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English
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Published:
2024-05-13
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2,818
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1/1
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Parts of a Whole

Summary:

Shawn sees things that no one else can. Sometimes that's a problem.
[AKA: Pilot, a bit to the left]

Notes:

Y'all this concept hit me like a ton of bricks.

Work Text:

Henry Spencer answers the door to find his estranged son looking at him for the first time in nearly a decade. Shawn looks good. Tanned, well rested and full of energy. Henry almost doesn’t recognize him. There’s very little to connect the man in front of him to the haunted sallow mess he’d been at eighteen. In fact, he looks more like he did when he was twelve, active, quick to smile and always, always scheming.

“Shawn,” he says, half-thinking it’s a mirage. That this happy, alert adult would vanish to leave the wreck of a teen that Henry almost let go into the system just to make sure certain health-related measures continued to be take care of.

“Hey, Dad,” Shawn says warily. “I didn’t realize you were back in town.”

“I’d have told you if you left a return address on any of those post cards of yours.” He steps forward to wrap the kid in a hug. Something loosens in his chest when Shawn props his chin on Henry’s shoulder, even though he doesn’t move to hug back. Henry allows himself precisely four seconds and two back pats before drawing back and grabbing his hat from the hook by the door. “I was just about to head out to grab lunch. You should join me. My treat.”

Shawn allows a small smile, and follows Henry towards the truck. “Wasn’t expecting this kind of warm welcome or I might have decided to visit years ago.”

It had been a decade of irregular postcards and radio silence. The silence and regular moves had not painted a shiny happy picture of Shawn’s prospects or finances. Henry estimates that his longest job had lasted approximately five months and that he spent more time sleeping in that claptrap of a blue Toyota Echo than he had in any hotel or apartment.

It’s still radio silent as they make the five minute ride down to the city proper, right up until they get their orders taken. At that point Henry figures he won’t spook. At least not until he gets his food.

“So kid, you back for good? Need a place to stay? Nothing permanent mind you—” Henry would absolutely offer permanent if that was what the kid needed. “—but there’s room at the house for you until you get yourself on your feet.”

Shawn slurps at his soda and then answers with a dismissive wave of his hand. “As tempting as it is to revisit the Wonder Years, I think I’m going to have to pass. I remember it being a little too heavy on the shouting for my taste.”

Mostly shouting about Shawn. Occasionally shouting at Shawn. “Kid…”

Shawn breezes by before he can get an apology out. “Turns out I’ve actually stumbled into something of a job opportunity. And if I play this right, I think it’s actually going to work.”

Henry folds his arms over his chest, leans back and listens. Only his son could get himself into the situation where the most plausible way out was to call himself a psychic. The fact that he’d managed to get a job out of it didn’t say anything good about what happened at the station after he retired.

But the kid is actually excited for once. Henry can’t remember when he last saw Shawn as anything other than sullen and resigned. Sure, acting out the murder scene with fries and ketchup is a little uncouth, but for once Shawn’s invested and engaged.

It makes his reservations difficult to voice. “You sure you can handle this kind of thing? Job seems a little high pressure and we both know how you handle pressure.”

“If you want to say something, just say it, Dad.” Shawn take a vicious bite out of the Malcolm fry. “You don’t think I can do this. There’s a reason I didn’t wind up at the police academy. You think I’ve gone soft.”

“Fine,” Henry cuts in. “How about you tell me what Gus thinks of all this.”

Shawn’s eyes narrow. “Gus is thrilled I’m back in Santa Barbara. Unlike you, he missed having me around. The psychic detective thing is going to be a harder sell, but he’s already starting to come around.”

Henry doesn’t know if that should be concerning or not. Gus is ninety percent of his son’s impulse control, but he’s also a potentially concerning development. “You didn’t see Gus when you were gone?”

“We talked over the phone pretty regularly, but Gus lives in Santa Barbara. You know that.” He meets Henry’s eyes and adds, “And I’m better when he’s around. You know that, too.”

Still at least a half a sandwich left on Shawn’s plate, not to mention most of the fries. Means Henry can take the gentle track. Madeline always said it gets more results. “Kid, I want you to listen to me. You’re a great detective and it’s a damn shame you’ll never get a chance to be a great cop. But if you drag yourself and Gus into the middle of a double homicide, you’re going to get in trouble. And even if you don’t, even if you play this safe and cautious, you’re going to wind up seeing something that’s not actually there.”

“I know what’s real,” Shawn says stubbornly.

The hard way it is. “Close your eyes.”

“Dad.” There’s a whine in Shawn’s voice.

“Take another look around if you feel like you need it,” Henry offers.

