A/N:Hi, all! Sorry it's taken so long for an update; my life has been in upheaval for the last… well, year, pretty much.

A slight note on this chapter: Shawn, as you'll recall, has just been admonished by Chief Vick to go easy on Lassiter; while his actions here are slightly out of character, they're in line with Karen's request. And yes, the peripheral characters have more lines than usual in the show… mea culpa.

Thank you for your patience, and many thanks to everyone who reviewed…and especially to Vaapad; your prompt was inspirational.-Coeur

General O'Hara staggered out of the back of the police car soon after it screeched to a halt in front of the cordoned-off crime scene. His knees were weak as he made his way to the curb and collapsed. The overcast sky wasn't helping his pallor.

Juliet quickly opened her door, and bolted with a bit more poise. "Carlton," she demanded of her partner, "was it really necessary to use the siren all the way here?"

"I would have been fine," the general spoke up from the curb, "with a minor delay."

Lassiter frowned and slammed his car door shut. "No! Evidence is deteriorating as we speak; time is of the essence!"

Juliet snorted, and shook her head. "Fine. But next time you plan on going 60mph down a 35mph stretch of road, it had better be when there's a high speed chase going on."

Carlton shrugged. "Fine, if you want to be second banana to a psychic."

The General stared at Lassiter. "This was about Spencer?" He gave in incredulous laugh. "You decided to play Evil Knievel because you wanted to win a race against the department psychic?" He shook his head, and stood, following Juliet to the crime scene, muttering darkly about contests and rulers causing heart attacks.

Carlton fumed silently, locking the car behind him. He was mollified and slightly pleased with himself as he looked around, knowing that he'd beat Shawn to the scene. Pulling on latex gloves, he called to the CSU team, "What do we got?"

Juliet was offering her father a spare set of gloves when the General paused, glanced at the body, and offered to go on a coffee run. Lassiter ignored this, and knelt over the corpse of the victim.

"Looks like a drowning death," he said, frowning.

"There's no foam around the mouth," Juliet objected. "Maybe Shawn was right."

The coroner on-scene perked up at the mention of the psychic's name. "Spencer thought it wasn't drowning?"

Juliet shrugged. "He just said it was murder."

"O'Hara," Lassiter objected, "murder by drowning is not that conventional."

"Actually," the coroner said, sitting back on her haunches, "that's not entirely true. There was a group of serial killing nurses in Austria, in the '80s… they killed between 49 and 300 elderly patients. Their preferred method was drowning them."

"That's a really big range," Juliet objected. "They're not sure?"

"The victims were elderly," the ME responded. "Fluid build-up isn't uncommon. And they're not sure because after they were caught… well, embalming isn't really popular in Germany. Most of the suspected victims were too decomposed to be sure."

Juliet made a face. "Eew."

Lassiter asked, kneeling next to the pond, "What, the drowning, the number of victims, or the decomposition?"

"Pick one," she suggested, grimacing.

"Hello!" a familiar voice called over to them.

Juliet spun around to see Shawn ducking under the crime scene tape.

"Spencer!" Lassiter shouted in disbelief before Juliet could do more than smile in greeting, "How the Hell did you get here so fast?"

Shawn shrugged. "You guys took the long way..." he opened his mouth as if to say more, but shut it and turned to Juliet. "Hey, Jules! You know, I saw the General speed-walking away. Gotta hand it to him, for a guy his age, he's pretty spry… but he did look a little green around the gills."

Juliet nodded, and gestured to the bloated corpse. "Can you blame him? He doesn't see corpses this long after death."

Shawn grimaced. "Yeah. Gross." He frowned. "Jules, you wouldn't happen to have a spare pair of latex-"

Before he could say anything more, she held out the pair of gloves her father had declined. "Please say you meant gloves."

"I meant gloves…" he agreed, slipping on the nitrile gauntlets. "But if you had something else, I wouldn't object."

Juliet glared at him before joining Lassiter at the body and addressing the Coroner. "So, what do you think did him in?"

Shawn looked around, and spoke up. "Definitely murder." He was trying his best to not get under Lassie's skin, but it was difficult… still, instead of going for the big reveal, he figured he'd give the man a break for once, and make his process almost transparent.

The coroner looked up. "How sure are you?" she asked, frowning. "I still need to examine the body, and the protocols change."

"Concrete."

"Why?" Juliet asked, curious.

