Chapter Three: Spotting the Thread
Hikari kept looking down and adjusting her red cardigan. Tugging at the sleeves and the collar. She couldn't stop thinking about how she had seemed to just barely make the cut at the front door.
In reality, she had no way of actually knowing anything, she basically never visited jewelry stores, and didn't actually know how things worked in typical cases. She just felt like they had examined her for quite a long time, debating the qualifications of someone wearing a cardigan and pencil skirt that had been sixty percent off during a clearance sale last year, and strappy sandals that were a graduation gift from her mother. Was this young woman who worked as a waitress and had less than nine hundred units in her bank account worth the space inside here?
Okay, it was pure paranoia to think that they actually knew that, but she could feel the assumption being made. She looked like a typical young woman, and typical young women weren't the key demographic in fancy jewelry stores. But they had let her in, and nobody had said anything, so it could easily have all been in her head.
"Oh, put that down," Lily scolded, snapping Hikari back into the present. "You waste your time with something like that, you'll feel disappointed by everything else."
Ren was holding a bracelet with lines of diamonds running across the surface, nearly blinding all witnesses with it's reflective powers. "It's pretty cool though, isn't it?"
"Oh, sure, it's cool. But unless you're secretly the heir to the throne of some small country over in Eatarous and have just been holding out on us, it'll look absurd," Lily said as Ren put the bracelet back on the small cushioned platform that supported and displayed it.
"And unless Aaron's got an uncle on the board at Safelock Bank & Trust or Globtronics, it'll have to be on a two hundred year payment plan," Hikari added, bending down a bit and eyes widening at the price tag just beneath the bracelet.
"Okay, okay," Ren relented, beginning a slow stroll towards one of the corners of the large store, her friends following. "You guys...you don't think it's lame that Aaron needs me to tell him what I want?"
Hikari shrugged. "If I were in your position, I'd just be hung up on him insisting on getting you a real ring."
"It's tradition," Ren said. "That's what he says, anyway. Says it wouldn't be a real marriage if he doesn't get a real diamond ring."
Hikari watched blankly as Ren bent down over a row of rings out on display pillows on a table close to the corner of the store. "Not a real marriage unless he earmarks three hundred units a month for the next year on payments, right when he's trying to start a family."
"Hikari, don't talk about the money!" Lily hissed. "You'll destroy the...the beauty of the moment," she added as Ren examined a gold ring with a square blue gem on it.
Hikari looked over the table, trying to take in all the different elements at play on it. Dozens of finely crafted and beautifully designed pieces of finger jewelry, which took the finest jewelers in the world hours of painstaking crafting. Big, strong men with big, loud pieces of equipment drilled for years to open up the caves that the precious gems and metals were found inside, hard labor that was highly valued. The table's contents alone were probably somewhere around six figures. More than a hundred times what she took home in a week. If any one of the display items were to accidentally catch on the zipper of her cardigan and nobody noticed when she left, her net worth would immediately double.
I mean, that was pretty cool, when you thought about it like that. But she kept coming back to the fact that these rings didn't do anything but simply exist. You put it on, and it was there, and it remained there until you took it off. It didn't make you stronger or faster or more attractive or give you some sort of special powers...it simply was. And that just wasn't quite holding her attention. She didn't think she was just telling herself that to suppress some form of jealousy that Ren's fiancee was getting her one and she was a long way off from potentially getting one. It just wasn't doing much in terms of motivating her to accelerate that long way off.
"So, was I right?"
Hikari again had to jolt back into reality, having gotten lost in opposing trains of thought. Ren had a silver river with three small diamond studs on her right hand's ring finger, looking it over, absorbed in judging how it looked on her hand. Lily stood at Hikari's side.
"Come on, you're starting to feel the itch, aren't you?" Lily continued.
"Oh...you have no idea," Hikari said dryly. "How many rings has she tried on?" She asked in a low whisper, putting her lips right by Lily's left ear.
"Like seven now," Lily answered quickly, before really considering the question. "W-wait...you've been standing there the whole time."
