Sorry, the update took a bit longer than I wanted it to, but you'll forgive me, right? ^.^
Nothing really to say about this chapter so... read, enjoy and review?
Chapter 6
B struggled with wires for a few seconds then nodded with approval when he heard the car start. Grand theft auto… never thought I'd become something as petty as a car thief. In B's eyes, anything that did not involve shedding blood was a petty crime.
The stolen car was important for a couple reasons. One, he didn't feel like stalking Naomi on foot, which would require time he did not have, and two, he needed to trace the trail of her attacker away from himself. The owner of the car was a man who had been a suspected for several accounts of assault and gang involvement but was never convicted. Made for the perfect cover for B.
He drove onto a main street and parked where he could get out using a lamp post for cover. He donned a mask, grabbed a club and a blackjack and slid out of the car, using the lamp post for cover and slipped into an alleyway that he knew would connect to where Naomi was headed. So far, Naomi had proven herself, but B was wondering exactly how skilled she was. If she didn't completely match up to the strict standards he used when it came to psychological battles, he might abandon the plan altogether. What would he prove by defeating someone who was even slightly underneath his requirements? Nothing.
This was also a precaution. He wanted to see exactly how physically skilled Naomi was, to see how hard he could fight her without hurting her but without getting himself injured. He didn't particularly like hurting people unless there was a rather good reason… Naomi didn't really deserve to be hurt. And as for why he might have to fight her… well, you could never know. What if he accidentally met her as B and not Ryuzaki? He might have to fight his way away from her then concoct another plan to defeat L.
It really was an elaborate step for a situation that would probably never happen, but B liked his plans perfect.
Which is why he always won.
Even at Wammy's, B refused to compete with someone who he didn't consider worthy to become successor to L. This was back when he didn't mind the idea of being merely a successor… that came later. His hardheadedness landed him in worlds of trouble with Roger, but he absolutely would not lower his standards. In this way, he was similar to L, who wouldn't take on cases he considered beneath him, and he constantly reminded his teachers of that fact. Eventually they were so exasperated that they granted B his wish, and he would only compete with A and C, who were the only other two children in Wammy's at that time who were going to be L's successors (Wammy's took in other bright children besides the successors, but few were ever actually considered to be successors). While C and B were somewhat close, A and B developed a special bond. They both had similar interests and a similar demeanor; C was brighter and B often found himself thinking that she was annoying. B couldn't talk to her about his dark tendencies and interests. With A, however…they spent hours speculating on death and the afterlife, sitting under the great oak trees behind Wammy's, laughing at the children who pointed at them and taunted them as outcasts and hermits.
Of course, that all changed after A committed suicide.
B rounded a corner and barely avoided kicking a can of beer that was lying in the middle of the alley, empty and lonely. Kind of how B was after A's death.
After A died, B was left with no friends. He and C studied together, sure, but they couldn't just sit and talk. They had no mutual interests whatsoever. They were as different as night and day, and incompatibly so. They had respect for each other, and that was it.
Why A killed himself, B never knew exactly. He had seemed fine until he was found, one day, hung from a tree. On that day A had been distant, melancholy. Later B had figured out it was because A's grades had been slipping steadily, and he hadn't been able to attain perfection. He was still brilliant, but he just couldn't handle what Wammy's had recently been throwing at them. His only desire had been to succeed L… when he realized he couldn't do that, what was there to live for? B figured it was that mindset that had killed A.
So B decided he would change his own mindset.
He wouldn't merely strive to be a successor… he would strive to be L, to surpass L. It was the least he could do to honor his best friend's death. That wasn't the only factor that had driven him to leave Wammy's and become a criminal, of course, but it had been a driving factor.
The blackjack swung as he turned to face Naomi and bumped his leg softly. The club was hanging easily by his side. The mask made his breath echo, and to him it seemed impossibly loud. He knew that Naomi couldn't possibly hear it, but it still bothered him. He took one walking step forward, then sprinted toward Naomi and swung the blackjack, not striving to actually connect but not wanting to make it easy to dodge either.
Naomi reacted amazingly well. She ducked, landing on her two hands, and kicked out with both legs, using her hands to propel her. She twisted sideways to face B and landed in a crouch, feet apart, right hand in front of her face. B smirked slightly, the expression not visible behind the mask. Very, very good Misora… He swung with the club, this time attempting to connect, knowing she would probably dodge but wanted to see anyway. She did, extravagantly at that. She sprang the side, landed on her hands and twisted, trying to hit B with her heel. He easily leapt back, and, feeling his back hit the wall, turned and ran. He turned the corner and climbed into the sedan as inconspicuously as possible. He slid off the mask and ran his hands through his hair, smiling slightly as it sprang back into its normal position; just plain wild. He drove to the parking lot he had stolen the car from, stuffed the mask, blackjack, and club under the seat and left the car.
He walked down the street, cracked his neck and smirked, not caring about the odd looks he received from people. He estimated he had about seven minutes to get to the crime scene. More than enough time. He sprinted to the crime scene, and, knowing LA exceptionally well and being a very athletic person, reached it in a little under three minutes. Heading over to the bathroom, B washed his face and cleaned up a bit so he wouldn't look like he had just taken a jog; Naomi would inevitably wonder why he was running.
