“Headhunter who?”
Shawn stared at him as if he’d just said he couldn’t name all the Goonies. “He’s only the reigning champ of Extreme Handball in all of Santa Barbara. And I’m playing him next. Do you know what this means?”
“That you’re going to miss your game,” Gus said. “This is life and death.”
“You think Extreme Handball isn’t?” Shawn said, hurling the ball against the wall, where it dislodged three pictures and a clock before returning to his hand. “It’s a desperate struggle between two men, an existential battle on a concrete court. Kill or be killed. And by killed, I mean these things really sting when they hit. Headhunter Hank Stenberg is going to feel like he’s the guest of honor at a jellyfish convention by the time I’m done with him.”
“Headhunter Hank can-” Gus broke off, finally recognizing the name. “Hank Stenberg? You’re going to play against Hank Stenberg?”
“Someone’s got to take that killer down.”
“You mean the kid who lives down the street from your dad? I doubt he’s even twelve years old.”
“That’s what they said about all those Chinese gymnasts, and they still walked off with the medals,” Shawn said.
“We have work to do,” Gus said.
“That’s for sure,” Shawn agreed. “My serve is strong, but there are a couple of moves I haven’t quite mastered yet. I was thinking we could head down to the handball courts and I could try them out on you.”
“We are not going to the handball courts.”
Shawn glanced around the office. “I guess we could do it here, but it’s going to be dangerous with all this broken glass lying around.”
“We are not going to the handball courts because we have a case,” Gus said. “It might be the biggest, most exciting case we’ve ever had.”
That got Shawn’s attention. He stopped bouncing the ball. “The biggest?”
“It might be,” Gus said.
“Got it,” Shawn said. “Who died?”
“No one, if we can get there fast enough.”
“Get where?”
The phone rang once. Then Gus’ cell started ringing as the call forwarding kicked in. “There.”
Shawn snatched the cell out of Gus’ hand and hit the SPEAKER button. “Psych Investigations,” he said.
“Help, he’s killing me,” the rasp whispered harshly. But not quite as harshly, or as whispery, as it had before. There was a hint of tone, a smidgen of voice-not a lot, but enough for Gus to realize he knew the speaker from somewhere.
Shawn stared at the phone. And then spoke one syllable that chilled Gus to his liver.
“Dad?”
Chapter Three
The drive from the Psych offices usually took fifteen minutes, twice that at rush hour. But Gus kept his foot jammed down on the gas, blasting through stop signs and red lights, screaming around traffic, and violating every precept of the state vehicle code that didn’t involve the transportation of livestock. In the passenger seat, Shawn desperately dialed and redialed his father’s number, but every call went direct to voice his father’s number, but every call went direct to voice mail.
As he hurtled past a bus full of nuns on their way to a local convent, Gus cursed himself. How could he have failed to recognize Henry Spencer’s voice? He’d heard it almost every day of his life since he was in single digits. He knew it as well as his own voice-better, actually, since he always covered his ears and hummed loudly whenever he was forced to listen to a recording of himself.
Logically he knew that part of the fault was Henry’s. If he’d only identified himself, or even just engaged a little more of his vocal cords, there’s no way that Gus wouldn’t already have been there to help him. But that only made Gus worry more. Henry had been a cop for decades. He knew better than anyone how important it was to identify yourself clearly in an emergency. That meant there was only one reason he didn’t-because he couldn’t. Whatever danger he was facing, it was bigger than anything Gus could imagine.
Gus took his eyes off the road for one second to sneak a glance at Shawn. His best friend was ashen faced as he listened to his father’s voice on the outgoing message.
“Shawn, I’m so sorry,” Gus said for what must have been the hundredth time.
Shawn shook his head tightly. No need for apologies. He knew how much Gus cared about Henry.
Gus yanked the wheel hard and felt the Echo rise up on two wheels as it screamed around a corner. The car slammed back down on all fours and Gus jammed the gas pedal even harder. He could see Henry’s house straight ahead.
Two more seconds and they were out front. The Echo screamed to the curb and Shawn and Gus leapt out, tearing up the walkway to the front door. Shawn twisted the knob. It was locked.
“Stand back,” Shawn said, raising his leg to kick the door in.
“Hey, I just painted that!”
Gus and Shawn wheeled around to see a man emerging from the garage. It took Gus a moment to realize that this was indeed Henry Spencer, because he’d spent the last eight minutes visualizing him covered in blood, his ears and hands cut off, and set on fire. The fact that he was dry, intact, and completely unflamed simply didn’t make sense.
“Dad?” Shawn’s face seemed to be torn between relief and disbelief.
“We got here as fast as we could,” Gus said.
Henry checked his watch. “Did that include a stop for doughnuts along the way?” he said. “Because if it didn’t, eight minutes is pretty pathetic.”
He walked past them to a corner of the house where red paint was beginning to peel after simmering through another summer of Santa Barbara sun.
“You said it was an emergency,” Shawn said.
“Good thing it wasn’t,” Henry said as he pulled a paint scraper out of his back pocket. “Three phone calls before you guys figured out who I was? I could have been murdered a dozen times over.”
“The day’s still young,” Shawn said, relief turning to anger.
“Wait a minute,” Gus said. “This was all some kind of test?”
“Not exactly,” Henry said. “I do need help.”
“You want us to scrape the paint off your house, you call like a normal human being and ask politely,” Shawn said. “That’s the way human beings do it.”
“If I called and asked you politely to scrape the paint off my house, you’d invent some ludicrous excuse for not coming over immediately, promise to drop by in a couple of days, and then I wouldn’t hear from you until the rainy season started,” Henry said.
“Exactly,” Shawn said. “That’s the way human beings do it.” He turned and headed back toward the Echo. “Come on, Gus.”
Gus was frozen, if only by the desire to find exactly the right parting shot for Henry. Finally he realized there was nothing he could say that would sum up everything he was feeling. He gave Henry a look he hoped would convey a bevy of emotions, then turned and followed Shawn.
“Okay, hold on,” Henry called after them. “I’m sorry if I scared you two little girls.”
“Way to apologize, Dad,” Shawn called over his shoulder.
“But I really do need your help,” Henry said. “And it doesn’t involve scraping paint, and it is kind of an emergency.”
“What kind of emergency?” Shawn said.
“The kind that’s best discussed over pizza,” Henry said. “Fortunately, Giuseppe’s took a lot less time to get here than you guys.”
By the time the three of them had finished two large pies, a family-size chopped salad, and a side of buffalo wings, Gus found his anger had been drowned in a sea of carbohydrates. That’s when Henry consented to discuss
