Sorry for my hiatus, guys. I've been decommissioned for the past several weeks thanks to a bad driver, but no worries; I'm perfectly okay! Arm is still healing but I'm in tip-top shape otherwise! Ready to get back to writing!
I was so happy reading all your reviews from the last chapter, please keep up the support!
Guest Review Corner:
Great – Yeah. That time I think I was travelling and didn't have the means to confirm it early. That chapter was my first shot at something ShinRan (I'm a stickler for canon pairings…) Haha, well thank you! I hope you enjoy this chapter.
Estelle – Trust me, everything I do is for a reason. Shinichi returning was important. The romance was inevitable. :) Thanks for reviewing, and we'll get back to Heiji now!
LittleFan – Kidnapping Shinichi and killing Heiji. My reviewers are kind of obsessed, aren't they? Lol, no I don't plan on killing Heiji, but like I said… I'm sporadic. Some things just kind of… happen. Haha, thanks for reviewing! :)
Tantei-chan – Gotta hate those cliffys, right? XD Thanks for the review!
Chapter 10 – In Which More of the Code is Solved
"My mind is like a racing engine, tearing itself to
pieces because it is not connected up with
the work for which it was built."
- Sherlock Holmes, The Man With the Twisted Lip
"Did you get it?"
The man's icy voice cut through the air, and the already chilly atmosphere turned a little colder.
"Of course I did," she said, reclining farther into the armchair. She pressed the cell phone between her ear and shoulder, using a fork to casually poke at the salad bowl in her hands. "What do you take me for?"
The man on the other end of the line harrumphed skeptically. "You're an unpredictable woman. Sometimes I don't even know if you're on my side."
"Don't get me wrong, sir," she emphasized, bringing a forkful of lettuce to her lips. "I'm definitely on your side. I want that bastard dead just as much as the rest of us. I just think we finally found ourselves a competent detective. We don't need to get any more."
He took a sip of a drink, making loud gulping noises. She held the phone away from her ear with a scowl, but brought it back when he said: "You mean Heiji Hattori? The Jap?"
"It's Hattori Heiji," she corrected through chews. "In Japan you put your surname first. You hired me for cultural studies, remember?"
"What's it matter what name goes first?" he growled. "And I don't give a damn about your cultural studies. I just want to know you have it."
She abandoned the salad, pulling her knees closer to her chest and taking the phone in hand. A small smile pulled back her lips, and she giggled. "It was so easy… I barely had to touch him. He never even suspected it."
"We'll discuss it further tomorrow."
"Yeah, yeah. But I still don't get why you would go ahead and send the order for the next detective. Mr. Hattori is doing better than the other detectives brought in. I don't understand why you went ahead and Atmadja early."
"Hattori solved one code. Hardly the makings of greatness. I need the police to think he's already dead and they haven't found him yet. If we're inactive for too long, Interpol will know something's up."
She pursed her lips, knowing that her boss was technically correct. "Hattori's gotten farther than some of the others. He got the first one right, too."
The man rustled paper, taking another sip of his drink. "The police are on to us," he muttered. "They've worked out it's been one kid per country."
"Ho?" She giggled. "I'm surprised it took them this long."
The man was silent. She didn't know if it would be appropriate to hang up, so she rested her chin comfortably on her knees and relaxed, listening to the steady drip drip of the broken tap she'd been meaning to get fixed for several months. Finally, he said, "Just bring it tomorrow, got it? Give Mr. Hattori the next code."
"He knows the key though, doesn't he?"
"I'll send it to you. Call me if he gets it right. If he doesn't, then pull the trigger, and then we'll continue with the next one like we always have."
She was met with the monotonous dial tone, indicating he had hung up. She let out a deep sigh, dropping the phone from her ear. Really, he may be head of the entire operation, but it didn't give him the liberty to boss her around like some pathetic rat.
Her phone buzzed, the screen lighting up like a beacon in the blackness. She glanced at the new set of letters, heaved another sigh, and closed her eyes.
.o0o.
Heiji had had enough.
He'd spent two days alone with his thoughts, with meager and yet sustainable meals three times a day. The shadow hadn't made an appearance in all that time, and Heiji didn't know if that was particularly good. Yesterday he had spotted a steel pipe that ran across the ceiling and through the wall above his head, an ideal weapon-sized length. Heiji stared at it for hours, training his nonexistent telekinetic powers to dislodge his only means of escape. Unfortunately, the pipe stayed where it was.
The jailer was kind enough to give him a British newspaper (albeit a few days late of its publication), where Heiji's face was printed on the front page with the word MISSING in big bold letters. Heiji snorted, but read the article anyway.
