Logically, there was little difference between one side of the table and the other. There was one door, opposite him, and the handcuffs fastened to the center of the table were closer to his side of the table than the other. And that was where the differences ended. Two chairs of similar design faced a table surrounded by three plain walls and one entrance/exit.

But Shinichi was more familiar with being on the other side of the table, not handcuffed and left to ruminate while the police scurried about, collecting evidence against him.

He could only be held for 48 hours under suspicion of a crime, he reminded himself. And once they realized that KID had impersonated him, purposefully left incriminating evidence to indict Shinichi, and staged the entire confession of guilt, once they realized those things, he would be free to go.

The door opened and a pair of officers entered the room. One of them stayed by the door while the other sank into the chair opposite him, setting out the most incriminating piece of evidence yet.

It was a screen shot from a traffic camera.

One that clearly showed a time stamp in the corner, and Shinichi and Ran walking together at the exact time that he had been caught in full KID regalia, holding the night's target and bragging about his success.

As soon as this was sorted out, he was going to go to jail for killing the Kaitou KID.

"You can see that it isn't looking good for you, KID," the officer said, tapping a finger on the picture. "We have proof that Kudou Shinichi was nowhere near tonight's heist.

"Obviously, that's the KID pretending to be me! You should do another test-"

"Your fingerprints register as those of Kurosaki Minato, a man currently serving a life-time sentence."

"There are fingerprint seals on my fingers! If you would take them off-"

"You must understand that we cannot permit any officer to come any closer than what I am currently. Your ability to mimic our officers and use magician tricks against us, they make it impossible to treat you as we would any other criminal, KID." The officer spread his hands and gestured to the officer standing guard at the door. "We cannot even question you one-on-one."

He was genuinely going to murder the Kaitou KID. Every fantasy he had about inconveniencing the thief could always be reworked into a unsolvable murder. He'd seen enough to know what not to do.

"I am asking you for the final time to cooperate with us, KID. You will be allowed to hear our evidence against you and to contact a lawyer in one hour. Please use this time to reflect."

The officer pushed away from the table, collecting the photograph and leading his partner out of the room.

Shinichi groaned and thumped his head against the table. The only lawyer he knew who would treat this seriously was Kisake Eri, and calling Ran's mother to explain the situation was not something he wanted to do.

Absently, he thought over the faces of the two officers that had been sent in to see "KID." He didn't recognize either of them from the task force, but that could have been intentional. The task force officers were a persistent and loyal bunch, but being in charge of being professional to the man who had made all of them, at one point in time or another, the victims of humiliating pranks, it would have been asking too much. Nakamori was likely being kept in another building entirely, the temptation at having the Kaitou KID captive too appealing to pass up.

Twenty minutes into the hour, another pair of officers entered the room, an older man and a young woman. The older man took station at the door, while his partner sat primly in the seat across from Shinichi. She folded her hands in her lap.

"Are you here to read the evidence against me?" Shinichi asked, pulling once on the handcuffs in irritation.

"No. I have a list of questions I would like you to answer for us, please," she said, the faintest hint of kansai-ben to her voice. Shinichi nodded, trying to use his thumb nail to scrape off the fingerprint seals that the KID had pasted on when he'd swapped their clothes. It wasn't working.

"What brought you to the Beika Museum?"

"KID's heist. I'm Kudou Shinichi, and I was trying to catch the KID."

The female officer hummed, placing a clipboard on the table and starting to transcribe his answer. Shinichi ignored the placating and disbelieving tone.

"What happened when you arrived?"

"I was checked by the task force before I was permitted to enter the museum," Shinichi said, keeping his eyes on the table as he tried to use the handcuffs to scrape the seals off instead. "KID planned to take the Dragon's Eye emerald at 8 o'clock. Nakamori-keibu and thirty officers in riot gear had the display location sealed off. I was checked again when I entered the room. Five minutes before eight, KID released a concentration of knock-out gas and colored smoke into the room. Five minutes after eight, he was running for the rooftop with myself and three officers from the task force in pursuit."

"At which point in time, KID switched your clothing, escaped to the streets of Beika to engage Mouri Ran in conversation, and left you with a recording that announced KID's successful theft," she finished, left hand moving quickly across the page.

