Disclaimer: I own nothing of this

Sins of the youth – his father´s son

Indian Summer

They called it Indian Summer, at least in some places of the United States. Not quiet in Santa Barbara though, but Shawn was sure that there had been Indians in this area once too. Of course they were, they´d been everywhere before the white people had come here, so why shouldn´t there be an Indian Summer in Santa Barbara too? It sure felt like one. Warm sunny days, under a blue bright sky and cold chilly nights, with crawling ground mist. And the leaves were red as blood.

Of course Shawn couldn´t see the color right now, it was too dark already. His mom had forbidden him to go out that late, scared for his safety, after these last two murders that had happened in the big park in the middle of town. But he´d felt restless so he´d snuck out anyway. He´d asked his father to tell him about the case, but Henry had refused to share information. Allegedly the case was too gruesome for a fifteen year old. As if.

Shawn would have loved to see the crime scenes. Not that he was a rubbernecker like all the other people who tended to gather around a crime scene, when something bad happened. But after all that his father had forced him to learn about police work, it would have been interesting to see those specific murder scenes, to see how the police was treating them, how his father really worked when he was on the job.

But of course he wouldn´t let him. So Shawn was walking at night, his hands in his pockets, not even thinking about any form of danger he might be in, be it the trouble he would get with his mother when she found out he´d climbed out of the window – that wouldn´t happen, he´d locked his door and put on some music – or the danger a young teen like him might be in if someone should attack him from behind and drag him into a dark, even darker corner of the park. And there were many of those dark corners.

Shawn eyed them with great interest, always expecting to see something. Something suspicious, something lurking, or maybe just a hobo, snoring in the cold of the night, trying not to freeze by slinging an old wool blanket around himself.

But Shawn saw no one, not even a hobo. He was perfectly alone in the park, his only companion the crawling white fog that was snuggling around his feet.

After a while of walking through that quiet and unrevealing darkness of the park, he turned back and headed home again. The next day another girl was found murdered, not too far from where he´d been walking. Her throat was slit and her body half buried, just like the others, only her head looking out like a grotesque gravestone. The newspapers declared: "Digging Jack hit once again."

...

Today:

When Henry Spencer enters the chief´s office, he expects to get his instructions, just like always when she calls him in. A new case maybe, or something else he´s supposed to take care of for her. But this time it´s different. Her face is different.

"Please, Henry, close the door." she says and it is her tone that makes him shiver, more even than her face. She´s so serious. More even than usual. Something´s up, he just knows that. And he isn´t sure he will like what he´s about to hear.

"What´s the matter, Karen?" he asks her, and the concern is evident in his voice, no matter how hard he tries not to let it shine through.

And there´s only this look in her eyes, her face gray with something that makes his blood run cold. Oh no, he thinks with dread. Please, don´t let it be Shawn. Please don´t say something happened to him.

But he doesn´t get a chance to vocalize his fears. Karen hands him a file, a report actually, with a small photo attached to it.

"It happened again." is all she says.

Henry regards the picture, doesn´t even need to read the report, and his heart stops for a moment. The picture shows a young woman, dead, buried in the ground to her chin, her throat obviously slit, from ear to ear. And he immediately remembers.

Just like the others, is all he can think. Just like all the others. Only that had been twenty years ago.

He stares at the chief and she looks right back at him, almost sympathetic, as if he´d known the victim. Henry feels rage in his chest.

"What do you want me to do?" he asks grimly.

"What do you want to do?" she asks him right back.

Henry grits his teeth. "You know exactly what I want to do. I want to go out there and bust this son of a bitch, with my bare hands if necessary. He made me and the whole police of Santa Barbara ridiculous back in the days and we could never catch him. Now he´s back, obviously trying … to mock us again." He stops himself, taking a step back and silently counts to three. "But this is your call, not mine." he finishes.

Karen lowers her eyes, for a moment. "It was your case." she states, matter of factly. "You have first hand knowledge about it. I´ll allow you to work it again. With Lassiter. You´ll be under his command."

"I understand."

"Do whatever it takes to bust the son of a bitch."

Henry only nods, and leaves the office.

...

The first thing Gus hears, when he enters the Psych office, is Shawn´s quiet snoring. He sits in his chair, leaning back, feet on the table and hands neatly folded on his belly. Gus furrows his brow, and throws the door shut, to wake him up.

It works. Shawn flinches, halfway through a long deep snoring and his feet tumble off the table. The rest of him almost follows them to the ground.

"Shawn!" Gus cries, ignoring his friend´s startled expression.

"God, Gus!" the fake psychic cries, clinging to the armrests with both hands. "You scared the living snot out of me. What the heck is the matter with you?"

