Author's Notes:  This fic's been haunting me and I think I've got a handle on what I'm doing again.  Go me!  If you recall last time I said I'd try to get these up faster but ff.net went down so…  Anyway, here's hoping to keeping my promises. And I'm crafting my plot twist very carefully now.

Arigato to mya, saKura^silver, KayJuli (I have to say I love 'The Power of Two Hearts'), kY, Silex, Rhea (*cough* your agreement *cough*), nightshadow, chibicherry, reveileb maerdyad (I'll try for longer chapters if I can), Tenshi no Kijutsu, The Great One, Kitty Neko.

This chapter is dedicated to Silly*Niecy:  I haven't heard from you in while.  Wow.  You just didn't wait to get through this whole fic.  I'm glad you've got a suspect list up; there're some interesting ideas you bring up.  By the way, I like poison dart frogs; they kill you if you eat them, sorta like last revenge type thing.  Anyway, thanks for blearing your eyes late at night to read it.

The Hunt For A Cherry Blossom

Chapter 10:  The Letter

The media are bloodthirsty when they smell award wining journalism or at least a really, really good public interest story.  Well they hit the jackpot that morning.  The letter was published the next morning, luckily embedded a few pages back of the front page.  The front pages were taken up by a conspiratorial public official accused of corruption.  Kami-sama bless the weakness of human nature.  However, it wasn't by any means unnoticed.  Reporters kept jamming up my office phone, following me around. 

Invasion of privacy I can partially handle, but having Touya Kinomoto threaten me over the phone and then at his home was probably the equivalent of an unanaesthetized root canal.  Watching him stomp up and down the living room, spouting off the most venomous things he could think off, accusing me of not doing my job, echoing each word of that stupid letter, I began to wonder that perhaps he might have kidnapped her.  Then I laughed at myself, careful to keep a straight face as he continued yell and shake the house by its foundation.

I find myself placating him with meaningless "The media's unstoppable.  We told them we had no comment."

Of course in Touya fashion he flings me the copy of the newspaper, shouting to the high heavens.  "Then how the hell do you explain this?"

I scan over the short little article, tracing along the words.  "They must've found out somehow.  I didn't have anything to do with it, I'm sure."

He snatches up the gray paper from my hand and starts reading.  "Dear Police, I hope this letter finds you well.  It's awfully boring around Tomoeda these days.  So what you do say to a friendly game?  The prize?  Sakura Kinomoto.  Sounds fun doesn't it?  I'll give you two weeks to prepare.  I'll make the first move.  Don't worry; I won't keep you waiting."  He finishes with a sneer and throws the paper again at my face.  "What the hell do you say to that?"

I'm barely able to keep my patience and prevent my fist from smashing itself satisfyingly into his face.  "I'm telling you; we're trying to trace the letter now.  We're police, not psychics."

He starts to lurch toward me but his father makes a move to quiet him.  Fujitaka shakes his head.  "No Touya, this doesn't solve anything."  He looks years older from when I last saw him.  "This is all crazy isn't it?  Her disappearance, the letter.  It's all mad." 

I nod.  "There may be a truth in that.  We're looking into the files of the criminally disturbed.  We may be able to find a clue."  I take a quick look at Touya, inwardly fuming on the adjacent sofa.  "And as much as I hate to say it, we may have to wait for his first move."

As I predicted, Touya leaps off the couch, face squeezed hard into a ball of fire.  "What?!  Are you insane?"

I raise my voice.  "What we've observed with criminals like this kind is that they are very self-assured that they'll get away with whatever they did.  And in many cases, they make careless mistakes that lead us to them."

He isn't comforted and neither am I.  "What about Sakura?!  So we let him have her for what, another month, another year, hoping the guy makes a stupid mistake?"

I sigh heavily, myself getting up out of the armchair.  "No, of course not.  But you have to understand we can't make things pop up out of thin air.  I'm certainly not giving up on the case, but it takes time.  You're being unreasonable when you keep demanding that I magically find her as if I could just close my eyes and know where she was."

Luckily the doorbell rings and he stomps off to answer the door.  I shake my head exasperatedly and bid a hasty goodbye to Fujitaka.  "I know it seems like nothing's happening, but we're trying our best.  I'll contact you if anything comes up.  And don't talk to the media; the kidnapper's probably living off his public exposure."  I nod my head goodbye and make my way to the door.  Touya's talking to two shadows.  I'm a couple feet away when I make out, with excruciating horror that it's Daidouji and her boyfriend.  I shudder involuntarily and shuffle quickly to the door, giving a muffled 'hmph' of acknowledgement. 

A disembodied 'where's he going?' drifts pass me but I'm in my car in a second and driving down the street before I can catch sight of the boyfriend's stupid grin.

__________________________________________________

A week's elapsed since the letter.  Kaho's put a lot of the precinct to help locate the potential suspects, and the other half to deal with the reporters.  We haven't got much done, but we've eliminated various people.  I'm on the phone getting more and more annoyed as I'm trying to explain the situation to some woman.  "Mrs. Hanaka, we just want to talk with your son.  No, no, he's not in trouble; we just want to know where he was March 22.  Yes, yes, I realize that's quite a while ago, but if you can just tell us where he is…"

A slip of paper is deposited in front of me.  'Hanaka arrested March 20 for disorderly conduct.  Released March 22.'  I sigh and hang up abruptly on the woman, and tick off another name.  I flip through the next five pages of recent parolees, wanted criminals, suspects.  I grope around for my coffee mug, but land on top of someone's hand. 

"Feeling friendly?"  Hwang rolls his eyes above me.

I jerk my hand away, reminding myself to scrub my fingers with bleach when I get home.  "What do you want?"