Shinichi scowled at the reminder.

"He did," he maintained. "I am a victim of circumstance and KID's warped sense of humor."

"How familiar are you with the Kaitou KID?" she asked, pausing in her transcription to meet Shinichi's eyes. She had very pale eyes, nearly light green in the light of the interrogation room.

"I've been chasing him for-" and he stopped. Because Conan had been chasing the KID for years, but Shinichi had only been to three heists before this one, including the Ekoda clock tower. "For months. But I've read about his exploits in the papers for years."

"But it sounds as though you know KID better than that," she responded, eyes sharp over his faltering. "Well enough to understand KID beyond what is released in the papers."

"I'm a detective. I can read a little more into something written in the papers." And the fact that he was there for most if not every heist, albeit not in the shape anyone would ever guess, certainly helped.

She nodded and went right back to transcribing his answers, the scratch of her pen the loudest sound in the room. Apparently satisfied, she moved on to the next question.

"You said you've been chasing after the Kaitou KID for months, correct?" She didn't wait for his nod to continue on. "Upon investigating Kudou Shinichi, we've noticed that there's a three year gap where no one aside from your parents and a few family friends can produce any evidence at having met you in person. Curiously, this time line nearly aligns perfectly with the Kaitou KID's revival debut. Isn't that interesting?"

Shinichi looked up sharply, eyes narrowed as he considered this new information. His shinking had happened not too long after the Ekoda clock tower heist, and the few temporary cures he'd taken over the years had been sporadic. But to insinuate that he'd been pretending to be the KID...

"I became involved in an international attempt to expose a criminal syndicate," he said, staying close to the original story. "Because of safety concerns, I had to limit contact with those around me and minimize exposure."

"The criminal syndicate apprehended by the FBI?"

"Yes." He watched her scrawl her answers instead of trying to remove the seals. Her clipboard was angled so that he couldn't see the words on the page. She wrote by flicking her wrist, limiting what he could guess about the words based on her movements.

"The same criminal syndicate that had members arrested for the attempt assassination of the Kaitou KID? We have arrested several men after heists carrying sniper rifles who were then transferred into FBI custody."

"They were after the KID."

"And you." She tapped the blunt end of her pen to the clipboard. "You claim that they were after you, as well."

"They were!"

She didn't say anything, but he could read her assumption in the line of her shoulders and tilt of her lips.

"This isn't the first time this theory was suggested," she said. "Two years ago there was a terrorist attempt that took control of Suzuki Jirokichi's blimp. Officers from Division One were in pursuit of the aircraft when they were asked to divert and retrieve Kudou Shinichi and Edogawa Conan."

Shinichi really didn't like where this was leading.

"Of course, the officers discovered they had really been diverted to pick up the Kaitou KID, claiming at the time to be Kudou Shinichi. Now, doesn't it seem unlikely that Kaitou KID would masquerade as Kudou Shinichi just to return to the airship when there would have been plenty of other opportunities for a disguise? Especially when Edogawa Conan was known to be both an enemy to the KID and distant relative to Kudou Shinichi?"

Not when the true Kudou Shinichi had been the one to suggest the plan and grant permission to the stupid thief to disguise as him. Of course that lapse in judgment would come back to bite him.

"Witnesses reported that the Kaitou KID rescued Edogawa Conan, and hours later both the KID and Conan were back on the blimp. Edogawa Conan himself reported that he had no idea why Kaitou KID would pretend to be Kudou Shinichi, except that he knew his cousin had connections to the police."

"What are you asking?" Shinichi interrupted, cold sweat starting to bead on the back of his neck.

"Someone created false testimony. Either Edogawa Conan was lying when he said he didn't know why the KID would pretend to be Kudou Shinichi, or Edogawa Conan lied about the fact his cousin is an international jewel thief to take advantage of the ties Kudou Shinichi has with the police."

