“Just listen,” Gus said. “One day I was talking to Jerry Fellows and I mentioned my interest in the subject. He was thrilled. He said that in all the decades he’d been with the company he’d thought we should have a real program to address the issue. From then on he always asked about my progress. He encouraged me when I was feeling hopeless, cheered me on when I was doing well, and did everything he could to subtly keep me focused on the problem.”
“You sold me,” Shawn said. “He’s got to be the killer.”
Gus wondered briefly if Shawn felt now the way Gus always had when Shawn announced some ridiculous theory of the crime at hand, and if he’d feel as foolish when Gus proved to be right.
“Just before my big presentation to the executive committee, he let something slip,” Gus said. “Jim Macoby had been working on a plan to address the orphan drugs issue before he died.”
“Jim Macoby?” Shawn asked, and then remembered. “Oh, Mr. Coffee.”
“Steve Ecclesine was my primary opponent on the committee,” Gus said. “I’m pretty sure he was planning to do whatever he could to stop me.”
“I’m beginning to see an issue here, but let’s keep going with this for the moment,” Shawn said.
Gus didn’t need Shawn’s permission. He was already at his desk and typing furiously onto his computer monitor. “I knew it!” he said.
“You can’t put a red six on a red seven?” Shawn said. “Because Hank Stenberg made a patch for the Psych computer so that you can put any card on any other card. It’s made the long workday a lot more fun, I’ve got to tell you.”
“Sam Masterson,” Gus said. “I’ve got access to all his files, and here’s one marked ‘orphan drugs.’ ” He tapped twice on the image of the file and it spread open. His face fell. “It’s empty.”
“This certainly is a slam-dunk case you’re putting together against Jerry,” Shawn said. “You’ve got one dead guy who was all in favor of giving drugs to Little Orphan Annie, one who was opposed to it, and one who was so passionately involved on one side or the other that he couldn’t be bothered to invest any more time in the subject than it took to label a new file. I’m definitely seeing a pattern here.”
Shawn might not have seen the pattern, but Gus did. At least he was feeling the general shape of it. The details were still hazy, but he could tell there was something. “Did it ever occur to you that this file might be empty because somebody erased everything in it?” he said.
“Sure,” Shawn said. “And when I buy a frying pan and get it home to find there are no pancakes in it I know it’s because some kid ate them all before I could.”
“Jerry Fellows is passionate about the issue of orphan drugs. Can we agree on that?” Gus said.
“We can agree to take your word on it,” Shawn said. “Then if you turn out to be wrong we can agree to make fun of you for the rest of the week.”
“He’s been supporting me and doing whatever he could to help me prepare my presentation to D-Bob,” Gus said. “So I’m going to make a leap and say that he would have done the same for Jim Macoby.”
“Leap on.”
“D-Bob was impressed with my presentation-there’s no question about it,” Gus said. “But Ecclesine managed to derail it at the end. It was obvious he was going to be the biggest obstacle in my way. So he had to go.”
“I’m still with you,” Shawn said. “Or I would be if I hadn’t already gotten to this point about the time you started down this path. Now I’m up ahead waiting to see if you notice that it plunges off a cliff.”
Gus shot him a scowl. “The big question is Jim Macoby,” Gus said. “If he was pushing the issue why would Fellows have wanted him dead?”
“You’re not at the plunge yet, but at least you’ve skipped through the minefield,” Shawn said.
Gus thought hard until he finally had a glimmer of an idea. He typed furiously and a different file cabinet opened on his screen. He opened the cabinet. “Nothing here labeled ‘orphan drugs,’ ” he said. “But we’ve already established that it could have been deleted.”
“In the same way we’ve established what happened to my pancakes,” Shawn said. “Which reminds me, where’s the kitchen in this place? All this talk about breakfast is making me hungry.”
Gus opened another file. “This is it,” he said. “I’ve got it. Macoby’s calendar.”
“If he’s got dinner reservations for tonight, let’s see if they’re for someplace good,” Shawn said. “Because if we show up instead of him I don’t think he’s going to object.”
Gus flipped through screens. “He had reservations, but not for dinner,” he said. “It looks like he kept scheduling meetings with D-Bob to talk about orphan drugs, but then they all got canceled.”
“I know I’m not exactly the expert on how business works, but doesn’t that happen all the time?” Shawn said.
“Yes, but from the notations, Macoby canceled the meetings himself,” Gus said. “He talked a big game about tackling the issue, but he chickened out every time.”
“And you think Jerry doesn’t like chicken?”
“It makes sense,” Gus said. “If Jerry has a real sense of urgency about the issue, then he’d take this as a betrayal. Who knows how much time and energy he put into helping Macoby get his proposal together?”
“For that matter, who knows if any of this has the slightest connection to the truth?” Shawn said. “Oh, right, nobody.”
Gus wasn’t listening. His fingers were flying over the virtual keyboard, and after a few seconds another file opened up. “What about Mandy Jansen?”
“Well, if she did know, it’s not going to do us any good,” Shawn said. “Not unless you know someone who can talk to the dead.”
“Like Shawn Spencer, psychic detective?”
“Exactly,” Shawn said. “Just like him, only with actual psychic powers. Give me a call when you find the guy and I’ll buy him lunch.”
“We don’t need to talk to Mandy Jansen,” Gus said. “All we need to know is right here in her file. She said she quit Benson Pharmaceuticals to take care of her mother, and in fact here’s a digital copy of the letter she mailed just before I was hired. She said her mother had been diagnosed with mesenchymal chondrosarcoma and that she needed constant care.”
Shawn just looked at him. “You know, I feel like I’m supposed to come up with a witty riposte here, but you’ve left me completely blank.”
“Mesenchymal chondrosarcoma is a cancer of the cartilage, one of the rarest cancers there is,” Gus said. “There haven’t even been a hundred cases diagnosed in all the world. So obviously there’s no treatment for it.”
“Still waiting for my opening,” Shawn said.
“Don’t you see?” Gus wanted to hit Shawn in the face with the facts. Unfortunately they were nothing more than pixels on a screen, so he was reduced to waving his arms in the air to emphasize his point. “Mandy’s mother was suffering from an orphan disease. Mandy, who was supposed to take the job that eventually went to me, was the perfect person to lead the charge for the cause in the company. She would have had the passion, the firsthand knowledge, and the moral gravity to force Benson Pharmaceuticals down this path.”
“Instead she decided to stay home and take care of Mom,” Shawn said. “How selfish can you get? No wonder she killed herself.”
“That’s what I’m trying to tell you,” Gus said, arms flapping so hard that if the glass had fallen out of the window right now he could have flown down to a safe landing. “She didn’t kill herself. She committed the same sin that Jim Macoby did: walking away from the cause. And for that sin she was murdered.”
“By Jerry Fellows.”
“By Jerry Fellows,” Gus agreed. “Don’t you see? It all makes sense.”
And for one brief, shining moment of clarity, it did. He had found the pattern. But that was only the first step. After he found it he needed to prove it, which meant using the pattern as a guide to find another instance that would fit. And he had done that, too. Gus had solved a series of terrible crimes when no one else had even suspected that the crimes had been committed, except for Shawn, and that didn’t count.
So why didn’t he feel that sense of triumph that always used to come with the solving of the puzzle? Where was that satisfaction as the last piece snapped into place and proved him right?
It wasn’t there. And, Gus realized, it wouldn’t be there. Because he hadn’t actually solved anything, except theoretically. Yes, everything he said held together, and he could connect every one of his dots to make a sound,
