A/N: Sorry the update is a day late; I was ill and totally spaced it. Hope you all enjoy!
It was a quiet drive over to the homes in question. Watari commented on the weather and how it wasn't snowing any longer thankfully. He also made sure to ask if I was too cold or too warm on the ride there. He was a gentleman to the last detail; I could see where L got some of his manners. Too bad the detective didn't exercise all of Watari's politeness and courtesies.
The first home was the one of the deputy director. I'd already read the files L had on each member of the household. None of them seemed to stand out. There was the director himself, his wife, and their three kids. Two girls one boy. The girls were the eldest, one in high school, the other in her last year of middle school. The boy was only ten, placing him in grade school. All in all, I wasn't certain any of these people were going to be Kira. Nothing in L's files suggested they had the smarts to work as delicately as Kira did.
All the same, I wasn't going to rule them out.
We had to wait about fifteen minutes for Watari's people to give us the go ahead. It seems some people were still home. Watari parked down a block and around the corner. I drummed my fingers on the dashboard to my music. It didn't seem to bother the old man.
"This is kind of cool," I admitted. I spoke in English since I knew Watari was fluent. "I've never actually been part of a team sneaking into someone's home and getting on their computers. I've always had to do it solo. I feel like I'm part of the FBI or something."
"Well, the death of FBI agents is why we're here," Watari noted. "But I'm pleased you're finding a bright side."
I could tell he actually meant those words. He wasn't one to be passive aggressive or sarcastic.
"Well, hopefully their deaths won't be in vain," I said. "Hopefully it's what will lead us to Kira."
"You're hoping he's in one of these homes? You told Aizawa otherwise."
"I told him that to shut him up. The sooner we find Kira the better. For everyone."
Watari nodded. "Well, I can honestly say I agree with you."
Good, at least someone was sensible. I was beginning to really like Watari.
There was a buzz and Watari looked at his cell. There was a text on it. It was in katakana, but I was able to read most of it. We had the okay to head in.
Watari turned off the car and got out. I knew he was going to come around and let me out, and I suppose dressed as I was, I could just let him. But instead, I hopped out and shut the door behind me, pushing some of my wig hair behind an ear. Watari merely chuckled and beckoned for me to follow him.
Being careful not to slip on the ice, I followed Watari to the home. Some other people were already heading in with some equipment. They wore black outfits fit for robbers, but also bore official badges on their fronts. Hopefully no neighbors would get too curious.
However, among the men, one without a mask and wearing an official suit approached us.
"Oh hey, Ukita," I greeted him in Japanese and smiled widely.
Ukita didn't exactly look thrilled to be there. He sighed and folded his arms, looking over me. "So I guess now we see if you weren't just spouting crap about your skills."
"Have a little faith!" I said. "Why are you here, anyway?"
"Overseeing everything," Ukita replied. "And making sure if anyone asks questions or approaches that we're prepared."
I knew another piece of truth. Watari was just one man and I was sure despite his age he could move quite fast. An ideal babysitter for me in case I decided to attempt to take off. Ukita was just another babysitter- two was better than one. It could be that L didn't even tell the officer that he was meant to keep an eye on me, but Ukita was suspicious enough of me on his own.
"Well let's get down to business," I sang with a big smile and headed through the door. Mulan had always been one of my favorite Disney movies.
The deputy director had a nice house, that was for sure. Two story and a finished basement, making three floors in total. I went to the first computer I could find and asked Watari to find any others that might be in the house, including laptops and tablets.
The desktop I found was in a small office off the living room and wasn't even password secured. It was easy enough to poke around and search for anything of suspicion. I searched for key words like police, Kira, secret, criminals, names, faces... There were many others I tried, grabbing at even the most obscure thing. I even tried Death Note. But even when a file came up with something in common with my searches, it was useless. Nothing indicating that Kira had used this computer.
While I worked away at the computer, Ukita approached me.
"To be honest,I don't think I've ever seen anyone type so fast," he muttered.
"Years of practice," I said, eyes darting over the monitor as I conducted another search. "Shit... this isn't yielding any fruit."
