Kaito rubbed tiredly at his right eye, trying to clear the blurriness from it as he stared at the screen of the evidence room computer. The vision in it had never been quite the same ever since Scorpion's attempt to kill him; though the bullet had shattered his monocle instead of actually hitting his eye, the shards of it had still caused damage. He still had some sight in it, but it always got worse whenever he was tired.
As soon as he was done at the police station, he was going to head home and climb in bed, taking advantage of the fact that it was a weekend to sleep in.
Focusing back in on the task in front of him, Kaito scrolled through the evidence database, trying to find a list of what had been recovered from the heist locations. Alone in the darkness of the evidence room, every click of the mouse felt incredibly loud, as if the sound might draw someone to come investigate. In reality there was no way it would be able to be heard outside of the room, but Kaito's already strung out nerves delighted in conjuring up scenarios where his presence was discovered.
It wasn't like it would be that big of a deal if he was discovered though, he reminded himself. He'd made sure to prepare some sleeping gas to bring with him ahead of time, so he could just knock anyone out who had the misfortune of entering the room while he was still there. It would have the side effect of likely alerting people to the fact that someone had broken in, but he'd be long gone by the time they discovered that fact. Besides, even if they managed to figure out that the break in had to do with KID, they'd be likely to attribute it to an assistant given the circumstances.
Having successfully reassured himself that things would be fine, Kaito let his worries slip away as his gaze caught sight of a file named 'Kaitou KID Nakajima Manor Heist'. Clicking on it, he grimaced at just how small the font was, just whose bright idea was it to write a report with the font size at nine? Rubbing at his eyes once more to clear them, he leaned forward in his chair and squinted at the screen.
In response to the heist notification delivered by Kaitou KID, claiming he would attempt to steal the Azure Moon from Nakajima Manor at 2:30 am on Thursday, officers were present at the Manor in preparation for an attempt to capture the thief. As promised, KID arrived at precisely 2:30 and…
Kaito quickly skimmed past the part describing how exactly the theft had gone down, having been the thief in question, he already knew what had happened. It was what came later that he needed to know, after he'd been shot and fallen to his death. He shuddered slightly at the thought of it. Would there ever be a time, he wondered, when he would be able to think about what had happened without a sense of panic welling up in his chest?
It took another three paragraphs to get to the point where what Kaito had decided to refer to as the 'incident' happened, the police had included a lot more details about their attempts to capture him then he had expected; not that having a written version of events they could review seemed to do much to help their performance.
Teenage Detective Hakuba Saguru had reached the scene ahead of the rest of the task force, having taken a more direct path in following the thief.
Kaito couldn't help but let out a quite snort up reading that, he was pretty sure by a more direct route, they meant that Hakuba had tried to copy his acrobatics and take the same path he had. That would have been fun to see.
According to the statement Hakuba gave, KID had been examining the stolen gem when he arrived, initially ignoring his presence and only addressing him once he'd finished. Hakuba claimed that the thief had seemed nervous once he'd finally turned his attention away from the gem, and he believed the events that followed may not have come entirely as a surprise to KID.
Kaito grimaced, he'd had his suspicions that Hakuba had noticed something was off about him that night, but he wasn't thrilled to have them confirmed. As both a thief and magician, his ability to carefully control not only his facial expression but his entire body, was one of the most powerful tools in his arsenal; for Hakuba to have picked up on his unease was worrying, he couldn't afford to be slipping.
If it had been Kudo, he didn't think he would have been so bothered. The two of them had worked together on enough occasions—, that while there were still plenty of secrets between them—, they understood each other very well. Kudo picking up on something he was trying to hide wouldn't have been too unexpected, but he did his best to keep Hakuba at arms length, so his insight was concerning.
There was nothing he could do about what had already happened though, he'd just have to make sure he didn't slip up like that in the future.
Not wanting to read the part of the report that described him actually getting shot, he didn't need to experience that again, Kaito quickly skipped past it to try and find where they talked about the investigation.
Following KID's fall from the roof, a call was made for a forensics team and several officers were sent to search the grounds for any trace of him. A large pool of blood was found in the dirt directly beneath where KID had previously been standing on the roof, and initial estimates suggested that it to be a life threatening amount.
