A Fatal Frame of Mind (6 page)

Of course, this was work that could easily occupy two detectives full time, and he was burning to jump onto the more useful parts of the investigation. But he needed to finish up with Kitteredge first, even if that meant spending the rest of his natural life span stuck in the interrogation room.

Lassiter took a deep breath and was attempting to brace himself for the onslaught of useless knowledge when the door to the observation room swung open and Detective O’Hara put her head out. He could see Shawn and Gus sitting behind her, smirking at his failure.

“Are you almost done, Carlton?” she said. “There’s a lot of work to do on this case, and we don’t have all night for chitchat with the prof.”

“If you think you can do it faster, be my guest,” Lassiter said.

“Not after you’ve spent all this time building rapport with the man,” O’Hara said. “Now get moving. There’s a murderer out there, and we’ve got to stop him before he kills again.”

F
or the past five hours there had been nothing for

Shawn and Gus to do besides listen to Kitteredge expatiate on a series of subjects, each of which managed to be less interesting to Shawn than the one before. At least, Gus kept telling Shawn there was nothing else for them to do.

For his part, Shawn could think of plenty of other things. They could go home and go to bed, for instance. Or they could swing by the Bijoux and see if C. Thomas Howell’s appearance fee at the festival included sweeping up after the show. Or, as Shawn suggested after a particularly riveting aside detailing the chemical composition of oil paint and how it had remained remarkably unchanged over several centuries—unless it had changed equally remarkably over that same period, Shawn thought he’d dozed off somewhere in the middle of this passage—they could throw themselves off Santa Barbara Pier and see if they washed up in Japan before Kitteredge finished talking.

When Lassiter stepped out to take his break, Shawn was ready to drag Gus out of the observation room even if it meant clubbing him over the head with a chair first. But his mood changed when he saw the detective heading back into interrogation. Lassie looked so defeated, so close to cracking, that Shawn knew whatever happened next was going to be good.

Shawn pulled his chair up to the glass next to Gus’ and lowered the volume on the speakers as O’Hara stepped out to start making calls to museums on the East Coast, which would be opening for business about now.

“Don’t tell me you’re finally going to admit this is interesting,” Gus said.

“Don’t worry. I won’t,” Shawn said. “But maybe it will be in a minute. I think Lassiter got his gun during the break.”

A look of concern flashed over Gus’ face, but he quickly dismissed the thought. “You just watch,” he said. “Professor K is going to tie this entire case up in the next couple of minutes.”

“Professor K couldn’t tie his shoelaces without explaining the entire history of footwear,” Shawn said. “He hasn’t even begun to talk about the last century, let alone the current one.”

“That’s his genius,” Gus said. “He talk and he talks, throwing out more fascinating facts than you think any one man could ever hope to know. And then, just when you think you’re going to float forever on an aimless sea of knowledge, he comes up with the one tiny piece of information that pulls it all together. It’s kind of like what you do in your summations.”

“Except that my summations are never longer, duller, and more pretentious than
The Matrix Revolutions
,” Shawn said. “In fact, until tonight I didn’t think anything could be.”

“Pretentious?” Gus was astonished. “Professor K doesn’t have to pretend anything. He’s the real deal. Everything he says is valid and important.”

Shawn didn’t say anything. He reached over and flicked the volume back up again. Professor Kitteredge’s voice filled the small room. “You have to understand that according to the “Fifteen Discourses” that Reynolds delivered to students at the Royal Academy, the only way for a young artist to learn to create works of high moral and artistic worth was to copy the old masters and to sketch from—”

Shawn flipped the volume down again. “Valid and important,” he said.

But Gus was leaning forward in his chair, eyes lit up with excitement. “This is it,” he said. “Watch.”

“Watch what?” Shawn said. “Is Lassiter finally going to use his nightstick?”

“Kitteredge is about to make his point,” Gus said. “The one that’s going to tie this whole thing together. And probably even unmask the killer.”

Shawn stared through the glass. All he saw was Kitteredge talking while Lassiter held his head in pain. “How do you know that?”

