Professor Noto's Laboratory
Chapter 02

With Amari-san's apartment thoroughly investigated for evidence, the detectives decided to visit the lab. Amari-san's work might've had something to do with her disappearance, but even if it didn't, Inspector Yamato was curious why Kudo Shinichi had been called so suddenly. Though they had worked many cases together, the inspector thought Kudo-kun's appearance surprising. After all, the case was only hours old.

"Professor Noto must've called you almost as soon as Miyano-san told her about Amari-san's apartment," the inspector concluded.

"Oh, did she?" said Kudo-kun, hardly looking up from his notepad. He was still immersed in his own thoughts, and it proved difficult to get anything more out of him.

As we rode in the back seats of Inspector Yamato's unmarked car, Kudo-kun was already putting together his theory. His main concern was the alarm system. If someone had disarmed it to break in, why wouldn't they rearm it on their way out? Not rearming it would just arouse suspicion once Amari-san returned.

"Maybe they meant to come back," the inspector suggested. "We've caught them in the middle of their scheme."

Kudo-kun liked that idea, and he suggested, if the police had the resources, for someone to keep an eye on the apartment over the next few days, but the inspector couldn't devote much resources to it. At most, she could instruct the patrol officer from the police box to watch closely.

"Without evidence that Amari-san has met foul play, there's still the possibility that she's gone off on her own," the inspector pointed out.

Until they were convinced otherwise, the police's ability to help us would be limited. Kudo-kun insisted that there was no reason for an intruder to enter the premises unless they obtained something, whether it be only information or something material, but the only obvious items of value were the pills in Amari-san's medicine cabinet and her research data. Kudo-kun had already checked the pills. What remained in the bottle was enough to get her through to the next refill date with a few doses to spare. Her research was on her laptop, which she'd taken with her, probably to do work on the train.

"Is the work really so pressing?" Kudo-kun asked me.

It wasn't, but graduate students make their reputations based on the papers they publish. Amari-san had been writing a draft to submit to a journal, so it didn't surprise me that she might keep working on it at home or during odd hours.

"What is it about?" he asked.

"Professor Noto would explain that best," I told him. "Amari-san and I are colleagues, but we don't always work on the same projects."

"And what have you been working on?"

I was developing methods to treat cancer cells in the brain. It was all very experimental. We were only working on rats. We weren't doctors, after all.

"I see," said Kudo-kun, looking at me appraisingly. "You're a responsible scientist and student. Everything by the book—that's how it is, right?"

I saw the inspector looking at us in the rear-view mirror, and I let Kudo-kun's remark hang in the air.

Professor Noto's lab was on Shinshu's engineering campus in Nagano. It was unusual: most of Shinshu's life sciences and medical research was in Matsumoto, but Professor Noto was from the Nagano area, and she wanted to be close to home, so she persuaded the regents to give her some space in town. She'd sold it as an opportunity to do collaborative, inter-disciplinary research. To her, the brain was a fascinating and mysterious thing. How much could our colleagues in computer science help us understand cognition through the ideas of machine-learning algorithms? How much could our friends in materials science tell us about the elasticity of grey matter and how that makes us susceptible to concussions? Professor Noto had many questions like those, and her clout and record persuaded the university's bureaucracy to appease her.

Professor Noto met us at the entrance to our building as the doors were already locked, only accessible to faculty, staff, and students. The professor let us inside. It was Professor Noto's first time meeting Kudo Shinichi in person, and she had much to say. "Let's see if you live up to your reputation," she said to Kudo-kun. "Kagura-kun is always talking about your exploits."

Kudo-kun shot me a glance. "Is that so?" he asked.

"It is," said the professor as we walked the halls. "Sorry to have called so suddenly, but when Shiho-kun told me what had happened, I figured there was no one better to call. I'm sure Shiho-kun has already said something about me being inconsiderate. Don't believe her."

"She hasn't yet," Kudo-kun said, still eyeing me, "but I'll remember that."

The inspector asked the two of them about their contact. Why was Professor Noto so concerned about Amari-san to call Kudo Shinichi? The professor insisted that Amari-san was responsible and organized. She wouldn't miss answering her phone without getting in touch promptly. As for calling Kudo-kun, she just thought it was a good opportunity. Amari-san had always wanted to meet Kudo-kun. She idolized him. "To tell the truth," said the professor, "I thought it would be funny."

One of the detectives believed that was a thin reason to call a private detective, let alone one of Kudo Shinichi's caliber, yet Professor Noto expected that he would not only take her call but accept the job?

The professor shrugged at that, deferring to Kudo-kun. He seemed surprised to have the question redirected to him. "I, uh, how could I refuse a job for my biggest fan in all of Nagano?" he said.

Yamato's man wasn't at all satisfied with that answer, but the inspector took him aside for a moment, and after she explained something to him, he jotted a few notes down and moved on. "What do you know about Amari-san's medical appointment?"

The professor had known that Amari-san wouldn't be back that day. Amari-san's doctor was back home in Iiyama, and she figured that Amari-san wouldn't want to come in after making the trip. As far as the what this doctor was for, Amari-san had admitted to Professor Noto some time before that this was not a routine physical. She had to see a psychiatrist regularly.

"Amari-san told you directly what kind of doctor she was seeing?" asked Kudo-kun, who nodded at me. "Miyano didn't seem to know about it."

"I make it my business to know my students," the professor explained. "When Kagura-kun approached me to ask for a position in my lab, we talked about her health and how it would affect her research."

"You thought about refusing her?" asked one of the detectives. "About discriminating against her due to her mental health?"