Shawn’s eyes shut instantly and Henry suppresses a fond smile. Shawn at his best is always a half-step away from Shawn at his most dangerous. The absence of the drug induced haze that marked the back half of his high school career means either he’s finally sorted out the right cocktail of meds… or that he’s off them completely.

“How many hats?” Henry asks.

Somewhere between the ages of eight and twelve, Shawn started adding hats to the game. Henry initially thought it was part of some adolescent rebellion because when he asked for descriptions, the hats were always the most garish, flamboyant headwear possible.

In retrospect he can see it for the sign that it was.

Eyes closed, fingers at his temples, Shawn reels off the hats in the room describing them one by one without prompting. Up to and including the one Henry has stashed in his pocket.

The entire charade is almost enough to have Henry believing in him again.

Except he hesitates before concluding his count with: “Six hats.”

He keeps his eyes closed.

The count matches Henry’s no problem, but he reads trouble in the pause. For all that Gus is good at curbing his son’s worst impulses and serving as overflow storage for his kid’s more arcane knowledge, Gus is also the mother of all red flags.

He decides to push. “You sure about that count, kiddo?”

There’s another half-beat, Shawn’s eyes darting back and forth behind closed lids. “Yes.” He jerks his thumb towards the empty space behind him.  “Sequined cowboy hat, though undeniably my favorite, doesn’t actually cast a shadow so she doesn’t get counted.”

“Kid,” Henry says gently. “I think you might want to talk to your doctor about adjusting your meds.”

“The meds turn me into a zombie.” There’s a defiant jut to his chin. “I can’t think like that. I can’t live like that and I definitely can’t help like that.”

“You know what they call inventing evidence that isn’t real?”

“I’m not a cop.” He opens his eyes and holds Henry’s gaze. “My job isn’t evidence. It’s answers. I’ve already told the SBPD that some of the spirits like to play tricks. But more than that I know the difference.”

Henry wants so very badly to believe him. He’s missed this Shawn, the real Shawn. The sharp and sarcastic one whose brain never stops moving. If he’s figured it out when his mother hadn’t managed it and the shrinks hadn’t managed, well that’s just short of a miracle.

“For the records, I think this is a bad idea.” Henry puts down a twenty to pay for the lunch. Shawn’s jaw is tense. “But if you insist on pursuing this, I’d maybe try to think about who you’re trusting in your case that you shouldn’t be.”

Detective Lassiter can’t make heads or tails of Shawn Spencer. He’s obviously a fake—that much goes without saying—but he’d pulled an arrest out of thin air when the SBPD would have happily written the whole thing off and left the murderer at large.  Lassiter could have done without the obviously performative spasms, but he can appreciate the correct resolution even if the situation baffles him.

Spencer’s psychicness appears wildly variable in its credulity. He’d first thought that he had to have a source in the department, someone who’d managed to find out about his relationship with his junior detective. His warning about the kitchen could probably be traced back to a bad personal dining experience.

The cabin is harder to explain, but he’d caught sight of Spencer practicing surprised faces in his rearview mirror, not to mention the moment he pulled a pair of binoculars out of his jacket when Lassiter needed them. Spencer knew what they were walking into well before he came to the police. Lassiter’s immediate assumption had been that Spencer was part of the kidnapping scheme from the get-go.

He’d been in the middle of verifying Spencer’s alibi when they got the call to go to the MacCallum residence. The confession at least saved him the effort of tracing the man’s whereabouts for the second time in as many days, but it doesn’t tell him how Spencer did it.

What’s worse is the quality of his performances had varied wildly throughout the day. The fingers to the temple and the twitching visions were clearly fabrications and not even good ones, but the constant conversations with a spirit named Gus, were significantly harder to discount. There were none of the tells, none of the theatrics. Spencer genuinely sounded like he was constantly mid-conversation with the air on his left. Lassiter has no idea what conversation, but his speech patterns are natural, if bizarre, and the occasional hissed arguments always seem to get resolved.

Couple talking to air with Spencer’s itinerant lifestyle and lack of permanent address and Lassiter might have pegged him as someone who belongs in an institution.

Only the case got solved.

A fluke, Lassiter decides as a new assignment slides across his desk.

With any luck, a fluke he’ll never have to deal with again.

Interim Chief Karen Vick has been looking for a miracle. The interim part of her title is a growing weight on her authority and she’s all-too-aware that the mayor’s office is looking for any excuse to push her out and install their preferred man for the job. The usual summer uptick in crime is probably more than enough justification for pushing her out.

If she has even the vaguest hope of keeping this job, she needs to do something drastic. More than that, she needs it to work.

From a distant, Shawn Spencer looks like a miracle.