"I thought you told Aizawa you hoped that Kira wasn't any of these people," Ukita accused. Again with this. It was the same thing Watari said.
"I did," I replied. "I lied. The sooner we find Kira, the sooner this can be over. Every moment he's still out there, more people die, and now that he's targeting the people attempting to catch him, it's not just criminals we're losing." I leaned back in my chair, swiveling it to face Ukita. "He could kill you. Or Ryu. Or anyone on the task force; should he have the right information. You'd rather let him keep getting chances to figure out who we are?"
Ukita bowed his head slightly. "I suppose I get where you're coming from. But still, to imagine it's anyone in either of these families..."
I nodded. "I get it. I once was friends with someone who turned out to be behind a huge drug ring. It wasn't easy when I found out. It was even worse when I was the one who put him behind bars. But people were dying and getting addicted to life-destroying drugs because of him. I hated it, but it had to be done."
Ukita looked me over, his brow furrowing. "You're a lot more mature than I originally thought. Why don't you act like this with the rest of the task force?"
"Because though I can be serious and straight forward, that's not who I am." I grinned. "I like to laugh and I like to tease. Aizawa especially, since he's so salty all the time."
Ukita actually chuckled a bit at that. "I think if he saw this side of you, he wouldn't be so judgmental."
I shrugged. "Maybe. I think it might just be in his nature to be a dick. But hey, we're wasting time, huh? This computer's got nothing. I'm going to check the others."
Ukita nodded as I got to my feet and headed out of the room. It was nice to have some bonding time with one of the other members of the task force. I felt like so far the only ones who liked me were Watari, Matsuda, and Mogi. Yagami and L tolerated me. Aizawa straight up despised me. But now maybe Ukita could be a part of my little friendship circle I was building.
I did this search with the other two computers that were found in the house. Another desktop in the eldest daughters room and a laptop that was in the master bedroom. Both were password secured, but they were easy enough for me to crack. I merely popped open my own laptop, plugging in one of my thumb drives, and went to work.
Both of these computers were clean as well. Every file I searched was useless. Though I had to admit, the daughter was really good at poetry. It took all my self control not to leave her a compliment at the bottom of one of her documents when it almost moved me to tears.
Between computer searches, I made sure to look around each room. If Kira was in this household, he could have left the Death Note here. As I went, I was careful to leave everything as I found it, including replacing a fallen dark hair back on a backpack I rifled through. Unfortunately, there was no sign of a notebook.
"You're sure this is all of them?" I asked Watari as I closed the laptop found in the master bedroom.
Watari nodded. "Afraid so, Miss Forner. Nothing of use?"
I shook my head. Even the recently deleted files were nothing to bat an eye at. Though I did see the deputy director did have an interesting little folder of images that his wife would probably have something to say about. I suppose having play boy, or whatever Japan's equivalent was would be considered hard evidence more than a deletable file was.
"Well, we still have another home to check," Watari said. "Come. They're finished up here and will be moving on soon."
I nodded and put the laptop back where I found it.
Next up was Chief Yagami's house. He had a wife and two kids, a daughter in middle school and a son who had just graduated high school at the top of his class. Now, out of what I had observed, Yagami himself was not Kira. L didn't think so either. That led the most likely suspect within the home to be his son, Light Yagami. He had the smarts for it, plus L and I already had suspicions that Kira was a student. It would only make sense.
As of right now, the chance Light was Kira was one percent. That was the number that L and I came to an agreement on. The number may not seem high, but out of everyone else, it was the highest. We had to pursue it.
"Now this is the Chief's house, so be respectful," Ukita was ordering the men who were swarming in with their gear.
"Does that mean I can't tilt every picture hanging on the walls slightly to drive everyone insane?" I asked.
Ukita shot me a glare, but a grin was tugging at the corner of his lips. "Don't you have some computers to snoop around in?"
I smirked wickedly at him before going toward the home.
