment he fell into sudden, sullen silence. Shawn lingered for a moment, testing the quality of that silence, the meaning of which lingered tantalizingly just out of reach, and finally he leaned back quietly.

Minutes later, they arrived at the scene, and Shawn pulled himself from the backseat, lazily marking and noting the building they pulled up to, still swarming with uniformed men and lined with curious, thrill-seeking civilians.

Where the last scene had been a shack on the fringe of Santa Barbara itself, impoverished and set off in the middle of nowhere, this one loomed in the reputable suburbs of Goleta. A dull, blue-grey building, the only detail to mark this establishment from the optometrists and insurance companies that filled the other buildings was a small, metallic plaque marked only by a stylized, curliqued eye. The symbol struck a note, and Shawn began searching through the reels of his memory for a match, even as the three of them moved under the yellow tape and into the building, Shawn reflexively smiling at a pretty young local who seemed suitably impressed by the fact that no one moved forward to stop him.

Moving into the sterilized silver box of an office building elevator, Shawn remembered, even as he noted the way Lassiter shied away from him, pointedly moving to the other side of the elevator. Shawn idylly thought to move to the other side, see if he could make Lassiter move again (what was wrong with the man –now?-), even as a television commercial played in his head. In it, a man bedecked in a velvet purple suit laughed heartily at his tv audience, and behind him an elephant floated in mid-air, its long trunk waving uncomfortably at the unnatural affront.

A famous local magician, though now a bit past his prime, Shawn could remember taking a girl there at one point in his ill-spent youth, searching fingers moving into her lap as the man brought great plumes of red smoke and formed them into a line of dancing rabbits…

Thus prepared for what he'd find, Shawn barely reacted as the three of them moved past a pair of smudged glass doors emblazoned with the same stylized eye. What a place for a magician to work…perhaps this was some kind of—agent? Some poor, bedraggled accountant left to crunch numbers for all the foppery and decoration that came with being a professional magician?

Following a grim-faced officer into what appeared to be a file room, Shawn stopped in the door, his face going white, though he'd known what he'd find. Of course, it was the magician himself. Propped against the sickly green of his file cabinets, the magician lay grotesquely suspended in the reversed stigmata of certain overzealous saints, his head lolling, long hair hiding his face as it coiled about the ground, shifting lightly as rope creaked slightly, bending in the air-conditioned room.

Gooseflesh spread across Shawn's skin as cold air blew up the short sleeves of his t-shirt, nipped at the holes in generically torn denim. Of course, it was less the cold and more the gaping hole in the man's back that chilled him near to the bone. Perhaps similarly affected, Lassiter pushed past him grimly to inspect the corpse.

Shawn forced himself to do the same from the doorway, eyes skirting the hole to look at smaller details—brushmarks in the velveteen fabric of the waistcoat where something had moved against the fabric; the seams of the magician's trousers, a careful, neat line, broken down one ankle where the cheap thread had come undone. Such attention to the human catchings was important; without them, if one looked too long at that hole, one began to notice the shine of glistening, wet flesh, the torn edges of skin. It all began to look like meat.

Bile rose in Shawn's throat, as it hasn't in a long time now; details leapt into his mind, but he could barely pay attention to them as he staggered slightly, swallowing often, over and over, focusing on his breath. It wouldn't do to vomit here. He'd worked to get on this case, he wouldn't…still, his eyes closed as he leaned heavily against one wall, and a shiver ran up and down his back, his mind bringing details up to swim in his inner vision, finally making the obvious connections—

The man hung, reverse-stigmatized, his heart torn out. A healthy, robust man of maybe 50; an entertainer, as Bargussi, presumably, had been. Innocents, both of them; -all of them- Shawn's mind reminded him. There were three others, at least three others. Magicians. Fortunetellers.

There was a mental click as he finally slotted himself into the situation. No, this wasn't the first time he had been a killer's target. Calm down. Calm.

But his breath came more quickly, even as Shawn forced his eyes open, forced his posture to remain lax, unbothered. Taking deep, careful breaths, Shawn brought his gaze in a sweeping look that took in the entirety of the room, skipped lightly over the corpse to look around it; above; below; to the file cabinets.