Except she’s never believed in miracles. In point of fact, she puts them in the same category as psychics. And she has a long enough memory to know the rumors about Henry Spencer’s son. Especially in light of the time he’d spent bragging about his fifteen-year-old son’s perfect score on the detective’s exam.

So she makes a call, invites the venerated Henry Spencer back into a building that he left too soon, sits him down and says, “Your son’s claiming to be psychic.”

Henry had to be expecting the reasons for her call, but he definitely hadn’t been expecting the direct approach. He sputters.

She waves a hand. “Psychic’s obviously a load of crock, but he’s definitely useful. I’m just doing my due-diligence about his reliability.”

Henry fidgets, cracking his knuckles in his hands as he looks guiltily over his shoulder. Karen hadn’t seen much resemblance between the Spencers until this very instant. She would have expected such a good interrogator to be better at hiding his tells.

“Karen,” he starts.

She interrupts, “I’m not looking for confirmation about anything. I know you used to brag about how sharp Shawn was and I know that by the time I went through BLET you’d stopped talking about him completely. Best I can tell this shift coincided with a month worth of leave you took when Shawn was sixteen coinciding with a ‘death in the family.’”

“None of this is actually a question, Karen.”

Karen intends to be very, very circumspect about how she asks her questions. “My assumption is that your son’s psychic episodes started after the death of his friend Burton Guster.”

“That certainly a plausible explanation,” Henry says in a voice that implies he does not believe it.

“And I further assume that this spirit he converses with so readily—Gus—is the same Burton Guster.”

Henry gives a slow nod. “That’s Shawn’s assertion. He was never the same after the crash. And if I’m honest, I don’t think I was ever the same either. Gus was family.”

Karen nods. “Is Gus a reliable source?”

“Exactly as reliable as my kid is,” Henry says. “Are you really considering taking him on longer term?”

“No one in the department would have solved this crime.” She has another dozen in the same category languishing in the cold cases. Clearing some of that backlog would go a long way towards those measurable differences the mayor’s office loves to see. “And your son sees connections that no one else does.”

“Not to mention some things that aren’t there,” Henry puts in. He glances behind him like he’s afraid someone’s listening and then leans forward, talking with some urgency. “If you do this, Karen, you need to make sure you have either hard evidence or a confession. I know exactly how convincing Shawn can be.”

“I’m insulted you think the SBPD would move on something without proper evidence.” Karen says with exaggerated offense. “Shawn already solved one impossible crime. My only question for you is: Can he do it again?”

Henry’s face clears. It seems that this much he can answer.

“Absolutely.”

Solve the crimes the last administration didn’t. That’s the play here, her one chance to keep the job she’s been working towards for years. Karen is not above using every single tool she can get her hands on to close cases.

No matter how big a wildcard.

“One case and you’re renting office space?” Gus grouses, as they leave the car. “I thought the credit score in the two hundreds would have made you a bad bet.”

“Not so much renting as borrowing,” Shawn says. “This was Mom’s old practice. She owns the building. Figured it was a better investment return to hold onto the place and rent it out in case she ever needed to come back. She gave me a very reasonable rate. Bonus! The private back office where she would have people expunge their souls is already equipped with a lock and a super comfy couch.”

“You are too old to keep crashing in the blueberry,” Gus says thoughtfully. “And I get your mom loaning you potential housing and a spot to set up your new business. Did you bother to tell it was a fake psychic detective agency you called Psych? Like gotcha? Because you’re basically daring someone to call you a liar.”

“Who says I’m lying?” Shawn says, his arms thrown wide as he takes in their new office. “No, seriously. How can anyone know that you’re not a ghost? Or that I’m not a psychic?”

“I mean, your schizophrenia diagnosis is on file if anyone goes looking.”

“That would be a Hippo violation.”

“I think you mean HIPAA.”

“HIPAA is not the point,” Shawn says, turning to look at his friend. “The point is, I’ve been looking for a way to like, live with the rest of the world and still get to keep you. The whole psychic thing? That means I get to talk to you in public and being psychic means I’ve got the spirits and not you know, the crazies.”

“Now that I have heard both ways,” Gus counters. “You’re going to get caught.”

“Probably,” Shawn allows. “But I’m good at this. I can help people. And I want to do that. For as long it works. Are you with me buddy? Because I can’t actually do this without you.”

Funny, really, given the miles of red tape that seems to disallow Shawn from being a detective with Gus.

“If you really think this will work, I’m with you man,” Gus says. “Always.”

He extends a fist and Shawn raises his own to meet it, the sensation of knuckles touching nothing but the ghost of a whisper on the distant rattle of the office AC.