"No, concrete, Jules," Shawn answered, gesturing about 10 yards to her left. "The CSU hasn't processed the pond yet, and unless someone was fish-tickling next to our bloated friend…" he caught a suspicious glare from Lassiter, and changed tactics. "The spirits are telling me that concrete grows grass, not algae." He strode over to one of the CSU team and requested fluorescein, and a pair of tinted glasses.

Amused, the team provided him the equipment with a warning not to get it near his eyes. Shawn waved them off, and approached an area. He started spraying, and waved Juliet over. She accepted when he offered her the glasses, and frowned. "That's not blood, is it?"

He shook his head. "That would be algae, Jules. Fluorescein and Luminol both react to other stuff—blood, yes, but bleach, algae… This stuff was from the pond."

"The koi ate most of that," she objected.

"Not the stuff near the pump," he answered, pointing it out.

"According to the original photos," Juliet said, frowning, "the victim was closer to the edge than that."

The CSU frowned. "Those traces could have been there for weeks."

"He's right, Shawn," Juliet pointed out. "Lumiol and fluorescein can detect residues that have been present for years."

"I would agree," he answered, "but for one thing… have you noticed an upswing in gang activity lately, Jules?"

She frowned. "That's another division, Shawn… but yes."

"Aaand what initiative did the mayor just push through city counsel?"

Juliet's jaw dropped slightly. "Cleaning up Santa Barbara…"

Shawn nodded. "They're power-washing everything touristey that looks like a gang was there." He pointed out a few tags at the edge of the sidewalk around the pond. "This pond was power-washed clean two days ago."

The CSU that handed him the fluorescein looked absolutely crest-fallen. "All that evidence…"

"So the prints were there less than two days." She looked down again through the glasses. "Can't discern anything about size from it, but that's a footprint pattern."

Shawn called back to the ME, "Hey, how long you think our vic's been in the water?"

"Hard to tell," she answered, "not more than a day, day and a half. Liver temp is inconclusive, with the water bath."

"But you guys got BAC already?" Lassiter asked, confused. "What'd you do, breathalyze the CPR?"

The ME snorted and did not deign to respond.

Shawn turned to Juliet. "Did Lassie just make a joke?"

She shrugged. "Hard to say. Shawn, are you getting anything else?"

"Maybe, but the spirits are strangely whispering; can't be sure…" He glanced at the body, taking in the ante-mortem gash on the head, the faint red line on the neck, the ID badge still in the front coat pocket that proclaimed the victim an MD at the VA clinic. Then there were faint red lines around the victim's fist, encircling fingers, with nothing to explain them.

Shawn backed up slightly, looking around for a cord, a choker, a necklace, a whip, anything to explain the abrasions. The back of his heels hit the raised edge of the pond just as his cell phone chimed. He juggled the flourescein briefly before tugging the cellular abruptly out of his jeans pocket. It was a text from Gus: Am SO bored… convention not over soon enough… got a case, yet?

As he looked down at the screen, his focus drifted to the cement. Shawn noted a faint trace of green on the walk. He sprayed the indicator over the area, and looked over to Detective O'Hara, who still sported the bright orange visors over her eyes. "Hey, Jules? What do you see?"

"From this angle? Here," she tossed him the glasses, which he caught like a football, cradling them in his arms. It took some manipulation to avoid dropping anything while affixing the glasses, but he could tell the drop pattern had a spatter pattern, and no directional indicators; this was more of a splash than a drip.

"Okay… hm… here's what I believe happened… I'll try to re-enact the crime. Hey, Lassie-face? Would you mind giving me a hand with this?"

Lassiter smirked. Shawn couldn't help but think, "This is not good…" and remembered what the chief told him about how Lassiter's day had been. The smirk definitely did not bode well.

"Love to," the detective answered, and without raising himself off his haunches, he pushed the pseudo-psychic into the pond.

After a few mid-air gyrations, Shawn ended up holding the cell triumphantly above water-level as far as it would go, and the luminol bottle and glasses only slightly lower… unfortunately, this caused his head and torso to completely submerge for a few seconds.

Juliet glared menacingly at her senior partner before rushing to the edge of the water. Just as he broke the surface, she exclaimed, "Shawn, are you alright?" She extended her hand out as far as she could reach, offering help.

Spencer sputtered a bit, but nodded. "Yeah… Jeff Daniels was right; it does taste like fish… pfft!" he tried to exhale water out of his nose and mouth at the same time.

Juliet grabbed his extended wrist, and yanked him closer to dry land.

"Lassiter," she was about to upbraid her partner when Shawn cut her off.

