Free Psyc 03_The Call of the Mild by William Rabkin Page A

was gone from his face. He stared at his father with deep, grave eyes.
    “Ellen Svaco came to Psych for help,” Shawn said. “I didn’t realize the kind of trouble she was in. If I had, she might still be alive. I can’t do anything about that, but at least I can help catch her killer.”
    Henry thought about this. “I’ll help,” he said. “On one condition.”
    “I’m not going to sit in for you on the great rock and roll swindle,” Shawn said. “But I will troll the retirement homes for your replacement if that will make you feel better about breaking up the band.”
    “It’s not that,” Henry said, “and it’s not negotiable.”
    “Everything’s negotiable,” Shawn said.
    “Not this,” Henry said. “If I’m on this case, you’re off it.”

Chapter Fourteen
     
     
     
     
     
     
    S hawn stared at his father as if he hadn’t heard him correctly. “You do understand that this is my case.”
    “I understand that it was,” Henry said. “Now you’ve got to ask yourself what’s more important: that this woman’s murderer be brought to justice, or that you’re the one who does it.”
    “How about this,” Shawn said, thinking quickly. “I’ll stay on the case, but Gus will promise not to be involved.”
    “Hey!” Gus protested from his corner.
    “Like you weren’t looking for a way to get on this without me,” Shawn said.
    “Only so I could work as a mole, passing you information from the inside,” Gus said.
    “Which is why I wasn’t going to let Gus in, either,” Henry said. “This case is too dangerous.”
    This was so outrageous that Shawn bolted up from the bed. And while he didn’t necessarily mean to thrust his face right into his father’s, the cramped quarters of the cabin meant that some portion of his anatomy had to be pressed up against Henry, so he made necessity his accomplice.
    “Dangerous!”
    “You’ve been on the case less than one day and you’ve already had two guns pointed at you,” Henry said. “At some point, one of those is going to go off.”
    “Do you realize how many murderers I’ve gone up against?” Shawn demanded. “I went face-to-face with a serial killer who’d been terrorizing Santa Barbara for years when you were on the force, and I won.”
    “And I’m always pleased to read about your exploits in the paper,” Henry said. “Well, most of the time, anyway.”
    “Then what’s the problem?” Shawn said. “Just think of this as getting the paper a day early. Except if I were you I wouldn’t use this information for my own personal gain, like betting on horse races or anything, because that never works out well.”
    “I think that’s only if some strange metaphysical force sends you the paper so you can use it to protect innocent people from fates they don’t deserve,” Gus said.
    “It’s fair to say that I’m as strange a metaphysical force as any of us is going to see,” Shawn said. “So is this settled? We’ll work the case from different sides: You help the police, and Gus and I will do it the smart way. We’ll call you for the summation.”
    Shawn headed for the door. At least he would have headed for the door if there had been an inch of space between Henry and the bed for him to squeeze through. But there wasn’t, and Henry didn’t move out of his way.
    “I told you, it’s not negotiable,” Henry said.
    “Why?”
    Henry’s hard grimace softened. “When you were little, I used to worry about you all the time. When you missed curfew, when you slipped out your window in the middle of the night, when you were just a few minutes late for dinner, my heart broke at the thought that something might have happened to you.”
    “You certainly hid it well,” Shawn said. “Under all that yelling and nagging.”
    “Do you really think that was hiding it?” Henry said. “The point is, once you moved out of the house, I stopped worrying.”
    “That was a mistake,” Shawn said. “What I was doing then was much