Hikari squeezed her eyes shut. She had to stop zoning out like that.
"So, Hikari, I want as many takes as possible...what's the right look for me?" Ren asked.
"O-Oh, well...well, I'm a ruby girl, you know me, red's my jam," she said quickly. "So yeah, I'm on that side." She quickly stepped away from Lily, swinging her head around to find the restroom. "I'll be right back," she murmured after finding the sign hanging from the ceiling in the back right corner.
She quickly moved towards the sign, thinking about how if Lily wanted to motivate her to want to settle down with a man, she'd have far more luck taking her to a baby gear store.
OOO
Takeru looked down at the display screen in his right hand, watching it spark to life and show him a view of a large green dumpster.
"You think they ever accidentally chuck a gem or something in there?" Daisuke asked. "Got hundreds of pieces laying around, something just falls into a trash can, ends up back there? If I was a dumpster diver it's the first place I'd look."
"I'm not really the kind of person who ever considers what I might do if I was a dumpster diver," Ken replied, craning his head up from the back seat of the van to watch the screen. The camera began to move upwards, depicting a stone grey building behind the dumpster.
"Well Daisuke, while we're working inside, why don't you run out back and swim through the dumpster real quick to see if there's anything?" Iori suggested.
"Hey, watch it, buddy," Daisuke said, looking in the rearview mirror of the van. "We're giving you the biggest chance of your life, and there could be more action down the road, last thing you want to do is get on my bad side," he warned.
"Oh my GOD, is that really how you talk now?" Iori said, laughing a bit. "Please tell me you rehearsed that in the mirror for five hours last night, I won't be able to bear being around you anymore if that's the new you."
"Alright, air traffic's probably picked it up by now," Takeru announced as the camera quickly ascended, up above the building that it was looking at, coming to look over a concrete roof. A trap door was in the back right corner and some metal pipes trailed around. Several of the pipes were connected to a large aluminum cube more than a meter tall with a partially open top.
"I could be controlling this drone with my feet and still get this done before air traffic actually does anything about it, see?" Koushiro's voice came in through small earpieces that everyone in the car was wearing. "Nothing to it."
The camera closed in on the cube, coming to hover above the open top. Suddenly, the picture flickered out and was replaced by one pointing down into the aluminum, showing the inside of the piping that went down into the building.
"A nice ninety-two degrees out, air conditioning is on full blast," Koushiro muttered. A round object suddenly dropped from the drone, down into the piping inside the cube. As soon as the object was clearly inside the pipes, the drone sped off, roads and the roofs of buildings and structures whizzing by.
"Okay, I'm gonna go self-destruct this baby four blocks to the west, might even cause a small distraction to help us out," Koushiro said. Daisuke began to drive the van forward. "Should be about thirty seconds before that gas has everybody in there on the floor, so we're a go. I've got the alarms suppressed and the cameras on a loop."
The van pulled out into the street, only needing to go half a block before coming up on the entrance to the store. Glass double doors leading to a buffer room between the outside world and the interior. Daisuke got as close to the curb as he could, parking the large, back half of the van so it was covering as much of the doors as possible.
Meanwhile, Takeru, Ken, and Iori all put on black gas masks with heavily tinted eye windows. Takeru groaned at the thought of wearing such a thing, combined with the grey jumpsuit, in this kind of heat, but it was too late to complain. He jumped out of the passenger side door, with the sliding doors being pushed open by Ken by the back seats.
Takeru came around the van just in time to see a couple customers collapse to the carpeted floor just inside the front doors. Thankfully, nobody had been inside the entry room.
"Nice work," Takeru muttered to Iori as the three quickly marched up to the door. Ken tossed an empty black gym bag over to Takeru, holding an identical back in his other hand. Iori had one as well.
As Takeru pulled open the door, black gloves on his hands covering any trace he might leave, Daisuke began to play some music from the van's speaker system. An impressive bass beat burst from the large vehicle, not enough to draw attention but enough to make everyone in the area aware of it. Takeru slapped up a small paper sign that said CLOSED in bright orange lettering against the outmost door, for whatever tiny percentage it might help them should someone walk by.
