Read Psyc 03_The Call of the Mild Online

Authors: William Rabkin

Tags: #Detective and Mystery Stories, #Espionage, #Mystery & Detective, #Fiction, #Fantasy, #Business Intelligence, #Murder, #Psychic Ability, #Wilderness Survival, #General, #Psychics, #Media Tie-In

Psyc 03_The Call of the Mild

BOOK: Psyc 03_The Call of the Mild
7.26Mb size Format: txt, pdf, ePub
ads
Table of Contents
 
 
SILENT KILLER
Shawn hadn’t moved. He was staring back towards the snack bar, looking for the vanished mime. “There was something wrong with that mime,” Shawn said.
“By definition,” Gus said.
“No, something else,” Shawn said, still looking back where they’d last seen the mime. “Something I noticed but didn’t register until after we left.”
There was a long moment of silence. Then Gus spoke quietly. “You mean like he had a gun pointed at my head?”
“I think I would have noticed that a little quicker,” Shawn said. “No, it was—”
“Shawn!”
“Yes?”
“The mime has a gun pointed at my head.”
Shawn turned back to his partner. The mime stood in front of Gus, his white-gloved hand leveling a gleaming pistol at Gus’ forehead.
“Please,” the mime said. “Don’t make me kill you.”
THE PSYCH SERIES
Call of the Mild
Mind Over Magic
A Mind Is a Terrible Thing to Read
OBSIDIAN
Published by New American Library, a division of
Penguin Group (USA) Inc., 375 Hudson Street,
New York, New York 10014, USA
Penguin Group (Canada), 90 Eglinton Avenue East, Suite 700, Toronto,
Ontario M4P 2Y3, Canada (a division of Pearson Penguin Canada Inc.)
Penguin Books Ltd., 80 Strand, London WC2R 0RL, England
Penguin Ireland, 25 St. Stephen’s Green, Dublin 2,
Ireland (a division of Penguin Books Ltd.)
Penguin Group (Australia), 250 Camberwell Road, Camberwell, Victoria 3124,
Australia (a division of Pearson Australia Group Pty. Ltd.)
Penguin Books India Pvt. Ltd., 11 Community Centre, Panchsheel Park,
New Delhi - 110 017, India
Penguin Group (NZ), 67 Apollo Drive, Rosedale, North Shore 0632,
New Zealand (a division of Pearson New Zealand Ltd.)
Penguin Books (South Africa) (Pty.) Ltd., 24 Sturdee Avenue,
Rosebank, Johannesburg 2196, South Africa
 
Penguin Books Ltd., Registered Offices:
80 Strand, London WC2R 0RL, England
 
First published by Obsidian, an imprint of New American Library, a division of Penguin Group (USA) Inc.
 
First Printing, January 2010
Copyright © NBC Universal Inc., 2009.
Psych
is a trademark and copyright of Universal Studios. All rights reserved
 
OBSIDIAN and logo are trademarks of Penguin Group (USA) Inc.
 
 
Without limiting the rights under copyright reserved above, no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form, or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise), without the prior written permission of both the copyright owner and the above publisher of this book.
 
PUBLISHER’S NOTE
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental. The publisher does not have any control over and does not assume any responsibility for author or third-party Web sites or their content.
 
 
The scanning, uploading, and distribution of this book via the Internet or via any other means without the permission of the publisher is illegal and punishable by law. Please purchase only authorized electronic editions, and do not participate in or encourage electronic piracy of copyrighted materials. Your support of the author’s rights is appreciated.
eISBN : 978-1-101-19555-0

http://us.penguingroup.com

For Rufus R. and the woman who loves him
Prologue
 
 
 
 
 
