A.N.: Thanks for all the amazing reviews! They do wonders for my mood :)

Chapter Fourteen: April 3rd

You're excluded, you backstabbing Bishop.

The police had immediately categorized Haru's disappearance as a kidnapping and the media had immediately accused the Director of it. They assaulted him tirelessly and pitylessly. I saw him on TV that night, as he tried to enter his house, and reporters shoved their microphones under his nose and asked him questions like "Aren't you ashamed of what you've done already? Why did you have to kidnap an innocent child?" or "Where is Rook? Will you tell us?" From the background I heard shouts of "Monster!" and "Pedophile!" and he just took it, tight-jawed and hard-eyed, trying to push them aside, his bodyguards no longer strong enough to protect him.

I could understand their logic: the perpetrator of a crime was usually the one who most benefitted from it. And no one benefitted more than the Director, whose trial had been postponed until Haru was found. That could give him and his friends the time they needed to work their bribes into the justice system, in exchange for a more lenient sentence, perhaps. The other possibility, that he'd made Haru disappear for good, made me want to vomit, so I pushed it to the very back of my mind.

I don't think there was a single citizen in Tokyo who believed him when he declared, the following morning, that he had nothing to do with the kidnapping. In the eyes of the public he was already guilty.

I wasn't so sure. The Director was a smart man. He wouldn't have placed himself in a spot where he was the only suspect, especially with the whole city already against him. I believed that was exactly what the real criminal was after: to frame the Director, to make him out as more of a monster than he already was. So who would benefit from that? The first answer was simple: all the orphanages in Tokyo. The harder the Willow fell, the higher they would be able to rise. But they wouldn't dare resort to kidnapping children so soon after the scandal, when the awareness of orphanages and their dynamics was at its maximum.

Who else would want the Director's demise then? At the moment, every outraged person in Tokyo. A pretty darn high number of suspects, if you asked me.

But I had one suspect that I couldn't seem to get out of my mind. Alright, he wasn't a very likely suspect, and I was aware that pursuing him shouldn't be my foremost priority in this moment, that it would mean too many wasted hours which the real criminal could use to slip away. But Coil had intrigued me. I was certain there was more to him than he cared to reveal. Why didn't he want to show his face? What was the case that kept him so occupied (if such case existed in the first place)? Why did he believe that three children (more accurately, only Bishop) were the best agents to solve his case?

(Not that I doubted my own abilities, mind you. I already had an idea, or the prickling of an idea, of where this case with Haru was headed, and, if I was right, then we had nothing to fear. But I wondered why Coil placed such a large amount of trust in me. It felt as if seeing how I performed as a detective was more important to him than finding Haru, like his curiosity was more important than the life of my friend. I didn't like it.)

I swore to myself that, once it was over, I would answer all of those questions. If Coil was in Tokyo, then I would find him. Besides, I wanted to meet the man who would have been the best if not for L.

Since the headwork got me nowhere, the following morning I accompanied Sandra and Olm to Gwenn's house to inspect the crime scene, as Coil had requested. While they searched the room for pieces of hair or skin the kidnapper might have left behind, I sat on my bed and thought about it all again.

My gaze swept over the room. The three of us had been sleeping here, Sandra, Haru and I, him inside his fort and us in our beds. The way to his fort, the furtherest distance possible from the door, was plagued with toys, chess pieces, candy wrappers and Lego. I found it hard to believe that an adult had reached the fort, grabbed Haru, and returned to the door without tripping or making a noise to wake us. And Haru might be a coward, but if he'd been conscious, he would have at least screamed.

Then there was the window. The window was much closer to the fort, just besides it, in fact. It had been closed when we woke up that morning, but that didn't completely rule out the possibility... I walked over to it, pulled on the handle and opened it. The screeching of wood on wood was so loud and unpleasant Sandra and Olm stopped what they were doing and covered their ears. "Stop that immediately, detective," Sandra barked in my direction.

"Sorry," I apologized. There was no way we had slept through that concert. So the door it was, and by process of elimination, that left only two possibilities. Either Haru had been knocked out cold before being taken out of the room, or he went willingly, knowingly avoiding the toys so as not to wake us.

After two hours of examining every surface for fingerprints, Sandra and Olm were exhausted. "He didn't even disturb the toys," she complained, stomping her foot on the ground comically. "How are we supposed to find this guy?"

