A/N: So, here's the closing chapter to "The Vanishing Man" ark. This has actually stretched out much longer than I thought it would. Originally, I'd envisioned this as two, maaaybe three chapters. But, here we are, on chapter six. Well, to be fair, I did sort of write two 'intro' chapters, so I guess it's more like four, which isn't too far off the mark.

This chapter has also proved to be quite the mystery to me. It's been the hardest one to write yet. I think I've probably written ten subtly different versions to this chapter. (Ok, some of them not so subtly different. In one Ran corners Takagi in a hall and, after practically interrogating him, gets him to start researching where Shinichi's gone off to and what case he's on. I scratched that one as, obviously, that might screw up some plot developments. :P) Anyway, this isn't how I envisioned this chapter going, buuut, it's the best of the bunch.

As usual, tell me if there's any OOC parts, or any parts that you plain didn't like, or... Well, you probably get the picture by now, eh?

Miruial: I KNOW! I honestly thought (may be a spoiler if you're still going through the series. Be warned!) that the episode Shuichi died in, when Jodie took Conan's cellphone in to be tested for prints, that Takagi would check Conan's prints against a database and find that, 'hey what a surprise!', Conan's and Shinichi's fingerprints matched. Then even when he didn't say anything, I thought he'd show up and episode or two (or dozen) later and be like "Oh, and Conan, are you Shinichi by any chance?" Just maybe not in those exact words...

Chelseaj500: Haha well, as long as people keep reading, I'll keep writing. ^_^

As Conan spoke into Takagi's ear, he just kept nodding, periodically giving a grunt just as quiet as the whispered words and nearly as concise. Once the boy had drawn back, Takagi stayed silent for a second, thinking it over. It was possible, probable even, but it all hinged on one assumption. An assumption that could easily be proven or disproven. Easily, providing one were a detective with the police department, of course. "So you want me to find-"

Conan nodded, cutting the detective off. "I can't exactly tag along, so I'll wait in Kazuma-san's office." Takagi nodded once, rising to his full height.

"Do you need me to walk you back?" the detective asked, pausing as he pushed the door open.

Conan had to resist the snort that nearly sprang forth as he dropped out of the swiveling chair, replacing it with a small smile that grew slowly more sincere as he spoke. "I'll be fine, don't worry."

Takagi gave a short laugh, more a sharp exhalation and a grin than anything else. He looked like he was about to say something, then looked away, starting down the hall. Conan stared after him, confused by his reaction. It's not important, he told himself. Then he turned on his heel, running off in the opposite direction. Hopefully to meet again before too long.

When Conan had arrived back at the crime scene, his heart fell into his stomach. Something was wrong. Ran and Kogoro were missing. The forensics teams were packing up. Aisaka Taichi was in handcuffs, and inspector Megure was ready to lead him away. Finding his mouth full of cotton, Conan could only watch as the man looked around once more, that same sorrow coloring his eyes that Conan had seen before. No! Not yet! It's too soon! he was shouting in his head. He set his jaw, taking in the scene. Panicking wouldn't help him. He saw Tome, over in the corner, apparently supervising something. He would have to do.

Running up to the officer, Conan tugged at his sleeve. "Tome-san?"

Looking down, the officer seemed a little preoccupied, but nevertheless responded with a gentle smile. "Ah, I was wondering where you'd run off to. Usually you're jumping all over the place."

Conan gave a small smile in answer and his hand found itself at the back of his head. "Yeah... But," and here, he turned, looking pointedly at the inspector and the man in handcuffs to his side. "What's going on with Taichi-san?"

"Weren't you here? He confessed. He even had a little lighter fluid on his hands and clothes from earlier. He's going to be taken back for more questioning once we find a little more evidence."

Conan's eyes darkened minutely at the confirmation of his suspicions. Kuso. I knew it. But I thought we'd have more time. There's no way that he'll make it back here in time. I have to find a way to stall them.

"Say, Tome-san, did they figure out his motive yet?" he asked. He had to start somewhere.