Ken pulled a metal rod less than foot long from his front pocket and pressed the top of it up against the interior door. Takeru turned towards the van, watching Daisuke in the driver's seat. After a brief moment, Daisuke pointed at Takeru. Takeru pointed back at Daisuke. "Do it," Takeru said firmly, voice muffled by the mask.
Takeru winced as a small bolt shot out of the rod's tip and penetrated through the sheet of glass, shattering it with a non-trivial burst of noise that pierced everyone's ears. As Ken had done this, Daisuke had quickly cranked the volume up on the music, a sudden climb in decibels to disguise the shattering glass. Within two seconds, he had taken it back down to the previous, normal level. Maybe people walking or driving in the area had noticed the sudden volume increase, but it had gone away so fast, all would assume it was nothing more than a finger slipping on the dial. And the destroyed door would pass unnoticed by anyone who wasn't specifically listening for it. And why would anyone be?
Takeru took a half second to look around the large store. All he cared about were the people, and the only people he could see were laying flat on the floor. Iori's mixture had worked seemingly to perfection, and there was now nothing between the three and the thousands of pieces of jewelry lining shelves and tables.
"Alright kids," Koushiro said as the three dashed into the store, Takeru going right for the right side wall. He pulled an empty gym bag from the inside of the first bag, shaking it out to open it, and began to pull necklaces off of the wall and tossing them into the bag. "I'm watching the channels, so just focus on the grab."
OOO
Hikari pushed the silver handle on the sink down, turning the flow of water off. She looked at herself in the mirror for a few seconds, steeling herself to force some excitement for Ren's sake. This was for her, and this was a fairly significant moment in her life, and she wanted to be a part of it.
"Alright, come on, jewelry's still pretty," she muttered to herself. She winced, nose wrinkling, as she suddenly felt an onset of mild nausea come on. She furrowed her brow and glanced around the empty bathroom.
"Alright, five minutes in a public bathroom is four minutes too long, come on," Hikari said, her voice echoing off the walls. She hiked her purse up underneath her arm and went over to the door, pushing it open slowly.
At first, everything seemed normal, but her mental alarm went up on seeing that the far wall had been stripped of brooches and earrings, bare where once there had been riches. She took one step out of the bathroom and glanced around the room, taking a second to find a surprising lack of people, two people laying on the floor a few meters in front of her, and two individuals in jumpsuits and gas masks, carrying black gym bags.
One of them was standing maybe four steps in front of her, right next to a shelf that towered up to the ceiling, staring right at her, expression and reaction unreadable thanks to the mask. She needed only a second to process that and react accordingly with a piercing scream and a jump back that rammed her body right into the bathroom door.
The man in front of her pulled on a velcro strap on his waist and, just before she turned to try hiding in the bathroom, she saw him whip out a silver pistol from a pocket behind it. Immediately, her interest in fleeing left her, and her hands rocketed up at her sides, going high in the air above her head, hoping that doing so without being prompted would earn her some bonus points.
She vaguely acknowledged a third mask-wearing individual pop his head up from behind a row of counters across the store, for the tiny iota that it mattered to her right now, and then squeezed her eyes shut in fear.
OOO
"And we were doing so well," Iori muttered, as the young woman surrendered immediately and without consideration of any other possibility.
"Somebody's awake?!" Koushiro snapped through the earpieces. "Just one?! Who?! What's going on?!"
"Teenage...teenage girl," Takeru said, keeping his pistol trained on her. For a moment, he was self-conscious of his appearance, having to remind himself that his outfit, mask, and the distortion of his voice from the mask hid everything from this woman. "Don't worry, it's fine, I got her."
"Are there others?" Koushiro asked. "Is she the only one?! Are you sure?!"
"Slow down," Takeru replied. "You two keep going, I'll handle the crowd control." He took a couple steps towards the girl, who had her eyes shut tightly. "You're not here to cause trouble for us?"
She popped one eye open, looking over at Takeru, before quickly realizing that nodding was the right thing to do.
