“Listen harder,” Shawn said.

Lassiter scowled, but he put on his listening face again. After a moment, a tiny voice floated on the wind. “Help me! Help me!”

“That time you had to hear it,” Shawn said.

Lassiter’s eyes flashed open. “I heard Guster doing the voice of the guy at the end of The Fly, ” he said. “And I’m sorry, but the constitution doesn’t allow me to break into a private home even if I believe a half-man, half-insect is about to be eaten by a spider.”

“It doesn’t?” Shawn said. “You’d think the Founding Fathers would have planned for that kind of thing.”

“Don’t you ever watch TV, Lassie?” Gus asked.

“What I do in my private time is none of your concern.” Lassiter scowled again and raised his cell phone to his face. “If I want to find Judge Napoli while he still remembers his own name, I’ve got to start calling bars now.”

“What half-fly here is saying is that there’s a clever little police trick we’ve picked up from watching some of your better shows,” Shawn said. “We all agree we hear a scream coming from inside the house, and then we’ve got our exigent circumstance.”

“Unless there’s no one inside,” Lassiter said. “And then we’re stuck explaining under penalty of perjury how we heard an empty house screaming for help.”

“What, you’ve never seen The Amityville Horror?” Shawn said.

Lassiter turned to his phone in disgust.

“I can’t think why we don’t call the police for help more often,” Gus said.

“Lassie’s just doing his job,” Shawn said. “Say, I think your shoe’s untied.”

“It is?” Gus said.

“I believe so,” Shawn said. “You might want to check it while I take a step forward to press our case with Detective Lassiter.”

Gus crouched down on one knee. Shawn took a step forward and stumbled over him. He fell forward, right into Lassiter, pushing him backwards. Lassiter tried to right himself, but tripped over the door’s threshold and tumbled back. The door flew open under his weight, and he crashed to the floor inside the bungalow with Shawn on top of him.