“Didn’t you catch his tell?” Gus said.

Shawn looked again and this time noticed that Kitteredge’s hand was fishing around in his left coat pocket. After a moment, he pulled out his old meerschaum and knocked it gently on the table.

“You mean the pipe?” Shawn said.

“Every time he makes a significant point, he takes that pipe out of his pocket,” Gus said. “In class, all the students knew they’d better write down whatever he was saying when it came out. Once he moves on to details, the pipe goes back into his pocket. I’m surprised you didn’t catch that.”

Gus turned the volume back up to hear Kitteredge’s voice reaching a crescendo. “In fact, one of the core beliefs of the founding Pre-Raphaelite brothers was that everything Reynolds taught at the Royal Academy was corrupt. They believed that art had to draw its inspiration not from other artists but from truth, from nature, and from the beauty of the world.”

Shawn stifled a yawn. “I did see him playing with the thing,” he said. “It just never occurred to me that any one of his endless sentences was supposed to be more important than any other. Of course now that I understand that the plebiscite brothers hated Reynolds Wrap, or whatever he just said, it all becomes clear.”

“So much for the brilliant powers of observation,” Gus said.

“Observation has nothing to do with it,” Shawn said. “It’s a matter of authorial discrimination. Simply spewing out every stray bit of information lying around is not a sign of wisdom.”

“There is nothing stray about what Professor K is saying,” Gus said. “Something important is about to happen here and now.”

“Wait. You mean something even more exciting than what we just heard?” Shawn said. “I have a hard time imagining what that could be.”

Gus felt a momentary flash of pity for his partner. Shawn was so talented in so many areas, so brilliant about so many subjects, but he was also so completely blind to anything that didn’t fit into his narrow set of interests. He could, as he had attempted to prove earlier in the evening, spend hours discussing every aspect of the cinematic career of a former child star whose major claim to fame was that he’d managed to become a has-been without ever actually having been anything. But there was so much that simply never grabbed him, and he refused to put any effort into anything that wasn’t immediately appealing.

And yet there was so much in life that offered rich, full rewards only after you’d put in a little work. Russian novels were like that, or so he’d heard. Expensive wine and smelly cheese—not that Gus had much of a taste for either type of delicacy. Foreign movies, if the critics were to be believed. And most of all, the study of art history.

But this didn’t seem to be the time for Gus to give Shawn a lecture on the sophisticated pleasures of life. For one thing, Shawn had already sat through the longest lecture either of them had ever heard, and the experience didn’t seem to be inspiring him to study further.

For another, this lecture was about to reach its climax. Gus moved his chair closer to the glass. “This is it,” he said.

“Yes, I can see Lassiter is about to fall over dead from boredom,” Shawn said. “I only hope I can hold out one second longer than him.”

Again, Gus had to repress the desire to educate Shawn. “The pipe comes out whenever Kitteredge has a substantial point to make,” Gus said.

“It’s amazing how much more interesting that is the second time you tell me about it,” Shawn said. “Oh, wait; it isn’t.”

“That can happen easily a dozen times in a normal lecture,” Gus said. “But he’s got another tell, too. When he’s about to make his ultimate point, when he’s about to utter the words that will tie everything he’s said together and astonish you with his brilliance, only then does he bring out his lighter and light up.”

“Which is good, because then Lassiter will have an excuse to throw him in jail forever,” Shawn said. “The no-smoking statutes here are tough.”

“If you’ll apply your justly praised powers of observation, you’ll notice that Professor K’s hand is moving toward his right jacket pocket,” Gus said. “That means the lighter is about to come out. And that means—”

“That he’s almost ready to stop talking?” Shawn said.

“That he’s ready to make his point,” Gus said. “I think we should listen in, don’t you?”

“Why don’t you listen in?” Shawn said. “You can take notes, and then in the morning you can write it all up in a big report. And then I can use that as a pillow in case we’re ever stuck in an observation room all night again.”

Shawn dropped his chin to his chest and pretended to be falling asleep. Gus turned the volume back up.