Once inside the Yagami household, I first checked out the Chief's computer. Of course, it was password protected. It took me a moment to get in. There were no files of interest until I searched the recently deleted ones. Once they were restored, I saw they were all pertaining to the Kira case. But I had a feeling this wasn't anything to be alarmed about. Yagami surely would have these on his computer, and he got rid of them once he realize that Kira was getting information.
Even if by some insane stroke of chance that Yagami was Kira, this wasn't damning evidence.
I moved on through the first floor. I found a laptop in the girl's room that wasn't even password protected. It was bland as can be. Lots of things retaining to bands I wasn't familiar with and school work. When that was done, I headed upstairs. There were a few rooms up here. I looked through some of them to find none of them had computers.
Finally, I was left with only one room I hadn't searched. It's door was still closed. The camera guys hadn't been here yet either. I examined it with a frown. I hadn't found anything suggesting to be Light's room yet. I bet this was it. My eyes spied a speck of white and I saw there was a scrap of paper between the frame and door. Something to alert him if someone enters his room. It could be seen as just a teenage boy wanting his privacy.
I reached up and gripped it, making sure to note it's exact position. I opened the door slowly. I heard a small snap. Blinking, I looked to my right where the sound came from. It seemed to be one of the hinges. But when I moved the door back and forward again it remained silent, save the small whine of metal on metal. I set the paper just inside the room on the floor and spotted something near my foot.
It was a small stick of graphite. The kind for a mechanical pencil. I picked up with a furrow brow, then saw a second piece of it not too far away. Ah. This was in the hinge and snapped when I had opened the door. Well, I hadn't seen which hinge. I could certainly try to replace a new one, but if I got the wrong hinge it would be for nothing. This boy was smart.
I figured it would be best to attempt to replace it. Perhaps I would get lucky and pick the right hinge. It was worth a shot. But first thing was first.
I stepped into the room and knew for certain it was Light's. There was a desk directly in front of me, a bed to my right, some shelves to my left. Everything was pretty neat and tidy, especially for a teenage boy. There was a computer on the desk before me. My hands instantly itched to touch its keyboard. But I forced myself to wait. This was the most likely person to be Kira out of all their suspects currently. His Death Note could be in here, right under my nose.
I checked around his bed first. Nothing beneath, nothing under the pillows. The bedside table was also fruitless. I stomped around looking for a loose floorboard or hollow compartment. I pulled out random books on his shelf to no avail. Finally I went to the desk and checked the drawers. The bottom two had office supplies like erasers, sticky notes, index cards, extra pencils and graphite. I grabbed a stick for the door.
The top drawer, however, was locked.
I tried again, to no again, it wouldn't open.
"All right..." I breathed. "I'll play your game, you rogue..."
I reached into my bag and pulled out a bobby pin and a screwdriver. I was a hacker, but I could get through more than just digital locks. After a bit of finagling and a couple of colorful curse words, I got the lock to spring. Proud of my achievement and so certain I was going to get a juicy reward for it, my heart nearly burst out of my chest when I saw a notebook in the drawer.
But it was just a simple black leather-bound journal.
I picked it up, scowling at it from all angles. No Death Note written on it anywhere.
"A diary?" Nox chuckled. He'd been oddly quiet today, not that I was complaining. "He went through all that effort for a diary?"
"Odd for a teenage boy to keep a journal," I muttered. I opened it and saw some things documenting the past few weeks. He complained about finals and how simple they were. He fretted about getting into To-Oh academy. He mentioned Kira's actions and how he worried for his father. Nothing of use.
I replaced the journal and relocked the drawer before moving my attention to the computer. Now this... this might be of more use to me.
It was password protected, of course. And it took longer to crack this one than any of the others. Light wasn't using an easy password. He was using symbols and numbers capital and lower case letters, and it was probably long too. But I still got in all the same. I've hacked through worse.
Once in, I saw his desktop open up before me. It was an image of a lovely landscape with trees and a river. I wondered if it was taken here in Japan. I scanned through the icons he had up first. A word processor, the internet, a media player, a few games I wasn't familiar with. Then there was one by his documents icon.
It was a folder. It was titled simply: DO NOT DISTURB.