Due to the weather taking a turn for the worse and beginning to pour rain, the decision was made to not wait for the forensic team and to attempt to take crime scene photos before the scene was destroyed. No blood evidence was able to be collected due to the rain.
No sign of KID was found aside from the blood pool, and a trail of footprints leading away from it. Given the amount of blood loss KID sustained, it's likely there was another person waiting to bring him away. Whether it was an assistant of KID or an ally of the shooter remains unknown.
It was reassuring to know that hadn't managed to recover any blood evidence from the scene. Kaito was pretty sure they didn't have anything to compare it to even if they had recovered some, but there was no telling what could happen in the future.
Past incidents of gunfire have been reported at KID heists, and while they had previously been considered isolated incidents, in light of this most recent incident the possibility that there's a group targeting KID is something that should be considered.
The report ended after that, leaving Kaito with some answers but still plenty of questions. Leaning back slightly in the computer chair, Kaito rubbed at his chin thoughtfully. He wasn't sure yet whether it was a good thing or not that the police were beginning to suspect there might be a group after him. It would make it more likely that they'd manage to capture Organization members when they showed up at heists, but it could also put them in danger if they tried to investigate.
He was the one who had started this war against the Organization, he didn't want anyone else to get hurt because of it. At the same time though, if he didn't involve the police then he wasn't sure how he was supposed to take down the Organization, not without crossing a line that he wasn't prepared to cross.
He really needed more information about the Organization, and so with that in mind he turned his attention back to the computer, clicking open the search engine. Unlike the search engine in a web browser, this one was much more limited, only accessing files that were on the police station network.
Tapping his fingers against the desk, Kaito furrowed his brow in thought as he tried to figure out what keywords to input. It was a pity he couldn't just type something like 'Tell me about the Organization that's trying to find Pandora?' and get the answers he needed like that, but it was a search engine for case files, not a crystal ball.
Finally he typed 'jewel thieves' and 'murder' into the search bar, and hit enter. Somewhat to his displeasure, there were a lot more case files related to those keywords than he expected, and he doubted he'd have time to go through all of them. Even if he wasn't as worried about someone finding out he was there as he had been earlier, he was still in desperate need of sleep; he couldn't afford to hang around much longer. He'd look at just a couple of them for now, and then he could come back some other time and go over the rest.
Realizing he was treating the police station as if it had a revolving door for him to easily come in and out of, Kaito couldn't help but let out a soft laugh. It really was a good thing Nakamori had no idea about the kind of things he got up to outside of heists, his heart would definitely suffer otherwise.
The first two files he skimmed through weren't very useful, their contents about different jewelry store robberies that had ended with the thieves turning on each other. The third case file was different however, not because it had any useful information, but because he couldn't read it.
"Oh come on!" Kaito muttered, staring at the prompt asking for him to input a security code. He should have expect that some of the files would be restricted, it would be really dumb of the police to just leave highly sensitive information where anyone in station could access it, but it was still annoying. If he really wanted to then he could probably find a way into it, but that would take time, and ideally equipment that he didn't currently have. It seemed he was done for the day.
Letting out a sigh, Kaito shut down the computer and stood up, rolling his shoulders to release the tension in them. Hunching over a computer for over an hour hadn't done his muscles any favors, especially not after having slept sitting up the night before, his whole body was permeated by a dull ache. It was only going to get worse though, he still needed to crawl back through the vents to get out of the station.
Moving until he was standing directly under the vent in the ceiling, Kaito reached up to grab hold of the wire that was attached to a playing card he'd left lodged in the grate and yanked on it, the force enough to pull it open. The wire still wrapped around his hand, Kaito leapt up and pulled himself into the vent, using the walls to pull himself up further into it. Once his entire body was in the vent, he yanked on the wire again, pulling the grate shut once again and freeing the playing card from where it had been lodged.
With no evidence left of how he'd entered the room, Kaito carefully crawled through the vents, a grimace on his face at the tight quarters. He wasn't worried about getting stuck, the vents weren't so small that that was a danger, but it was still uncomfortable. If more builders could consider the poor thieves who might end crawling through their vents, then that would be great.
