A/N for anyone who cares to know, I changed the date from 1987 to 1995 because L died in 2007 and he was 25 then, and he's about thirteen now. Just so you know.
It was pointless.
Absolutely pointless.
After five hours of looking through every piece of evidence they could get a hold of, they had gotten nowhere.
L's head hit his desk with a thud, resting next to the evidence box and a half-eaten chocolate cupcake.
"This is pointless," he moaned.
I can't give up now! He thought angrily. If I give up, then who's gonna find the guy who did this? Those girls still haven't gotten the justice that they deserve. If I can't do it, then who will?
He furrowed his brow.
But all of this seems so impossible.
It wasn't as if he was going to find a serial murderer by staring at a bunch of photographs.
Wait a minute…
L flipped through the pictures until he found one toward the back. It wasn't anything special- a picture of another one of the victims laying in the grass. But that wasn't what he was looking at. He rummaged around in the drawer for a magnifying glass.
He felt like Sherlock Holmes looking through the glass, and couldn't help smiling.
That's when he found it.
A series of numbers were scrawled in the girl's blood on the wall.
8 24 2007 10033 12 1 16 12 5 19 20 18 5 5 20 19 16 18 9 14 7 12 12 5 4 5 20 18 15 9 20
L copied down the numbers, drawing little boxes around each set. He fiddled around, doodling on the paper for awhile before an idea hit him.
"Watari!" L called urgently.
Watari opened the door.
"What is it?" he asked.
"What day is it today?"
"Um… the twenty-ninth of July. Why does it matter?"
"Look at this."
L pointed out the sets of numbers.
"Eight twenty-four, two thousand. Doesn't that sound like a date to you?"
"It could be."
L pointed out the next.
"Ten zero thirty-three. At first I didn't think much of it, but then I saw the next set."
He pointed to the last two sets.
"These were the ones that gave me the most trouble. But now I think I know what they are. I think it might be some sort of encryption."
"Encryption? You mean like a code?"
"Exactly. If each of these numbers stands for a different letter, then the twelve would probably be the letter m, one is the letter a, and so forth."
He wrote out the letters underneath the numbers until they spelled "Maple Street, Springville, Detroit."
"So the ten zero thirty-three is probably a house number, and the date could be the day he intends to kill another girl. In this case, the twenty fourth of August."
"How do you know?" Watari asked, thoroughly confused
"I wasn't sure at first," L admitted. "But then I noticed that similar patterns of numbers appear at each crime scene. The pattern of numbers always reveals the place, as well as the date of death of the next girl to be murdered."
"Look," he said, pointing to another picture. "This girl died on January twelfth. That date was written in blood at the previous crime scene."
He indicated the first.
"Obviously, this man plans his kills very carefully."
L scowled.
"This guy, whoever he is, is a bully and a coward. But I'll find him. Just watch me, Watari.
He looked at the list of the murdered girls' names.
Don't worry, he thought, I'll find justice.
A/N please review!