Notes: I originally posted this fic under an old account on January 11, 2008.
Prompt by descrime: "Ai and Conan are teenagers now. On a case far from home, Conan gets caught snooping at a crime scene and is thrown in jail as a suspect. Ai is his only chance for solving the case before the real criminal gets away. If he can convince her to help."
Bail
-x-
The rain's battering drowned out the radio in the taxi. Ai closed her eyes, wishing she could shut out that noise as well. Heavy rain always brought back haunting memories of the fight against the Organization and Agasa-hakase's death six years ago. Shuddering slightly, Ai opened her eyes and glanced out the window. The lights from the street lamps came and went as the car traveled down the road.
Conan had called her a couple hours earlier, requesting her help. After leaving her with an address outside Tokyo and telling her to head to that town's police station, he'd hung up before she could ask for an explanation. It was easy to see the connection to a case—he was always involved in cases. However, in recent years, he went to them far more frequently than they came to him, especially after she'd told him about the impracticability of a permanent antidote.
"APTX is a failure of something else," she'd said after the fall of the Organization, when they were ten years old. "There're too many unknown parameters to reverse the effects completely and permanently. I'll keep trying, but I make no promise."
His response, on the other hand, was strange. "It's okay," he'd said with a small smile. "Don't waste your time on it. I don't want it anymore."
Ai felt a pang of sadness. Ran continued to love him after learning the truth, despite her initial anger and disappointment. It was he who had grown distant, thinking only about cases all the time. If nothing was happening in Tokyo, he'd make a call to Osaka. He didn't want fame; he was never mentioned in the media.
Nonetheless, he'd never wanted any help before when he was solving cases. Why now? Why her?
-x-
"You want me to bail you out of jail," Ai stated flatly when his sheepish grin greeted her.
"Is this where I say 'Bingo'?" His cheeriness faded away under the her glare. He slumped. "No bail. Catch the culprit, and I'll be released automatically." Taking her silence as a cue to continue, he said, "I bumped into a woman who was carrying a child and rushing out of a house. She ran off frightened when I shouted after her, telling her the front door was left ajar. My detective senses were tingling, so I went into the house and found a corpse in the kitchen. Unfortunately, a neighbor saw me entering and thought I was breaking in, so he called the cops first. They mistook me for the murderer."
"Moron," Ai muttered. "What about the woman?"
Conan scratched the back of his head. "By the time I told them the story, they deemed I'd had enough time to make up fiction. I didn't want to make a ruckus at the crime scene," he explained. "If anyone else saw the woman, they didn't have the guts to speak up. Besides, this is a small town. Everyone knows everyone, and the police are corrupt. Throw Mister Unknown into jail, and everyone's happy."
"Why didn't you contact the Tokyo Metropolitan Police?" Ai asked, regretting it immediately as she realized what his answer would be.
He looked away and said in a quiet but tight voice, "Are you stupid? I'm no longer a renowned teenage detective, and I have no official association with any police force." He paused, and his voice became a whisper. "Getting Tokyo involved is exposing everything about me."
Ai's expression softened. He was still holding onto that... The fact that he'd revealed his identity to Hondo Eisuke because of Ran. That, along with his desire to defeat the Organization so badly, had led to a cascade of exposed secrets and eventually to Agasa-hakase's death.
It was raining that day, too.
"Oi. Are you going to help me or not?"
The strawberry blonde raised an eyebrow. "I'm Miss Unknown in this village. What makes you think I can snoop around the crime scene without ending up in the jail cell next to yours?"
Conan leaned forward and lowered his voice. "You don't have to go to the crime scene. All you need to do is find out where the woman is, find the trash bag she threw out, and bring her into custody. The trash bag probably contains the soiled clothes, which would be the crucial evidence. The victim's throat was slit with a kitchen knife. There's no way the culprit could've dodged the blood spray. The trash bag should be near the house, because judging from her anxiety when I saw her, she wanted to get rid of it as soon as possible."
"Why don't you tell the police this? To everyone else, I'm just a high school girl. Why would she willingly come with me? How would I recognize her? And why are you so sure that it's her? Maybe she found the corpse and was traumatized. Maybe the trash bag contains something else."
"Haibara!" Conan said with frustration. After a moment of silence, he replied, "The police here don't listen to what I say. Look, you'll manage. The woman is probably the mother of the child, and she's probably divorced. In the house, there're only photos of the father and the child. I heard from here and there that the victim is the caretaker, and that the father is away on a business trip. The mother probably wants custody of the child. So regardless, you have to start with her. You still have the address I gave you earlier, right? That's the location of the crime scene. You'll manage."
Brows furrowed, Ai sighed in resignation. She stood, and her eyes met those of the detective's. "I don't know how I'll manage," she said, "but I'll try."
"Thanks."
Ai turned to leave but halted her footsteps. She glanced back at the detective. "Why me?" she asked.
