An hour later the storage yard was swarming with CSI and the lab rats that inevitably followed in their wake. Carlton despised lab rats, though he knew that his job would be incredibly difficult without them. They were an arrogant group of bastards and found whatever reason they could to flaunt their supposed superior intellect in cop's faces whenever they had the chance.

Lassiter believed they were a necessary evil, though, he supposed, he may have been a bit harsh in his judgment. He had only ever talked with a few of them and as his mother used to tell him a few rotten eggs don't make up the whole coop. Still, he chose to keep his life simple and treat them all the same rather than take the time to delve into the world of laboratories and the denizens that frequented them.

He looked approvingly at the yellow tape that cordoned off the area as a crime scene and studied the evidence markers that trailed the pool of blood like a macabre group of checkpoints. The area had been zoned according to size and the CSI techs had swept the ground looking for clues of the crime that had taken place there. O'Hara and Guster waited patiently by his side for him to explain their findings which he did, with more gusto than was probably appropriate for the situation, but he couldn't help who he was.

"Alright," he said in his best commanding tone. "Based on the blood patterns and marked on the ground he was shot here and dragged this way."

They already knew all that, but Lassiter always found that starting from the beginning and working his way down the list of events was more conducive to a successful investigation.

"Blood trail ends here," he said, pointing absently. "We couldn't get any usable tread marks, but these swirls in the gravel indicate a kickback from a car pooling out of here at a rate of speed. We recovered a single shell casing. Shooter used a .45 auto."

He looked up at the sound of a car door slamming and swore loudly in his head. Spencer's father was making his way towards them with a look of sheer determination on his face. Damn, damn, damn! Family always complicated matters and Shawn couldn't afford complications if he was going to be rescued before he either bled to death or his captors tired of his constant chatter and shot him again.

"Who the hell called him down here," Lassiter snarled.

"I did," Gus answered defensively. "It's his father—"

"Which is exactly why I don't want him here," Carlton growled. "If Shawn really is shot there will be no room for family in the investigation."

"If Shawn has been shot there's no room I'm not going to bust open to find my son," Henry snapped. "You got it?"

"Henry," Lassiter began, trying to keep his irritation from creeping into his tone. "Please."

"Carlton," O'Hara said firmly. "This thing may get personal. We might need him."

He glared at his younger partner, but she didn't flinch away from his gaze as most in the department would have. She stared back at him in defiance and he sighed, breaking eye contact with her and conceding her victory.

"We do this, we do it my way," Lassiter snapped. "No questions. Spencer will ride with me. We'll chase the breadcrumbs to find Shawn. O'Hara, you take Guster and retrace Shawn's steps in whatever ridiculous investigation he got himself into. We've got a lot of ground to cover. Let's go."

He strode purposefully towards his car and grit his teeth as Henry followed him, wishing he could come up with a reasonable argument for the retired cop to remain there. He knew O'Hara was right, but Lassiter didn't want the inevitable emotions that would follow if events turned ugly. He'd been the one to break the news to his missing friend's mother and the look in the woman's eyes was not one he would ever forget.

She had loathed him in that moment. She had known him since he was a boy, had baked him cookies and given him birthday presents, but she had hated him in a way that only a grieving mother could. He hadn't been the one to take her daughter, hadn't murdered her in cold blood and left her in an alley garbage unit to rot like yesterday's trash, but it was him she blamed. He was the one she had trusted to bring her little girl back to her and he had failed her. He had failed Charlotte, the girl he would never again see smile or join hands with when their families said grace. It was a failure that still kept him up at night.

Lassiter had never been friends with Shawn and any respect he had for the man was given grudgingly, but Henry had been a good cop despite the way his son had turned out. The older man had given his life and blood to the service of protecting others, same as him, and that warranted an unspoken companionship between them. Carlton had even looked up to the man back in his early days and for Henry to be broken by grief in front of him was a thought Lassiter couldn't stand to entertain.

"I know what you're thinking," Harry said gruffly as they pulled out from the storage yard. "You don't want me here because you think I won't be able to handle seeing my son dead."