"That´s the matter with me." Gus cries and furiously throws the newspaper down on the desk.

Shawn blinks, still fighting the cobwebs in his brain, and tries his best to read the head article.

"Jack the Digger back from the dead."

Gus can actually see how long it takes him to take in what these words mean. Eventually he grabs the paper, without a word, and starts reading, for real this time.

"A serial killer?" he asks, tongue still sluggish with sleep. "But last nights victim was the first. How does that fit, mathematically?"

Gus is irritated for a second, almost shocked.

"Shawn. Are you seriously fooling around? Now? At this?"

He´s only earning a glance from Shawn, over the rim of the paper. A frown.

"It´s happening again, Shawn."

But Shawn is still frowning, thinking deeply.

"Don´t you remember?" Gus cries, almost shouts at him.

"What am I supposed to remember?"

Gus shakes his head, irritated. "Are you kidding me? The Digging Jack? Fall of 1991. It was your Dad´s case."

Again Shawn frowns, even deeper now. "Really?"

"You can´t seriously have forgotten about that." Shawn takes a moment to remember, and fails. Gus can see it written all over his face. This is unbelievable. He knows that Shawn has a bad memory sometimes, especially when it comes to things he rather wants to forget, like a childhood he´d been forced to spend with a father like Henry. But this …

"My dad´s case, you say?" Shawn murmurs. When Gus doesn´t respond, he shakes his head, shrugging his shoulders. "Well, I guess if it was his case, he´ll want us to work on it. We should head for the station."

And as if it wants to prove him right, his cell phone starts to ring. He takes it and holds it up for Gus to see. Exhibit A, ladies and gentlemen. Gus rolls his eyes.

"Dad." Shawn answers without waiting for a word from the caller. "Aha. On it. We´re over in a minute. Okay, let´s say in … hello? Dad?"

He looks at the silent phone with a disapproving frown.

"Let´s go." is all Gus says. This is going to be a long week.

...

When they reach the morgue, around half an hour later, the rest of the team is already assembled around the body. Lassiter, Juliet, Henry and of course, Woody, the goodnatured coroner. Shawn meets the eyes of his father, for a second, and what he sees there tells him without a doubt now, that Gus had been right. This case must have been his, back in the days. A gloomy look like that is strictly reserved for cases like that.

Cases that hit too close to home for comfort. Cases that leave you with a feeling of dread, because you could never really solve them. Cases that haunt you, even in your dreams.

Shawn had some of them too, so he actually can understand how his father feels. For a change. He throws a glance at the dead girl, and thinks that she looks kinda familiar, though he can´t place her. Maybe he dated her once, some years ago, before he got serious with Jules? But he isn´t sure. Man, that´d be creepy, wouldn´t it be?

"Emily Thompson." Woody tells them, starting his speech, as if he truly just waited for them to arrive. "As you all can see very clearly, the cause of death is a slit throat. Very deeply slit, almost to the spine."

"From behind." Lassiter grumbles.

"I´d most certainly say so." Woody agrees, way too lighthearted for the detective´s taste.

"Yeah, that´s exactly how he used to do it." Henry remembers, and Shawn is sure he has the bitter taste of bile in his mouth at the thought.

"Any traces?" Lassiter wants to know. "DNA, hair, blood under her nails from the fight?"

"No." Woody answers shortly, and when Lassiter blinks, he adds: "Unbelievable but except for the dirt he buried her in, there is nothing on her. The blood is her own, no other DNA … she didn´t get a chance to fight him. So he either attacked her from behind, and slit her at once, or …"

"Or she was unconscious." Juliet finishes the sentence. Her eyes never leave the body before her. And for the first time, regarding her heavy voice, Woody seems to get serious too.

"Any traces of GHB or other drugs?" Juliet finally glances up.

"No. But of course there are substances that can´t be traced. He might have given her something we can´t find."

"No." Henry grumbles. "He never used anything else but his knife and his shovel."

"How do you want to know?" Lassiter demands to know. "Twenty years ago they didn´t have the tests we have today."

"He´s right, dad." Shawn agrees, supporting the detective for a change. "Times are changing and not even you can stop the progress of technology."

"All right, Sherlock. Then tell me what you think. Any `visions´ you get on the case?"

"Not yet. Although if I would have been out there last night, to stalk and kill a woman to halfway bury her afterward, I´d have taken a caterpillar with me. Seriously. It´s freezing at night."

"That´s true." Gus agrees inbetween.

"And the ground will be hard like marble." Shawn looks at his father. "Am I right? I mean you´re the experienced gardener here."

"You´re right, Shawn." Henry nods. "But he buried her in the park, in the newly dug flower beds. He didn´t have to do too much hard work."

