We didn't have anywhere else to go.

We didn't have any other leads to follow-up on. I may not be a retired cop or a fake psychic detective, but even I know that when every lead you have dries up, sometimes all you can do is go back to the scene and start again from scratch.

The only problem with that this time was that I wasn't too eager to see the spot where my best friend was most likely killed, and I knew Henry wouldn't be too thrilled with the idea, either.

I half expected Henry to sock me when I finally brought it up as I pulled away from the curb.

"There's nothing there, Gus," he told me, shaking his head. "I was already there."

"But you might have missed something," I pointed out, watching cautiously as his fingers tensed into fists at the suggestion. "You were still in shock…it would've been easy to--"

"I didn't miss anything!" he snapped, his knuckles bone-white now. "Damn it, Gus! He's my son! I wouldn't miss--!"

"Okay," I agreed quietly. "You didn't miss anything. But we're only a few minutes ahead of Juliet. If we don't go to the scene and pick up a new scent, the only other option we have is to call her right now and tell her that Chapman isn't the guy. We need a new lead, and if it doesn't come from the scene it's going to have to come from the official investigator. And if I call her, I'm going to have to tell her how I know Chapman isn't our guy."

I made the threat sound as neutral and even affable as I could under the circumstances, but Henry picked up on it immediately.

"I was already there, Gus," he protested, almost weakly, and I was suddenly struck by how old her looked. He had dark circles surrounding his eyes, and his shoulders were stooped with the air of a man who was completely defeated. He was still breathing, still cognizant, but with each passing moment, something inside him was dying before my eyes.

I glanced at myself in the rear view mirror, noting ruefully that I didn't look much better.

"We have to go back," I insisted quietly.

"I know," Henry nodded with an agonizing sigh. "I know."

With his directions, I arrived at the scene about fifteen minutes later. Of course, from the outside you couldn't tell it was a crime scene at all. There was no yellow police tape and the destroyed bike had, thankfully, been towed away long before we got there. For all intents and purposes, it was just a quiet, rural strip of highway a few miles outside the city limits.

I pulled over, my heart in my throat as I stepped out of the car. I tried not to imagine what Henry had seen a few hours ago, but I could tell from the look on his face that it had been every bit as bad as I imagined.

I didn't even have to wonder if I would have puked like Juliet.

I walked along the shoulder, my eyes skimming the ground for signs of the crash. I finally came upon a flattened spot in the grass a few yards off the road with two deep tire grooves running through it and a patch of dirt about a meter wide where the grass had been ripped up, almost as if a large metallic object that had gone tearing through it.

For the first time in our investigation, Henry was behind me, hanging back as long as possible. He came alongside me a moment later, staring down at the tire tracks.

"It wasn't a van or a truck," he said quietly. "They're not big enough."

I nodded, still not able to fully process what I was seeing. The only thought that kept pulsing through my mind was that there wasn't any blood.

None…

Maybe Shawn was still alive…

I didn't bother running through the statistics on the odds of surviving a motorcycle accident. I knew them by heart, but for once I wasn't finding any comfort in the numbers.

We stared at the patch of torn earth, but there weren't any clues.

There wasn't anything.

I turned back to the highway without another word, kicking at a stray beer can as I walked back to the Echo, completely at a loss for what we were going to do next.

I kicked it again, sending it skipping across the blacktop. It struck another discarded beer can, the metals striking hollowly against each other.

I stared down at them, trying to see them like Shawn would see them.

Trying to see the cans beneath the cans…

I had seen him strip away the obvious and see everything just beneath the surface so many times…

There was always something beneath the surface…

I blinked as a thought hit me in the head like a brick.

A thought that hadn't occurred to me before.

"Henry," I said slowly, turning around. He was a few steps behind me still. He looked up from the ground.

"What?"

I looked back down at the can, something starting to click into place in my mind.

"What if we were wrong the whole time…?" I asked, stooping down and picking up one of the crushed cans. "What if it wasn't a murder at all? What if it was just an accident?"