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I laughed out loud. Roger turned to me and, with a "Hm?", requested to know what it was that I'd found amusing. I shook my head smilingly. He wasn't actually concerned about it. Not to mention he wouldn't have found it funny either way. Not like I had any certainties, but I was pretty sure L would have. I figured I'd tell him when I returned to the Wammy's House... Along with all of the other things I'd been meaning to tell him for about four months.

Ruvie himself was alright. His problem was that he'd had the (incomprehensible) misfortune of working at a place whose sole purpose was to give orphan kids aid (later on we'll probably have to go back on that "sole" adjective. But for now it's staying). Not like he had anything against orphans, God, he just disliked the concept of 'kids' as a whole. Things started to actually take off the moment I started to behave myself a bit more in his presence. I'd try to groom myself more, wear shoes at all times, try to reply when I was talked to (which often made me feel upset about my replies' poor content), things of the kind. Yet at the same time, this kind of conduct would often make me seek for isolation, feeling I was repressing my true, natural-state self. But at least he respected that.

Somebody entered the building. Good thing was you didn't have to be constantly and suspiciously staring at the doors, since every time they'd open, (and given that you were sitting in the right seat), a winterly breeze would hit your face and mess your hair. Bad thing was, that it was thanks to that winterly breeze that I could almost swear I could hear my frozen blood vessels contract beyond anatomically possible. I made a note to myself to mail my discoveries to the British Journal of Medicine and Medical Research as soon as I returned.

"Do we have to be sitting here?" Roger had started to get uneasy again.
I nodded. Who's the child now?
"I'll go get us some coffee." He informed me, finding an excuse to escape the cold. And say they tried to teach me dedication.

When he said he'd get us coffee, he meant him. As for me, he was actually going to get me hot chocolate instead. He didn't like it if I consumed caffeine. I thought he was being overly ridiculous, but I'd let him have it his way if that was the way he'd found to show his concern for me.

I'd been sitting in the same position for about two hours and 47 minutes. I knew it because after some point my whole self had become synchronized with the room and the ticking of its clock. If asked, I could also name the last twenty patients that had been called out by the doctor I was particularly interested in. I'd start a new count every time I hit twenty. I could also tell you an estimated amount of the remaining glasses of water the dispenser had left to offer. Around 35, if it makes a difference. I didn't know it at the moment, but I was nervous. Each sound, each step, each new patient was a countdown to me.

And then the door opened again. I don't know what stimulus set the reaction first in my brain, but I had suddenly completed the puzzle without my head having had the time to actually count how many pieces there were available to play.

Time slowed down. Considerably.

The brusqueness of the way he opened the door. The scary pressure of the footsteps splattering snow as he went. The half limping left foot that made his walking march seem out of rhythm: it was a march nonetheless.

The door had closed already but the cold hadn't left my skin.

I raised my head slowly. My heart beats sped up. Something told me this had been the moment I had been waiting for a very, very long time, but I had yet to be carefully patient and not let my eagerness to win destroy the magnificence of my plan.

I looked at him from behind, walking towards the counter. I wasn't looking straight at him, but he was all I could focus on. You've got no idea how it feels like, to be four months chasing after one person. Learning his whole stupid language from a week to another, retracing every single step that had been taken, taking all the steps that should have been taken, skipping your meals, skipping your naps... After all that, you did not just know how the person felt or what the person thought. You were that goddamn person. So chances were, regardless of what little evidence you were still to possess, you'd been right all along.

I'd wait. I'd been waiting for a long time. I would wait a few more minutes. My waiting would seem meaningless when compared to the sentence he'd probably be given.

The doctor called his name out loud. I became unsettled. Roger still hadn't returned. It was then or never.

I didn't want to admit it, but I did feel a bit sorry for Georg Wirth, in a way. I had his phone-calls taped the moment I set foot on Offenburg. I knew how much he'd been trying to get an appointment with the doctor, yet it was his well-grounded paranoia that kept him from actually making the call. So I waited. Because even if he didn't know it at the time, I did know myself that it was all a question of sitting and waiting for the moment when his pain had progressed to a point so far advanced, so unbearably infernal, that his confidence that he would be able to take it forever would crumble without a warning, thus making him pick up the phone and ask to get the God-condemned X-ray that would offer him the answer he seeked. He probably even convinced himself that it was rather irrational to think that someone would actually catch him because of his knee. Nobody had ever thought of that, so why now?
Now, while under normal circumstances I'd say that was a quite prudent idea, because, what are the odds? I think at this point we're all free to think of the words "tough luck, pal". I imagined him getting up every morning, his pain becoming stronger by the day as the illusion that he would be able to take it decreased in a directly proportional manner. All that to wake up one night, pick up the phone, and make the call that would dig his own grave.

I don't think he ever imagined that a shot in his knee would have that kind of consequences. Specially considering (after the initial pain phase had ceased) that his knee hadn't really bothered him again considerably, at least not in the first year after Ebru Kowalk was murdered.

"Georg Wirth." Dr. Hueber called again.

He was only gonna get his leg x-rayed. He'd have to wait a few days for the results. Little did he know that he'd be arrested by then. I would make sure he got a note informing him that the cause of his pain was a degenerative arthritis. There was no need to keep him in pain after he'd been caught.

He followed the doctor to the room he was appointed to. I got up as soon as the door was closed and stood behind it. I'd only have a few moments to do my thing. There would quite likely not be another chance.

To get x-rayed, Wirth would have to get rid of anything metal he was carrying with him. That is to say, he'd have to be separated for a few minutes, (regardless of how restless it'd make him), from the chainlet he'd stolen from the victim's neck after having killed her. If I had done a good job, then I knew that I'd find it somewhere among his belongings.

It is funny, because the police had actually thought of that. Countless warrants were obtained, all to no avail. They searched everywhere, and I mean- everywhere. They destroyed his mattress, his pipes, his trash. The chainlet was nowhere to be found. I wonder why it never occurred to them to search him. What better protection, what better a hiding place than himself? These people had obviously never read The Lord of the Rings, because otherwise they probably would have made the Gollum-connection in a heartbeat.

Poor devil, I thought as I searched his coat. By then, he had already gone on to the next room and was trying to follow the instructions the doctors gave him to get his X-ray right. That limp would get me the time I needed and more.

I found a bus ticket on his left pocket. It had cost him 2 euros to come from his home in Niederschopfheim to the city. It had probably cost him a whole lot more to walk up to the station.
I put my hand on the right pocket.

My heart was pounding, I couldn't find the necklace.

Wirth was almost done with his scannings.

I took the coat and shook it like I'd gone batshit crazy. The chainlet was there. I knew it. I was right. It had to...

A metallic sound hitting the ground gave my existence the two longest seconds of glory it could ever experience. I picked it up.

Imagine winning a million pounds playing Bingo. Okay, good. Now imagine you win a million pounds playing Bingo eight times in a row. If you can somehow manage to picture what your face would look like, you probably can picture what mine did.

One word of Roger's and the police would enter the hospital, the evidence would be turned over and of our existence, nobody would know. I ran off to find him. For all I cared, I was going back home.