Olm grimaced. "Everyone knows the Director or his cronies did it. We should just ask Kira to kill him." Sandra shot him a glare, like every time he mentioned Kira.

I set down the Lego block I'd been examining carefully. "Kira only kills murderers." It was red, but had no smiley face. Where was the block with the smiley face?

"For all we know, Haru's dead," he shot back. "So he's a murderer." Sandra hit him hard and told him to shut up and keep working. Shortly after, there was a knock on the door, and Inspector Gwenn walked in, carrying a plate with glasses of lemonade.

"You won't find anything," she warned as she handed one to each of us. I straightened up from where I'd been searching under the bed and took a glass. "The police have already gone through it. I have already gone through it."

I gulped down the liquid, welcoming the cooling sensation in my throat, while Sandra answered something along the lines of "We might catch something you missed."

My eyes crossed with Inspector Gwenn's as I set the glass back on the tray, black against black. She held my stare for a moment, and then lowered them with the excuse of making sure that nothing on the tray spilled. "Do you have any leads?" I asked slowly. The inkling of the idea turned into a seed of suspicion, which I uncomfortably cast away.

She sighed. "No, not yet. For the moment we're just combing the neighborhood. Hopefully one of the neighbors has seen something."

Lunchtime found us in the bathroom, huddled around Sandra's phone, making our report to Coil. Sandra had assigned to me the task of remembering the number, so I was the one who dialed, and so they never found out about Coil's change. "There's nothing," she repeated into the speaker. "The toys are all where they were before we went to sleep. There isn't a single hair or a fingerprint."

"Then don't look for fingerprints," Coil's voice replied, bored. "Sometimes it's no use to look for things that shouldn't be there. Look for something that should be there, but isn't." I pursed my lips. The block with the smiley face wasn't there. And then it dawned on me, and the seed was back, blooming into a full-fledged carnivorous plant. When Sandra hung up and pocketed her phone, I asked her for it, telling her that I'd take it to the kitchen to charge since it was low on batteries.

As soon as she was gone I flipped it open and dialled. Coil picked up straight away. "Good morning, Bishop."

I went straight to the point. "Haru wasn't taken by force. He left the room willingly."

He was slurping something again, and again it reminded me of Rainbow Jam, except this time I didn't have one in my pocket, so it only made me jealous. "Really." He didn't sound very surprised. I frowned.

"You already knew?"

"Given what you told me yesterday about neither you nor Queen waking up, it was the most likely explanation," he deadpanned. "The other possibility was that he'd been drugged before being taken out of the room, but it was less likely." He paused for a moment. "So? Do you have evidence?"

I started chewing on my hair. He really was good. "His favorite Lego block is missing. If he had time to pick it up and take it with him, he must not have felt very threatened."

"What was the block like?"

"Red with a yellow smiley face."

"When did he show it to you?"

"The morning before his disappearance."

"Who are the people closest to Haru, apart from you three?"

"Jun spends a lot of time with him in his fort. Gwenn too."

After the volley of questions he remained silent for a moment.

"Coil," I tried. If I wasn't in detective mode in this moment, I wouldn't have been able to say what I was about to say. But we had to consider all the possibilities if we wanted to find him.

"Yes?"

"They're suspects." And snap! The jaws of my idea closed over the two unsuspecting flies.

I thought about their reactions when they'd learned of the disappearance. Gwenn, calm and composed. Jun, enraged. I'd known Jun all my life, and he was a very bad liar. I had trouble believing he had been faking it all. And Gwenn... I'd only known her for three months, but she was kind too. She had paid for Haru's specialist, she was concerned for him. How could either of them have kidnapped him?

And yet, the truth was they were probably the only people Haru would have trusted enough to follow out of his castle and out of the house. And he must have been following someone. I didn't think he could have been brave enough to leave his fort, his sanctuary, by himself in the middle of the night, what with his paranoid nature and all. "There's a high chance they're the kidnappers." But why? Why make Haru go missing?

"Yes," Coil replied, completely unphased. "Seventy percent."

Just so he would know I still was planning on investigating him later, I added, "You're a suspect too."