"I thought about what she would need to be successful; I never considered turning her down for that," said the professor. "I knew from her record she had great potential."

"You know a good deal about every prospective student, huh," said Kudo-kun, echoing her. His eyes went to me, then back to the professor.

"Yes, I do," the professor reiterated.

"I see."

Kudo-kun and the inspector conferred for a few moments. With the inspector's permission, Kudo-kun asked if they could inspect Amari-san's desk for clues. The professor agreed, provided that they didn't go into the lab area without supervision. Amari-san's notebooks might be of interest, but we had sensitive equipment.

Professor Noto pointed the others to the lab, but while she locked up her office, I stayed behind with her. "Don't you think it was premature?" I asked her. "To call Kudo Shinichi."

"Is it a problem?" she asked me.

I didn't think it was a problem. When it came to Amari-san's safety, he could only help, but if Professor Noto had expected the Kudo Shinichi one sees on television, she was making a mistake. He was not like that. He was invasive and prying. I'd seen that with my own eyes. The professor liked to pretend she was an open book, but she needed to be cautious.

"I'm not worried about my business," Professor Noto said coolly. "Discipline and discretion are second-nature to me now."

"So 'discretion' is why you never told me about Amari-san's doctor," I concluded.

"And I never told her about your background, either." She kept her eyes steady on the hallway ahead. "That's only fair, don't you think?"

Kudo-kun and the police were stopped in front of the lab door, and I went ahead of the group to tap my card on the reader and show them into the analysis section of Professor Noto's lab. Each of our group's graduate students had a cubicle with a computer and some desk space to work on. Amari-san's cubicle was in a back corner. There was one notebook in plain view on her desk. One of the detectives handled it with gloves and bagged it for review. Aside from that and the computer, the only items visible were some pens, an empty thermos, a poster of Kudo Shinichi on the cubicle wall, and a baseball cap with the initials KS on the front and the words Only One Truth superimposed over them. Amari-san liked to wear that hat when she was thinking deeply about something.

With the back end of a pen, Kudo-kun tapped the keyboard. The monitor lit up, and the screen asked for a password.

"We'll have to get a warrant for that," said Inspector Yamato. "University IT policy I'm sure. Professor, could you show us some of Amari-san's experiments?"

The professor obliged, leading them to the other section of the lab, where the specimens and experimental apparatuses were held. Kudo-kun indicated he wanted to stay behind, apparently to look over Amari-san's file cabinet, but once the police were out of earshot, he sat down in Amari-san's chair. "You don't happen to know—"

I took the keyboard from him and typed in the password, Kudo382cool!.

"Your friend has good taste," he commented.

"If she knew how full of yourself you are, she'd think twice about that," I told him. Besides, just because I could get into her university-owned computer didn't mean that we'd find very much. Amari-san kept a laptop with her for remote access and research. If she were smart, the most personal aspects of her life were kept there. Still, Kudo-kun found a lot on Amari-san's work computer. Foolishly, she'd opened her personal email on that machine, and Kudo-kun uncovered an appointment reminder from the offices of Hayami Eita, a psychiatrist in Nakano, just south of Amari-san's hometown.

There were also personal messages from me that I insisted he refrain from reading, but his curiosity got the better of him. He called my messages about the party the next day business-like and stiff. "Are you sure she's a friend of yours?" he asked.

I had thought so. As much as I'd listened to her stories about the great Kudo Shinichi and his escapades, I'd thought we were close—as close I can be to a person.

He frowned. "But you didn't know about the trazodone."

I hadn't known—not about the trazodone, not about her psychiatrist. If I had, perhaps I would've taken the matter more seriously. One has to think that, if a person on mental health medication goes out of contact or disappears, she could be suffering a bad reaction. She could be thinking of harming herself.

"Relax," he said with an assured smile. "It's a little early for that kind of thinking. We'll get to the bottom of this."

Aha, there it was—that million-watt smile that tries to announce to the world that Kudo Shinichi is here and on the case! If he hadn't been rummaging through Amari-san's hard drive, I might've felt reassured. Instead, I had to keep a close eye on him to make sure he didn't inadvertently delete some of Amari-san's research data.

Kudo-kun took down some notes about other websites Amari-san had visited. She'd been chatting with some fans on a forum for mystery buffs and detective groupies. Perhaps one of those people had turned a friendship with her into an unhealthy obsession—or maybe they would know something that Professor Noto and I did not.

On our way out of the office space, Kudo-kun stopped at the next cubicle—mine. He looked for a long time at the photo on the right side of my desk—the one of my sister and me. "That's nice," he said, his voice quiet. He took another look around and saw a small poster of Higo Ryusuke, the soccer player from Big Osaka, on the divider between my cubicle and the next. "Well, well, someone might take a look at this and think you're a soccer fan," he said, laughing to himself. "So your friend Amari-san is a fan of mine, and you're a fan of that guy. Do you two argue over who's the better man?"

"Why should I argue about something that's obvious?" I said. "Higo-san is gentle and compassionate. You just violated every facet of Amari-san's privacy in under fifteen minutes."

"You watched me do it; you gave me the password!"

"That doesn't mean I like what I saw."

He hissed, shaking his head, and he looked over my desk one more time. "No other photos, huh? You like your privacy, don't you—Miyano Shiho, ordinary graduate student. Is that right?"

If you asked Amari-san, that's exactly what she would say about me.

Even ordinary people can hide great mysteries. What mysteries does Shiho hide?
Next time: Shinichi buys Shiho dinner, and Shiho invites him into her apartment.
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