( Disclaimer, still don't own either Detective Conan or Death Note )

Kudou Shinichi refused to believe it was nothing more than a coincidence that a video game engineer just dropped dead right in front of the agency. He happened to know of some people in the market for video game engineers (for reasons he still wasn't clear on) that didn't like being told no. The question on his mind was if the man was coming to the agency with a case and was coincidentally murdered or had the murder been a message from someone inside the organisation? There was only one person within their ranks that he personally knew that would send a murder as a message to him. But there was one thing throwing him off.

He eyed the cigarette suspiciously. Poison wasn't really their style. Burning buildings down, sniping people on the street, arranging an 'accident' was more their style. However, Shinichi wasn't stupid enough to think one second that they couldn't arrange a crime without actually pulling the trigger. All it took was a little persuasion and a lot of pressure. He needed to solve this murder and see where it led him. The only problem was that he had to somehow come up with a plan to convince the guy babysitting 'Conan' that he needed to solve the murder.

He watched as the person who'd been left in charge of him hung up the phone from where he'd contacted the police. If Yagami wanted to do things by the book then he'd probably try and tell Conan to leave it to the police and that was something Shinichi could not allow.

"Hey." He switched to his sugary-sweet tone of voice. "You're going to be a police detective, right Light-niichan?" Light looked at him curiously, they'd already established that much and they both knew it. "Why don't you solve the murder?"

"What?" Light looked from him to the victim. The fact that he bothered to look at the victim told Shinichi he had at least a chance of convincing the older to go along with it.

"You should solve the murder." Conan chirped cheerfully. "It'll be good for you-I bet you could do it. It won't even be that hard-we already have a lead, right?" Come on Yagami. Just solve the murder. He could tell that Light was at least thinking about it. Shinichi turned his attention to the business card. "This address is two stops away on the loopline. We could get there fifteen minutes if we're lucky."

"What about our statements, aren't those important?" Light countered. By the book. Shinichi repressed a groan. Nothing ever got done if you went by the book-or at least not fast enough for his taste.

"It'll be okay, I know the officers that work in the homicide division. We can give our statements later. But the longer we wait the more likely the murderer is to get away with it, right?" Shinichi continued to try and coax him.

"At least grab a jacket. I don't want you getting sick on my watch." Yagami finally caved. Shinichi stood back up and felt Light grip his upper arm before pulling him off to the side. "And this time we're taking the crosswalk."

ooooOOOOOoooo

Shinichi could tell that Yagami Light did not like the loopline. It wasn't surprising. He'd early read 'perfectionist' on the other based on the pristine condition of his clothing and how grimaced upon seeing Kogoro's desk. Ran had apologised about the mess and her father to which Light assured her it was okay. But it wasn't and Shinichi had read it on his face.

The loopline was worse. The seats were burnt orange and seemed to be permanently stained with coffee and probably a few other substances that Shinichi didn't really care to know about. It smelled like public transit tended to smell-a mixture of stale chips and sweat that nearly made you want to hold your breath. It was not a place a perfectionist could easily tolerate for long.

While Light tried to ignore his surroundings, Shinichi pulled out his phone and ran a search on the company name imprinted on one of the cards he'd taken from the crime scene. 'InoTek Gaming Systems' he typed into the search bar. The search yielded several results and Shinichi was content to just read up on the company while he waited for their stop.

"The man was left handed." Light stated, pulling Shinichi's attention from the phone. He wasn't wrong,it was more that it seemed a little random given the circumstances. "Divorced." Yagami went on. He was sharing his observations. "There was a mark on his left ring finger that suggests a ring used to go there."

"Mmhm!" He slid easily back into the persona of Edogawa Conan with an encouraging nod.

"Alcoholic and a smoker." Light turned his attention to Conan, waiting to see if he approved. Shinichi did approve. Yagami had missed most of the important stuff but not too many people would've noticed the missing wedding ring or alcoholism without first talking to someone that knew the victim.

"That's all correct." Shinichi stated, gaze drifting out to the window. "But you missed almost everything that was important."

"I see." Yagami closed his eyes, letting it roll off his back "In my defense, you have more practice in that area." He stated good naturedly. "What did you see?"

"You noticed he was a smoker but the correct term is chain smoker-he had heavy nicotine stains on his fingertips despite the purple discoloration. He smoked about two packs a day-there was an empty pack in his pocket and a full pack by his right hand. His watch was set a few hours ahead-so I think he was recently in europe. He makes a decent living but his clothes suggest that he hasn't bought anything new in a while. He was thin-pale and cheeks sunken in which are signs of starvation. He makes money but he hasn't been eating much or bought new clothes in almost three years-you can tell by how faded and worn they are. Something had him paranoid."