"'S'alright, Jules." He tried exhaling forcibly again, "Everybody has one of those days, and today it's Lassie's." The sentence was punctuated by snorts as Shawn attempted to rid his nasal passages of water.

"Did you hit your head?" she demanded, aghast.

"No, but this does prove one thing," he answered. "My head didn't get anywhere near the drain pipe, and there weren't any signs of blood or skin on the edge of the pond. However the victim got that knock, it wasn't an accident."

"It could have happened before, and then he got a concussion and drowned," Lassiter posited.

"No sign of clotting," the ME bashed that theory, "and there's nothing else around here to cause this injury."

"So," Shawn continued, letting Juliet help him out of the water and onto the bank, "based on what we know, let's recreate."

"I'll stand in," Juliet volunteered, glaring at Lassiter as she removed her suit jacket. "We've already covered the falling, so let's try this on dry land. Someone pushes him in, or he falls. Fine. But based on the lack of mud on his knees, I'd say he was pushed, right?"

"Okay," Lassiter agreed, standing and crossing his arms across his chest.

"…Shawn, what's that on your shirt?"

The Psychic looked down, half suspecting a joke, and found some string fragment dangling from a button. "Eew. Pond litter."

"Looks like fishing line," she commented, lifting the strand and depositing it in an evidence bag.

"Can't be," Shawn responded. "The string is... what do you call that, dissolving?"

"Actually, it might be," Lassiter interjected. "Some doofus company is coming up with biodegradable fishing line, so the tangles and knots that get thrown away don't kill fish and other wildlife, they just decompose."

"Actually, that sounds pretty neat," Juliet responded. "When I was in Florida, we'd see tangles of line everywhere on the beach."

"But what use is line that degrades when you get it wet?" Lassiter argued. "It's fishing! It's a water sport! The last thing you need is to loose the big one because your line started to get weak!"

"These are koi, though; they're practically pet fish!" She shot back.

"Guys," Shawn broke in, handing the fluorescein back to the tech, "back to the recreation…"

Juliet returned her attention to the psychic, who started speaking again. "So, there's a struggle. Mesmet trips on- what, a koi? A water-lily?- and takes a tumble, hitting his head on the pump."

"Had to be when he was advancing," Juliet stipulated. "The injury was on the front of the skull."

Lassiter concluded, "So he falls forward."

Shawn nodded, and jerked head slightly. " Bam. Stunned."

"All of this could be explained by being drunk, alone, and falling," Lassiter pointed out.

"No," Shawn insisted. "Someone was still there with him. I feel it." He forewent the mention of already highlighted evidence of footprints wading and walking away from the crime scene. "I know, deep in my psychic bones, that however Mesmet came to be in the pond, someone was with him, that someone went in the pond after him, struggled with him, and murdered the MD."

"We have uniforms canvassing the area," Juliet informed him, "to get any information about what happened, who he was with, that sort of thing." She pivoted, asking her partner, "We had them start at the bars, right?"

"And as of now, they all agree he was alone," Carlton informed Shawn smugly.

Juliet turned abruptly with a suggestion for the psychic, but ran into Spencer and accidentally knocked both of them to the ground.

"Why, detective," Spencer flirted up at O'Hara, "you can struggle with me anytime."

Juliet blushed, and pushed herself off the ground – and Shawn- with minimal contact. "Sorry," she apologized quickly, "that's twice today you've been assaulted."

"Again, anytime," he offered with a grin. His phone rang again, and he jumped up. "Guys, gotta take this call…" He headed out of the crime scene. "Mom, hi! …no, no serial killers yet, just a death in a koi pond… actually, the circumstances are kinda fishy…"

Juliet snorted, and shook her head. She looked down at her blouse. "Oh, great, it's all wet…"

The ME finished quickly, and informed the detectives that the body was being removed for autopsy. Lassiter agreed, and began consulting the busy CSU team while Juliet logged in the evidence found on Shawn after his pond adventure.

Suspiciously soon after the body was removed, General O'Hara came up with a smile and a coffee cup extended to Juliet. "Hi, princess," he said. "How'd it go?"

Juliet gave him a glowing report as she pulled on her jacket. Her stomach growled, and in her embarrassment, Juliet blushed. "Sorry, I guess lunch was a few hours ago."

"No problem, it's about dinner time for me. How about letting your dad treat you?"

Juliet looked up at her father and smiled. "I'd like that, Daddy. Thank you." He put his arm around her shoulders, and walked her to a thai restaurant he'd just discovered around the block.