This one's short, but Part 4 is about 3500 words, so look forward to that, I guess.


"I guess no one's home?" Yako said after trying the doorbell twice. The mobile number that Yasuda had given them was disconnected, so she hadn't been able to ask if Saturday morning was a good time to meet with the fourth harassment victim.

\Perhaps she's still sleeping/

Yako looked around at the typical suburban neighborhood. "Dunno. Maybe one of the neighbors knows how to get ahold of her."

First they tried the houses directly on either side of the victim's. "I don't know much of anything about those folks," the woman of the first house responded, leaning out of the doorframe just far enough to peer next door. "I reckon you know her better than I do."

"Why's that?"

"That's her infant you're holding there."

"He is?" Yako couldn't hide the surprise in her voice, but this development meant they were getting somewhere. Three was related to the fourth harassment victim – it was the first solid indication they had that the double homicide could be connected to demonic activity and therefore Three's origins, as Neuro had postulated. Could the murderer be Three's mother, then? A lower-power demon would want to avoid attention on Earth even more than Neuro, but would still have no problem killing humans in extreme situations, if Neuro's strength during his weak moments was any indication. Neuro, of course, wouldn't stoop to murder unless it was necessary, but not all demons fed on mysteries generated by people. If Three's mother was a demon and fought back against Kanemoto and Fujino out of self-preservation, or tracked them down later to carry out vengeance, a demon's unnatural power would trump humans more often than not. She would've had motive and ability to kill them.

Yako suddenly remembered that she had to explain herself to the neighbors, who had begun looking at her with some suspicion when she revealed her ignorance about Three's mother. "I'm actually looking to locate his parents. I found him wandering yesterday in the city and I'm trying to figure out where he came from as well as work on this case. Can you tell me anything about the family? What kind of people they are, maybe?"

"The missus is a sweet-faced girl, twenty-something years old I'd guess, and she's married to a strange young man."

"Strange?"

"He has a smile as sweet as syrup, but there's something almost eerie about him, like his expressions are just a mask." Her husband shivered behind her. Yako could only imagine what kind of person would be married to a demon, especially one that may not have the same respect for human life that Neuro did. Or maybe he was the demon. "We aren't close enough to them to know anything else. They keep to themselves, so I don't think anyone around here will have much more to tell you, but the wife always waves when I'm in the garden and she's out with her son."

"Do you happen to know his name?" she asked, nodding sideways at Three.

"I'm sorry, but I don't know it. I wasn't joking when I said the family keeps to themselves."

Hmm. Yako hid her disappointment and got back on track with the investigation. "Have there been any strange people prowling the area? I have reason to believe that the wife was being targeted at one point."

"Hn, I don't think so." She looked at her husband for confirmation and he shook his head. "No, we haven't noticed anyone who shouldn't be here, and her behavior hasn't appreciably changed. The last time I saw her…" The woman frowned. "That's strange. It's been a few weeks since I saw her outside with the baby."

"What about her husband?"

"He doesn't play outside with his son often. He – goodness." She exchanged glances with her husband again and thought for a long minute. "I think the last time I saw him was on our way to the festival at the end of June. What about you, Kouta?"

"That's the last time I saw him too," her husband agreed. "He might be on a long-term business trip." The pair shrugged.

Was the father the murderer, rather than his wife, and in hiding? Had she killed him? Had they split up? Was he just on a business trip? Everything Yako thought was speculation at this point.

"What do you think, Akane?" she asked after they left.

\I think we're trying to make too many things fit together. Three's abandonment in the park may not have been directly related to this murder case at all. It may be just coincidence that his mother was one of the victims. We don't even know if these four women were the only harassment victims – there could be other suspects. Someone who didn't report it could have made a plan to get back at the duo/

"Yeah, it's a pretty tenuous connection," Yako conceded.

\But you're going to keep investigating regardless, because a mystery is a mystery and Neuro wants this one/ It wasn't a question, but Yako nodded anyway. \I think that the way Kanemoto and Fujino were cut up suggests deep, personal anger in the culprit. There are a lot of people who might have been angry with them. As long as we keep from jumping to conclusions because we want the two situations to be connected, I think we'll be fine/ It was good advice, so Yako kept it in mind.

The man who answered the door at the second house had obviously rolled out of bed when Yako rang the doorbell. When she mentioned that the first neighbors hadn't known much about the couple between them, he shrugged and said, "Yeah, I'm not familiar with them either." He wasn't particularly wordy with any of his answers: "Yes, that kid you're holding is theirs." "No, I don't know his name." "Dunno, haven't seen the parents around lately." "Nah, I haven't seen anyone weird followin' her home."

The third home they tried was across the street, and it was here where they hit gold. The house belonged to a nosy old widow who knew a lot about the goings-on in the neighborhood. So that the woman wouldn't get the wrong idea, Yako explained that she was looking for Three's parents, and the woman nodded when Yako outlined the everyone's descriptions of Three's family. "I'd agree, they are odd folks, but not bad, I think. They seem… happy in their own private world. It's nice to see a change from the misery of other modern couples, you know, with young people getting divorced left and right and treating their kids wrong."

Yako remembered how they'd found Three, soaking wet and alone next to a pond in an empty park, and changed the subject. "Do you happen to know where the husband has been? We've heard that he's been scarce for a while, and their neighbors on the left suggested that he might be on a business trip."

"That's possible, I suppose, since he works at the Miyamatsu Accounting Firm." Registering Yako's blink of surprise, she cackled. "He always wore his badge when he left in the morning and I can tell you for sure that he hasn't been around in months. A job transfer wouldn't be an unreasonable guess. Ah, maybe that's where his wife's been the past two weeks, visiting him, though I don't know how that fits with you finding their baby in the city. Maybe a babysitter lost track of him."

Yako called Miyamatsu Accounting Firm and asked to talk to a manager, giving her name when he came on the line. "Pleased to make you acquaintance, Katsuragi-san. As for your question about our employee, he took a leave of absence for health reasons. I can't tell you more specifically than that."

"That's fine; I'm more interested in when he last came into work. That's not private information, right?"

"Let me look it up. Just a moment." The sound of papers shuffling came over the line. "Okay, on July 3rd he was supposed to come to the floor meeting but didn't turn up. He didn't return any calls we made to his mobile phone, but his wife called that Saturday and filled out the leave of absence paperwork for him." Yako thanked him and disconnected.

July 3rd was the morning after the deaths of Kanemoto Denji and Fujino Hideaki. Yako didn't have to be a world-class investigator to connect the dots there: his absence made an awful amount of sense if he had found out about the two men harassing (or outright attacking) his wife and had exacted revenge before going into hiding to avoid a murder charge.

"But then where is he, and where's his wife? Are they in hiding together? Where does that leave Three's situation?"

\The behavior certainly doesn't sync up with the account that their neighbors gave of them as a quiet, tight-knit family, but then again, they weren't particularly close to any of the neighbors/

"Can you work some computer magic and find out if either of them has any family members who might know?"

\Leave it to me O(≧▽≦)O/


All specific locations mentioned in this story are made up, by the way.