 
1988
H
enry Spencer’s head was about to split in two. Part of it was due to the horrible high-pitched whine coming from the backyard. But mostly it was caused by the even more horrible low-pitched whining from the woman on the other end of the phone line. She’d started complaining the second he picked up, and she hadn’t stopped to take a breath in five minutes.
Finally there was a pause in her tirade. Maybe she needed air. Maybe she’d keeled over from a stroke. Henry didn’t care. He saw his opportunity and he seized it.
“You want to sue, I’ll see you in court, lady!”
He slammed down the phone receiver, then picked it up and slammed it down again. It didn’t help. His head still throbbed.
This wasn’t the first time Henry had been threatened with a lawsuit. Half the creeps he’d arrested in all his years on the Santa Barbara police force had screamed police brutality and vowed to take him to court.
But it was the first time he’d been threatened with a lawsuit because of something his son had done. Or, rather, not done.
Henry massaged his pounding skull, then shouted, “Shawn!” There was no answer, of course. And the whining kept getting louder.
Henry stalked through the kitchen and and flung open the screen door. Shawn was standing in the middle of the lawn, a radio-control box in his hand.
“Watch out!” Shawn said.
“I’m not the one who—” Henry’s sentence was cut off as a model airplane crashed into his stomach, knocking the wind out of him.
“Well, that’s just great,” Shawn said, flipping a switch on the control box. “You killed it.”
“Then half my work is done.” Henry pulled air into his lungs, then picked up the airplane and looked it over. It was a nice model, finely detailed. These things weren’t cheap. “Where did you get this?”
“I bought it,” Shawn said.
“With what money?”
“Money I earned,” Shawn said.
“Would that be money you earned taking care of Mrs. Calloway’s garden?” Henry said.
“Why do you ask?”
“Because she just called,” Henry said. “Apparently she paid you in advance for your work, and now all her flowers are dead because you never showed up to take care of them. She wants to sue you.”
“Good luck to her,” Shawn said. “It’s not like I have any assets, thanks to a medieval allowance policy around here.”
Shawn turned the control box upside down and banged on the bottom. The plane in Henry’s hand gave a cough and a shake, and the propeller kicked over. Henry grabbed it and held it in place until the toy stopped struggling.
“Maybe I should have said she wants to sue me,” Henry said. “But the lawsuit isn’t the important part. Hell, if she was stupid enough to pay you in advance, she shouldn’t be allowed to own plants anyway. But you said you’d take care of her garden and you killed it.”
“It was a weasel,” Shawn said.
“Oh, that’s good,” Henry said. “You took care of her flowers, but a weasel destroyed them.”
“I’m not talking about a rodent,” Shawn said. He walked over to his father and tried to pry the plane out of his hands. Henry didn’t let go. “I’m saying I didn’t lie. I told her I would take care of her plants to the best of my ability. Well, this
was
the best of my ability. That’s a weasel.”
Henry stared at his son, wondering as he had so many times before exactly what he had done in a previous life to deserve this. “You want to go into court and explain this weasel to a judge?”
“It’s the truth,” Shawn said.
“A weasel is not a legal defense,” Henry said. “If anything, it’s going to make a judge really angry. He’ll find a way to put you in juvie just for smarting off to him.”
Henry was pleased to see that Shawn actually looked a little nervous. “What should I do?”
“I only see one way out of this,” Henry said. “And that’s another weasel.”
“But you just said—”
Henry held up a hand to cut him off. “It’s a very special weasel, guaranteed to get you out of trouble. But you have to promise to do exactly what I say, or it’s not going to work.”
“What is it?” Shawn said suspiciously.
“Promise first.”
Shawn struggled to find a way around the requirement. Then he smiled. “I promise.”
“Right. Because I am an idiot. You have to tell me exactly what you’re promising, or it’s no deal.”
Shawn’s smile vanished. “I promise to do exactly what you say.”
“Good call, son.” Putting down the plane, Henry led Shawn to the garage and threw open the door. He poked around in his tools and came out with a long pole topped with three sets of rotating tines. “There you go.”
He thrust the tool out to Shawn, who took a step back. “I thought you said you had a weasel for me.”
“I do,” Henry said. “This is the Garden Weasel. I want you to use it to dig up Mrs. Calloway’s garden, and then I want you to replace everything that died. Is that clear?”
Shawn thought this over for a long time. Then he broke out into a grin. “Yes, sir!”
Shawn took the Garden Weasel and ran down the driveway. Henry looked after him, wondering what had just happened. He had laid down the law for Shawn, and Shawn had agreed to it. Why had he seemed so triumphant? What had Henry missed?
Inches away from Henry’s feet, the airplane’s propeller kicked twice, then started to spin. The plane taxied down the driveway. Henry dove for it, but it took off and rose out of his reach.
And then Henry knew. Shawn hadn’t agreed to do the work. Shawn hadn’t agreed to do any work. He had simply acknowledged the clarity of his father’s demands. It was another one of Shawn’s weasels.
BOOK: Psyc 03_The Call of the Mild
7.26Mb size Format: txt, pdf, ePub
ads

Other books

Margo Maguire by Brazen
Dark Angel by Maguire, Eden
Terror by Francine Pascal
Lone Star Wedding by Sandra Steffen
SVH07-Dear Sister by Francine Pascal
Kathleen's Story by Lurlene McDaniel