"Then there should be footprints of him." Gus mentions, smartly.

"No." Jules shakes her head. "Not even of her. The area was swept."

"And no one found anything."

"Swept in the sense of cleaned of traces." Henry specifies. "Digging Jack used to sweep the earth around his victims, so he wouldn´t leave any footsteps. We always suspected that he had experience with things like that. Maybe he got arrested once after he left footprints."

"Or …" Gus adds. "He works for the police … or any other department of the force."

For a moment everybody just looks at him, making him slightly uncomfortable. Shawn can see in his father´s eyes that this thought was something they didn´t even consider back in the days, and he has to chuckle. Of course. No cop would ever do something as gruesome as this. Not one of us. Never. The good old days.

Next to him Lassiter frowns. "You know what." he speaks up. "I think I remember another case like this."

"Another case like this?" Henry repeats.

"Yeah. Ten years ago. Not in Santa Barbara but in Ohio."

"What?" Shawn laughs.

"How do you know what´s going on in Ohio?" Henry asks.

"I´ve been studying serial killer cases very intently for a while, and I think there was one that resembles almost to the detail, what we have here. Yeah, it was in 2001. The Ohio River area. Three women were murdered and buried, only their heads looking out, as if to mock the police. They called it the headstone killings."

Gus makes a noise of utter disgust. "That´s inappropriate." he says. "And cruel."

Shawn barely hears him. He´s started to think, to remember.

"Shawn, does that tell you something?" Juliet asks, her head askew to see him past her partner.

"I´m not sure." he mumbles. "But I think I worked in a zoo in Ohio at the time. Yeah, I´m pretty sure I took care of the zebras."

"You were there?" Lassiter snaps.

"Why didn´t you say anything?" Henry demands to know.

"I just did."

"I mean back then." his father bellows. "There are murders that are done with the same MO like the case I worked on ten years earlier and you don´t tell me that?"

"Well, maybe if you would have shared more of the stuff with me that you were doing at work, I would have seen a connection." Shawn retorts. "But you didn´t."

"You were a kid. Was I supposed to tell you in what gruesome ways these girls had been killed?"

For a moment Shawn doesn´t know what else to say. He´s angry, even more because he knows his father is right. But of course he can´t admit that now. That wouldn´t be like him, now would it?

Henry´s shoulders slump, under the stare of everybody around him. Eventually he huffs.

"Still you could have mentioned that there was a serial killer on the loose, kid."

Shawn chuckles. "I´m sorry that I figured it would somehow spoil the post card. How does that sound? Weather´s great, food´s yummy, oh and by the way. Another girl was brutally murdered tonight. What´s up at home?"

"Okay, skip that." Lassiter demands at last. "But when you heard the news, you should have told us right away, about that case near your working place ten years ago. One that was so much alike this one."

Shawn raises his finger. "First. I didn´t hear the news. I was very tired this forenoon, since I watched Secret Window last night. Second." and here he stops, shaking his head: "To be honest … I´d totally forgotten about that … until now."

"You´d forgotten about this AND your dad´s case in the 90s?" Gus asks him. "What´s wrong with your memory?"

"Dunno. Maybe I´m getting old."

"Stupid." Lassiter grumbles. "The fact that these murders always happen around you, is no coincidence. Maybe someone from Henry´s past has a grudge against you."

"Or …"

After that they all stare at him for a moment, until Jules breaks the silence: "You think it could have been Yin?"

"Yin is dead." Lassiter recalls. "And Yang´s in prison."

For a moment they all hesitate, thinking: Is she? But then they all decide simultaneously, that this thought is ridiculous. Of course she didn´t break out. Still Shawn is sure Lassie will check this out as soon as they´re done here. And if he won´t, Jules will. And if she won´t, his dad will. But he´s sure Yang is not the killer. She never killed anyone. Except for Yin, but that´s another story.

"Maybe it´s someone related to the Yin-Yang case anyway." Lassiter goes on. "A family member, or a friend of them, who wants revenge. We should check this out."

"It could as well be someone from Shawn´s past." Gus mentions, earning a glance from Shawn.

"Thanks for the nightmares, buddy."

"He´s right." Juliet agrees. "Is there anyone that comes to your mind that could have done something like that?"

"A gruesome and disturbing personality? Quite a lot. But able to murder like that, plus stalking me while doing so?" he pretends to think for a moment, and then shakes his head. "Nope. No one."

"Try to remember anyway." Henry orders. "Especially what happened in Ohio. Juliet will help you. Lassiter and I will have a look into the files of Yin and Yang.

Shawn doesn´t say anything, just nods obediently.