The detective shuffled through Raven's notebooks, but found them full of notes from school or still blank. There was nothing of interest. Returning them, he knelt and looked under Raven's bed with a flashlight. There was a stray bra and crumbled up paper, dust bunnies consorting with a forgotten magazine and a blue brain-shaped eraser. He brushed the eraser aside and reached for the magazine, seeing it was a National Geographic. He left it and stood, dusting himself off as he went to her dresser and pulled open the top drawer.

Kendell Hart really was surprised Raven had allowed him to search her room – as long as he didn't break anything, she said. She stated she had nothing to hide. It had been self-defense. What sort of evidence could there be? Hart was less certain. Griffin had hired him to find some evidence, and Hart believed there was evidence to be found. From what he understood, Peter had been harassing Raven long before this, but Raven had been interested in a boy named Cody Sharp. Cody had recently died, suicide, officials claimed, but everyone else said it had to be murder. Cody had a date with Raven scheduled for the next day.

There was a mystery here and Hart loved solving mysteries. He just hadn't expected a state Senator to contact him. Perhaps it was because his last case involving Ray Henderson, a boyfriend gone missing, had become so high profile. Hart shut the last drawer of the dresser, still not finding anything. He had heard about the fall of L during his attempt to learn Kira's identity, and that Eraldo Coil and Deneuve were aliases used by him. The top three detectives in the world were gone.

Hart wondered who would replace them. He didn't have an interest in it. L was too high-profile, too much a celebrity, even with his true name unknown. He was always being pushed to take new cases, constantly, and criticized when he didn't. Hart didn't want that. Solving mysteries was fun for him, and very satisfying. It wasn't something that should be forced upon him. He bet some cases L took he didn't even like. What was the point of being a detective?

No, he was fine being just another private eye. Normally he'd never take such a high-profile case like this (the son of a Senator supposedly killed in self-defense when he tried to assault a classmate). The fuss Senator Griffin and Governor Bellerose were raising had already brought the case into national light. It would be on the news soon. There was something about this case he couldn't ignore despite the spotlight, a mystery tied up at its core that tantalized him. He would find out the real story behind this.

There was nothing behind the dresser but more dust bunnies and a stray pencil. The first thing he'd done when he'd entered was look at the floor to see if there were imprints of objects being moved, indicating there might be something to hide. Everything seemed to be in its rightful place. Finished with the dresser, he moved onto the closet, still ignoring the computer. It was turned off and he had a feeling from his conversation Raven was the type to have a password protecting her CPU.

Something about Raven didn't sit right with him. She was too undaunted, too calm. She'd cut another human's throat. Even though she claimed it was self-defense and felt no guilt because it was to protect her and her friend, it was not the attitude he expected from a high school girl. He didn't expect her to be sobbing over Peter given the circumstances, but did she not feel empathy for another person?

Shoes and her backpack were on the floor of her closet and a search of it came up with nothing but school supplies. There was a box he opened that contained a solder and supplies. What was that doing here? Maintenance for her computer? Hart chewed a lip thoughtfully.

The upper shelf had comic books. It was the Transformers, the original 1980s series – the best one. He was greatly impressed to see she had all eighty issues in the series, each in their plastic sleeve. Raven had good tastes. Not wishing to damage the comics, he took care as he shuffled through them and returned them to their rightful place.

There was always a more thorough search to do he supposed, but it looked like only the computer was left. Shrugging, he approached Raven's desk and hit the power button on the computer. Sitting down, he reclined in the chair after turning on one of the monitors and waited for it to power up.

He heard steps and glanced towards the open door curiously. Someone else entered, pausing in the doorway to take in the scene. Hart blinked when he saw it wasn't a police officer and raised a hand in greeting. The newcomer stared at Hart. He was older than Hart was, his brown hair cropped very short.

"Who are you?" He asked Hart flatly.

"Kendell Hart, PI," Hart replied innocently. "The Senator hired me to investigate this."