“. . . wasn’t afraid of the public’s opinion,” Kitteredge was saying. “He refused to exhibit at a new gallery opened by his friends simply because members of the Royal Academy had pictures there. To him, the only thing that mattered was the truth of the painting itself.”

Shawn mumbled as if in sleep. “Oh, yeah, definitely worth waiting for.”

Gus ignored him and focused all his attention on his old professor. “If Rossetti refused to allow this painting to be shown in public, there had to be a reason,” Kitteredge said. “And it clearly wasn’t an aesthetic issue. We’ve all had a chance to look at the work now, and we’ve seen that it might be his masterpiece. So the only reason it’s been hidden away from sight for one hundred and fifty years is because it contains a truth so powerful, so dangerous, he couldn’t afford to let anyone see it outside a select few.”

Even if Kitteredge’s right hand hadn’t been plunging into his coat pocket, Gus would have known this was the moment they’d all been waiting for. He jabbed Shawn in the side with his elbow. “This is it,” he said. “This is the moment where it all comes together.”

Shawn roused himself sleepily. “As long as it doesn’t involve talking, I’m in,” he said.

“Just listen for one more minute and I promise you we’ll learn something important about this murder,” Gus said.

“I can’t listen for one more minute,” Shawn said. “Because that would require that I’d listened to any of the rest of it.”

“Then listen for the first time,” Gus said. “Because something big is about to happen.”

Reluctantly, Shawn turned his attention to the professor. If there was about to be a breakthrough in the case, the momentousness of the moment was escaping Lassiter, too, who was using his index fingers to prop his eyelids open.

“I have been working up to this slowly and cautiously, Detective, so that when I reached the incredible truth you would have no choice but to believe. Because that truth is the key to a conspiracy that reaches across the seas, across the centuries, and that is without a doubt behind the murder of poor Clay Filkins.” Having delivered this final, determinate statement, Kitteredge proudly pulled his hand out of his jacket pocket.

But when he held his lighter to his meerschaum, his thumb couldn’t find the trigger. It slid down the sticky, wet handle. Kitteredge thumbed it again, then realized something was wrong.

If Lassiter hadn’t been using his eyes to count the holes in the acoustical ceiling tiles, he might have been faster to notice what Kitteredge was holding.

Gus did see, but it took him a moment to understand what he was looking at. He expected to see that flame-jet pipe lighter sparking as if it had been newly forged, the same way it had so many times in class. Instead, the professor was holding what looked like a metal tube that had been sloppily dripped in wet paint.

Then Kitteredge’s thumb found a button, and a long, thin blade shot out of the handle with a
snik
sound so loud that even Shawn had to look up.

Look up and see that Professor Kitteredge wasn’t holding his lighter. Instead, he was holding a switchblade knife covered in blood.

“What’s that?” Gus said, even though he recognized the thing in the professor’s hand. His mind simply refused to accept what his eyes were seeing.

“I’ve got to give it to you,” Shawn said. “I didn’t think he could make it happen, but when he got to the end, he really did tie up the entire murder.”

“S
hoot him!”

Carlton Lassiter tensed his muscles and waited for the lead to slam into his flesh. If he was going to die, let it be at the hands of his fellow officers.

Because he was going to die. There was no way around it. This was the kind of situation no one walked away from. Professor Langston Kitteredge had him pinned against his body with one of his massive arms; the other was pressing the bloody switchblade against his neck. Facing them was a line of guns, each in the hands of a member of the Santa Barbara Police Department. Either Lassiter was going to be brought down in a storm of police bullets or the knife at his throat was going to slit him open.

“Hold your fire!”

Lassiter tried to turn his head to see who was speaking, but the blade dug into his flesh, stopping him. It didn’t matter—he’d know that voice anywhere. It belonged to his partner.

“Don’t listen to her!” Lassiter shouted at the assembled police. “Take him down!”

“Hold your fire!” O’Hara commanded again. “We are going to end this with no bloodshed.”

Not a chance, Lassiter thought. There was going to be blood, and lots of it. His and his captor’s.