"It turns out that he had a gambling problem, and one day he wound up in a lot of debt to Isao-san. He said that Isao-san was threatening him, and when that hadn't worked, he'd started threatening his wife. So he led him here, saying that he had just won a bet and had enough money to pay off his debts. Then he subdued him, tied him to the chair, and set the room on fire."

Good, at least I have a lot to work with. This guy couldn't have been more vague if he'd tried. "Subdued him?" Conan asked, voice rising a decibel higher than it already was. "How? Isao-san didn't appear to have any injuries, right?"

"There was a single blow to the back of his head made by a blunt object. Taichi-san said he threw it into the woods when he was trying to escape. We haven't found it yet, but we've got most of our people out looking."

Conan grimaced minutely. Time for the trump card. "When he said he 'lit the fire'... did he elaborate on how he did it?"

Tome blinked, seemingly confused. "We already figured that part out before he confessed. There was a cigarette found in the trash bin."

"Then how did he get lighter fluid on himself?"

Again, Tome took a moment to respond, this break longer than the first. "Well, he could have soaked the papers in lighter fluid, to make sure that the fire would catch."

Conan shook his head, a little faster than strictly necessary. "He wouldn't have gotten it on his clothes if he was just putting a little in a trash bin." Conan held his hands out in front of himself, as if holding a bottle of lighter fluid. "The only way that would happen is if he was holding it up really high and some of it splashed out. But if that was the case, we would have found some traces of it on the ground, too, wouldn't we?" He mimicked the actions as he spoke them, hands falling back to his side as he finished.

"Uh, well-"

"And wasn't there lighter fluid on his hands as well? I wonder how it got there?"

The forensics expert was left dumbstruck. Not necessarily that these comments were that enlightening, but because they had just come out of the mouth of a little boy. A boy who was still looking up at him expectantly. "There could have been some on the outside of the container," the officer started.

"But then wouldn't it have been really dangerous for him to light the cigarette if he had lighter fluid on his hands?"

Before anything else could be said, a group of three officers with 'CSI' embroidered on their uniform ran into the room, straight for officer Tome. "Sir!" The officer in the middle said with a quick salute, the two flanking him had their hands occupied with large plastic bags. "We found these a little less than 100 meters from where Taichi-san was found trying to escape through the woods."

Inside the bags was a pen holder, a little larger than a coffee mug, that appeared to be made entirely out of metal. The blood caked to the bottom was easy enough to see. The other bag contained a jacket, the front seemed to have a light spattering as well. However, this had nothing to do with the small smirk on Conan's face. It was just as he'd thought. One more nail in the culprit's coffin.

But now, the problem was time. If Takagi didn't return, and soon, things were going to go down hill. Fast.

It was then, when Conan noticed how the room was just a little too silent and deja-vu clawed at his sense, that he took a quick look around the room and found most of the officers staring at him with varying expressions of surprise. His heart seemed to stop in a moment of panic, searching to make sure that Ran and Kogoro were indeed still absent. His heart began to pump once more on this confirmation, but his luck only ran so deep. The phrase 'Be careful what you wish for' passed through his mind in a tauntingly sarcastic voice.

"Takagi-keiji!" Conan called. "Did you get those documents?" With that comment, every eye that had been trained on him focused in on the detective standing in the doorway, thick folder held under one arm.

Swallowing as his throat seemed to constrict to the size of a pinhole, the detective held the papers up in front of his chest. "Uh, yeah. Tachibana Mogi-san, the security guard, has been depositing a minimum of ¥600,000 a month, when he only earns a little under ¥300,000. We found some deposits of an unexplained origin going into his bank at the beginning of every month that are identical to deposits being made into Isao-san's account on the same days."