"Shaw," he replied shortly. "I've also been a hired to investigate this. I've done work for Senator Griffin before. You're from Henderson case, right? He said there was someone new. Find anything?"

Hart shook his head, "nothing that indicates she planned to murder Peter. I'm waiting for the computer to come on."

Shaw looked away, "very well."

He began to look around Raven's room. Hart ignored him. The monitor came online, a lock screen of diagonal blue stripes of varying shades. The account picture was a mango. He wondered what that was about, but more concerned with the box asking for a password.

"Thought so," he rubbed the back of his neck, "great."

The pillow from Raven's bed was tossed aside and Hart glanced over in time to see Shaw strip the sheets from her bed.

"What are you doing?" He asked.

Shaw ignored him. After upending the mattress and finding nothing, he looked under the bed and then went to her dresser. He removed the top drawer and dumped the contents on the floor. Hart stood.

"What are you doing?" Hart repeated louder as he stood and approached him.

Shaw was kicking aside the socks, underwear, and bras that had been in the drawer. Finding nothing, he turned for a second drawer. Seeing he wasn't stopping, Hart grabbed one of his arms. Shaw looked up at him dangerously.

"Let go of my arm," he warned.

"After you answer my question," Hart repeated. "Why are you tearing through her things?"

"Miss Grayson has just murdered out client's son," Shaw pointed out. "The Senator wants proof so I'm going to get it for him. There's no need to nit-pick through her things. That's a good way to miss something carefully hidden."

He tried to move forward, but Hart didn't release his arm. Shaw stared him in the eye but Hart did not flinch.

"There's no reason to wreck her room," Hart disagreed. "I searched carefully and didn't find anything. I doubt you will if you scatter everything."

"Our job is to find evidence," Shaw responded coldly, "and I intend to find some."

Hart didn't like that tone. When Shaw tried to free his arm Hart wouldn't let go. Scowling, Shaw tried to raise his other hand to shove Hart back. Hart grabbed Shaw's hand, fingers on his wrist, and twisted. Shaw flinched and gasped as pain spiked up his arm. His legs gave as Hart raised the arm and he fell to the ground.

Hart sighed. "Didn't Raven say we could only search if we didn't break anything? This is a search without a warrant so we are bound by how far she wants to go. Even if we had a warrant, there's no call to destroy her room."

He released Shaw. Grimacing, he stood as soon as he could, rubbing the hand Hart had almost broke. He opened his mouth, but then closed it.

"Smart move," Hart congratulated. "Since we're on the same case, we're probably going to be working together a lot. I'd rather we get along, but that's not a requirement."

Shaw stared at him and then scoffed. "Henderson case or not, I don't understand why Griffin would bring an amateur like you in. You obviously don't understand how this works. We were hired by the senator to find evidence. He never said how."

"I do," Hart disagreed. "Behave or scram."

Shaw remained silent and walked away from him to Raven's computer to examine the lock screen. He wasn't foolish enough to randomly type in a password. Raven was said to be quite comfortable with a computer. The two snapped and grumbled at each other, but there was no further incident. Shaw took the harddrive of Raven's computer when he left. Hart though about trying to put Raven's things back up, but he didn't know how she kept them and left the mess.

"Another harddrive," the man mused as he plugged a USB cable into it. "What is it this time Shaw?"

"Just hack it Jack," Shaw sighed.

"Touchy," Jack raised an eyebrow. "You run into some trouble getting this?"

Shaw thought about how Hart had twisted his arm and scowled. "This is Raven Grayson's. Now hack it. She's something of a computer whiz."

Jack whistled. He'd heard the case. "You always bring me the interesting ones. Well, a high schooler is no match for me."

Jack plugged it into his computer and waited for the drive to load. He often helped Shaw when it came to breaking encrypted sources.

"You think there'll be info on it," Jack asked.