"Then this'll be very easy." He pointed down at a thick wooden table leg attached to a table a few steps away. "Just sit down on the floor right there, back against the table leg, and put your arms out behind you."
The three of them had known there was a possibility of some stragglers and had prepared accordingly. Takeru was grateful that this particular straggler was a small teenage woman who had no interest in being a hero. All in all it was a very minor setback, as she quickly complied with his request and sat down on the carpet, setting her purse down next to her.
"She was in the bathroom," Ken muttered as he and Iori resumed plucking tiaras from a display shelf.
"Oh, shit!" Koushiro hissed. "Must have been the fan in there, I...I didn't think about that!" Takeru heard a sound that was either Koushiro smacking himself or him smacking his face against a hard surface. "The fan, it...it must have sucked the gas out of the room before it could affect people inside the bathroom!"
"Hey, there are like fifteen people total in here, horrid luck that someone was in there right when we started," Ken pointed out as he filled his bag.
"The gas will have thinned out by now," Iori added. "Light nausea at most for her."
"Okay, stop...stop talking about it," Koushiro ordered. "We'll discuss later."
Takeru kneeled down behind the girl, who seemingly had no interest in trying something, even as Takeru made himself somewhat vulnerable. He reached down into a pouch in his jumpsuit and pulled out a pair of steel handcuffs.
"We'll be out of here in about five minutes," Takeru said to her, voice even and commanding as he clipped the cuffs on her thin wrists. He pulled both sides of it tight so they wouldn't slip over her small hands. "Cops'll be here in fifteen or so. Just sit here, be quiet, and wait for them to come get you."
She was shaking, and her eyes were as wide as a full moon, and Takeru found himself wishing he could actually make her feel better given he had no desire to harm her and she was simply a very unlucky individual at the wrong place at the wrong time, but there wasn't time for that. With her arms secured around the table leg, she drew her legs up close to her, knees up near her chin.
"Purse is yours," she squeaked out, voice tinny and cracking, as she quickly jerked her head down towards her white bag. Takeru gave a small laugh. Why did people always say that? Was he expecting too much rational thought from people who were afraid of being murdered? Maybe.
"Don't worry, we're not here for your money..." Takeru told her, reaching down into the pouch and pulling out a black strip of cloth.
OOO
"...just maybe don't say too much to the police. They won't be able to do anything with it anyway."
She couldn't stop herself. Her entire body shuddered and she turned her head to stare straight at the thief, forehead wrinkling. She had been too terrified to even glance at him ever since she had come out of the bathroom, feeling like the less she looked at him the less she would know about him, and the less he would feel like killing her was a necessity. She still was terrified. But for a brief moment, that took a backseat as she stared in shock and confusion at the burglar.
Her mind raced to make connections, interrupted when a black strip of cloth was placed over her eyes and tied behind her head, robbing her of sight. This gave her just enough time to realize that opening her mouth to say anything would be the worst idea in the history of bad ideas, so she kept her lips sealed.
"I'm putting the handcuff keys on the table behind you," he told her. Thankfully, he must have missed her reaction to his line, or at least didn't particularly care. Which might have meant that it didn't mean anything to him. Or that he didn't realize it's significance. And maybe it wasn't significant to him. But it certainly was to her.
As she shifted around on the floor, thankful for the years of gymnastics that allowed her to keep her arms behind her like this for long periods without any soreness, she thought it over. She heard the thief say "bathrooms are clear" and continued to hear the sounds of jewelry being taken off of shelves and placed into bags, but there was little point in paying much attention.
She had relived that day...or really, that fifteen minute span, a hundred thousand times over four years. She felt entitled to curse her luck at least that many times, that she would take off running in a random direction and just so happen to end up right next to their getaway car five blocks away. Then she would remember that, other than the extreme fear of death she felt, nothing actually happened and that there was an argument that she should actually feel very lucky. So if there was a memory of her life that she had full confidence in completely recalling, it would be that one. Particularly that thirty seconds she had spent in the company of the criminals.