His brow wrinkled slightly as he caught a bit of paper sticking out of one cabinet, and he strode to it as confidently as he could, though his knees were weak as the thick, heavy musk of blood and flesh caught in his nose, the bloom of death skunky underneath it all. Officers watched him curiously as he threw himself against the file cabinet (if none had noticed it thus far, then Shawn would prove his worth theatrically, as he had so many other times), and with a puppetlike pull of his shoulders he wrenched the cabinet open, thrusting one hand inside.

He regretted the enthusiastic movement immediately as his fingernails dug into something stringy and smooth, a lump of something, half-wrapped in the paper he had seen. His fingers made indents but did not tear, and he could feel the raised lines crisscrossing around it, the tough, gristly lines that marked differentiated chambers.

Knowing he was touching a human heart, Shawn yelped, the sound like a blow across his cheek. Lassiter and Juliet both were at his side in an instant, the taller Lassiter able to follow the line of Shawn's outstretched hand, the rusty smudges along Shawn's finger, pulling back and held away from his body as if the digits were liable to crawl up and go for his own throat…

"Oh God" came Juliet's voice, breathy with disgust, though lacking the panicked discovery of Shawn's own voice. Of course, Juliet was a detective, a professional. A note of shame, the remnants of Shawn's father's teachings on masculinity, hit against Shawn's gut, to be ignored. He was not a cop; he need not be stoic like one...It was eventually she who pulled on gloves and reached for the murderer's note, wrapped like butcher paper around the heart.

She read it aloud to all those present, and Shawn, backed into a corner and scouring his hands with soap given by the sympathetic McNab, could feel someone's eyes on him.

The note was oddly aromatic, and the scent of flowers and what smelled like wine briefly wafted through the room as Juliet's voice rang out, speaking a threat against those who use or profess to use "black magic." The officers present listened grimly, and Shawn could imagine the difficulty of such a killer, more specific than most but vague enough to present quite a class of possible victims. How to protect all those who made their living in such a way? Those chosen were of varying degree of visibility and acclaim, age and gender. And Santa Barbara was a place for sun and basking tourists from all over the country; there was a fair number of so-called psychics here, laying out cards, whispering into glass balls…

Following the pull of that gaze still on him, Shawn found himself eye to eye with Lassiter, only several feet away (when had he breached the distance of a room away, Shawn wondered, disgquieted that he might not have noticed something). Imagining the head detective had seen his reaction, Shawn chuckled nervously, scratching at the back of his neck, mussing at the fine hairs there.

"Quite a showman, this killer" Shawn commented, his voice a bit low, a bit hoarse. He cleared his throat.

"Leaving notes—hasn't he seen, well, every crime movie ever made? But then, I'd guess the voices in his head aren't really the reasonable sort…"

Lassiter's gaze didn't waver, but it changed slightly, turning to incredulity.

"When he comes for me, I'll be sure to start talking in tongues—maybe I can lead him in myself." It was meant to be a joke, but came out all wrong. His voice was wrong, for one; husky and dull, it lacked humor, and Shawn realized as he said it that he was actually afraid, that part of him already assumed this killer –would- come for him, though there was no particular reason to think he would be preferred over any other magician. Of course, he was very –public;- the police's own psychic, how many times had he been in the paper?

Then there was the storm that passed abruptly over Lassiter's face. That mild, neutral, uncharacteristic mask broke at the edges, and Lassiter glowered at him. After a moment, the storm turned to a more suitable sneer, and Lassiter moved to clap a hand on the back of his neck. Strong fingers lingered for a moment, eyes downturned on his face, and Shawn stared back for a moment. His lips pursed against the beginnings of a word, and the detective's fingers clenched, digging into the cords of his neck in a way Shawn was more familiar with.

Pressing forward, Lassiter led him away from the scene, out of the room, voice snarling with contempt at the idea that a psychic would say something so disrespectful at a crime scene.

Still, the hand in his neck shook as the two of them broke into open air, and Shawn had a curious thought.

Afraid for him. Lassiter was afraid for him.

What was he to make of that?

END OF CHAPTER FIVE