"Paranoid?" Yagami watched him curiously.

"That's the obvious part-he was outside a famous detective agency. The Cigarette was to calm his nerves before explaining his situation to Ojisan. He didn't know that Ojisan is on an adultery case." Shinichi explained. Yagami considered everything that had been presented to him and obviously the source it had come from. Maybe Shinichi shouldn't have pointed all that out but he couldn't help himself-observations were fun.

"And you think his coworkers might know something?" Yagami finally asked. Shinichi rolled the thought around in his head.

"Yes." He finally decided on answering. "He was too scared to go to the grocery store or out to eat so he was probably reclusive. The business card suggests that he's the owner of InoTek Gaming systems. The employees should be able to tell us if he'd acted strangely in the past few days or perhaps when the reclusive behaviour started."

"It's as good a lead as any." Yagami conceded. "Though I do think that's information that you should have relayed to the police."

"It's okay." Shinichi waved it off. "If Officers Sato and Takagi are working the case then they'll catch up to us there." Probably within the first hour of their arrival if Takagi listened to Sato which he generally did.

"Now we just have to find out what could make a video game engineer so scared. Perhaps he has a criminal record-a lot of people that have committed crimes are now in hiding from Kira." Yagami offered. Shinichi shook his head.

"No, I thought about that but Kira hasn't been around long enough for that man's starvation to progress as far as it did. I think he probably lived on a diet of canned soups and had been doing so at least a year or two." He turned his attention back to the phone in search of something that might be useful. Apparently one of the employees had filed a lawsuit against Hanashi the company settled and the reason for the lawsuit was kept quiet. Considering this had happened three years ago it might very well have something to do with the case.

He closed the internet browser and hunted down the list of contacts until he found 'Kisaki Eri.' He heard Light asking who he was calling and held a finger up as Eri answered her phone.

"Hello?" Came the tones of Ran's mother and Shinichi had to fight to keep from shuddering. The woman still made him nervous.

"Hello? Eri-Obsan?" He turned up the cutesy act. "Can you look up a case for me?"

"Conan-kun?" Eri sounded skeptical, it wasn't often that Conan called her-she was probably far more used to Ran. Ran happened to the messenger for both her parents and Conan usually just tagged along.

"Mmhm! Ran-neechan's at Karate practice and Ojisan is on another case. But someone died outside the agency and I think it might have something to do with a lawsuit filed against InoTek Gaming Systems three years ago."

"I'll see what I can find." Eri offered, still sounding suspicious. Or maybe it was because of the weird allergy he seemed to have when it came to Ran's mother.

"Th-Thank you!" He stammered before clicking the phone off. Yagami was staring at him, irritated that he'd been given the 'just a moment' signal and left out of the loop. Shinichi supposed it came from the fact that he'd convinced Yagami he should solve the case. Maybe he'd caught on that Shinichi only wanted to solve the case himself.

"What's this about a lawsuit? If you want me to solve this for you, you're going to have to keep me informed." Yagami's voice had an edge to it that suggested that maybe he was starting to get a little annoyed. The way he'd worded the statement was concerning. He'd definitely realised that Shinichi wanted to solve the case on his own-or maybe he was just annoyed that Shinichi now had a head start.

"Hanashi was sued for something. It doesn't say what it was but one of the employees sued him. The case was settled under the condition that it was kept quiet. It was obviously an internal affair of some kind that no one wanted leaking. So it's probably a stolen project or-"

"Or?" Yagami encouraged.

"A sexual assault charge." Shinichi stated, thinking over the facts he had so far. So far the conclusion he'd drawn from the various articles he'd read on his phone was that Hanashi Ryosuke was a creep of the worst variety. Sexual Assault was looking a lot more likely. He was in the middle of reading an article about how the female turnover rate was triple that of the male and apparently females were more likely to get hired. It was probably just gossip. Message boards were teaming with it but they always held kernels of the truth which made them indispensable.

He let Yagami read the new pieces of information and turned his own attention to wondering if maybe it was just a coincidence it happened to be video game engineer-if this had been going on since three years ago it was unlikely the parties he feared had a hand in it. Unlikely, unfortunately, did not mean impossible. He pressed his fingertips together and sat back in his seat, waiting on the next stop.

"Something doesn't fit." Yagami voiced at the same time the same thought nagged at Shinichi's mind. He looked up at his temporary guardian waiting on him to elaborate. "You stated that Hanashi-san was likely a recluse and suffered from an extreme paranoia. Why would someone like that leave the country and return?"

Yagami had a point. It didn't make sense. And now that he was thinking about it-the watch didn't make sense either-it was new. They'd decided that based on his appearance he hadn't bought anything new in a while so why did the victim have a watch set to a different time?