.
Heiji Hattori was declared missing two days ago by the Japanese Police Force. Hattori, seventeen, is believed to be the next victim of the global criminal, Umbra, who has been kidnapping high school detectives from around the world. He was a student at Osaka High, captain of his kendo team, and an ace teen detective, on par with fellow student sleuth Shinichi Kudo of Tokyo. Hattori was last seen leaving his home February sixteenth by his mother, Shizuka Hattori.
"We're doing all we can to find him," said Heizo Hattori, Osakan Police Superintendent and the father of the missing Heiji Hattori. "I ask for the support of Interpol in finding my son and putting a stop to Umbra's serial murders."
.
"That's pop for ya," Heiji muttered. "Stoic, as usual. But seriously, wha' is up with this article? They're talkin' 'bout me like I'm already dead."
"For all they know, you are," said someone in Japanese.
Heiji looked up as a tall dark skinned man, his black hair close-cropped against his skull, suddenly joined him. Dark sunglasses were perched on his hawk-like nose, and a wireless communicator was tucked in his ear. The young detective's eyes stole a calculating glance over him, noting the slight bulge around the chest beneath his black suit. Bullet-proof vest, most likely. And a gun at his left hip. Left-handed. Smoker; ugly nicotine stains on his fingers. Military, by the way he holds himself and the haircut. Specially trained in hand-to-hand combat if the scars on the knuckles say anything about it.
"And you are?"
"I represent a board of constituents who are interested in you, Mr. Hattori." The man continued, this time in English. His dialect and word choice betrayed him as an American.
"Is that so?" Heiji replied in English.
The man squatted in front of him, resting his elbows on bent knees as he stared the chained detective down from behind his sunglasses. Heiji suddenly felt very self-conscious. "But those constituents aren't why I'm here," the man said, squatting down and reaching inside his jacket. Heiji's fists curled behind his back, and didn't relax even when the dark-skinned man extracted an envelope and a pair of scissors.
"I'm here on delivery."
With a snap, the man cut apart Heiji's bonds, moving so specifically that the detective could clearly see the gun strapped to his body. There would be no chance if he tried to grab it and escape. So Heiji resisted the urge to grab it, and instead accepted the envelope when it was offered to him.
"You'll stay here to solve this one," the man said, still in English. "I'll be outside the door. You have four hours this time; otherwise, I'm under full jurisdiction to shoot you, even if it takes four hours and point oh one seconds. Kapish?"
"Kapish," Heiji said, and the man in black opened the door. Raising a hand above his head, he pressed a button on a small device, and Heiji knew without looking that his time had begun. The iron door slammed shut with a bang, and the tanned detective was left alone.
Heiji's eyes immediately flicked to the pipe, which was easily in reach if he stood on the table. His mind quickly did the calculations, was it worth wasting time to fetch it? Would the man be able to hear the screech of rusted metal? Would he be strong enough to take out a guy with a gun with rusty kendo skills? Was it worth risking his life, when he knew everyone was working so hard to rescue him?
Heiji shook his head. First things first. He took quick inventory of what he knew from the last code.
The clue had been simple enough to figure out once he actually got the hang of it. The assassination alibi gave Bev her ending. Thanks to those students, it had clicked instantly: an anagram. Ending didn't refer to her death, but the last letter of each word, which combined to E, N, I, E, V, R, and G.But Enievrg didn't make any sense, meaning it was a palindrome as well.
It took a few minutes to switch the letters around in every possible order. One of the solutions was VIGENERE. Heiji knew he had heard the name before: Blaise de Vigenère was a French cryptographer in the sixteenth century. He had developed the Vigenère Cipher based on the ideas of Giovan Battista Bellaso. It involved several Caesar ciphers in which letters were moved down the alphabet in accordance to a key number. But Vigenère used a table of alphabets consisting of the English alphabet written out twenty-six times in different rows, each alphabet shifted to the left compared to the previous alphabet, corresponding to the twenty-six possible Caesar ciphers.
All Heiji'd had to do was figure out the key word that had been used to encrypt the message: that was in the clue, too. The assassination. What other case to solve than a murder?
The code itself was TCJWSJUU. Using the letters of the word "murder" to fill out the character limit left him with MURDERMU. And using the cipher code he found in the library, he had deciphered the word to be HISTORIA: the Spanish word for history.
In other words, the case Heiji was meant to solve had taken place in the past. Heiji was reminded dully of the Detective's Requiem case. At least he'd had Kudo with him that time.