"Hm. But only two percent. Haru wouldn't have trusted a stranger enough to follow me willingly. But Inpector Gwenn has been his mother figure for the last three months, and Jun his father figure for his whole life before that. If they had told him to leave the room, he would have obeyed." A pause. A slurrrrrrrp. "You, Bishop, his best friend, are four percent."

Well, I couldn't keep accusing Coil of being a suspect if my percentage was higher than his. Instead I ignored his last comment and declared, "I'm going to interrogate them."

Looking back on it, I realize that my investigative method was quite risky. I tended to challenge potentially dangerous suspects head on. I had challenged Inspector Gwenn at the station when I thought she could be an ally of the Director and I had confronted Coil about being the kidnapper. Now I wanted to confront Gwenn and Jun again, even while knowing they had Haru in their power.

To this day, I haven't changed. I guess there is something perversely exciting about telling a person you suspect them of a crime. Not only is it useful as an intimidation tactic, but it puts them on their guard, which makes for a much more interesting game than if you caught them unaware. It's no fun to win when your opponent isn't even aware he is playing.

Regardless, at that time, I wanted to interrogate Gwenn because I wanted to find Haru. The challenge was only a secondary motivation.

Coil agreed with me. "Yes. That is the best course of action. They will most likely admit to it straightaway. When you're done, report to me again." He gave me a different number, and hung up.

I glared at the pink phone for a moment. I'm not done with you, Coil. I'll find out what you're hiding.

Then I turned around, and froze.

Because there, leaning against the kitchen counter with her arms crossed, was Sandra, staring straight at me.

Her face was carefully expressionless, but her eyes were blazing with anger and betrayal. Just looking into them made me want to hide inside a cupboard. My blood started roaring in my ears.

I'd never found a utility for swearing, save to insult Olm and annoy the adults. But right then only a last-second reflex prevented a very, very bad word from escaping my lips. Instead I managed to keep my face blank. Sandra's mouth thinned, and then she stalked over and tore the phone from my hands without a word, twisting my fingers in the process.

I moistened my lips. "Hey, uh, Coil called again, and I just picked up."

She whirled around, and immediately I realized I shouldn't have said anything. The expression on her face was terrifying. "I might not be as smart as you, but I'm not stupid, Jaylin," she said darkly. "I followed you when you left the bathroom. I've heard everything, from the beginning."

My tongue was heavy. "Why?"

She scowled, her gentle face twisting into an angry mask. This wasn't supposed to have happened. The likelihood of Sandra or Olm suspecting of my cooperation with Coil was practically nonexistent. "Why? Because I wanted to make sure you knew how to charge it, that's why. But look what I overhear instead! If you had discovered a hint to find Haru, why didn't you tell us about it?"

"I just thought Coil should know first-"

"Shut up!" she ordered, and I did. "We were supposed to be a team, to work together! We were supposed to investigate together!" Each of her words was like a sharp needle into my stomach. "You weren't supposed to hog all the glory for yourself!"

I panicked. My hand dove into my pocket and I started stretching the elastic so much it broke and singed my fingers. "I didn't want to hog the glory, I just had to tell him..." I tried, speaking so fast the words blurred.

Her scowl deepened. "Whatever." She turned around and walked out of the room, but paused just before reaching the door. "I'm gonna be the one interrogating Gwenn and Jun. You're excluded, you backstabbing Bishop."

My shoulders sank as I watched her go. It's just a children's quarrel, the more rational part of my mind whispered. She won't stay angry for long. But the look in her eyes when I'd first seen her was burned in my brain with a searing hot knife. There were few things that made Sandra really, truly angry, but being lied to was undoubtedly at the top of the list, and I had lied to her, in more ways than one. My insides churned painfully. This wasn't supposed to have happened! How could I have been so careless? I should have gone outside to talk to Coil, or...

I ran after her. You don't need Sandra for everything, Bonman's voice kept repeating. But I did. Sandra was the one who taught me which corridors to take to avoid Bulldog Bertha. She was the one who tied up my laces when my fingers were still too slow and clumsy to do it properly myself. She was the one who drilled into me that stealing was wrong, no matter how little food the orphanage put in our plates. I needed her. "Wait, wait!"

She looked back, her eyes cold.

"I'm sorry," I apologized, gasping for air.

"Hmph," she shrugged, and kept walking as if I hadn't said anything.