Making his way to the point where he could leave the vents was slow going due to the need to avoid making any kind of noise that might make someone want to investigate them, or worse, shoot. He'd had that happen before once while scouting out a location for a heist, he'd made a little too much noise in the vents and a trigger happy security guard had decided that shooting at them was the best way to get rid of the rodent he'd thought had got in. The bullet had luckily only grazed his leg, and he'd gotten away without being caught, but he'd been extra careful in vents ever since.
"Hey, did you hear about what happened at the KID heist yesterday?" The sound of footsteps followed by the voice of a police officer floated up to Kaito's ears from the hallway beneath him, and he froze momentarily, his attention drawn by the mention of his other identity.
"Kashiwagi-kun said he was shot…" A second voice said, their tone uncertain. "But Satoru-san said it was probably just a trick…"
"It wasn't," Came the first officer's firm reply, "I was there, and there was no way that was faked." The officer took a deep shuddering breath. "There was so much blood, Yukito, I think I can still smell it. I don't know how anyone could have survived that."
The voices of the officers were getting farther away from Kaito as they walked away from him, and so against his better judgment, he began crawling through the vents again. He knew doing so was risky, especially since he was moving faster than he had been before, but he wanted to know what kind of opinions the police had.
He already knew what the official stance was thanks to the report he'd read, but he wanted to know what the individual officers thought. It wasn't just so he could gauge how well his plan of using his now nonexistent injury to create a further separation between Kaitou KID and Kuroba Kaito would work, thought that was a major part of it, but also because he wanted to know how the members of the task force were dealing.
He wasn't the slightest bit ashamed to admit that he was quite fond of those who had been assigned to capture him; sure they might want to lock him up and stop him from succeeding in his goals, but it wasn't like they really knew what those goals were, and it was clear that none of them wanted to see him hurt. He already knew that Hakuba was shaken up by what had happened, and from what Aoko had said it seemed likely that Nakamori was too, but he didn't know about the regular officers.
"...do you think he's dead then?" The officer who had been referred to as Yukito asked in a hushed voice, as if he was committing some kind of taboo by voicing such a question. Which, to be fair, there were certainly some people around who it would be.
"...I don't know." The first officer admitted, and Kaito took the risk of peering through a grate to try and see his expression. He somewhat regretted it when he recognized the officer, it was one he'd seen frequently at heists before; his name was Nakahara and Kaito had given him a flower during the last heist because it was his birthday.
Some birthday that had turned out to be.
"It's Kaitou KID, you know?" Nakahara continued, gesturing vaguely with his hand, as if it could help to get his point across. "No matter how much we plan things out or set traps, he always finds a way around it and comes out on top. The KID Ki…" Nakahara quickly cut himself off, the nickname the media had given Conan no doubt feeling inappropriate given the situation. "That one kid is the only one who ever really gets close to matching him, and even he hasn't caught KID! I want to think that's true even now, but…"
Nakahara and Yukito had moved too far ahead for Kaito to see their expressions anymore, but from the sound of Nakahara's voices it was clear he was struggling not to cry. Realizing that was like a punch to the gut for Kaito, and he hated the fact that there was nothing he could do yet to reassure the task force he was still alive. For his plans to work, he still needed to wait a couple more days before he could send back the Azure Moon, with the injuries he'd received it wouldn't be believable for him to be well enough to do so yet.
He'd have to do something to make up to them later.
"They haven't found a body so far," Yukito pointed out, "That's a good sign."
"That we know of," Nakahara cynically told him. "We don't actually know what KID really looks like, he could have managed to change outfits before dying and then we'd never know."
Kaito winced, thinking about his father's death and how even now people like Nakamori had no idea the KID he'd originally chased was already dead. Sometimes he really wished he could tell him, that he could let the inspector stop chasing a ghost and move on, but it was too dangerous.
"Why was someone even trying to kill KID?" Yukito asked., "I've never been to a heist before, but from what I've heard he doesn't seem like a bad guy. I mean I know he's a criminal, but he usually returns what he steals, doesn't he? And he doesn't hurt people."
Nakahara was silent for a moment before replying. "I don't know, Yukito. KID is a nuisance, but you're right that he's not a bad person. I think someone would have to be a pretty awful person to want him dead, and I can't imagine how KID would have gotten involved with anyone like that."
If only you knew, Kaito thought, as he heard the two officers open a door and turn into a room off the hall. He'd have to change his course to follow them, and there was no point in doing so, he'd heard all he needed. It was time to head home.