Shawn looked up again, then let his tongue drop out of his mouth. He panted.
“You’re wasting our time,” Galen shouted. “No one wants to hear this.”
“Sure they do,” Gus said. “It’s just you who doesn’t. Why is that, do you think?”
Shawn snapped out of his doggie trance. “Baxter tells much the same story. Although since he’s talking in dog, there are a few more digressions. Apparently dogs don’t really care if their snacks taste like bacon or not. The point is, he was stolen off the street and used to train fighting dogs. Who also didn’t care if he tasted like bacon or not.”
The woman collapsed into her seat. “Poor Baxter.”
“Now you’ve upset that poor woman,” Galen said. “I demand you apologize to her right now.”
“Fluffy and Baxter think you’re the one who should apologize,” Shawn said.
“Me!”
“Your kennel was closed down, but that didn’t mean the dog fighters were willing to let you out of your contract,” Shawn said. “You had promised to supply them with a steady stream of bait animals, and they didn’t care where you got them from. I’ll give you credit-you tried to refuse.”
Gus noticed Galen reflexively cradle his splinted fingers in his free hand. Score one for Shawn.
“But they made it clear you were going to deliver on your promises, or they were going to use you as their next bait animal. So now you haunt the streets of Santa Barbara by night, stealing the innocent pets who are naive and loving enough to let you get close to them.”
Arno Galen’s eyes had been getting wider through Shawn’s entire explanation, and now they looked like they were planning to set out and find a new home for themselves. He backed away up the aisle.
“You’ve got no proof of that,” he shouted.
“Except the testimony of two eyewitnesses,” Shawn said. “Fluffy and Baxter.”
Galen turned and ran up the aisle, disappearing through the heavy doors as if they were lace curtains. “Somebody stop that man,” Gus shouted.
“I don’t think so,” Lassiter said.
“He killed my Baxter,” sniffed the woman in the audience.
“All we have to support that is the word of these frauds,” Coules said. “Why don’t we wait until they’ve been exposed and disgraced, and then we can see what we think of their evidence?”
Baxter’s owner started to object, but Chief Vick turned and spoke soothingly to her. “I pulled in right after that man, and I believe my car is blocking him. So unless he wants to walk back to town, he’s not going anywhere until the press conference is over.”
“I’d say it’s over,” Shawn said. “Wouldn’t you, Gus?”
“I can’t imagine what’s left to prove,” Gus said.
For the first time all morning, Gus was feeling optimistic about the future. The people sitting on the aisles were already gathering up their belongings and putting on their coats. If one or two of them actually walked up to the door, that would be it for the press conference.
Gus didn’t notice that behind them the golden curtain began to rise slowly.
“Thank you all for coming, and please remember to drive safely on your way back home,” Gus said.
There was a massive, unified gasp of shock from the crowd. One elderly woman in the crowd rose to her feet, then collapsed back into her chair. And now Lassiter was pushing through the seated spectators in his aisle, with Vick and O’Hara close behind. Shawn shot a puzzled glance at Gus before turning back to the crowd.
“People, people, people,” Shawn said, “is it really that big a deal?”
Lassie pointed behind them. Gus knew he should turn around. Knew he should see what everyone in the audience had already witnessed. All he wanted to do, though, was curl into a ball underneath one of the theater seats and hope that everybody else would go away.
Since that didn’t look like it was going to happen anytime soon, Gus turned to see what the crowd was staring at.
Dallas Steele was tied to a chair, his normally bronze complexion drained to an ashy white. A large knife stuck out of his heart. Tara stood over him, her hand still grasping the knife.
Gus screwed his eyes closed, praying that when he opened them again, this would turn out to be a terrible dream. That worked as well as it always did. Tara was still standing frozen before Steele’s corpse.
For a moment nobody moved. And then a shriek pierced the stunned silence.
“Mr. Steele!” It was Shepler, who leaned out of the window in the projection booth. “She killed him!”
Lassiter and O’Hara pushed past Shawn and Gus to grab Tara. She barely seemed to notice as they spun her around and slapped the cuffs on her wrists and pulled her toward the exit.
Tara seemed to be completely unaware of her surroundings, or even that she was being arrested. The only thing she noticed as the police pulled her down from the stage was Shawn.
“That’s the way you wanted it, right?” she said.“Please tell me you’re happy.”
Lassiter yanked her away from Shawn and dragged her up the aisle. People scattered to get out of her way as she left red footprints up to the door.
“I haven’t heard your answer yet, Mr. Spencer.” Chief Vick was standing in front of them. “Is this the way you wanted it?”
Chapter Sixteen
The interrogation room’s walls were the same bright, happy yellow as the rest of the police station, as if the SBPD’s decorator had decided that the best way to make a suspect talk was to let him think he was back in kindergarten.
Shawn and Gus had been in the room for two hours now, and there wasn’t a hint of milk and cookies. In fact, there hadn’t been any sign of human life. Every so often Shawn would pop up from the table to make faces in the two-way mirror, just to see if he could get a reaction. If there were people watching, they seemed to be peculiarly immune to the insult of the outstretched tongue.
“I don’t think they’re paying attention,” Gus said as Shawn tried out a new set of expressions in the mirror.
“Oh, they’re paying attention,” Shawn said. “They’re in there studying every move we make, listening to every word we say. Searching for a way to break us down and make us talk.”
“Maybe they could just ask,” Gus said. “I’m ready to talk anytime.”
“So they’ve broken you already,” Shawn said. “I thought you were made out of sterner stuff.”
“I’m ready to talk because I don’t have anything to hide,” Gus said.
Shawn rushed over to him and whispered in his ear, “That’s good, very convincing. Stick with that.”
“I don’t have to stick with it.” Gus pushed away from the table and walked to the mirror. He rapped on it sharply. “It’s the truth.”
After a moment, the door swung open, and Lassiter marched in with a bottle of Windex and a roll of paper towels. He took Gus by the shoulders, steered him back to his seat at the table, then sprayed window cleaner on the mirror.
“Good to see you finally got that promotion you wanted,” Shawn said.
Lassiter swept away the last of the ammonia streaks with a paper towel. “If you had any idea how much one of these mirrors costs, you might treat it with a little more respect.”
“Maybe if you treated us with a little more respect, we might treat your toys with a little more respect,” Shawn said.
Lassiter crumpled the towel and tossed it toward the wastebasket. It bounced off the rim, then dropped straight in. “Let me see,” he said. “You’re drawing a comparison between yourself and this mirror. You’re both shallow. I can see right through both of you. And both of you will crack under the slightest pressure. So yes, I think that does work.”
Shawn turned to Gus, amazed. “He didn’t just do that.”
“He did,” Gus said. “He turned your flip comment around and landed it right on you.”
“Lassie, that’s a first for you,” Shawn said. “And as a fair man, I give you my congratulations.”