Ugh, this is going to be awkward… still, I'd rather get her mind off of the recent attack. If she thinks about it too much she might notice that my body is very similar to that of her recent assailant. He walked over to the victim's drawers and started rifling through the top one, which happened to contain underwear. Despite his absolute ignorance of social standards and his tendency to not give a rip if people thought negatively of him, it still made him feel weird to be rifling through the female victim's very personal belongings.
At that moment, Naomi walked through the door. Without turning, he said, "Ah, Misora. You're late. Please try to be on time. Time is money, and therefore life."
B chuckled as he heard Naomi's poorly concealed sigh of exasperation. He had no interest in such things as children's underwear, of course, but Naomi wouldn't know that. The whole point had been to disarm her. She was bound to be somewhat miffed about the attack in the alley, and B had thought about different ways to just make it awkward for her to speak or complain. This was the most straightforward way. After a relatively long silence, she said, "We're talking about a single mother here, right? Who has now moved back in with her parents? It must have been devastating..."
Way to state the obvious... I need to segue into the case and not the poverty of the occupants... they didn't even know true suffering. "Yes. These apartments were built for college students, intended to house only one, so a young girl and her mother living here attracted a fair amount of attention. I asked around a little this morning, and heard many interesting things. But most of them were already in the police report you showed me yesterday. The mother was out of town at the time of the murders, and the body was discovered by a college girl who lived next door. The mother first saw her daughter's body in the morgue." The words came from B's lips without any emotion; truthfully, he could care less how much the mother mourned. B observed as Misora observed the holes in the walls. Curse her... I need to get her attention off the Wara Ningyos. Now. "Something bothering you, Misora?"
"Yes, yesterday, we," B noted the emphasis on 'we', "decoded the message the killer left at the scene of the first murder, but... the Wara Ningyo and the locked room remain mysteries."
Curse you, Misora... there was no real vehemence behind the sentiment, but it seemed appropriate. "Yes," he said, dropping to his knees then his haunches t try and divert her attention from the Wara Ningyo to him.. He crawled precariously around the crowded room. I wonder sometimes if this crawling is necessary. "But Misora, I don't think it's worth wasting much time on the locked room issue. This is not a mystery novel - realistically speaking, it's quite possible he simply used a spare key. There are no keys that cannot be duplicated."
"True enough, but do you really think this killer would do something so prosaic? There was no real need to create a locked room in the first place. But he did so anyway. In which case, it might be some kind of puzzle..."
"Puzzle?"
"Or a game of some kind."
"Yes.... yes, maybe..." he stopped crawling and sat much like he had seen L sit; crouched, hands on his knees, nibbling his thumbnail. She's good... too good maybe? B wasn't really worried; he was confident that the real reason behind the locked rooms wouldn't be discovered. Still, that Naomi could get so close yet still not realize the true purpose made B's task that much more fulfilling.
"What would you do, Ryuzaki?" B turned toward her. "If you were trying to lock it from the outside?"
"Use a key."
"No, not like that…if you'd lost the key."
"Use a spare key."
"No, not like that... you don't have a spare key either."
B smirked almost imperceptibly. "Then I wouldn't lock it."
Naomi sighed. "If this were a mystery novel.... locked rooms are always created by a trick, like with a needle and a thread, or..... I mean, we call it a locked room, but these are just ordinary rooms, so they're never that secure. They aren't like Bridesmaid's bookshelves –they've got plenty of gaps and chinks around the frame. String could get under it easily.... run a bit of string under the door, and tie it to the edge of the latch, and pull it..."
I need to shut off this train of thought now. "Impossible. The gap isn't that big, and the angle would kill the force applied. You could try it out, but too much of the string would be pressed against the door. Pulling the door toward you."
"Yeah... but a lock this simple doesn't leave much room for a trick. The doors in detective novels usually have much more complicated ones."
"There are many ways to create a locked room. And we can't rule out the possibility he had a key. More important, Misora, is the question of why the killer made a locked room. He had no need to make one, but he did so anyway. If he made a puzzle, why did he do it?" B hoped Misora wouldn't see the smirk forming on his face. He had been slightly nervous about her train of thought, but he decided it would be more fun to tease her without her knowledge, dangle the answer in front of her face, and laugh inwardly as she struggled with the answer as it continually slipped through her fingers.
"As a game. For fun."
"Why?"
At that Naomi sighed, resigned, unknowingly, to B's twisted pleasures, and pulled out a photograph from her bag; pictures of the second victim, killed in this room – a young blonde girl, wearing glasses, lying on her face. When B looked at the picture and saw the faint dent in her head, he recalled the murder briefly. Sneaking up behind the girl with a nondescript metal bat, smashing it into her head... boring, to put it plainly. No experiments whatsoever, like his last murder, since the removal of the limbs allowed him liberty to experiment with said limbs. Even the removal of the eyes provided to entertainment. B sighed inwardly. Murder has just gotten so... dull. "Killing a child... how horrible."
Pfft... I thought you were stronger than that, Naomi. "Killing an adult is also horrible, Misora. Killing children or adults... equally horrible." If it is horrible at all. Really, humanity just lives to die... what's the matter with someone hastening someone toward their ultimate goal?