He smiles falsely.  "The chief thinks I can help in your case."  I snort.  "Besides I've got your forensic analyses on the letter."

"And?"

He plops onto my desk.  "Nothing.  Prints on the envelope from the mailman and a post office worker.  No prints on the letter itself, common letter paper, no foreign fibers.  Mailed from downtown, stamped from the post office on 1st avenue, mailed on March 30."

"Great.  Very helpful," I say sarcastically.  I make a move of dismissal but another shadow bears down behind down.  I twist my head back and stare up at Chief Mizuki. 

She has her blank face on, hands crossed over her chest.  "Mr. Li, pulling overtime?  Can you see me in my office in fifteen minutes?"

I nod and she walks off.  Hwang's still on my desk, sitting like some masterless puppet.  "Why are you still here?"

He shrugs, fiddling with my penholder.  The sound of teeth grinding is loud in my head.  "No reason."  Finally after a strained silence of minutes and my glaring he leaps to his feet and disappears back into the lobby.

It's a gift he has for being able to annoy others so easily.  Just a gesture and you hate his guts.  This time I find my coffee cup, the cold and bitter liquid like motor oil down my throat.  I pick up the clipboard and start to go down the list again, my hand inching toward the phone.  I catch a sight of my watch and curse; I'm supposed to meet with Kaho now.

_____________________________________________

Kaho's hunched over her desk, magnifying glass in hand when I enter.  She looks up distractedly and motions me over.  "Take a look at this.  See anything interesting?"

On her desk is the kidnapper's letter and a singed and holed fragment of paper.  The burned paper had a sample of printing, straight, precise capitals and even professional spacing.  Both sheets, I realize belatedly have almost identical handwriting except for some slight blurring on the damaged fragment.  "They're the same."

She nods.  "That's what our handwriting expert tells us.  We think this guy's your kidnapper."

There's a surge of hope but it disappears in the wake of her grave face.  "Let me guess.  We don't know who this guy is."

"No.  He's some maniac that sends letter bombs.  The national security force has been looking for him for nearly a year.  In fact, the last Chief put Hwang on the case when one of bombs showed up in Tomoeda a few months back."

I remembered the incident; the unopened package in city hall.  It was the sensation of the time.  "Hwang?"

"Exactly.  He noticed the similarity in the letters, and with the corroboration of our handwriting expert, we think this guy may have kidnapped Ms. Kinomoto.  And that's why I'm partnering you with Hwang."

I feel my insides twisting themselves into vicious knots, my lungs seizing themselves.  I cringe at the thought of having to see Hwang's bird face every day.  "You've got to be kidding me.  There's no way in hell I'm working with that asshole."

Any semblance of good nature drains out of Mizuki's face, replaced by a deadly hostility.  "I don't care what you think Mr. Li.  Our goal is to bring Ms. Kinomoto back to her family safe, not make sure each of our detectives is happy.  You will be working with Hwang because he may have useful information…that is unless you want to step off the case?"

She perfectly knows I'd refuse to give up, and I grudgingly say "Understood."  I leave the office and make my way to Hwang's desk.  He's not there of course.  Why would he be?  "Yamakazi, where's Hwang?"

Takashi stops midstep through the precinct doors and turns to face me.  "Hwang?  He's gone home, just like I'm doing now."  He disappears through the doors into the night whistling.

I almost laugh in frustration, but instead ball my hands into fists and shake them in the air.  I upped myself with caffeine ready for working into the morning and now I'm left at a dead end because Hwang needs his beauty sleep?  Maybe I could pick the lock to his desk…

______________________________________________

A clipping from the newspaper lays under the round circle of light from a desk lamp.  The man scans over the article's contents and laughs to himself.  "Fools."  He bends back down over a white sheet of paper and various rulers.  His gloved hand takes up a ballpoint pen and starts to carefully scratch straight strokes up and down.  He finishes a 'N' and sits back to lets the ink dry.  Scrutinizing the letter for an extended moment he smiles satisfactorily and covers the paper with a piece of plastic wrap.  He shuts off the lamp and the only sound in the darkness is the smack of surgical gloves being snapped off. 

_____________________________________________

I knock hesitantly on the glass of the door, hoping that there'd be someone in.  A muffled 'yes?' comes from the other side.  I twist the knob and open the door to find myself in a stuffy, dim, musty office.  It almost has a horror movie feel.  The man at the desk looks up, his face distorted and comically arrayed by thick glasses and some kind of mini binocular type lens on the bridge of his nose.  "Uh, hi.  Are you the person that worked on the Kinomoto letter?"

He takes off his 'glasses' and rubs his eyes.  "Yes, what can I do for you?"

"I wanted to ask you about the letter.  I wanted to know if you could tell me how the person wrote it."

He nods and turns to his computer, clicking a few keys and motioning me over.  The screen is filled with two windows, both writing samples side by side.  I plead to myself that he doesn't start spouting off professional jargon.  He points to the first letter.  "See this?  See how straight these lines are?  He probably used a ruler.  And these angles?  They're 90, 60, 45 and 30, almost exactly.  Probably using an architect's T square and a triangle."  He moves over to another letter.  "But you see these curves?  They're all freeform.  Your suspect's got very good coordination and penmanship.  I'd rule out a doctor."  He laughs at his own joke and I force myself to smile a little.

I thank him quickly and escape the room back to my desk before some bloodthirsty monster can jump out from the shadows.  I've gotten as far as I can today so I decide to go.  Maybe I'll think of something at home.

________________________________________________

Author's Notes:  The next chapter's the first move.  And maybe a guest appearance by Hirigazawa.  =)