Sorry. Hope the wait is worth it!
"Once again, I have no idea what you're talking about."
Satou and Takagi looked at each other and sighed dejectedly before returning thier attention to Hakuba Saguru, the meitantei who had been brought in (well, walked in) and subsequently treated for a gunshot wound to the forearm late last night. Luckily the damage hadn't been too severe since it was a small .22, but the bullet had dug in just deeply enough to require surgery to remove. The hospital had decided to keep him for a day due to the fact that he had undergone anesthesia, as well as to make sure that the wound was healing and not trying to become infected. Unfortunately for the pair of keiji, it appeared that Saguru's provided after-surgery pain medications had done little to dull his sharp mind, which he was currently using to rather unsubtly and forcefully stonewall them. Then there was also the fact that this particular blonde-haired teen was the only son of the Japanese police commissioner- stepping on those particular toes was something that any police officer needed to be delicate about even in the midst of a massive investigation.
"Alright, Hakuba-kun. Let's go over this again and see if it helps your recall any." Takagi flipped open his notepad and read off the details that he had provided. Well, more details that had been drug out of Hakuba with a massive effort on his part as well as Satou's sheer persistence. "You saw the report on the news that ran yesterday afternoon, and deduced that this statue would probably be stolen as well. And you showed up to try and prevent the theft and got shot at before the robber later made off with the statue."
"Exactly." Saguru shrugged slightly, still somehow managing to look fully collected and imperious even with a light, flexible cast around his left arm, a pair of IVs coming out of his other arm and not being dressed in his usual perfectly tailored three-piece suit. He was currently wearing a short-sleeved dark blue hospital gown, with a thin, stiff light blue comforter and surgically clean white sheets wrapped lightly around his chest and equally white-clad pillows propping his back up. "I already told you what happened. Repeatedly, I might add. I honestly don't see why you keep rehashing it." He settled back down into his bed a bit and sipped the hospital's tea, which he made a subtle but distinct disgusted face at before setting it aside, apparently disliking the flavor.
"There were a few things we found at the scene of the shooting and robbery that seem to say there was perhaps a little more to it than that." Satou's immense patience was beginning to wear thin at this point; the signs were subtle but Takagi had become familiar enough with his partner's habits to know that she was on the verge of beginning to pace the floor back and forth in front of the hospital bed in an agitated staccato, her substitute for simply reaching out and throttling what they needed out of whoever they were currently interrogating. Of course, he suspected that at least part of that frustration lay in the fact that the both of them had figured that Hakuba would cooperate fully (he was a meitantei, after all) instead of...well, Takagi wouldn't call it outright refusal to part with information, more of an extreme reluctance. Either way, both he and Satou had the distinct feeling the boy knew far more than he was telling about what had gone on at that storage facility last night.
"Like what exactly?" This was asked in a tone of genuine curiosity, and Takagi wondered if he was correctly picking up on what almost seemed like an anxious or worried undercurrent swirling beneath Hakuba's mild-sounding question. Why is he being so uncooperative? Why do we have to practically pry details out of him about last night with a crowbar?
"To begin with, there was the little boy's blonde wig that we found at the scene. It wouldn't even fit the head of most people over twelve or thirteen." Takagi raised his eyebrow just slightly; Satou was playing their trump card, the one that they hoped might finally elicit some reaction or better yet some elucidation about last night from Hakuba. Try as the pair might, they had not been able to come up with a good reason for a child's blonde wig being there other than an adult trying to squeeze it onto their head in a desperate attempt at disguise (perhaps digging it out of a dumpster en route to the scene or something) or an actual child having been there that had been wearing the wig. But if it was a child, why the need for a wig?
"That's strange indeed." Saguru then glanced down at the pocket watch that was open on the bed in front of him and lifted it up with his right hand. "Now if you'll excuse me the doctor is due in here at any moment to check on this wound." This was said in a dismissive tone and the investigators exited the room slowly as they both brushed past a dark-haired girl who had just entered the room, getting the uncomfortable, somewhat irritating feeling that they had just been played for fools and had wasted thier time.
"I'm telling you, he knows something more than he's telling about last night. Actually, probably quite a lot of somethings," muttered Satou in a huff to her colleague as they moved rapidly towards the elevators that would take them down to the hospital's lobby. "The question is why he won't say anything that we don't have to wring out of him first. He should know better than that." She pressed the down elevator button with a sharp jab that visibly showcased her pent-up steam before beginning her pacing ritual while they waited for the elevator to arrive.
"You don't suppose that he might have been involved in whatever happened last night? I mean, beyond showing up there and getting shot at that is. There is the still unanswered question of who dropped him off here at the hospital last night, after all." Oh, he and Satou had both asked, multiple times in at least three different ways hoping that his carefully constructed wall of obstinacy would crack, but Hakuba had danced around the question(s) with the practiced, adroit ease of someone all too familiar with the techniques that the police used to try and worm things out of people.
