Thanks to all my reviewers!
"Tell me again why we agreed to do this stakeout tonight?" inquired Satou of Takagi with a sleepy yawn. She covered the yawn with her hand before halfheartedly sipping at a now lukewarm cup of coffee that she decided was far too bitter after the first sip. But I need every drop of caffeine, it's two in the morning and I've been up nearly eighteen hours...
"Well, it was that friend of Conan's- Hattori Heiji the tantei from Osaka. He seemed pretty sure that the same guy who dressed up in Kid's suit and shot the guard will show up and try to take the Buddha statue that this museum has on loan right now." Takagi gave a sleepy glance at his partner sitting in the passenger seat and sipped from his own lidded Styrofoam cup after he replied. "I also checked up on Hattori a bit with a contact I have down in the Osaka PD and I was told that he's extremely reliable, which is a big part of why I agreed to at least check this out. Quit yawning by the way, don't you know that it's contagious?" he muttered ruefully before letting out a yawn himself. "Ugh, I wish there was some other store we could go to besides that store down the street. This coffee is like like acid-flavored mud with milk mixed into it."
"Better than no coffee at all, Takagi-kun, though I agree with you about the taste," grinned Satou through her grogginess before forcing herself to take another sip of the awful brew and suppressing a shudder once she was done. "So Hattori Heiji was friend of Conan's. Have you ever wondered about that boy, Edogawa Conan? I sometimes find myself wondering if he's even really a boy at all. He seems so much older than he is sometimes."
"Eh, every now and again I do wonder, but I figure it's maybe because he's around that other tantei who always seems to be at our murder scenes- Megure-keibu's friend Sleeping Kogoro. The boy must be used to deaths after being around that guy for so long, and I'm sure that his interest in being a detective springs from being around Kogoro as well." I'll tell you who I really am in the afterlife... Takagi had decided quite awhile ago to keep that conversation between Conan and himself that they'd had in the elevator that day while defusing the bomb strictly to himself, and to just be grateful that he was on their side for the time being.
"Maybe." Satou shrugged and stared out the windshield into the clear, somewhat chilly night that was harshly illuminated by the streetlight at the end of the alley they were parked in for purposes of surveilling the museum that housed the statue. "But I feel like there's something more to it than that, something I can't quite place my finger on..."
Just then, the conversation came to an abrupt halt as both of them spotted a rather large flash of white heading down the street in the general direction of the museum. "He's wearing Kid's outfit again," growled Takagi as they both leapt out of the unmarked patrol car, wide awake thanks to having seen their burglar heading towards the museum- just as Hattori had predicted.
The kid and I think that this guy may be after these statues. The one in the library is part of a set of 16 that an American guy had made a long time ago that his relatives seemed to just kid of let scatter after his death. Hey, he's already killed at least once to get his hands on one, and there's another case in England that's really similar to this one...
"Just be careful, remember that this isn't the real Kid and that this guy has killed before," muttered Takagi as he and Satou raced towards the museum. "He may wear Kid's costume but he definitely doesn't play by Kid's rules."
"Same to you- be careful," came the quiet reply as they split off to the left and right sides of the library begin their search for the false Kaitou Kid- a search that would hopefully end in his apprehension and arrest.
"On the roof!" Takagi suddenly heard Satou cry out a few moments later, surprised and a little angry at her so casually giving away her position. He then looked up to see the white-clad, caped figure running across the roof of the library. He quickly spotted a downed fire escape that the wanna-be Kid must have used to try and climb up and decided to follow suit, not caring if he made a lot of noise going up since the thief already knew that there was at least one person there.
"FREEZE!" he shouted, drawing his service-issue pistol without hesitation and aiming it at the white-clad figure's back. The too-tight suit was really straining at its seams as the person slowly lifted their hands above their head. If it's possible, that suit seems even tighter than it did when we looked at it on the video... "Now turn around and face me. Very, very slowly, and keep those hands way above your head while you're doing it."
"Can't we talk about this? I was just out on a pleasant evening stroll-" asked the impersonator as he slowly turned around with his hands up exactly as Takagi had requested.
"Mm-hmm. I'm sure you were, Kaitou Kid" replied Takagi, not wanting to let the guy know that he knew that there was no way that this overweight clod was the suave, slippery International Criminal 1412. "Satou, I have him over here," he called while never removing his gun or eyes from the bloated white suit. He heard his partner's footsteps cautiously approaching a few moments later, her own gun drawn and aimed squarely at the criminal as she circled around and flanked the would-be burglar's left rear side at a distance.