I stared at it for a moment. What was that supposed to mean? Maybe some indie game was in that folder? Or an obscure project he was working on for school? All the same, I was too curious.
I clicked it.
And the screen froze.
I nearly screamed. I knew this all too well. I had just opened a virus. Invited in something to seep into every nook and cranny this computer had. I swiftly worked at the keyboard. If I could just get control back for a second I could attempt to combat it. But my old friend control, alt, delete, did nothing for me. The mouse cursor was trapped in the loading icon.
I wanted to throw the keyboard across the room. Nox was laughing at me, probably figuring out exactly what was going on after having watched me work for the past seven months. Finally, after a few minutes, the mouse moved again. I let out a breath of relief, but then cussed under my breath.
The desktop picture was gone. So were all the icons. I clicked into the menu and tried to poke around for files. Programs. Anything.
But it was gone. The hard drive had been wiped completely. All that was left was the operating system.
It took all of my self control not to chuck the monitor at Nox who was still laughing behind me. I hadn't even gotten the chance to check anything else on this computer. I had seen that folder and fell for the bait hook, line, and sinker. I didn't think Light would have any skill with computers, not like that. It was simple enough to make a home brewed virus to wipe out a hard drive, this was true... but for him to think to do that... that he would know simply deleting files wasn't enough...
I started to work at restoring what I could of the hard drive. But the virus had been thorough. It was picked clean. It was sloppy in its execution, of course. I personally preferred to have fun with it when I cleaned out a computer. I would display a message or video or music while the virus did its job. It was a good way to distract someone until it was too late to save their files. But Light had simply frozen me.
Watari and Ukita eventually came to check on me. I never felt so humiliated as I did then, admitting my own failure.
"I got cocky," I muttered. "It was a rookie mistake, to be honest. I didn't expect Light to think to put that."
"We all make mistakes, Miss Forner," Watari assured me. "It is all right."
His words were soft and gentle. I knew he wasn't angry with me, but I had a feeling L would be.
"What exactly happened?" Ukita asked, frowning.
"He had a homemade virus set up as a shortcut on his desktop," I explained. "Honestly, just about anyone can do it if they have basic computer knowledge. Or access to YouTube. It wasn't anything fancy, so I don't think Light has too much computer skills- I mean, not like I do."
I looked back at the computer, biting my lip. Light would know for sure someone was in his room now. Ideally, we could have his father take the fall for it. But explaining how Yagami got the password would be impossible. I really screwed the pooch on this one.
"Electrical malfunction it is, then..." I breathed.
"Pardon?" Watari said.
I looked back at the old man with a grin. "That's how I can cover my tracks. At least as much as I can. A malfunction with the wiring his computer is plugged into. It caused the tower to fry."
"That would be destruction of property," Ukita pointed out.
I shrugged. "I'll reimburse Yagami for the cost to replace it."
"And you know how to do this safely?" Watari inquired.
I was already crawling under the desk to find the plug. "Safety is overrated," I said. "Shit it's in a power strip. Looks like I'm paying for that monitor and fan too."
Water would be the easiest thing to use, but that would leave some dampness I couldn't leave behind as evidence. Luckily, I carried some things for emergencies like this. I reached into my satchel and pulled out a small bundle of 3 AA batteries with a tiny pad on the end of it with some wiring sticking out.
"Cool, no surge protector," I murmured. "Gotta love Japan and its lack of grounding pins."
"Miss Forner, may I ask what that is?" Watari said.
"A shocker," I said. "Kind of. I made it out of parts from disposable cameras. It can give about 920 volts. Should be enough."
"Wait, are you crazy?!" Ukita cried. "You could get hurt! Or start a fire!"
"Gotta take risks in this line of work, Uki," I said.
"Did you just give me a nickname?" Ukita demanded.
"I'd say you could call me Ni, but I would just laugh every time thinking about Monty Python," I said.
"I don't know what that is," Ukita grumbled.
"Some of the best things to come out of England," I told him. "Aside from Ryu, I suppose."
I reached into my bag and found my rubber gloves. Time to be careful. They were blue and typically meant to be used cleaning dishes. I pulled them on and gripped the shocker again. One of the plugs in the power strip was empty. I reached out, closed my eyes, and tapped the shocker against it.
