The next night, everything began to intensify. My schedule- everything. It began the Monday night when I was making my run out of the studio. Three flashing police cars sped by and turned left onto a road called Sakura Drive. My family lived in the duplex a ways down that road.
When I got back to the headquarters, the first thing I noticed was that Mr. Yagami hadn't come back with us and my father was no longer there. L was the only one in the room, sitting in front of the monitors as usual.
"Where is my father?" I ask him after checking where he usually sat only to see his coat was not there.
"I would suppose that by now, he is at your house. The police station got a call that someone broke in just a moment ago. They called here and he rushed over to make sure everyone was alright," L replied lazily, biting off of a chocolate chip cookie.
"What?" I shrieked, loud enough for the rest of the team to hurry in behind me. "Who? Why?"
"I have a few suspicions," L said, "But none of them will be confirmed until either Mr. Mogi or Mr. Yagami returns from the scene."
L watched me a few more moments before spinning back around to the monitors.
I could not believe how calm, how careless, he was being. I, myself, felt as though I was drowning. There were several pats on my shoulder and someone ended up taking me up to my suite. I felt dazed and unaware of Watari in my kitchen, brewing up some grape cider using a mix he'd stopped to get from the kitchen.
When he handed me the steaming mug, I stared at the blue and white checkered pattern painted onto it.
"Your father stopped to ask me to make you some whenever you found out what was going on before he left," Watari explained.
"Thanks," I muttered numbly.
The rest of the night was a blur to me. My father didn't return. Watari spoke some more- though I can't remember what it was about. I finished the grape cider without tasting it. And eventually, I fell asleep there on the couch in my suite.
When I woke up, the tiny clock in the corner of the laptop on the table in front of me read two in the morning.
Wait… my laptop was on top of my bed at this moment..
I sit up right, knocking a soft green blanket off my legs. Someone had taken time to cover me up with it.
A lamp had appeared on the desk across from the couch and had been left on. I know I am still in my suite. There are pictures, containing my friends, family, and I, placed meticulously all over the room. And I can see my bedroom through the open door.
So whose laptop?
Getting up, I stretch my arms, and then grimacing, my legs. I feel unbelievably cramped and felt as though all the moisture had been sucked from my skin. Couches were never that good to me anyway.
"You've been out of it for a long while."
Jumping, I turn to look at the kitchen. My father was leaning against the counter with a mug in his hand. Coffee, I assume, judging from the smell drifting over.
"What do you mean?" I ask, concealing a yawn.
"It's been twenty eight hours- according to Watari- since you fell asleep right there," he explains, walking over to stand by the couch.
"It's been over a day?" I question, shocked and confused at the same time.
"Yes Larissa," he said quietly, bending over to close up his laptop and tuck it under his arm. He sounded frustrated for some reason, not with me though. "I should be heading back home now. I need to check in on your mother and brother. I should be back at around noon."
Home- that reminds me.
"What about the break in? Are Hiroki and mom okay?"
Turning around, he picked his discarded coat from the arm chair. He seemed extremely tired. "Why don't you save that question for later? I'll tell you everything then. Right now, Larissa, I am exhausted. I'm going to go home to your mother and brother."
I groaned when he shut the door. According to him and Watari, I'd spent twenty eight hours dreaming and wondering about it. I was sick of not knowing already. Besides, the fact that I had wasted my entire Tuesday sleeping.
Feeling grungy, I took a quick shower and changed clothes. Afterwards, feeling starved, I made myself a grilled cheese sandwich. As always, I managed to burn it. As soon as I'd taken my first bite, someone knocked on the door.
I stopped, wondering. Watari always buzzed in before he came to the door- so it can't be him. And unless my dad had forgotten something…
Still thinking it over, I got up and walked over to and answered the door. Instead of Watari or my father, I came to see-
"L?"
"Good morning Miss Larissa," he replied.
Surprised, I returned his greeting.
"Do you mind if we chat for a bit? Watari has retired and I need to mull over some thoughts with someone," he said, walking past me into the suite.
"Umm, sure. Why not?" I replied. It came out as more of a question than I had intended it to. As I shut the door back gently, he walked over and climbed into one of the white armchairs. For once, I didn't wonder about his odd posture.
"I have a… theory," he begins. I look at him as I fold up the green blanket I had knocked to the floor just an hour ago and set it on the couch. After he's been quiet for a while, I sit opposite him on the couch.
"I believe that someone- who knew you and your family- found that they did not like your broadcast quite so much. I believe that this person tried to scare you," L starts, looking up at me from beneath his long bangs.
"What? The break in?" I ask, making sure that we were on the same page.
He only nods once.
"I'd figured that it was just something random," I thought aloud.
"No. Whoever it was came through your window. They most likely knew that your mother and brother were both watching your broadcast in the living room. They didn't leave your room. They pulled everything off your shelves and ransacked you desk. They also pulled all the bedding from your bed. Whatever was once in your closet, is now thrown all about your room. It was almost as though they were searching for something…" he trailed off, biting his thumb nail.
"You think it was Kira looking around for my real name, don't you?"