"That's a distinct possibility," commented Satou darkly as a soft, pleasant ding and down arrow flashing indicated that one of the elevators had arrived. "I can't think of any other reason for him to be so evasive," she finished as the pair stepped into the elevators and the doors closed behind them.
"Nah. Never seen a logo like what you're describing to me before, though to be honest I'd probably have to actually see the thing to be certain of that." Heiji's reply to Shinichi's inquiry about whether the strange golden bird on the chess piece was something he'd ever seen or heard before was not what the shrunken meitantei had wanted to hear. "How good is the camera on your phone? Can you send a picture?"
"I can try sending a photo in a picture message, sure. Don't know how well the picture will come out though. Hang on a minute; I need to find a good place to do it at." Shinichi began surveying the route home, thankful that Ran was busy at karate practice so that she wasn't there walking him home like she normally did.
"What are you looking for?" The strange male voice behind him made Shinichi leap upward slightly with a start before he turned around and realized with a flare of irritation that it had merely been Kuroba Kaito using a deep voice. The other boy's carefully suppressed snickering told Shinichi that the magician had elicited almost the exact reaction from him that he had been hoping for.
"Don't do that again," Shinichi snapped before beginning to walk a bit more rapidly, trying to find an alley where he could safely take out and photograph the strange, expensive-looking chess pawn. He finally spotted a likely-looking alley and turned into it. "Sorry Hattori, took me a bit to find an alley," he muttered into the phone after he realized that the other meitantei was still on it. "I'll send it in a minute, I'll have to hang up to take the picture though. I'll call you once it's sent, OK?" His face went pale as he unzipped his backpack after hanging up to find that the chess piece was no longer there.
"I didn't know that Fabergé ever made a chess set," commented Kaito airily as he appeared at the end of the alley where Shinichi was digging through his backpack, the missing pawn in his hand. "Was this what you were looking for? I thought it looked a little out of place in that backpack full of school supplies," he added with a roguish grin as he finished approaching the other boy. "Sorry, I couldn't resist."
"WHAT THE HE-" began Shinichi before realizing that Kaito had recognized the bird logo and finding that his anger had completely evaporated, replaced by the excitement of finally getting somewhere. "Fabergé? Wait a minute, isn't that the company that made all those fancy jeweled eggs back in the late 1800s to early 1900s?"
"That would be them, yep. And this bird right here-" Kaito turned the pawn so the strange bird was facing Shinichi- "is their logo. In fact they still use it today, though they don't make those eggs any more." At Shinichi's puzzled look, Kaito shrugged and added in a quiet voice "Hey, I'm a thief. I've picked up a little bit of knowledge about the finer and more expensive things in life." With that he handed the pawn back over to Shinichi, who leveled a mildly annoyed glare at Kaito before placing it back into his backpack. "That pawn seems pretty old, though. Maybe once he gets out of the hospital Hakuba could figure out whether it's an antique or not. Sure looks like one."
"Maybe." Shinichi wore a slightly guilty expression as he looked up at Kaito. "Do you know how he's doing? He did land in the hospital because he took that bullet for me, after all."
"Doing well enough to annoy the investigators that dropped by his hospital room earlier," laughed Kaito as the pair stepped out of the alley. "I guess that Koizumi Akako, a classmate of ours went and visited him when they were leaving his room, and both of them looked really irritated, or so she told Aoko a little bit ago." His expression suddenly grew very serious. "I wonder how much Hakuba told them about what went on last night, although I'm hoping it wasn't much and it might not have been if they were irritated like that."
"Well, if he told them too much about last night he would only wind up incriminating himself, remember. He's the one that tucked the statue in his pocket after all. They could get him on robbery charges if they knew that." Of course, he could drag Hattori and I both down with him too...if they believed his story that is. "Are you certain about that logo? It's Fabergé's logo?" Shinichi found himself rather suddenly wanting to change the rather uncomfortable (for him, at least) subject of the rather insane undertaking that they had all participated in last night. He was still coming to grips with the fact that he'd actually committed or burglary- or rather that he'd been willing to commit one if Hakuba Saguru hadn't beaten him to it.
"Yes. But like I said, I never heard of them making a chess set. Maybe that's why someone is stealing those statues; they know that the chess set is hidden in them. The whole set would probably be worth a small fortune to the right collector if it's vintage Fabergé from thier older stuff, after all. Oh, there's your house. Not going to get any closer, I don't want your girlfriend coming after me with a broom, she seemed about ready to last night" he added as Shinichi blushed furiously before Kaito started taking off down the street towards the bus stop.
Gaah. He's so irritating! fumed Shinichi as he tried to will the blushing down a few notches before finalizing his approach to the house. Well, I can at least let Hattori know what we've got. I'll confirm that it's the Fabergé logo first by searching for it on the Internet, but Kuroba seemed fairly confident about what it was. At least they had some more clues about why the statues were so hotly pursued...Now they had to try and catch the person or group that was quite willing to murder to get their hands on them.