POP!
I screamed a little and jolted backward. I didn't get electrocuted, thank goodness, but the sound startled me enough. I could smell plastic burning. I looked down to see that there was a decent scorch mark on the power strip. The computer had also shut down. Part of the smell was coming from the tower. Good deal. I'd rendered Light's computer useless.
"I thought we weren't killing computers," Nox teased.
I ignored him. "Ta-da!" I said, gesturing to my work.
Watari let out a small breath. "Officer Ukita was correct, that could have caused a fire, Miss Forner."
"Oh please, it's fine," I said, waving him off. "Light won't know any better. Power strips fry all the time."
The men came in and set up the wire taps and cameras. Once they were done, I replaced the graphite stick in the middle door hinge when I closed the door behind me, hoping it was the right one.
Outside, Ukita leaned against the wall and lit a cigarette, his face tight with anxiety.
"You okay, Uki?" I asked him.
He shot me a look for using his new nickname again, but then he let out a long sigh, a wave of cigarette smoke accompanying it. "I just can't imagine what we'll do if it turns out one of these people are Kira," he said.
"Regardless, we'll handle it," I assured him. "You're tougher than you give yourself credit for, Uki. I think, if it does turn out to be any of these people, you'll take it in stride."
"But what would that say about me?" Ukita demanded. "Is that what you did when it turned out it was your friend behind that drug ring? You just took it in stride like some cold fish?"
I leaned against the wall next to him. "Of course not. I was both incredibly pissed and devastated at the same time. I had to take an hour to just calm down before I could start moving forward to get him arrested. Punched a pillow for a long while, screamed into it to. We're human. We get attached to others and we feel things that can both build us up and tear us down. But everyone still has a foundation. Something that will always be there, despite what hits them."
I turned my head to smile at the officer.
"I think you have a pretty good foundation, Uki."
Ukita shook his head. "You barely know me, how can you say that?"
"It's the same for all of you in the task force," I said. "Even dickbag Aizawa. You guys are taking a huge risk in trying to chase down Kira. Out of your entire police force, you are the only ones who stepped forward and acknowledged what Kira is doing is wrong and he needs to be stopped. That's huge, Uki. You guys are something else."
Ukita took a drag from his cigarette. The tip of it glowed crimson, a small trail of smoke wriggled up from it. "I suppose that the same can be said for you, then," he finally replied. "I know you and Ryuzaki go back. But still, you came forward and showed yourself to people for the first time in your career. You're putting your life on the line to stop Kira, just like us. I'm sure there's a ton of other stuff a young lady like yourself could be doing with her life. But this is what you chose. Gotta admit, I'm impressed."
Flattered by his words, I shrugged off the wall and tried to fight away my blush. "Thanks, Uki. That's really nice of you to say."
"Just try to find something less insane to do after this," Ukita said. "Maybe try to convince Ryuzaki to do the same. You're both so young. You should be living your lives."
"We are," I said. "In the best way we can. We're helping others. Saving lives." I smiled. "Just like you."
Ukita dropped his cigarette and stamped it out. "Let's get out of this cold before we get too much more sentimental. You're an odd one, Nina."
"Thanks, I do my best!" I gave him a thumbs up before turning and heading toward Watari just as he exited the building.
After waving goodbye to Ukita, Watari and I got back into the car and began heading back to the hotel. Talking to Ukita had been nice, and I appreciated his words. But after all I'd been through, I honestly couldn't imagine myself doing anything else with my life. And I doubted L could either.
L... I had a feeling he wasn't going to be pleased with me about the computer I fried—but how was I supposed to know Light would be so crafty? And besides... if anything, it just increased my suspicion of him. Why have that kind of folder on his computer?
I would have to keep my eye on Light during the next week. Perhaps he would slip up while on camera. I glanced at Nox. All it would take would be for him to talk to his own Shinigami. It would confirm it for me at least that he was Kira.
Light Yagami... I frowned. If he was Kira, this was going to be tricky.