It was a fairly simple and generic statement, she supposed. Any criminal who was leaving behind living witnesses would probably say something like that.
But...those exact words, in that exact order?
Don't worry, we're not here for your money. Just maybe don't say too much to the police. They won't be able to do anything with it anyway.
That's what it had been that day, four years ago. And now, today, it was that again. She was sure of it. And it was just a little too much of a stretch for her to consider that pure coincidence.
She was so wrapped up in that revelation, that she forgot to be afraid for her life. At some point, the three individuals had finished up and left Angelique, as Hikari could no longer hear them running around. She relaxed a bit, stretching her legs out in front of her, and allowed herself to be concerned for Lily and Ren. But first and foremost in her mind, she was planning on giving quite a witness testimony to the police as soon as they found her.
OOO
"Six gym bags full of Angelique's finest," Ken said proudly, turning around to look at the cargo. "Nowadays people would consider you crazy to try to take so much as a handful."
"You're talking as if it's a done deal," Koushiro chirped in through the earpieces. "Which just makes you sound more stupid if things go bad here, please don't. If we all go to jail, I'd prefer to at least not sound stupid."
"It basically went perfect," Daisuke said from the driver's seat. "If we don't get away with this, then there's no justice in the universe. A heist that perfect deserves a clean getaway."
"Perfect?" Koushiro repeated. "Yeah, that's a funny way to describe a heist that involved unexpected crowd control."
"Oh, don't be like that," Takeru scolded. "She was probably a teenager, she couldn't wait to surrender."
"A witness is a witness," Koushiro insisted. "She saw you and she saw what we were doing, which we didn't plan on having to deal with, which is an unexpected variable. Besides, she slowed us down significantly."
"Has third party security even thrown up the sirens yet?" Takeru asked. "We're already three blocks away, in a perfectly inconspicuous van, with nobody chasing us."
"Sirens just went out," Koushiro answered. "The police should be there in about ninety seconds."
"Well, this van'll be going up in flames in about ninety seconds, so I'd say we're doing pretty well," Daisuke said, turning the van off into a side street. "Alright, get the gas bomb ready. Switch number one is imminent."
"Don't worry about the girl," Takeru insisted.
"It's just...awful oversight," Koushiro groaned. "I just didn't consider the fans in the bathrooms being that strong."
"Like I said," Ken said. "Horrible luck that anyone was in there at that exact moment. Don't sweat it. And what the hell is she going to be able to do or say that changes anything at this point?"
Takeru nodded. "Alright, everyone grab the luggage, switch is coming up on the right."
OOO
Hikari blinked rapidly as the blindfold was yanked from her face, stretching up above her head. Comfortingly, the policewoman kneeling in front of her was the first thing she saw, a far more soothing sight than a man in a gas mask. Even the police woman's face, curled in a grimace of stress and concern, was better than that mask.
"Who are you? What happened?" she immediately demanded. Hikari swallowed. It had been probably less than five minutes since she had heard the thieves leave the store, which meant time still played a major factor.
"H-Hikari Yagami," she quickly answered. "I came out of the bathroom and they were putting everything in gym bags, they handcuffed me."
"They?" the officer continued. "How many? When? What did they look like?"
Hikari was ready. She was going to stick the landing on this. She wasn't going to be phased by the police being pushy or demanding. She might just be able to make a real difference here.
"Three people, jumpsuits, black gas masks," she reeled off. "One was a male, I don't know about the other two, only one got close to me." She glanced up over her shoulder, towards the table she was cuffed to. "They said they left the key on the table."
Quickly, the officer grabbed a small metal key from the corner of the table, then reached down with an aggressive motion towards Hikari's hands. "Everyone else in the store is asleep, why aren't you?"
"I...I don't know, I was in the bathroom anddddd…" as soon as the handcuffs were off, Hikari jumped to her feet and spun around, looking back towards the entrance of the store. "...aand I'm here with my friends and—"
"I'm sure your friends are fine," the officer said, grabbing Hikari's shoulder and spinning her back around to face her. "These people are all asleep, we're just being cautious about waking them up right now since we don't know what was used to knock them out. Now, I need as much information as you have as fast as possible right now. My transmitter is sending out to the station right now, the things you tell me now could make all the difference in stopping these guys before they get away."
