- "I have been following you two all day. Who finds a murder weapon and goes to a Wendy's drive-through?"
- — Ian is not the first to be perplexed by our duo's methods
Ian Collins was the best friend and business partner of the murdered Warren Dern, and since he was also his ICE contact he is called to the crime scene in the hopes he can provide some insight into what might have happened to Warren. Ian explains to Shawn, Gus, Lassiter and Brannigan that they had known each other since grade school and their prestige real estate business was doing very well, so it came as a surprise to him when Warren suddenly "wanted to move on to a new chapter in life" and set up his own real estate business that same year.
Ian openly laments the loss of "a great partnership and a great friendship" and says he'll never be the same without Warren, which rubs Shawn the wrong way because it makes him feel guilty about his plans to move hundreds of miles away from Gus to be with Juliet in San Francisco. He irritably mentions that they should probably consider Ian a suspect, but Brannigan tells the group that Warren has only been dead for two hours and Ian has the ironclad alibi of being at a fundraiser attended by "about 300 people and my wife". Shawn then further offends Ian by suggesting his wife should be a suspect herself and is taken outside.
Ian re-enters the picture when the investigation leads to dead hitman Klaus Goedecke and our duo find a map to the body of Chris Cheramie, a land speculator who turns out to have been a rival of Ian and Warren's at an auction three years ago. Shawn and Gus realize that the two must have killed Cheramie to win the auction and happily celebrate before finding the murder weapon under Goedecke's car.
While taking a break at Bosseigh High they are confronted by Ian, who has been following them around all day and now threatens them at gunpoint because he couldn't find the murder weapon in Gus's new company car. As they talk, Shawn puts all the puzzle pieces together: when Cheramie came to town to submit his bid, Ian and Warren simply took him out and went on with their lives. However, when Warren suddenly wanted to branch off and threatened to use the murder weapon as leverage against his partner, Ian responded by hiring Goedecke to kill Warren. Warren tried to save himself by suggesting to Goedecke that they blackmail Ian together, but Goedecke realized he might as well do that alone and killed Warren anyway after they had retrieved the gun. When Ian learned that Goedecke had also turned against him, he murdered him as well and now all he needs to cover his tracks is the original murder weapon.
Shawn stalls for time before throwing some spiced flaxseed from Gus's office kitchen into Ian's eyes. Since Ian has cut the ignition in Gus's car, our duo escape in The Dualberry and Ian gives chase in his SUV. When they realize the road ends at the local college, they text Henry and he takes his criminology class on a field trip to save Shawn and Gus by shooting out one of Ian's tires and arresting him.
Trivia[]
- Ian is portrayed by Billy Zane, who had been mentioned several times throughout the show's run before finally appearing in the series finale in a typically villainous role.
- When Gus wonders how Ian got to his car so fast, Shawn figures it must be because "he's smooth and European and his 'stache is immaculately groomed."
- During the confrontation at gunpoint Ian calls Gus "Leno", apparently because in his eyes Gus must clearly be joking if even in this situation he's still concerned about a broken company car window.