"Most likely," Shaw agreed. "Raven's boyfriend Cody recently committed suicide, but everyone said it was murder. Peter's name was given as a suspect."

"Revenge gig," Jack mused.

Jack would rather that be the case. The last two cases Shaw had needed Jack to fabricate emails so the jury would convict the person their boss Griffin wanted them to convict. It would be nice if Jack didn't have to work overtime creating evidence again, though the extra pay he got was nice.

The drive finished loading. A password box appeared on Jack's monitor.

"There we go," Jack raised his hands above the keyboard to start hacking. The screen blurred. He stared at the screen as the screen dissolved into pixels.

"What?" Jack said.

Shaw glanced at the screen at his comment. They both stared as the pixelated screen vanished and the monitor turned black.

"Jack," Shaw stepped forward. "What did you do?"

"Nothing," Jack exclaimed. "I haven't even touched the keyboard!"

Giant white block letters filled the screen reading, "YOU LOSE." The letters vanished and it went black. Smoke rose from the harddrive and Jack swore as he yanked it free from his computer. It was too late. His computer had already turned off. There was a pop and a flash of sparks from the harddrive.

"What just happened?" Shaw asked when Jack didn't move.

"How did she do that?" Jack whispered, talking to himself.

"Jack!" Shaw called out.

Jack glanced at him. "She had the harddrive rigged to destroy itself, probably in case someone stole it. I could understand how she did it if the drive just erased itself but it physically destroyed himself. I'll need to open it to see how badly."

He turned from the harddrive to his computer, which had shut off. Jack pressed the power button to turn it on but nothing happened. A pained expression crossed his features.

"No way," he muttered. "She couldn't have. It killed my computer to?"

Shaw stared at the half-melted still smoking remains of the harddrive as Jack jabbed at the power button of his computer again. This was ridiculous. That girl had gotten him!

Raven sat on the bed inside the cell of the police station, leaning against the wall. She still had her original clothing and her own cell courtesy of Dominic's father. She never thought being his friend would give her such an advantage. It was better then she thought she'd get since criminal charges had been made and she'd been formally arrested on suspicion of the murder of Peter Griffin. Noah Bryant, her defense attorney, had promised he would not let her get a guilty verdict. Raven wasn't worried. They had no evidence for murder, especially if law enforcement tried to access her computer.

Losing the harddrive was going to be a pain but she had created the self-destruct feature because she was ready to lose it. It was designed to activate if someone stole it, but would also stop the cops from finding anything potentially incriminating. It was an unexpected bonus.

If someone stole her computer, what were the chances they would manually open the harddrive and look inside? They wouldn't. They'd just hook it to their computer and try to access it. If they did open it, they would see the lithium-ion battery she'd glued to the inside and the electrical connection she'd made with her solder. Those little batteries could pack a punch when used correctly. No matter how thoroughly a harddrive was digitally erased, some traces of the files would remain. Those traces could do a lot of damage depending on what they were. So it would physically destroy itself. You couldn't get information from it if you couldn't access it.

The self-destruct algorithm would trip the lithium-ion battery if the harddrive, taken by itself, registered an IP address that wasn't her computer's. It would also activate if its computer wasn't attached to three monitors at once, since her computer desk always had three. Even if they stole the computer with the harddrive it was doubtful they'd attach it to three monitors at once, which would also kill it. She always had three at her computer desk. Even if they didn't instantly trip the auto-destruct, it still had failsafes that caused it to destroy itself if they tried to hack it. It even had a virus that should crash the computer it was plugged into. She had faith in her virus's ability to do so.

She had a copy of the harddrive stored in a safe place so it didn't matter if they wrecked her current one, though she hoped they didn't also destroy the computer. She'd heavily upgraded hers to handle a greater data stream. She didn't want to buy a new one and make the upgrades all over again.

Ouch. Don't doubt the high schooler. Raven may have murdered Peter, but good luck getting evidence for it. She only has three days left to live, though anything can happen in the world of Death Note.