Hikari shook herself off. Right. She could be concerned about her friends in a minute.
"I went into the bathroom for a few minutes, when I came out, everyone was knocked out and half the store had been bagged," Hikari said. "One of them was right in front of me, he pulled a gun and cuffed me to the table." Her mind raced with details of her encounter, trying to plow through everything as quickly as possible while maintaining coherency. "There were two others that I saw. There might have been more, but I saw three."
"Alright, jumpsuits and gas masks," the officer repeated. "Three people, anything else?"
"Uh…" Hikari thought for a moment. "The one who handcuffed me. Thin build, kind of slim. I think one of the other two was kind of short, but I'm not sure. Uh…"
She looked over at the shelf a few steps away from the bathroom doors. She walked over to it.
"Ma'am?" the officer asked. "What?"
"When I...when I came out, he was standing right here," Hikari said, stopping and planting her feet just about a foot to the right of the shelf. She summoned up all her memories of the last ten minutes, searching for exact details. Fortunately, the fear seemed to have seared itself onto her brain, creating accurate replications of the previous few moments.
"I...his head was here," she said, pointing up at a spot on the shelf, four levels up. "The top of his head, it came up to here." She tapped her finger on a spot. "That's how tall he is. However high up that is."
"Wow," the officer said, voice going a little soft and gentle after several sentences of harsh utterances. "Okay, we'll...we'll check that out for sure later, but…I guess that'd be about a hundred and ninety centimeters. One-ninety, slim build."
"Right-handed," Hikari added suddenly. "He pulled the gun out and held it in his right hand."
"Okay, wow," the officer said. "Someone was playing attention." She looked around the store. "Okay, we'll...we'll get that out to the force, and you can...reconstruct what you saw for the crime scene investigators when they get out here in a few minutes."
Hikari felt quite proud of herself. Her information had even managed to take the edge off this policewoman. With the adrenaline fading, her alertness began to drop, her mind grateful that it no longer had to work so hard. She nearly sat down on the floor, about to let exhaustion take over her, when she suddenly remembered.
"Oh!" She jumped up, quickly dashing back over towards where the ring displays had been, quickly finding her friends laying on the floor, Lily's pink mop in a haphazard mess and Ren's flowing jet black locks pooled against the carpet. "Are they okay?!"
OOO
"I'm gonna need some time with this," Koushiro said as Takeru popped the trunk on the hatchback, revealing the stuffed-full gym bags. "Some serious time. Months, could be a year before I push everything out."
The light blue hatchback was backed into a large garage, big enough for three cars. Other than a collection of tools against the left wall, it was bare, peeling white paint and oil-stained concrete giving the appearance of a garage that was never used. The five young adults were staring at the haul in the back of the car, only professionalism keeping them from doing backflips as they considered the significance of their heist.
"Gonna melt the gold, silver and platinum down, sell everything separately, no chance of anything being linked to this, but it's going to take awhile." Koushiro pulled down the zipper on one of the bags, peering inside at the treasure within. Takeru took a moment to appreciate that this was the closest he was ever going to come to being an actual pirate, as he was missing only a map with an X marking the spot.
They had switched cars five times in total, going as far as thirty miles outside of the city limits to make one of the changes. There was no such thing as overkill right now. They had, after all, spent countless hours searching every square meter of the city, as well as much of the surrounding areas, for places where surveillance was lax enough that something like a car swap could take place without immediate detection by the police. They may as well use them before another tax hike produced the funds for a new collection of cameras that would ruin it.
"A-are you guys sure about this place?" Daisuke asked, looking around the garage. "I mean, I don't want to be the one who says it, but would it really be that shocking if your Uncle ended up doing something to bust us?"