The inspector seemed to be catching on, giving the guard a firm, cold stare. "So what you're saying, Takagi-kun, is that Isao-san and Mogi-san were-"

"Business partners." Conan, captivating everyone's attention once more, took a few steps to the center of the room. If he was going to give away the killer, he was only going to do it once, and he wasn't going to repeat himself. Making sure everyone was paying attention, he continued. "Due to some problems with the budget on Nanyo's side, the last few years Mogi-san has been here alone at night. The empty school building has made a wonderful headquarters for their illegal gambling ring, and more recently their loan business. Isn't that right, Mogi-san?"

The man in question, the eyes of every officer in the room on him, had started sweating bullets in the last few minutes. "I-" His words caught in his mouth as he took his sweet time to gape at the child in front of him, laying bare all of the secrets that he'd worked so carefully to hide. "I've done no such thing!" he yelled. He was aiming for outraged, but fear was the predominant emotion in his tone. "Besides you dim wit, Taichi-san already confessed!"

That was it, Conan thought. That was all I needed. "Really? Because you seem awfully angry with me for pointing that out." His gaze fell to the floor then, bangs obscuring the way his eyes narrowed as he continued. "You'll probably be really angry by the time I finish then, Mogi-san. And by the way, what happened to your accent?"

Eyes like saucers, a frantic Mogi tried to repair the damage. "Wh-whatcha talkin' 'bout kid? I jus' learned ta talk two ways. Not a crime, is it officer?" he asked, inclining his head at the end in the direction of inspector Megure. As everyone's attention switched back to the inspector, like some kind of abstract game of attention tennis, it was actually Taichi-san that spoke first.

"So, Kazuma-san... Is innocent?"

"Yes, Taichi-san." Now the system was broken. People didn't know whether to watch the boy giving genius deductions in the middle of the room or keep an eye on the person in handcuffs, who was looking less and less like a murderer by the minute. "You see, Taichi-san only confessed to cover his brother. I suspect he also moved the bloody pen holder and coat out into the woods."

"Wait, so Taichi-san was here?" Megure asked.

"He was here all right," Conan said, still eyeing the floorboards as if they were the most fascinating thing in the world. "He walked in the room only moments after the fire had been started. He came here, looking for his brother who vanished yesterday or anything that might tell him where he'd gone. But when he opened the door, not only was he surprised to find it unlocked, but he realized once the door had shut behind him that there was a fire in the trash can. It only took another moment for him to find Isao-san dead in the chair. Or at least, that's how I'm sure he looked at the time. Taichi-san made a split-second decision that his brother had made a mistake and was trying to cover it up, and when he saw the two bloodied objects laying on the desk, he picked them up and ran off with them. He hid out in the woods, waiting for the police to find him and the murder weapon so that he could take responsibility for the crime."

Mogi was almost growling, features twisted into a snarl as he spat "You don't have any proof."

"But we do," Conan said, coolly as ever. "You'd planned on letting the jacket and the pen holder sit through the fire, so you never bothered wearing gloves. Besides, gloves would have been too suspicious, and Isao-san might have noticed that something was wrong before you'd had enough time to kill him. So you left the pen holder wrapped up in the flammable jacket on the desk, right next to where you knew the fire would be the most concentrated. But think. Taichi-san could have wiped off the prints on the pen holder, but I doubt he thought to remove the prints on the jacket itself. And if it was never exposed to the fire to begin with, then they couldn't have burned away, and they should still be there now."

"That's insane!" Mogi shouted. Clearly grasping at straws, his gaze jumped wildly from one officer to the next. "Who is this kid? Why are you all listening to him?"

Conan raised his eyes, the light glinting off his lenses, but it was the intense blue eyes behind the thin glass that rooted the grown man to the spot. "Edogawa Conan. Tantei-san."

"Takagi-kun!" On Megure's signal, the detective approached the murderer. To Mogi, the whole thing was surreal, and the world seemed to slip away. That is, until the moment he felt the detective's hand on his shoulder as he tried to get him to turn around to get the cuffs on. Then he went into a full blown panic.

"Get off of me!" he yelled like a paranoid mental patient, and with a shove the detective went sprawling backwards. Before Takagi had even hit the ground, Mogi was making a dash for the door.

