Despair and Tribulation {PSYCH}

What did that Lamp do to You?

"Henry!" Blake basically broke through the front door's hinges, in search of her friend. Henry was inside, quietly reading the newspaper while sipping on a beer when Blake nearly put him into cardiac arrest. "I need help, this case has really got me in a rut. And your useless son is nowhere to be found. The last thing we did together was go see Sal Guarino, and that was 2 days ago!"

The former detective folded up his newspaper and gently placed it down on the table, along with his reading glasses. "Mason, you know I have never had any control over Shawn, but he does this more often than you think. Come grab a beer and take a seat, we can go over the files you have." Blake beelined for the fridge, grabbing two bottles and sitting down right beside Henry, spreading the pictures she had stuffed in a manila folder.

"I have such a mess here, and it doesn't help that Shawn isn't here to help," Blake grunted, organizing the photos in front of Henry. "He was supposed to be my partner."

"Though I usually don't agree with how he gets his information, sometimes it's better to wait for him to get back with a 'psychic' vision." Henry joked, mimicking Shawn's ridiculous finger-to-forehead shtick. They laughed together at how stupid Shawn usually looks. Blake sighed, using the ring on her middle finger to pop open the beer bottle, and took a nice, long swig as she scanned over the pictures.

"You have a better eye than I do, do you see anything?" She asked.

Henry pointed at Josue's corpse. "Who's this poor guy?"

"Josue Reyes, he is, well he was our missing person's boyfriend and suspect. They had a falling out after she decided against eloping. Or so we were told. Sal Guarino said that Josue was planning on leaving her to come out as gay and get married. So, I'm pretty lost in how Victoria disappearing fits into all of this." Blake pressed her temples and groaned. She had no clue how to fix this mess of a case that she was given. Blake couldn't help but be furious at the fact that Shawn still hasn't contacted her about anything he's found if he found anything that is. A simple 'good morning' text wouldn't hurt anyone either, but she hadn't even gotten that.

Henry looked over the photos and considered what Blake has said. "Have you considered the option that that Guarino fellow might be lying?" Blake thought about it for a moment. Guarino didn't even want them saying Victoria's name in front of him, could he be lying?

"He did seem very... adamant about how much he hated her," Blake popped open the other bottle of beer next to her and downed it all in one gulp. She slammed her head onto the table. "I'm such a terrible detective. Here's my badge, Henry. You deserve it more than I do." She muttered, her badge gently placed on the table and slid towards her friend. Henry chuckled, lifting Blake's head up from the table and placing her badge back into her hand.

"You're just going through a hard time. You just got back into the swing of things after years of running a damn Italian restaurant. It'll get better soon." Henry stood up and took the empty beer bottles with him.

Blake lifted her finger in the air. "Could you hand me another one of those?"

"Absolutely not, it's early and I don't want to be responsible for you becoming an alcoholic." Henry placed the bottles in the recycling bin. Blake huffed and sunk into her seat.

Not even a second later, the back door goes flying open.

"Hey, Spencer, I just thought I should bring this back—" The intruder looked up to see a loaded pistol pointed right at his face by a very angry woman.

Blake realized who it was and lowered her gun in annoyance, "Carlton Lassiter," she glared, her voice filled with exasperation. "Don't you know better than to walk into a police household without knocking?" She turned on her safety and put her pistol back into her holster. Carlton almost had a heart attack, the same one he almost had at the Soto house a few days ago.