Koushiro sighed. "There are only so many back alleys without camera coverage left in the world, Daisuke. Sometimes you have to conduct a bit of business on private property, and this is about as good as it gets. My Uncle hates technology as much as he hates the deep state, we're fine."
"I know, but...he's not the most...y'know, mentally stable," Daisuke protested.
"Well, you have to be a little off your rocker to let people store close to thirty million in stolen jewelry on your property," Koushiro pointed out. "The stuff will be fine here, this is the best I can do."
"I think we pulled it off," Ken said, nodding slowly. "I mean...nowhere else left to drive, no more car switches to make, just...we did it." He looked over at Koushiro, then came over and smacked him on the back. "You know how many people have gone down in the last ten years trying to grab a rack of bracelets from the booths by the beach? Not even make it thirty steps before the tasers hit? They go to jail for ten years going for a couple grand in knockoff bracelets, meanwhile we're pulling this stuff off without a hitch."
Koushiro nodded. "Yeah, it's...alright." He cleared his throat. "Let's stash it and get out of here. We can celebrate in a couple days, but let's give it a couple days. May as well."
Takeru wiped at his eyes, then looked up. "Koushiro, you...you let me know as soon as you get your hands on a fizzer, and I'll go plant it."
Koushiro came over and smacked him on the back. "Will do. Good job with the crowd control too, nice improvisation."
"Yeah," Takeru said, voice a little throaty. "I'm going to need a new pair of handcuffs, though. Preferably before my next date."
OOO
She hadn't been in a police station since her last close encounter with criminals four years prior. It didn't seem to have been redesigned in any significant way since. As near as she could remember, and apparently her memory was quite good, the station was as it was the last time she had been there. She sat on the far side of a small desk, a short balding man opposite her, staring at a pair of computer screens in front of him. She glanced around awkwardly.
"Yeah, I...they lost the trail," he said, shaking his head sadly. "They kept dumping cars, and...yeah, these guys are really good."
Hikari's head fell a little bit. She knew it wasn't remotely her fault, but part of her was really hoping that, somehow, someway, what she had to say might make a difference. That somehow, her recollections could have resulted in an early resolution to this case.
"Oh, there's gonna be hell to pay for this one," he mumbled. "Thirty million, damn near, and all we've got are a couple of torched cars to go on. They're gonna turn every jewelry store into a bank vault now, probably make the security guards wear gas masks too."
"Uh...Sergeant Walker," Hikari said, raising her hand up into the air. "I...I don't know how useful this is going to be, but I have something else that might at least be interesting."
"Alright, well…"
Hikari jolted up a couple centimeters and twisted to look over her shoulder at the sound of a slamming door. Another officer, this one in uniform, marched up towards Walker's desk, visibly scowling.
"Nothing on the handcuffs or the key that can help us," he grunted, sweeping right past Hikari with minimal acknowledgement of her presence. "The gas they used to knock everyone out is gone without a trace, so we don't even know where to start with that. And the dispersion device they used is generic as can be. We're dealing with some damn professionals alright."
"We've been dealing with professionals for years," Walker said, spreading his arms out to his sides. "We've been taking professionals down for years. There weren't any professionals left, where did these guys come from?"
The newcomer frowned heavily. "They didn't even fire a single bullet for us to take to the lab. All we can do now is...hope they're dumb enough to try to fence some of the goods to one of our undercovers."
"You know they're gonna melt it all down if they have two brain cells to rub together," Walker said. "Now, our witness said she had something else to tell us."
The man rolled his eyes. "I don't see how it can help us now, but...go ahead." He clasped his hands together in front of his waist and turned to face Hikari. She felt a bit of trepidation as his domineering glare, but shook it off.
"I...this might sound ridiculous, but...you can look this up, I'm sure, this isn't the first time I've been a witness to a major crime," Hikari said. She had wrestled with discussing this ever since she had been escorted into the station, thinking it was important and crucial one moment, then deciding it would make her sound foolish and childish the next. Ultimately, she had put it off until after things had wound down a bit, as it couldn't possibly have been relevant to the immediate chase, but had finally decided to at least mention it. "T-the bearer bonds, four years ago."