Megure was the first to react, but too far away to do anything. "Stop him!" Mostly all that was left were CSI, and they didn't budge from where they were. One brave officer did try to tackle the fleeing culprit, but Mogi sidestepped him with ease, dodging his outstretched hand as he tried to grab him.

Conan had crouched down the moment the suspect had moved a muscle, reaching for the dial on the side of his shoe while his other hand was turning the dial on his belt. One let out a crackle like static electricity, and the other a quiet hiss as the ball inflated. "Hyyyaahh!" Conan drove the ball forward with all the power he could muster, shooting it off like a checkered rocket. His aim was true, smacking the man right in the back of the head with a satisfying thud, another, deeper thud sounding as he hit the ground.

Takagi was staring, wide eyed, at the suspect that the child had just taken down with a single kick. His handcuffs were still in his hand, and he'd yet to rise any higher than simply sitting up. A sharp hiss filled the air a moment later that made him flinch as the soccer ball deflated, flattening out next to Mogi's face, the force of the escaping gas blowing back his hair.

"Co-" a familiar voice had started from out in the hall, raised to a shout, but cut off quickly. Presumably when they noticed the unconscious man in the doorway.

"Ran-neechan?" Conan called back with a nervous rise in pitch. He knew he'd been forgetting something. Fortunately, her anger had been replaced with confusion for the moment, staring at the unconscious security guard with a deflated soccer ball next to his nose. He had to admit, though, it probably wasn't the strangest thing she'd ever seen at an investigation. Her head peeked around to look into the room, then tip-toed around the man as if she didn't want to wake him, her appearance seeming to have moved the surrounding officers into action for they finally secured a pair of cuffs around his wrists.

She stared at the man as he was hauled to his feet and walked out of view, then shook away the confusion. She wasn't unduly worried about him to begin with, and she was far more interested in the boy in front of her at the moment. "Conan-kun, where have you been? Dad's been ready to go ever since they arrested Taichi-san!"

Conan's eyes widened just a bit. "Taichi-san... Aisaka-san... I forgot!" He could feel it in his chest. That was the feeling he'd been having. Not that he hadn't noticed Ran was missing, but that he still had an unanswered question.

He took off at a sprint. The officers couldn't have gone far, just around the corner. "Conan-kun!"

He ignored Ran's calls, and even the footsteps that told him she was following him. He rounded a corner, but they were nowhere in sight. He kept running, taking in deep breaths. "I need to speak with Mogi-san!" he yelled. He rounded another corner, but still nothing. There's no way they could be that far ahead. Not unless they were running. And there's no reason for them to have gone a different direction, this is the quickest way to the parking lot.

Ran's hand fell on his shoulder, jerking him back and nearly toppling them both to the ground. "Why are you running?" she asked between panting breaths, exasperation coloring her voice.

He broke free of her grip with a twist, taking off again. "I'll explain later!" I'm running because if Kazuma-san showed up unexpectedly last night, he could have accidentally stumbled onto the two of them talking about something. And if they killed him... Isao-san's wanting to leave the business would make perfect sense. If he wanted to get out, Mogi-san could have killed him to keep him silent.

Conan burst out of the door, looking all around. There didn't seem to be any movement of any kind, save for the trees swaying in the icy breeze. He took a moment to catch his breath, great plumes of steam streaming out of his mouth like smoke from a dragon's snout. Where could they have gone?

Ran caught up to him a moment later, and this time she was not letting go. "Conan-kun!"

"Where did they go?" he asked out loud. Not that he expected her to know. Mostly he was asking himself. They couldn't have just vanish into thin air, but then, where were they?

"Come on, lets go home. It's late." Resigned to the situation, Conan took the hand she offered as she started to lead him back to the car, the cutting wind making him shiver. He purged the case from his mind, or at least as best he could, then turned to her with the closest thing to a smile he could manage. "What's for dinner?"

"Ahhh, you and dad, I swear!"