((I apologize for the long wait! I started writing the pregnancy fix with Kaito and Aoko and go distracted. Anyway! Here's chapter three!))
When morning broke Shinichi found it was entirely impossible to get out of bed. Both because he just flat out didn't want too, and because his sleep had been interrupted several times since he went back to bed after Kaitou Kid's unexpected and shocking house call. The first time he was reawaken he had been expecting as it was his parents- worried and calling to make sure he was okay. He assured them both he was just fine and he did Hattori were both looking into proving those dental records fake. He had a brief argument with his mother on the matter but his dad took the argument over and managed to convince her to see it her son's way. Finally, they both agreed to go along with the idea their son had died until it could be proved false without revealing their son's current identity. Yuusaku even offered to help look for loopholes but Shinichi turned him down since it was his case.
The next time he'd been woken up was the phone ringing in the background. Rolled over to check the time on his phone and saw that it wasn't even six yet and tried tune out what he knew was probably a hospital or police or maybe even his parents informing Kogoro or Ran- which ever one answered the phone, that Kudo Shinichi's body had been found in a ware house. And, seeing as his parents weren't in town at the moment, Ran and her father were probably the ones asked to come and identify the body. Ran had obviously decided to let Conan sleep until that last possible moment as she had not yet come to wake him up.
The third time he'd been woken up it was nearing seven in the morning and his phone was buzzing by his ear. It had to have been one of two people he decided, grabbing the blasted thing and checking the caller ID on it. Sure enough, the name Hattori was displayed on the screen and Shinichi pushed himself up into a sitting position to take the call and flipped the phone open, doing his best not to sound like he was just waking up.
"Yo." He stated simply and informally.
"Kudo!" Heiji began immediately, clearly more awake than the detective was. "Ya said yer body was foun' yesterday in some warehouse in Tottori right?" He asked seriously, the tone in his voice suggesting he was looking at the newspaper as he spoke. Conan raised an eyebrow. He was still wasn't that awake but he was awake enough to recognize the suspicious undertone. Thinking back on it- something wasn't sitting right. If Kudo Shinichi had been found dead in Tottori how was it exactly that Kaitou Kid knew before his parents did? Surely the authorities would have called his parents before it would be printed in any kind of paper.
"Yeah…" Shinichi said slowly, already getting the feeling he knew where this was going. He was also sure he didn't like where it was going as finally, the bizarreness of what Kid had said was starting to sink in. "At least, that's what Kid told me."
"Yer gonna wanna here this then." There was a bit of rustling in the back ground and Shinichi assumed he was folding the news paper and leaning back in his chair the way he usually did when they discussed cases. "Kid's story and an' what th' paper says don't match up at all. According to what I have you were found in a warehouse in Yokohama and- git this- at six this mornin' " The Osakan reported, leaving his friend stunned. Of course, Heiji didn't blame him- he'd feel pretty stunned too, seeing as now that the news was out, it was pretty clear Kaitou Kid had intentionally lied to him. What's more was that the only way Kid could have warned Shinichi about what was to be published- before the body had even been discovered meant that Kid knew someone was going to publish it. But that left two questions on the minds of both detectives- how and why? "Listen- 'm skippin' out on school today and taken and next available train to Beika- don't do anythin' 'til we can meet up- understand?"
"A-ah…" Shinichi responded, nodding his head despite the fact he knew Hattori couldn't see the movement. "I don't know if I'll be here- Ran and Occhan are likely the ones that'll be asked to identify my body- And I'm sure the victim has been made to under go plastic surgery to look like me." He reasoned, his mind still stuck on Kid and his vast knowledge about things he shouldn't have known about until about six this morning when everyone else was just finding out.
"Leave a key under th' mat or somethin' and I'll just wait inside until you get back." He offered, turning back to the paper from the sounds of rustling again. "I'll probably crash on th' couch or on yer bed if that's alright-M' pretty tired." he confessed. "I tried to do some kinda research last night on the matter but I was looking' in the wrong place. Not to mention you weren't dead until this mornin'"
"Oi… how long have you been up?" Conan blinked- It was close to five when he had gotten the call from his mom and dad- So Heiji must have been up and checking into things before then if he came up empty.
"Oh, well… after you called earlier I got worried and couldn' sleep." He admitted sheepishly. Conan sighed and waved it off like an annoyed friend trying to hide the fact he was touched at the concern the other had for him. It wasn't like Shinichi wouldn't do the same if he knew Hattori were in a similar situation. In fact, Shinichi probably would have done the exact same thing and gotten extremely frustrated and suspicious when his search yielded no results.
"Well…" Conan started, thinking over how his day would more than likely go. "I'll see you in a few hours." He finally stated, snapping the phone shut. He didn't bother to lay back down just yet as his mind was still fast at work and trying to reason out what would make Kid want to lie to him about something so important such as his own death. He tapped the phone against his chin as he sat in thought, nearly jumping out his skin when he saw that Haibara was calling him. He had meant to call her when he woke up, but Heiji had gotten there first. His held his breath and flipped the phone open- making sure to hold it a good six inches away from his ear.
"KUDO-KUN!" The angry mini-scientist yelled, causing the detective to wince as he chanced pressing the receiver to his ear.
"A-ah… Haibara." He stammered nervously. "I-I see you've read the news." He could tell by her loud silence that she wasn't amused at all with his quip and waited for him to explain things before she decided to grab a gun and put him out of her misery. "Listen- I had nothing to do with this." He decided to get that cleared up right away. Still, the girl remained silent and Conan could feel the thin ice he was standing on cracking beneath his feet- the icy waters below him threatened to consume him whole if he wasn't careful. "Last night, Kid came by the agency to tell me Kudo Shinichi had been found dead."
"And you don't know why?" Haibara finally spoke, her tone icy and sending chills down the poor detective's spine.
