Henry stared at the crushed beer can in my hand. I could see his mind turning over the suggestion, rejecting it before it even had a chance to sink in.
"It wasn't an accident, Gus!" he snapped. "Damn it! I was a cop for twenty years! I've seen accident scenes! There weren't any skid marks! They didn't even try to stop!"
"But if they were drunk," I pointed out, dropping the can back on the ground alongside the other one. "They wouldn't have slowed down. They wouldn't have the reflexes…especially if they were speeding and it was dark and they just didn't see him."
"Then where the hell is he?" Henry interrupted, grinding the can spitefully beneath his shoe. "Innocent people don't run from accident scenes, Gus. And they sure as hell don't dispose of the body. They call the police. They get help. This was intentional."
"But—" I started to protest.
"No," he shook his head firmly, refusing to even listen. "It wasn't an accident. It couldn't have been."
I stopped arguing. There wasn't any point.
I understood why it couldn't have been an accident, of course.
An accident was random.
And accident had no malice, no plan, no solution.
Henry couldn't have prepared against an accident like this, couldn't have protected Shawn from it.
An accident was something he was completely helpless against.
"I didn't say they were innocent," I said finally. "Not if they were drunk and not if they tried to get rid of the evidence…but it means we might not be looking for someone connected to a case. We might not be looking for someone who wanted to kill him. We might have been going about this wrong from the beginning."
Henry's eyes narrowed stubbornly. I knew he was hearing me now, but he didn't want to be.
He still wanted to shoot someone between the eyes.
Not that I could blame him.
"The only thing a detective has that's worth a damn is perspective," I said quietly. "Clues…leads…they don't mean anything if you don't have perspective on the case."
He looked up at me, blinking in surprise.
I knew he recognized the lecture. He's probably said it a thousand times. Of course, he had probably also assumed that neither Shawn nor I had heard a word of it, since we usually didn't.
I grinned at him. "When I repeated that one at home, I got grounded for a week for saying 'damn'."
He just stared at me for a long moment, then finally shook his head. "Well, who the hell told you to repeat it at home?"
"No one," I shrugged. "But that's not the point…the point is, you were right. We lost perspective. We've been after someone who might not exist. It's at least possible it was just an accident."
"No, it isn't!" he shouted back. "Gus, innocent people don't ditch bodies!"
"They do if they can't go to jail!" I shot back, my brain finally free to see it from a new angle. "Even if it was an accident, if they were drunk they were going to jail…and if it was someone with two strikes already…if they were trying to save their own skin…"
"Then what the hell did they do with their car?" Henry demanded. "A crash like that leaves major body damage, Gus. You can't drive around with a smashed front end without someone eventually asking questions."
My brain was working furiously, suddenly spitting out possible scenarios faster than I could process them.
"Get it repaired, I guess…" I suggested, but Henry was already waving that one off.
"No one brought in any cars to any garage in Santa Barbara for repairs like that today," he informed me. "I called around all morning. What the hell did you think I was doing?"
"Then maybe they ditched the car," I shrugged. "Wouldn't that be easier? Just ditch it somewhere and report it stolen--"
I stopped right there.
For a moment, we just stared each other, both remembering the theft report that was now laying crumpled up on the floor of my car underneath Henry's gun.
I opened my mouth to say what we were both thinking, but I couldn't get it out.
I didn't want to get it out.
Suddenly, I wanted desperately for it to be a conspiracy.