just shows me what’s on a Web site. It can’t make faces out of mush.”
“Not much of a computer, is it?” Shawn said. “Let’s see what else they say about Larison.”
Gus clicked back to the search page and scrolled through the list of links. Many of them were references to the Gazette ’s article on various sites devoted to psychic phenomena. At the bottom of the page, there was another Gazette article: “Local Psychic Wows Tough Critics.”
“Let’s see that one,” Shawn said.
This story was also written by Peter Jones, and if anything it was even more breathless in its prose.
“They say that hardened cynics make the toughest audiences, but harder still are those minds that don’t know enough to doubt what they believe. Such a crowd was faced by local psychic celebrity Fred Larison when he brought his bag of mental tricks to Suzie McKee’s first-grade class at Harry S Truman Elementary School last Friday. By the end they were all won over by Larison’s psychic stylings. Some had even decided to give up dreams of growing up to be policemen, astronauts, or nurses to follow him into the realms of worlds unknown.
“And they say public schools don’t educate children,” Shawn said.
“I don’t remember my first-grade teacher being that hot,” Gus said, looking at a woman who was partially hidden behind Larison’s cape. “And I certainly don’t remember her wearing hot pants to school.”
“Mrs. Wilson had her charms,” Shawn said, peering at the screen. “And since she was built like a cement mixer, not wearing hot pants was definitely one of them. But that’s not Suzie McKee.”
Gus craned his head to the screen to study the image. “How do you know?”
“I’ve spent a lot of time studying those legs,” Shawn said. “That is definitely Tara. The question is, what’s she doing there?”
“Maybe she was held back in first grade fifteen times,” Gus said.
“Wait-here.” Shawn scrolled down the page. “‘Larison was as always ably assisted by his lovely assistant.’”
“Tara was Fred Larison’s assistant?”
“More than that,” Shawn said. “It says here that Larison never needed to give her instructions. ‘When asked how they worked together, the lovely helper, who chose not to give her name, said that she took her orders from Larison psychically.’”
“How does it feel to learn you weren’t the first?”
“I’m devastated,” Shawn said. “Let’s find out why she left him.”
Gus went back to the search engine and hit the button for a second page of hits. Shawn pointed to a listing halfway down the page. “I think I figured it out.”
Gus clicked the link, which led to a page of funeral listings provided by a mortuary in central Missouri. “‘Memorial services will be held today for Fred Larison, noted local entertainer.’”
“Entertainer, ha!” Shawn said. “At least someone there wasn’t fooled by that fraud.”
Gus continued reading. “‘Mr. Larison died in St. Joseph’s Hospital Tuesday night after suffering a broken neck in a freak accident.’ Blah blah blah.”
“No dependants.” Shawn pointed to the end of the article. “I guess Tara took his last name without his permission.”
“At least we know why she left him,” Gus said. “He’d have to be a pretty good psychic to keep sending her orders even after he died.”
“We know more than that,” Shawn said. “We know that I was wrong. Dead wrong.”
Gus noticed that Shawn’s face had gone pale.
“When you say wrong, you mean about something unimportant, right?” Gus said. “Like pickles are really good on a burger, or Gremlins 2 wasn’t really better than the original.”
“I mean I was wrong about everything,” Shawn said. “I looked at Tara and saw innocence. I missed every sign. How could that be?”
“How could what be?”
Shawn waved weakly at the monitor.“How did Larison die?”
Gus glanced back at the screen. “In an accident. He broke his neck.”
“Uh-huh. How did Enid Blalock die?”
“Didn’t she fall down the stairs in an empty house?”
“And?”
Gus began to see the pattern that Shawn had already recognized.
“And John Marichal at the impound yard. His neck was broken, too.”
Shawn and Gus stared at each other across the office. “She’s not just a killer,” Shawn said. “She’s a serial killer.”
Chapter Eighteen
“‘Bad to the bone! Ba-ba-ba bad to the bone!’” Kent Shambling pounded the padded dash and wailed along with the stuttering scream of permanent rebellion. He was bad to the bone, damn it, and he was finally getting his chance to prove it.
Not that Nancy ever understood. She called him boring. Ungrateful bitch. Like he wanted to spend his prime years in an endless loop of office, home, Rotary, church, club, office. Like he didn’t yearn to strap on a helmet, climb on a hawg, and live free or die trying. He did it for her. He gave up his youth and the opening chunk of his middle age to provide her with the security he knew she needed. And after all those years of sacrifice, she announced that because he was boring, she was leaving him for the barista at the local Starbucks. They were going to find a life of truth and commitment together in some hippie commune in the hills outside Ojai. And of course, because the barista barely made enough to cover his monthly weed bill, Kent would be expected to shoulder all her expenses.
If Kent were as boring as she claimed, that was exactly what he would have done. But Nancy’s leaving revived the real Kent-the rogue, the rebel, the crazy cat who didn’t play by anyone’s rules. Instead of writing her that first check, he cashed out his 401(k) and put the bulk into a private account she’d never track down. He used the rest to buy the fastest, hottest, reddest car he could find with decent gas mileage and an above-average safety-and-repair rating from Consumer Reports.
That’s right, baby. Ba-ba-ba-bad to the bone. Kent was blasting out of Moorpark, and he was never looking back. He didn’t know where he was going, and he didn’t care. A podiatrist with his mad skills could make a buck anywhere in this big country.
He was starting a new life. And this time he was going to do it right. No more rules for Kent Shambling. He was going to do what he wanted when he wanted, whatever it was. If anyone else got hurt, that was their problem.
Kent slammed out a one-handed drum solo on the Mustang’s padded dash and peered out at the two lanes of freedom looming in front of him. He was saying goodbye to the dried brush and dripping eucalyptus trees of this dismal valley. In a few miles he’d hit the 101 and the coast. From there he’d go north or south; he’d make that call when he saw the sparkling blue of the Pacific.
As the song climaxed, Kent spotted a woman standing on the side of the road. She was wearing some kind of loose-fitting cutoff coverall, and even from a hundred yards away, she was the sexiest thing Kent had ever seen. He couldn’t tell what she was doing besides watching the cars go by. But as Kent got closer, she stepped out to the shoulder and waved her tanned, bare arms at him.
If Kent had one inviolable rule of life, it was never pick up hitchhikers. You never knew what kind of psycho might be on the other side of that thumb.
But that was the old Kent. The new Kent lived to violate the inviolable. Ba-ba-ba-bad to the bone, baby. He flipped on his flashers and glided to the shoulder, where she stood. Reached over and opened the passenger door without even rolling down the window to ask where she was going.
The woman leapt into the car and slammed the door, then smiled up at him. Ice blue eyes burned out from under jet-black bangs. What Kent had thought was a cutoff coverall was actually torn off-she seemed to have
