Author's Note: Next chapter, hooray! Sorry it's taking so long, but it's really hard to find time to write when it's the end of the school year. Thankfully, we are arriving at the home stretch (on both occasions). Thank you so much for all the nice reviews!

Disclaimer: I don't own them. Sigh.

Juliet's POV

After I dropped Shawn off back at his father's house, I drove. Just drove. I need sometime to be by myself, sometime to sort out everything. Unfortunately, there were so many confusing pieces to this puzzle; it made no sense. Why would anyone bring four empty bags to a drug drop? Presumably, the bags belonged to the couriers, but why were they empty? Surely they didn't think it would escape their buyer's notice that the bags were empty. Maybe the bags had belonged to the buyers, then. But then who had been the other group of people? A rival gang? So many questions... and so little time. Only a day to find the answers to them all, and I had no idea where to start! My poor tired brain felt like it had missed something, but I had been too upset to see.

"Maybe I'm just a bad detective," I thought glumly. I sure felt like one. Before I knew the truth about Shawn, I had never really felt bad when Shawn solved the cases; after all, I thought he had supernatural powers! But now I knew the truth, that Shawn was just a con man with incredible observation skills... it made me feel like a really terrible detective. How much had I missed over the years?

I turned into a gas station to fill up; it was getting late, and I was miles out of town. I needed to head back to the station and see how the investigation was progressing, then stop back by the hospital to see how Carlton was doing. Maybe I could look up a couple of our informants; we always had a mole or so that needed money badly, and could help us out. Then suddenly, as I was pumping the gas and looking absentmindedly at the gas station's open hours sign, I had... a vision,

Well, that's what Shawn would have called it. In reality, that nagging piece of information my brain kept overlooking suddenly hit me like a lightning bolt. "The sign!" I thought with a shiver. "The sign at Romano's Kahuna; I'd seen it but it hadn't registered. There had been a sign there and it had said 'Closed', but it wasn't an ordinary closed sign. The sign had read Closed for Winter. And it's been winter for a month and a half!"

I finished at the pump, quickly paid with my credit card and zoomed back out onto the freeway. Shawn had said he and Gus had ordered a pizza, yet if the restaurant had been closed for winter, where had the pizza come from? "You were duped, Shawn," I thought, feeling a sadistic pleasure at the thought that I knew something before he did. And unlike Shawn, who usually needed to manipulate the police force into taking action before anything could be done, I had the power to get the wheels turning.

Quickly, I turned on the police radio in my car. "This is O'Hara, calling for McNabb. Buzz, are you still on duty?"

I waited a moment, then was gratified to hear a reluctant, "Yes... what is it O'Hara?"

"Can you swing by Romano's Kahuna pizza tonight? I know it's not your usual beat, but I have an idea that there is something there that will break Lassiter's and my case wide open."

"I'll go by... where are you Detective?"

I bit my lip. Technically, I wasn't supposed to be this far out of town, even though the Chief had taken my name off the roster . "About forty minutes out," I answered evenly.

"Acknowledged," Buzz answered in an understanding voice. "Though, if I were you O'Hara, I'd get back as soon as I could... I hear tell the nurses in the hospital are going to throw Lassiter out if something isn't done."

I rolled my eyes; that's all I needed. "Great, well, thanks for telling me Buzz. And Buzz, take extreme caution at the pizza shack; there may be hostiles."

"Acknowledged. I'll let you know what I find; call you in twenty. Buzz out."

oOo

Twenty minutes later exactly, Buzz called back.

"What did you find?" I asked, not really sure of what to expect.

"Not much," came his reply. "There was really nothing there; the back door was open because the hinges were broken off, so we peeked inside. It's just an empty shack as far as I can tell; there is nothing inside but a few decrepit tables and chairs. There is one interesting thing, however."

"What's that?" I asked.

"There's something painted on the back door itself; it looks like a gang sign. Like a shark, or something. Sound familiar?"

I thought hard for a moment. "The Tiburons are the only ones I know that use a shark sign; usually they don't strike in this area of Santa Barbara."

"Maybe they're branching out."

"Maybe," I affirmed. "That would make sense, though; remember the shootout? It was like we were in the middle of a turf war."

"That's true," Buzz agreed. "Though their leader must be one tough nut job; the thugs we have in custody aren't saying a word. It's as though they are terrified; I doubt even Lassie could get a confession out of these guys."

"That's odd," I said, spying my turn-off for the city. "Usually, gang members aren't so afraid to go to jail because they've got friends there."

"Maybe their boss doesn't like failure. Either way, there's nothing more that can be learned here."

I pondered this information as I wove around a few slower cars. "Well, thanks for checking up on things Buzz. There are a couple of things still that don't add up... but I doubt a door can tell us more."