"This is all supposition and twisting the facts. I would have to have been-"

"Hakuba Saguru submitted a profile he created several years ago after collecting a possible DNA sample from a strand of hair suspected to be KID's. Height: 174 cm. Weight: 58 kg. Blood type: B. Age: 15-17, at the time. Vision: 20/20. IQ: 400. Skills: vocal mimicry, perfect disguises, magician tricks, pranks, and traps, can operate heavy machinery as well as a hang glider, planes, motorcycle, automobiles, and home-crafted rocket-powered toys. Possible vices: difficulty ice skating, boastful, excessive arrogance and pride, narcissistic-"

And Shinichi realized with horror that he fit within that profile. Shinichi, as he had been before the apotoxin and life as Conan, had been the perfect suspect for being the KID. Was obviously still a perfect match for who they believed the KID to be.

They had much more against him than he'd thought. KID's little trick was turning out to be far more dangerous than he'd thought.

"Well, you can see where all of this is headed." She smiled at him, slightly, a polite expression he'd expect to see on anyone delivering bad news. "You're in quite the situation, KID."

"I'm not KID," Shinichi said, "We might be the same blood type, but we're bound to have different DNA. You could try to match-"

"The DNA sample Hakuba-san collected is not sufficient enough for our department to base a full profile upon. The initial strand could only present a blood type and age group, as the DNA markers were not matched when sent through our database. All other supposition was gleaned through extensive interactions with the Kaitou KID."

"But I'm not-"

She sighed heavily, placing down her pen and flattening out the clipboard. His eyes were drawn to the motion and he froze as he realized what he'd assumed to be a transcription was actually a blank page, now no longer blank and sporting a familiar note complete with doodle and signature.

"You're-!"

"Finally, he gets it. Honestly, tantei-kun, how hard could you have been thinking to have missed all of the clues I'd laid out for you?" The female voice was gone, leaving only the mocking and reproachful tone of the Kaitou KID. "This uniform is far too short and exposed for regulations." He gestured to the mini skirt and blouse open to show the creamy swells of cleavage. "My partner is obviously far too old to still be a junior officer." He pointed at the man at the door who, while in shape, was far too elderly to be mistaken for any new hire. "And I have asked you a series of questions about Kudou Shinichi that no one in the entirety of Japan's police force was clever enough to put together."

Shinichi's mind went blank with rage. He lunged over the table at the thief.

Well, he tried.

He was caught by the handcuffs around his wrists. KID's eyes had widened, but he hadn't moved away. Instead, he'd leaned forward, resting his elbows on the table and exposing even more of his cleavage.

"So angry~ It can't have been that bad," KID purred, lips curling. "You've only been here a few hours."

"I'm going to end up right back here soon," Shinichi growled. "Because I'm going to kill you in a way that no one will ever forget."

"That's not a funny joke, tantei-kun."

"Am I laughing, KID?"

"Don't worry about anything. I cut the feed to this room when I entered. And I staged a bit of a show before then. You're free of suspicion since KID was seen prancing through the city, having recovered his costume and the Dragon's Eye. The only reason you haven't left yet is because I've gassed the department." KID grinned, wide and fearsome. "Once they come to, they'll let you free."

"The very first thing I'm going to do, when I see you again-"

KID leaned across the space between them and kissed him, smothering his rage under a passionate kiss. Shinichi's eyes were wide open, staring at the thief's own closed eyes. KID's lips were soft, pressure that was firm without being forceful, and a wet swipe over his closed mouth could only be KID's tongue trying to slip inside.

He squeaked, a humiliating and high sound, and then KID's tongue was in his mouth. It didn't occur to him to bite it until KID was pulling away, sucking on Shinichi's bottom lip before sitting back on his side of the table.

"That's the very first thing I'm going to do when I see you again, tantei-kun," KID pressed his fingers to his mouth, the entire female disguise suddenly more obvious and eye-catching than before, because KID had lipstick on and Shinichi could taste it. He'd gotten used to seeing KID's face under his disguises, but now he could only picture the thief's lips painted red and wrapped around –

"KID!"

"Catch you later," KID said, winking at him and then standing. He ran suggestive hands down the front of his uniform, readjusting the fake cleavage and tugging on the incredibly short hemline of his skirt. Shinichi's eyes followed his movements without input from his higher brain.

He collapsed in the chair, lightheaded at how quickly his blood had rushed south with that kiss.