With a pretty good idea of what to expect next, Heiji finally looked at the next code:
HGZTML
And the clue:
When in doubt, chant backwards in Hebrew.
Heiji knew it was another cipher. He doubted it would be another Vigenère, but it was worth a try anyway. Thirty minutes passed as Heiji struggled to recall the complex graph from the encyclopedia. In the end, his guess was correct; no matter what combination of words and letters he attempted, nothing came from the Vigenère cipher.
Heiji wracked his brain. He didn't know any Hebrew, but would his captor know that? Did he expect all his victims to be fluent in every language imaginable? That was pushing it a little bit. Maybe it was something to throw him off? Was it meant to be discarded?
As the minutes passed, Heiji experimented a little with different letter combinations, different code keys he had solved in the past, and anything else he could think of. With an hour of his time remaining, Heiji finally looked once again at the clue.
Hebrew. Was that the language the letters would rearrange themselves in? Did it have to do with the type of cipher? And why backwards?
Heiji didn't know the Hebrew alphabet. Well, he might if he tried to remember hard enough, but the dark-skinned teen didn't trust his mind under that kind of pressure. He would spend too much time remembering than solving. Normally, he worked well under pressure, but never before had his life been so desperately hanging in the balance.
So Heiji substituted Hebrew for the English alphabet, which he absolutely knew without thinking.
ABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRSTUVWXYZ
And backwards would be
ZYXWVUTSRQPONMLKJIHGFEDCBA
Heiji scribbled messily on the spare sheets provided in the envelope. Resting his chin in his palm and chewing subconsciously on the end of his dull pencil, the detective's eyes roved over the letters and picked apart each sequence, flitting occasionally to the original code.
Finally, it clicked. Heiji didn't know what to do with himself; the solution was so simple. One of the easiest codes in the book! Seriously, this kidnapper was losing his touch; the first cipher had been much more difficult. Was that why he had less time than before? Heiji wasn't complaining.
He still had ten minutes left. Heiji once again cast his eyes at the pipe. Ah, what the hell.
Heiji stepped carefully on the table, distributing his weight carefully so it wouldn't creak. He ran his hands along the rusty metal, searching for its weakest points. Heiji didn't even know if he had the physical ability to rip metal from the wall, and it didn't even occur to him he might suffocate in this windowless room if the pipe was transporting some kind of gas from one end of the building to the other.
The steel was cold, and in the deafening silence, Heiji couldn't hear the whispery breath of gaseous matter racing through the metal tube. Taking a deep breath, Heiji gripped two sides of the pipe and pulled, willing the metal to bend under his touch.
"Five minutes!" The man called from the other side of the door.
Heiji cursed quietly, giving one last yank before he finally felt the metal give a little under his hands. The trapped detective let out a successful breath, stepping down from the table. He had confirmed the metal was malleable, and as long as he wasn't moved from this room, he could dedicate a little time to dislodging his only hope of his own escape.
Heiji rapped loudly on the thick iron door. "Oi, Mr. Bodyguard!" he yelled in English. "I've solved the stupid code."
Keys jangled loudly, and the tall man reentered the room. He deliberately placed a fist on his hip, moving his jacket backward to once again flash his weapon. "Collect the papers in the envelope and hand it to me," he ordered.
Heiji sucked his teeth and did as he was told. When the man had what he wanted, he told Heiji to sit at the table, and when the detective had done so, the man promptly handcuffed him to said table.
Heiji was starting to think these guys were a little too cautious.
The man waved the envelope as he strode once again through the entrance to Heiji's cell. "Good luck, detective," he said, a hint of sarcasm in his tone. "Let's hope that insightful brain of yours has saved your life again."
Heiji wanted nothing more than to beat that guy over the head with the steel pipe over his head. When the man had left, Heiji looked again at the pipe, noticing the yielding metal only because he was looking for it. A miniscule smile curled his mouth, and he laid his head on the wooden tabletop.
Bring it on, he thought. Hattori Heiji ain't goin' down that easy.
You can read more about the Vigenère Cipher on Wikipedia; it took me a while to actually figure out what it meant and how to encrypt it. But once you figure it out, it's actually simple. It was really interesting to learn about. Thanks to everyone who tried to figure out the code! Can you get the next one?
I'm aware this is a short(er) chapter than the rest, but I really wanted to get this out to you guys. I'm sorry again for the long wait, but I already have part of the next chapter written, so look forward to it!
Until next time!
Coming Up: Chapter 11 – In Which Takagi-Keiji Makes a Discovery!