Buzz signed out with me, and I covered the last ten minutes of drive time in silent thought. So if it was a turf war that morphed out of a drug drop, where were all the pack mules when this went down? "Probably they were late," I thought, though it seemed a poor thought to structure a theory on. Drug dealers were not late; drops were often very precise so the exchange could be as quick as possible. However, I really didn't see any other way. Maybe the couriers had been there; it was just difficult to spot them in the chaos of the shootout. If that was the case, then there'd still be four backpack-sized loads of drugs out there... and if I could find them, I'd break the case of the year!

oOo

I decided to stop by the hospital first; I wanted to look in on Carlton and yell at him about his treatment of the nurses. When I arrived at Carlton's floor, the nurse at the duty station gave me a giant, almost half-crazed grin and said, "Welcome back! We needed you!"

I stopped in surprise and asked warily, "What has he been doing?"

The nurse rolled her eyes and said, "Only accusing each and every one of my nurses of attempted murder after every breathing check. You'd think he was being tortured to death; we're only trying to make sure he doesn't get pneumonia, but he doesn't seem to understand that. Thankfully, he sleeps most of the time in between checks, but as he needs to keep coughing hourly, we have to keep waking him up and I'm afraid he's already ran off one nurse... he tried to get out of bed to tackle her, though I think he was trying to grab the spirometer. We don't want to sedate him either; we need him to keep clearing his lungs, and as he's on a ton of pain medication I worry that it's already made him a little crazy... sedation would set him back."

I smiled my most diplomatic smile. "Carlton was crazy to begin with. Don't worry," I said calmly. "I'll pop in and scare the living daylights out of him for you."

The nurse flashed me a grateful smile, and I meandered into Carlton's room. I wondered that they hadn't paired him with a roommate yet, but I figured that the doctors and nurses valued the sanity of their other patients. Carlton was sleeping peacefully, his bed propped up into a recliner's position, however there was a paler sheen to his skin that hadn't been there before. It worried me, and I was not about to see my partner on his deathbed again. Besides, there were things I needed to ask him.

I walked up to his bedside, allowed him one more moment of peace, then punched his arm.

"Mmm?" Carlton mumbled, drowsily opening his eyes.

"Wow," I thought to myself, "they must have you on the really good pain medication." Out loud, I said, "Carlton, wake up, it's time to cough."

"Mmm, no, not... you too O'Hara! Seriously... enough is enough... I haven't had a ... decent sleep since I was fighting my fever... or something... and now everyone is constantly... waking me up... and I'm just so tired... and every time I wake up... there's this big black bird flying around... why is there a big black bird flying around?"

I blinked; what had happened to my once-coherent partner?! I suppose sleep deprivation combined with heavy drugs would do that to a person, but still; it was Carlton. His face looked confused; almost upset, and I worried that he was about to either shout or burst into tears. I changed my tactic then; I was going to yell at him, but I didn't have the heart to. Instead, I walked behind him, pushed him forward, and pounded his back as hard as I could. I knew what I was doing; my mother always used to do this to us when we were kids and had colds. It made the phlegm loosen up.

Loosen up it did; Carlton let out a barrage of coughs and finally managed to spit out a wad of phlegm into the trash near his bed. As he settled back down, he gave me the world's most pitiful look and said, "traitor."

I grinned. "I can't help it, Carlton; you're just so much fun to torture," I said lightly. Then, I settled myself on the edge of his bed, facing him. "I need some help," I said gently. "I have a day to break our case, Carlton."

Lassiter blinked. "What case?"

Oh, that was right. I hadn't told him about it yet. I took a deep breath and filled Carlton in on everything that was going on in the police station, Reed Brown and all. I covered all the events (case related only, of course; I wasn't ready to talk about Shawn yet) up to Buzz checking the pizza shack and finding nothing but a graffiti shark.

"Do you recognize the sign?" I asked.

"Sounds like... the Tiburons," Carlton answered. "They are the only ones who use a shark on the West Coast... though why they are up this far in Santa Barbara... I don't know."

I nodded. "I wondered about that too," I said quietly. "I mean, that entire shootout was really strange. With nothing in the bags, what was everyone fighting over? And where were the pack mules then? The whole thing is just too weird."

Carlton nodded, and after a moment of thought said, "Oh. It's a raven."

"What?" I asked, completely confused.

"Well, I don't know if... you've noticed O'Hara... but these drugs have made me a little loopy. But I keep seeing... this big black bird... in my dreams or something... and I think it's a raven."

"Really?" I asked, unsure of where to go from there. "Huh. Those must be some pretty intense drugs, then."

"It's more then that..." Carlton continued. "I keep dreaming of the... shootout... and I keep having nightmares... that you are getting hit. But every time I gun down the... shooter, he shouts... 'raven'! Strange isn't it, O'Hara?"

"Strange," I agreed. "Maybe it means something."

Carlton nodded, relaxing back again against the pillows. "Please... don't get shot O'Hara; it's no fun," he moaned, his eyes sliding shut.

I smiled a sad smile, squeezed his hand, and slid off the bed. "I'll let you get some rest now," I stated. "But Carlton, don't give the nurses any more trouble. I don't want to solve this case for us, only to get the call that you've died of pneumonia. When they tell you to cough, you have to cough."

"Okay, I will," he said again in a faraway voice. "Watch your back, O'Hara, she's got a gun..."

After that statement, Carlton was out. I put a comforting (I hoped) hand on my partner's head for a moment, then turned to leave. I had some research to do on the Tiburons.