Lassiter glanced at him before flitting his eyes back to the road. The man's expression had been hard, but Carlton could see the lines of worry that wrinkled his face.

"Something like that," Lassiter grunted. "No father should have to see that, Henry."

"No," Henry replied quietly. "They shouldn't, but if there is a chance he's in danger and I can help him, you can be sure I'll do whatever it takes to do just that."

"I know," Carlton replied evenly. "That is another reason for my concern, Spencer. I can't have you running off like a vigilante and getting yourself killed. You could kill Shawn in the proce—"

"I've been a cop for a lot longer than you, son. You don't have to school me on the risks like a rookie."

"Sorry," Lassiter allowed. "Old habits die hard."

"I trained him for a situation like this," Henry said softly. "His whole life I tried to prepare him and he fought me the whole way. He's a smart kid, but sometimes he can be obdurate to the point of stupidity. Jesus, I hope he remembers what I've taught him."

Lassiter didn't know what to say to that and he felt a slight pang of guilt at the jealousy that had coursed through him. His own father had rarely been around and even when he had he barely noticed his son. He was too busy doting on the various women he kept around when Carlton's mother bored him. He hadn't spoken to his father since the messy divorce they'd gone through when Lassiter was fifteen, but the urge to be recognized by his father for his achievements had never really faded.

He would have given anything to have his father spend the time and energy to teach him that Henry had given to Shawn. The younger Spencer had always acted as if his upbringing had been hell on earth, but it couldn't have been too bad. A little unconventional, perhaps, but if Henry didn't desperately love his son the retired cop wouldn't be sitting in the car with him, promising in no uncertain terms to find his only child. Oh, how he wished he could have been loved so unconditionally.

"You-you're a good father," Lassiter said, embarrassed by the thickness in his voice.

"Shawn doesn't think so," Henry sighed sadly. "We've been broken for so long I don't know if we'll ever fix it entirely. I wanted nothing but the best for him. Maybe I pushed too hard, but—"

"Your intentions were good," Lassiter finished quietly. "Shawn doesn't realize how lucky he is."

"I never knew what to do with him," Henry laughed suddenly. "We were so different, he and I. The trouble that kid could get himself into and, of course, he always managed to convince Guster to take the fall with him. I never knew two boys that had such a knack for raising hell. I probably never will. And to think, I wanted him to be a cop just like his old man."

"Well," Lassiter replied amiably. "In Shawn's own special way I suppose he is. He may not be the most conventional peacekeeper and I'm still not buying into all his psychic bull, but he's an accepted member of our team."

"I know," Henry said.

"Are you proud of him," Lassiter asked hesitantly.

Henry was quiet for a moment, staring idly out at the trees they passed, skeletal forms whizzing by in a blur of shadows. Lassiter couldn't tell what the older man was thinking, but there was a contemplative smile quirked on his lips and his eyes were soft with something akin to affection.

"I'm proud that he's finally found a way to put his abilities to good use," Henry finally replied, turning his head slightly to meet Lassiter's cool, grey gaze.

"His abilities," Lassiter repeated. "His psychic abilities?"

"Some people call it that," Henry replied, hedging around Carlton's unspoken inquiry. Is your son really psychic?

"And what do you call it," Lassiter urged, unwilling to let this moment slip between his fingers.

"A gift," Henry answered with a predatory smile, daring Carlton to continue his line of questioning.

Lassiter didn't push the issue and he briefly wondered what he would do if he ever discovered that Shawn was a fake, as Carlton suspected him of being. He wanted to say that he would go directly to the chief and have Spencer thrown out on his ass, but there was a small part of him that wondered whether he would really go so far. He would ream the younger man out, for sure, but did he have to go any farther than that? Whatever Spencer could do it had proved useful on numerous occasions and while he hated to admit it, his 'gifts' could prove to be a valuable asset for many years to come.

