“So?”

“Whoever planned Tanner’s disappearance is clearly intelligent,” Shawn said. “Can we agree on that much?”

“Since I’m working on the assumption that Tanner did it himself, yes, we can,” Gus said.

“The crime was perfect. There wasn’t a single clue left behind,” Shawn said. “No one could pull off that kind of job and not want to boast about it somewhere. And having that game sitting out there, the irony would be too great to resist.”

“What if the guy who did it doesn’t think he’s a criminal genius?” Gus said. “What if someone killed Tanner in a moment of panic or passion, and then threw some clothes in a suitcase to cover it up?”

“It doesn’t matter what the intent was,” Shawn said. “The loser who sticks up a 7-Eleven considers himself an evil mastermind if he gets away with it. All crooks do.”

“And you know this how?” Gus said.

“The same way I know there isn’t a man on Earth who thinks he’s a bad father, or a woman who believes she’s a lousy driver,” Shawn said. “Every crook needs to boast about how smart he is, and the smarter the crook, the bigger the boast. He left a clue in that game.”

“What if he didn’t work on the game?” Gus said.

For the next twenty-five minutes, Shawn refused to acknowledge Gus’ existence. That was fine with Gus. He used the time to discover that Tanner’s name wasn’t listed on any flights, trains, or ships within three days of his disappearance. Of course, since his car was also missing, that wasn’t tremendously helpful, except as a way of ruling out various avenues to investigate. Finally Gus agreed to take an exploratory trip through the game, if only because he couldn’t think of any other place to start and a dumb idea seemed better than no idea.

At least that’s what he’d told Shawn. As he said the words he could hear their falseness so clearly he began to suspect his voice and lip movements might have fallen out of synch. He couldn’t believe that Shawn would fall for his obvious untruth.