Walker scoffed. "Oh yeah, that's a real white whale for a lot of folks here." He shook his head. "We thought that one was an embarrassment, this one'll be worse."
"I was caught up in that one too," Hikari continued. "I ended up near one of their escape vehicles, they practically ran me over, and…" she bit her lip. "...I...I have reason to believe that...someone who was involved in that was involved today."
Walker raised an eyebrow. "That's...well, that's quite a big jump you're making."
"Putting it nicely," the uniformed officer agreed. "What, did one of them...wear the same cologne or something?"
"Hm," Walker muttered. "We've never caught anyone involved in the bearer bond lift," he admitted. "Four years later, someone from that crew, who was good enough to make a major score once, is good enough to do it a second time. I guess when you put the pieces together like that…"
"If someone got away with something that insane once, why would they even consider trying it again? They know how rare it is to get away with major heists, if you pulled it off the first time, you'd have to be stupid to try it again."
"Four years ago, maybe the money ran out. There probably aren't that many people in the world good enough to get away with a major robbery, two jobs in the same city could be linked."
"Even if the same guy did go for the double-dip, he'd never do it in the same city! He'd probably go to a different continent, but he'd at least move a time zone or two! It doesn't make sense."
Hikari cleared her throat loudly, getting both of the officers to stop their fruitless back-and-forth. Immediately, her mouth dried up and she felt her face going red, regretting her irritation getting the best of her and causing her to act somewhat rudely around police officers.
"So, what gave you that idea?" Walker asked her, seemingly snapping her back into the conversation. "Just, assuming it's the same people because major crimes like this are so rare?" He shrugged. "It's not absurd."
"N-no," Hikari said. "I...I remember that day, four years ago, very well. I thought I was going to be killed for a moment, you don't forget things like that. And...and one of the things I remember was...one of them said something to me on that day. You can find all this on the records of my testimony, I'm sure. They were walking past me, one of them said something to me. I remember what he said to me, word for word. And today, I heard that same thing again. The exact same words, in the exact same order, in the exact same way."
The two officers stared at her for what felt like several seconds. "Okay...what was it?"
"Well, both times, I...I offered them my purse," Hikari explained. "It was all I had, and it was the best I could think of while I was panicking. And both times, I was told the same thing." She swallowed down hard. "Don't worry, we're not here for your money. Just maybe don't say too much to the police. They won't be able to do anything with it anyway."
The officer that she didn't know the name of wrinkled his face. "That's it?"
"Well, it's kind of a long statement," Hikari said defensively.
"What else is a criminal trying to steal thirty million dollars going to say?" he asked rhetorically. "He's about to make off with Angelique's entire display set, and he wants some teenager's purse?"
Hikari allowed herself to feel annoyed for a half-second, given that she wasn't a teenager anymore, but it passed.
"No, that's what small criminals do, they throw back the guppies when they're hunting for the whales, that's not...that's not unique."
"I know, but it was the exact same words in the exact same way!" Hikari said. "If he was just conveying the same idea, I wouldn't have thought anything of it, but...it feels like too much to just be a coincidence. He...he could have said...keep the purse, just keep your lips zipped, or...we don't need your stuff, but do us a favor and keep quiet in questioning, or...anything else, but he said exactly that?"
Walker looked over at his co-worker. "Y'know, it'll look better if we can add an extra line to the suspect profile."
He sighed, looking back over at his fellow policeman, then pausing for a minute. "Well, at least something around here will look better." He rolled his eyes. "Alright, uh...suspect may have also been involved in bearer bond heist four years ago, I guess that's...throw it in there. Can't imagine it helping a lick."
"Alright, at least it's something," Walker said. "Well, Miss Yagami, you've been a star witness. One point eighty-five meters tall, slim build, right-handed, and possibly involved in another monster case, and you were blindfolded basically the whole time!"
Hikari nodded, again feeling quite proud of herself. "Well, Sergeant Walker, I...I hope you get these guys. If it is the same person, I've...I've been terrorized by him more than enough for one lifetime."