The sun was just beginning to peek its head over the top of the trees when Lassiter's cell phone rang. He looked down at the caller ID and found O'Hara's name flashing blue on the tiny screen while the Cops theme song blared from tiny speakers.

"Lassiter," he barked.

"Carlton," Juliet said. "We've got some information you might want. I don't know if it will help you much, but its what we have."

"Go on."

"This whole mess has something to do with the ice cream truck that exploded a couple of days ago. Gus said that Shawn got a strong psychic vibe that something wasn't entirely right with the way the accident went down. He said that the vehicle was blown on purpose."

"Of course," Lassiter grumbled. "Leave it to Spencer to come up with some conspiracy theory."

"I think he was on to something," Juliet admitted through the phone. "They found out who was servicing the ice cream trucks and went to do some digging. They met a guy named Garth Lawnmower and—"

"Lawnmower," Lassiter repeated incredulously. "You've got to be kidding me, O'Hara. That's really his name?"

"So far as we can tell," Juliet sighed. "We're on our way there to see him now. Ask him some questions and see if he remembers the last time he saw Shawn. Any luck with his text message?"

"No," Lassiter replied irritably. "Not a damn thing."

"It will come to you, partner. It has to. Call me if you have something."

"Yeah, you to, O'Hara. And be careful."

He clapped the phone shut and pulled over to the side of the road, putting a weary hand over his eyes to shield them from the bright morning sun.

"What are you doing," Henry demanded. "This is no time for cat naps, Lassiter. My son is out there."

"I'm aware," Lassiter replied irritably. "Let's just stop and think for a minute. There is no use in us driving around without reason."

"Has anyone tried tracking Shawn's phone," Henry asked.

"His GPS must not be working," Lassiter replied. "They can't get anything."

Lassiter looked at the copy of Shawn's text message on his notepad and repeated the words over in the hopes that hearing them aloud might trigger something in his brain. So far he was having no luck.

"How the hell does he expect us to find him with this cat scratch," he snapped, looking at the phone with disgust.

"Hey, come on," Henry said, ripping the useless piece of paper from his grasp. "We can do this. It's a text message. There are abbreviations. That's how you text. You are just out of the loop on what the young people are doing now."

Lassiter raised his eyebrows incredulously and glanced over at the obviously older man.

"The young people," he repeated questioningly. "Uh, yeah, fact check. I'm a little younger than you."

"You sure about that," Henry asked, looking him up and down.

Lassiter's eyebrow shot up even further and he shot Henry a withering look. Jesus, he thought, the man is as annoying as his son.

"You're kidding right," he said mockingly.

The man ignored him and Lassiter ground his teeth. He was the detective here, not him and he deserved a little respect. He leaned over and neatly plucked the notepad from the man's grasp.

"Look," he sighed. "With all due respect, Spencer, I know you were a good cop, but I'm still on the force and maybe I'm a little more viable at this point."

"Ohho," Henry chuckled, clearly amused. "We'll see. You know, you hear them out loud and you can trigger some stuff."

Lassiter looked up from his scribbles and rolled his eyes. I know, he thought in irritation, but he handed the notepad back to Henry obligingly, biting back the urge to ask him what the hell the old man thought he'd been doing earlier.

"O cone," the older man began. "Cone, maybe the o is on it's own. Maybe it could be its own word, uh, outreach, outhouse cone, oval cone—"

Lassiter couldn't help but send him a scathing look at that one.

"Orange cone," Henry continued then stopped as the word suddenly fit. "Orange. Cone. Construction. Could this be pertaining to some sort of construction?"

"Yel reflex," Lassiter said, excited in spite of himself. "Yellow reflector!"

"Peace sig," Henry said in confusion, pointing down at the paper. "Peace sig. What the hell is a peace sig?"

"I'm not sure," Lassiter replied quietly. "But I do know a stretch of road on the 166 that's been under construction for more than a month."

"Well," Henry whispered. "That's worth a shot."

Lassiter shared a knowing glance with the older Spencer before turning his car back on and spinning out of their makeshift parking spot like a bat out of hell. God, he loved new tires.