Disclaimer: I don't own death note.
Chapter 38
Strategy and Surveillance
"Wow, it's like we're a top secret squad assigned to go after Kira!"
"Matsuda!" Yagami scolded, "don't be silly! We're not fooling around here."
"... yes Sir." Matsuda pouted.
Yumi had been right about Matsuda, he was childish and acted compulsively, but that wasn't a bad thing at all. In fact. Yumi saw his carefree attitude strangely likable.
"One more thing. There's nobody in the NPA's task force office right now. That's no good." L pointed out, Yumi saw his point. "Take turns so one of you is always over there." he instructed.
"We'll do that." Yagami answered, "Aizawa, you be the one today." he ordered.
"Yessir. I can be back there in five minutes." Aizawa said.
He left and for the first time it was clear to Yumi that only five task force members remained on the case. The group worked through the rest of the day gathering information on the FBI agents that Kira had killed.
The next day started out much the same way, Ukita went to the station to answer the phones and the rest of the team began to search for video tapes that showed the FBI agents actions that day.
"That's all of the security camera footage we managed to find showing the murdered FBI agents. We're lucky we found this much." Aizawa informed L as the group began to watch the tapes that were piled up around the couch in the main room.
"So we have three of them on camera when they had the heart attacks; Knick Staek was in a Ginza department store, Raye Penber was on a platform on the Yamanote line, and Nikola Nasberg was in Ikebukuro bank." he continued.
"As for the others, the most we could find was where they're leaving their hotels." he finished.
Yumi and L remained focused on the three screens, though Yumi only bothered watching the one that showed Raye Penber. He was already being manipulated by the death note, even on the blurry video tape the red aura was clear.
He was the tail that Raito had tricked into giving up his name using the bus jacking.
"Can you play back the parts where Raye Penber goes through the turnstile, where he gets on the train, and where he dies? I'd like to see those again next to each other." L requested, Yumi looked up at him– because she was sitting on the floor by his chair– how had he narrowed it down to Penber?
"He enters through a turnstile on the west side of Shinjuku station at 15:11. That matches what's printed on the back of his pass." L began to explain as the tapes played through again.
It's not the clearest image, but that's definitely Raye Penber. We don't have to send this to the lab to see that." he continued, "he gets on the train at 15:13. Even if he was shadowing someone at the time, this image isn't clear enough to figure out who it might be."
"And right before he died... very strange..."
Matsuda and Yagami looked at him, Yumi also wondered what he was thinking.
"He gets on the train at 15:13 he dies the moment he gets off at 16:45." he mumbled, expecting everyone to hear him anyway.
"One full circle on the Yamanote line loop takes one hour, and he was on there for an hour and a half... but no other ticket was found on him, and nothing is printed on his prepaid card to indicate he got out and reentered." Yumi noticed this too now that it was being explained.
"Raye Penber received the file with the names and faces of all the FBI agents in Japan on his computer at 15:21. That's just eight minutes after he boarded."
"Penber sat on that train for an hour and a half with the file on him..." Yumi assumed the file was important, but no one had bothered to explain that to her.
"Kira can control people's actions right before they die. So I suppose we could just say that's the reason any of the agents acted strangely that day, but..." Yumi was shocked, she resolved not to underestimate L ever again, of course he would have had to figure that out to decode the notes left by the prisoners a while ago.
"What happened to the envelope?!" L exclaimed suddenly throwing the task force into a state of confusion.
"Huh?!" Aizawa asked.
"At the turnstile and on the platform, he's holding something like a manila envelope." L explained, Yumi knew paper fit in and envelope, she crawled over to the tv's and looked closely, there was an aura.
Why would Raito give Penber part of the death note then kill him? Wait did this have something to do with the file?
"Hey! Your right. He's definitely holding an envelope!" Aizawa called from Yumi's right side, he had gotten right up to the tv while Yumi wondered over Raito's plan, and his voice startled Yumi a bit.
"He's got it over here, too." he pointed to another screen, "I can't believe you noticed that, Ryuzaki."
"There was nothing like an envelope found on his body though." Yagami pointed out.
"Which would mean he left it on the train." L said, that made sense, in fact it made everything fit together.
If Penber had a file with the names and faces of the FBI agents, then instead of taking the file away from him, Raito gave Penber part of the death note and tricked him into killing the other agents, then he had him leave the pages on the train and killed him.
"Maybe... that envelope contained the file of the FBI agents in Japan..." Yagami suggested.
"And Kira got it from him, then made Penber get off and killed him." Matsuda chimed in.
"I thought he got this 'file' through a computer." Yumi pointed out. "And not until 15:21. Right?" she looked to L for conformation.
"Yes, Penber didn't have the file until he was on the train." L said.
"Oh, yeah..." Matsuda remembered.
"Get every station on the Yamanote line to give you all the footage they have for December 27th." L told Aizawa.
"Uh, okay..." Aizawa answered.
"And... this last image of Raye Penber... to me... it looks like he's deliberately trying to look into the train..." L commented.
"... and if he is, that's a clue?" Yagami asked.
"Wouldn't it be interesting if Kira was in there?" L wondered.
"You... couldn't be..." Yagami seemed unusually surprised by the suggestion that Kira even road the train.
"I agree, it isn't likely. If Kira can murder from afar, why would he bother going there...?"
"Still, he might have figured that's what we'd think and taken the risk of coming out in the open." L suggested.
"Well even if Kira was on this train, I'm pretty sure he wouldn't let himself be captured on a security camera with envelope..." he continued, "a public place like this, he would have checked the camera locations in advance and used the blind spots, if any. If not he'd hide behind someone."
"But if he is captured on camera with it, we could call him in as a material witness." L decided.
Yumi knew Raito wouldn't be caught on camera, but at the moment, all that she could really complain about was the fact that she would no doubt be stuck watching hours of security tapes with L.
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author's note: sorry short chapter, I'll try to write more in the future, but this one I had to copy a lot out of the manga and it took forever. Thanks for reading and thanks for the reviews!