Conan's eyes widened, taken aback by the question. "Uh..." he laughed nervously. "Well, Hattori would never let me live this down if he found out, and... There's not really anyone else that I can count on, and... Yeah." He flashed an uneasy smile.
"Idiot," Ai said softly and turned her heels.
-x-
By the time she reached the neighborhood, it'd stopped raining. It didn't take her too long to locate the house, which was still surrounded by police tapes. "Yamazaki," the name plate read. Ai narrowed her eyes and continued down the street idly, as though she was just a passerby, pausing long enough to stare at the police tapes with mere curiosity.
She rang the neighbor's doorbell, the lights in the house indicating people's presence. Taking in a deep breath, Ai tried to imagine different scenarios and decide which one would allow her to fish for the most amount of information in the least amount of time with minimal suspicion. It was probably dependent on who answered the door, and also required a bit of luck.
A few minutes later, a woman in her late sixties peeked out. "Yes?" she asked cautiously.
"Hi," Ai said tersely, slipping on a mask of a cool professional. "I'm a detective from Tokyo, and I'd like to inquire about your neighbor Yamazaki-san. We're investigating his involvement with an illegal organization. My colleague is contacting the local police currently, but you might know something that they don't. We appreciate your cooperation."
The elderly woman raised her hand to her mouth to cover a gasp. "I-I don't know. He's away. That's all I know. Oh dear me."
"What about his family? His wife, for example."
"Th-they're divorced."
"Where does she live?"
Stammering, the elderly woman gave her "Naoko-chan's" address. She thanked "obaa-san" and smirked when the door was practically shut in her face. Terrorizing was fun sometimes, but she almost felt sorry for Yamazaki-san for the little rumor she was spreading. Really, she should be more upset at the Moron, even though, for reasons unknown, she wasn't.
She returned in the direction she came, recalling that she'd passed by a few garbage cans on the way. Never again, she thought as she rummaged through the trash, would she do him another favor. "You owe me big time, Edogawa," she grumbled, and swore when her hand came into contact with something slimy.
Finally, after what seemed like eternity, she tore open a plastic bag that contained clothes. She held her breath and dragged the bag to the street lamp. "Bingo," she whispered, staring at the dried blood stains, careful not to touch the clothes. She wiped the sweat off her forehead with her sleeve, grimacing at the smell of garbage, and debated what to do next. Shoving Conan into the pile of trash and then taking a nice, hot shower sounded like a good idea.
Sighing in exasperation, she picked up the plastic bag and marched toward Naoko's place, taking a brief detour in the middle to make a call to the police. She had no idea if her plan would work, but after breathing in foul air for too long, she couldn't care less if someone rotted in jail. If luck was on his side, Naoko would be at home.
-x-
Ai heard a child crying before she turned the corner and saw a woman trying to hush the two- or three-year-old child. Judging from the distance, they weren't far from Naoko's house. Ai narrowed her eyes when she spotted the luggage next to the woman.
"Yamazaki Naoko?"
The woman's head jerked up, her eyes widening with fear. If the lighting had been better, Ai would've noticed Naoko's paleness when the latter caught sight of the plastic bag in Ai's hand. Temporarily forgetting the child, the woman stood up and fixed her gaze on Ai. "Who are you?" she demanded.
Ai eyed the luggage with feigned disinterest. "Trying to leave town after murdering the child's caretaker?"
An audible gasp escaped from Naoko's mouth. She took a step back and shook her head. "I... I don't know what you're talking about. I-I didn't. They caught the murderer this afternoon!"
"No murderer would be dumb enough to stick around the crime scene, waiting to be arrested," Ai said dryly, and held up the plastic bag. "This contains the evidence that you are the culprit. I suggest you turn yourself in."
The child's wailing grew louder, crying something about "mama." He wanted his "mama." Ai frowned when the woman knelt on the ground, shook the child's shoulders, and shouted, "I am your mother! I am"—her voice cracked—"your mother..."
Ai tightened her grip on the plastic bag and clenched her jaw. To her relief, a car pulled up from behind, and two police officers jumped out. Originally she'd wanted to force a confession out of Naoko with the police around; but evidently things were not going the way she'd planned.
"Are you the one who called us earlier?" one of the officers demanded while the other went up to Naoko.
Ai tossed the plastic bag at the officer's feet and said, "The evidence is in there. The rest, you'll need to ask her." She nodded her head toward Naoko, who had ceased her tears and was mumbling.
"It's not my fault. It's not my fault... She took my child away from me. She..."
-x-
"The mother is an alcoholic and a gambler," Ai told Conan in a bored voice what she'd heard from the police as they exited the police station. "She never seemed to care much for the child until recently, so the child, having grown up in the presence of the caretaker, saw the caretaker as his mother instead."
"And that made her mad," Conan finished in a soft voice with a hint of disappointment. "Haibara," he said after a pause and a sigh. "Thanks." He grinned. "See, I told you that you'd manage."
After studying Conan's face for a moment, Ai smiled and said, "Let's go home."