Life is great.

This was a mantra Shawn Spencer had learned to repeat over and over again when life was anything but. He had repeated it many times when he was on outings with his father and had been asked to perform some task entirely inappropriate for the age he'd been at the time. He had repeated it throughout the entirety of his parent's divorce. He repeated it like a prayer during his time away from Santa Barbara where he finally learned what it meant to truly lose someone dear and though he'd never spoken of his loss to anyone it was this thought that had kept him going.

Shawn Spencer repeated his mantra when things turned rough. And he was repeating it now, over and over again as he stared down into a ditch somewhere east of Highway 166. He could hear himself talking, spouting off some nonsense about the difference between porpoises and dolphins to Gus, recalling information from an Animal Planet special he'd seen sometime the week prior.

What porpoises or dolphins had to do with anything, he wasn't sure, but it felt good to talk about something other than what he was looking at. He felt like he'd been punched and from the way Gus was staring at him he hadn't hid his feelings very well.

He looked away from his friend and stared back down at the corpse lying in a forgotten heap in the dirt. The girl couldn't have been more than sixteen and from the little Shawn could see of her face she had been very pretty. Her name, or so he'd been told, was Veronica Dunning and she had been a junior at some preparatory school in the swankier part of Santa Barbara.

She had been partying with friends the night she had disappeared and her absence hadn't been noted by her illegally drunk friends until the following morning when they had recovered from their drunken stupors long enough to realize that she was missing. Her parents had immediately contacted the SBPD and Shawn had requested, no that wasn't right, he had pestered and badgered Chief Vick to be put on the case. And he had done what he had promised to do. He had found her, but not before it was too late.

"Shawn," Gus said quietly. "Are you alright?"

"Fine," Shawn breathed with forced joviality. "Just jonesing for some yogurty goodness, Gus. What do you say we stop by someplace on our way back to the office?"

Gus frowned, unconvinced, and Shawn punched him lightly in the shoulder.

"Gus," he said loudly. "Buddy, what I have I told you about eating Sour Patch Kids before lunch? It makes you all surly, dude."

"Shawn," Gus began. "You know that this has nothing to do with Sour Patch Kids."

"Sure, sure, buddy. Whatever you say."

Gus was about to say something else, but Lassiter stepped in between them, eyeing Shawn's eclectic dress ensemble with disgust.

"Spencer," he growled in his usual surly eating-Sour-Patch-Kids-before-lunch-tone. "What the hell are you wearing? It's ridiculous."

"What?" Shawn asked, pointing down to his shirt. "Lassiter, if you wanted one all you had to do was ask."

"Why in the hell would I want a shirt with a picture of your ugly mug plastered all over it," Lassiter snapped.

Shawn had been hoping for this sort of reaction. In fact, when he had seen the advertisement online boasting about shirts that could have any picture put on the front of it he had purposely dug through his old photos to find one of himself that would drive the older detective nuts. He had decided on one he had taken for a newspaper article perhaps three years previous. The picture showed his face, close up, and full of the cocky swagger that pissed Carlton off. His right eyebrow was raised in a seductive, come-hither expression and he had purposefully pouted his lips. He had the T-shirt company print a slogan on the bottom of the garment in large blue letters. 'Shawn Spencer…Psyductive Detective." Comic gold.

Of course, Gus and Jules had looked at him like he was nuts, and now, staring down at the body that had once contained the youthful spirit of Veronica Dunning, he couldn't help but agree with them.

Oh, how he wanted to hand this case over and walk away, never looking back. It reminded him too much of his past. A past he thought he'd left buried back in Chicago seven years ago along with the girl he'd been prepared to lose everything to save.

He shook his painful thoughts away and concentrated on looking for clues, but nothing came to him. Frustration rose in him and he forced himself to take a step back and regain control of his thoughts. His father had taught him early on that a distracted mind made mistakes and he couldn't afford mistakes now. There was too much to lose, too high a cost.

"Spencer," Lassiter was calling to him. "Where the hell are you going?"

"Just—just give me a minute," Shawn answered.

Shawn was aware of Gus's eyes trailing him like a hound with a scent. The man was his best friend, and always had been, but there were some things that Shawn could never tell him. Things that were his burden to bear. Things that were just too damn painful to—

"Damn," Shawn cursed quietly. "Why now? Why did this have to happen now? Everything was going so well!"

He didn't have to look at the grey, bruise mottled corpse of the young Victoria to know the intimate details of her murder. She had been murdered in the same way as the others all those years ago, their faces burned into him like a brand of shame.

"She was beaten," he said quietly to Lassiter, too tired to make a big show of his predictions. "Then strangled."

"We already know that," Carlton snapped impatiently. "What's with the number, Spencer?"

Shawn glanced down again and his eyes roamed over the number one carved deep into the flesh of her left shoulder. He felt sick.

"His calling card," Shawn answered. "He's letting us know the game is beginning."

"A game," Lassiter spat out. "This isn't a game, Spencer."

"That's how he looks at it," Shawn said. "Its just a big game to him, Lassie."

"Who?"

"I don't know," Shawn replied. "That's all I can tell you for now. Honestly, you have yet to understand that the spirits don't answer to me, Lassie. I answer to the spirits."

"Useless psychics," Carlton muttered, bending down to study Veronica's remains. "I can't believe that we pay you, Spencer. Honestly, what good are—hey, what's this?"

Shawn watched as he pulled something shiny and folded from somewhere beneath the body and his heart lurched. Lassiter shook the excess dirt that was still clinging to the outside edges of what looked to Shawn like a photograph and unfolded it with gloved hands.

Lassiter looked at it for a long moment then looked up at Shawn with an unreadable expression on his face. The young faux psychic shifted uneasily under the detective's penetrating gaze.

"Spencer," Carlton said softly. "What the hell is this?"

"The spirits tell me it's a puppy and kitten romping around in field of lollipops," he quipped, smiling uneasily. "Oh, no, wait—it's a…it's a…"

"It's you," Lassiter whispered, turning the picture around so Shawn could see. "And some woman…Spencer, what the hell is going on here? You've been acting funny ever since we arrived on the scene and now this?"

The woman in the picture stared back at him with an almost fierce intensity. Shawn felt his stomach tighten and he barely had time to turn away before he'd thrown up his manly breakfast medley of Cheerios, Cap'n Crunch, and Lucky Charms doused in a healthy serving of chocolate milk.

He could hear his friends calling to him, but they sounded like they were far away. He had somehow fallen to his knees though he didn't remember doing so. The only thing he could think of was the woman in the photograph. The woman who had been beaming at the camera, red hair whipped around by the October wind, dainty gloved hands wrapped around his as he'd held her close.

The way her hair had smelled like strawberries, which had always seemed so fitting to Shawn. The way her lips felt against his and the way she let him hold her close to him. He had loved her the way he had always felt a man was supposed to love a woman, with all of his heart and every fiber of his being. Before the countless one night stands and three week flings, before Abigail, before Juliet, Shawn had loved a woman named Amy. And she had loved him, despite his flaws and his never quite serious personality. She had loved him and he'd been happy for the first time in long time.

And she had been ripped away from him by a sadistic bastard who enjoyed the feel of a woman's life slipping away beneath the palms of his hands. The killer had wanted to play a game with him and Shawn had lost. And, for a little while at least, he had lost himself.

Life is great, he told himself as he stood up shakily. Life is just fucking great.