"Alright. Get down on your knees, nice and easy now," snapped Satou as the thief slowly got to his knees before she carefully approached him and placed the handcuffs on him.
It was just about at this time that it hit Takagi that this was way too easy. Granted, the guy was most definitely not the Magician of the Moonlight, but still. It was almost as if...as if...
"Shit!" he cried aloud in the midst of a sudden epiphany as Satou helped thier now-handcuffed suspect to his feet with a confused look on her face, not used to hearing her partner actually curse aloud like that. "Bring him with us, but we need to get inside as soon as possible!"
"Why? We caught him." Please don't tell me he's going delirious from lack of sleep...
"Because we were meant to catch this guy! I thought that suit looked too tight! He was a distraction!" Takagi yelled, angry with himself for not realizing it sooner as he waved for Satou to follow him down the fire escape. Satou tried her hardest to comply as quickly as possible with a handcuffed thief in front of her deliberately dragging his feet just enough so that he wouldn't get in trouble with the woman currently holding a gun to his back.
"I have something that belongs to you."
Kaito looked over at Heiji in puzzlement, not quite sure what the Osakan tantei meant. The three had decided to meet up a Jii's house after the announcement that Kaitou Kid had finally at long last been caught- because, of course, the three knew that that was a load of hooey.
"Hakuba knew that it was wrong, too," commented Kaito with a pointed glance over at Shinichi after they had finished discussing the events of last night. "He's trying to investigate you by the way- I found your name and some questions written under it on one of his stacks of paper today. I told him to lay off but I know him- It probably went in one ear and right out the other."
Unfortunately, that's probably all too true. I know how a tantei can be better than almost anyone, after all. Stubborn as hell, especially when you're told to stay away from something... This had been the main reason that Shinichi had decided to not flat out tell the other tantei to back off. He had sensed that Saguru would be the sort to only dig in his heels further when told to move. Of course, he was unaware of Heiji's attempted interference, as well as Kaito's, so he didn't know that Hakuba Saguru was in the midst of a rather determined session of trying to track him down. "Well, he should be worried about the killer, not me," Shinichi finally sighed as he slumped down into the couch.
"So, what did you have for me?" Kaito inquired, finally remembering Heiji's earlier statement. Heiji reached over the side of the couch and revealed a large evidence bag that he'd brought with him. "It's lucky I'm my old man's son- they actually left me in the evidence room just long enough so that this could go missing," he said with a grin as he tossed the bag to Kid. "I didn't see any reason for them to hang onto it. Here ya go." Kaito let out a gasp as he opened the bag.
"My-my outfit," a wide, genuine smile spreading across his face as he lifted out the wrinkled, dirty white suit jacket. "Needs cleaning badly, though...and some stitching up. Good grief, the guy who stole this from me must have used a shoehorn to get into it, look at all these popped seams!" he groused angrily as he investigated the holes in the armpits and very-close-to-ripped seat of the pants once he had inspected those as well.
"Well, that's the thing. We really don't think that the guy they caught last night was the actual killer," explained Heiji. "The cops are keeping something secret about last night, something they weren't even willing to tell the kid and I. But we can make an educated guess."
"We think that they guy they arrested last night wearing that suit was a decoy- someone the real thief and murderer hired to distract the cops." Cupping his head in his hand, Shinichi added "Of course, that begs the question how he knew that there was going to be a stakeout. It was kind of a last-minute decision on the police's part to go along with it."
"Maybe he has a police band radio?" offered Kaito as he began digging around and eventually extracted a sewing kit from a zipper compartment in his backpack. "I have one in my secret room at my house, but decided that using was like cheating so I haven't used it in months," he continued as he began repairing the outfit with expert hands.
"You sew?" asked both tantei simultaneously.
"Well, not really, but I had to learn to fix my suit up- and how to clean it properly too, in case Mom isn't around to do it for me. Kind of difficult to take this outfit to a cleaner or a tailor's after all, since it's on the news a lot" Kaito replied with a smirk before refocusing on patching up the outfit.
"What questions did he have written down about me?" asked Shinichi suddenly a few minutes later. "I need to know what to distract him with."