"Yes," he replies instantly.
"If it was Kira, and he was looking for my real name, then that means-
"He's already tried killing you and was looking for clues to your real name," L confirmed, cutting me off.
"He's already tried killing me.." I repeat, a bit dazed.
"Yes."
Looking at L, I suddenly remember something. "He could have found it."
"Hmm?" L asks, looking completely up at me.
"He could have found my name. I had baby pictures of me and books from elementary school and-
"I had your father search your room and get everything like that out. It's locked up in a storage room downstairs at the moment."
"I have a diary," I say silently. He hears me.
"We never found a diary," he muttered confirming my questioning look. And then, L bolted for the door, moving faster than I had ever seen him move before.
"Follow me," he said over his shoulder when stopping to press the blue button on the intercom before going through the door. Quickly, I follow him, running down the hall trying to catch up. Eventually we reached another set of doors. L had completely forgotten his manners and started pounding on the doors. After five seconds and no one answered, he turned back to me.
"Can you drive?"
"Not legally," I say, still confused.
He continued to the main room, ducked in, and came out with a set of car keys. After tossing them to me, he hurried to the parking garage and led me to a small blue car.
He climbed into the passenger side and I let myself into the driver's seat.
"Where are we going?" I ask, turning the keys in the ignition.
"Your house. Fast. Don't stop for red lights or stop signs. Just keep driving."
I had never run so many red lights in my life. Luckily, at 3:30 in the morning, the roads are pretty much empty of cars and police. When I stopped in front of my driveway, L was out and heading up the drive way before I'd put the gears in park.
I left the key in the ignition and followed him up to my door. Rudely, once again, he began ringing the doorbell continuously and then pounded on the door. Finally, the door opened and my dad appeared, a gun pointed at L's chest. When he saw it was the two of us, he immediately lowered his weapon.
"Ryuu- Larissa!?" he exclaimed sleepily.
"Excuse us," L said hastily pushing himself through the door, dragging me along with him.
"What's going on?" my dad called from the door.
L sure did know where my room was. Then again, it was obvious. Up the stairs and the only one with police tape across it. He stopped outside the doorway.
"Get it now," he ordered silently.
My mom came out of the room next door, rubbing her eyes. "What's going- Larissa!"
My dad rushed over to her, and tried to send her back into the room. Not paying that much attention, I ducked under the police tape, opening my door. Once inside my room, I paused, surprised. When L said things had been thrown around, it had been an understatement. It looked as though someone had broken in and let loose a tornado in my room.
"Hurry, you're not supposed to be here at all," L urged, coming in behind me.
I walked over to my book shelf and pick up a hair pin that had once been in a cup on my vanity. I then walked over to the side of my bed, sit down, and slide myself under, scooting towards the foot of the bed. I try not to hit my head as I dig the bobby pin in between the crease between my bed frame and foot board. Eventually, a severely thin but very long notebook drops into my waiting palm. As I slide out and hold my diary out to L, the gold and green threads glisten in the light leaking in from the hallway.
"It looks like he hasn't found it," I say, relieved.
Without any change in his tense expression, L turned around and left my room, tearing away the police tape. I follow him, but stop by my mother, who is resisting being pushed back into her room by my father.
"I just stopped to get something important mom. I'm sorry. I love you," I whisper to her as I give her a hug and then kiss on the cheek.
"Larissa, he's leaving," my father says, looking through the open door. I run to catch up with L.
On the drive back, he is even more silent then the drive before.
"I'm sorry," I say after a while, as we come to a red light. "I'd completely forgotten about my diary. I don't even write in it unless something huge to me happens. The last time I wrote in it was when the school cafeteria caught on fire, five months ago."
He's quiet for a moment as he looks at the book in his hands. "Let's just be glad we got to it before someone else did."
L sat in front of the monitors once again as he always did. He was the only one in the main investigation room at the time, other than Mr. Yagami who had fallen asleep at a desk quite a while ago. L had felt no need to wake him.
He felt angry. Not at Larissa for her spot of foolishness. Not at My. Yagami's irritatingly loud snores. Not even at the throbbing ache in the back of his brain, a side affect from amount of sugar he consumed on an hourly basis. The diary on the table in front of him was making him oddly angry. If Kira had actually gotten his hands on it, Larissa could have died. He would have been defeated in a sense, at least to the public. He would have Kanzo Mogi out to murder him along with Kira.
All those reasons for L's sudden anger flitted through his brain at the moment. However, he knew they were all untrue. The real reason for his anger, he could not determine.
After a moment or two, L realized he needed a way to distract himself, so he reached forward and flipped the front cover of the diary open.
It felt horrible to know he was invading Larissa's privacy to such an extreme level. It felt childish to know he was allowing the possibility of reading someone's diary, where personal thoughts were jotted down.
He stared at the cover page, which had nothing all that reveling other than a square box with Larissa's name in it.
Of course it wasn't her real name. That is what made the diary so dangerous. In neat, rounded letter was the title, "To Nicole 'Nix' Mai Sutter…-From Annabelle".