"He thinks it's because someone's trying to smoke me out but something isn't adding up about what Kid told me- he said that the body was found yesterday in a warehouse in Tottori- but actually the body was found in a warehouse in Yokohama probably around the same time he came to alert me about the report. What it comes down too, is that Kaitou Kid lied" Shinichi spat out quickly.
Haibara was quiet a long moment as she must have been running over everything he said in her head. She wasn't chewing his head off so that meant she probably realized he had nothing to do with this and was, for the time being, just the victim-literally. Conan got to his feet and started straightening out his blankets for when Hattori decided to crash on his mat before moving over to the door and sliding out. He made the quick discovery- via note on the bathroom door- that Ran and her father went to Yokohama without him and they'd be back soon.
"Kudo-kun." Haibara finally broke the long silence. "You need to find Kid and ask him why he lied." She instructed. As if he didn't know that- but that wasn't the problem. The problem was that he was the Kaitou Kid- not exactly someone he could look up in a phone book and writing an encrypted message through the newspaper would take too long and run the risk of someone deciphering it. Haibara briefly chatted with him about the importance of keeping their identities secret but otherwise didn't comment on the fact Kid had reported the body was found in Tottori. Of course, why would she- Haibara probably didn't want to give him reason to start snooping around over there. After a few formalities the two ended their conversation and Shinichi found himself at the desk Mouri Kogoro, seated in his swivel chair.
Shinichi set the phone down on the desk and leaned back in the chair- pressing his finger tips together and bringing his knees up in the same position Holmes used when he was deep in thought. He had now come to the point in his day where he tried to work out how to find Kaitou Kid without hanging out on a museum rooftop and waiting around from him to show. To do that, Shinichi realized, he was going to have to figure out Kaitou Kid's true identity which, in all honesty he had never really intended to do.
Sure, he had threatened that one day he'd figure out who was behind the monocle before taking it off but he had never really intended on following through. Shinichi had every belief that he could work out Kid's identity he had just never tried, Kaitou Kid wasn't violent- just annoying. He had never actually thought of the Kid case as a serious issue that needed to be immediately resolved- for Shinichi it was only a game of cops and robbers. While at a heist, he would give it his all to unmask and catch the thief- outside a heist? He didn't really care what the thief got up too so long as he wasn't hurting anyone.
Now, that he was faced with the task of finding the thief, however, he realized the task might be a touch more difficult than he had first given it credit for. Kaitou Kid was smart, after all, and he knew how to cover his tracks. Having few leads to go on, Shinichi decided to start first with what he knew about the criminal- even if it was surprisingly little there had to be something that people were over looking. No matter how good someone was, they were still human and couldn't cover all their tracks.
So, the first thing he knew about Kid was that he first appeared twenty years ago in Paris, France. Since the Kid he was most familiar with was not pushing or past forty he was able to assume that the kid from twenty years ago and the current one were not one in the same. Shinichi had seen Kid up close before and since Kid passed Nakamori's face test while disguised as the detective of the Eest he knew that Kid couldn't be more than twenty years old. That would make it impossible for the Kid now and the Kid then to be the same same person. So, the age group he was more than likely looking at had to be between fifteen and twenty.
The next bit of information he had was the fact that the original Kaitou Kid disappeared eight years ago after raiding the globe for ten. Given that Kaitou Kid usually sent out heist notices it wasn't too hard to believe that the thief would send out a retirement notice if he had no intention of returning- and since Kid did return, albeit eight years later, that led Conan to believe that the fist probably met with an untimely end and the second was probably his son.
Now, with that train of thought it was probably likely that the son would need to get in some practice and would do so close to home so he wouldn't have a long way to go incase of injury. The first time Kaitou Kid reappeared had been in the Ekoda district and he had struck their museum several other times in the beginning. He had hit a few other districts but Ekoda seemed to be favored. Therefore, Kaitou Kid probably lived somewhere nearby that district.
The next step was simple enough, he just had to hack into all the death certificates from eight years ago in the Ekoda area. Next he could eliminate anyone that died of natural causes that weren't sudden, such as heart failure. He could narrow it down farther by knocking out anyone female, elderly or younger than twenty. He also went ahead and knocked out those with preexisting heart conditions since he found it hard to believe someone with a heart condition would go around jumping off building as Kid was prone to do. He thought the same about an elderly person and anyone under twenty couldn't possibly have been the original Kid.
His search left him with about eighty suspects and he wasn't quite done yet. He was looking for the son of the original, after all, which meant all he had to do was knock those suspects that did not have children. Next, all he had to do was plug the last names into a student search after hacking into the Ekoda school district files and find a face similar to his own. It was easy but time consuming.
He had been at his search for hours already and finding a face similar to his own would probably take another hour. He boredly copy-pasted the next last name over to the student files and pressed enter- two girls and three boys- none of them looked even close to right. He tried again- three girls. Next. Five boys and still no matches. He resisted the urge to thunk his head on the desk several times and merely copy-pasted the last name 'Kuroba' into the search bar and struck gold.
"Think that's Kid?" Came a voice from beside him. Conan clicked the student profile, a little weirded out at how close a resemblance there was between him and this kid Kuroba Kaito. If Kuroba Kaito was the current Kid that would make the late magician Kuroba Toichi the original Kid. Kid was a master illusionist and master of disguise- a magician definitely fit the profile.
"Mm." He nodded, reading the small bit of information available. From what the school reported, Kuroba was a trouble maker from the words 'say go', a charmer, and the top of his class. Conan froze and twisted around to see Hattori Heiji hovering over him reading the information available.
"H-Hattori?" Conan stammered as his friend gave him a grin, clearly gloating that he had managed to sneak up on the little detective. "Geez, you could have knocked." The smaller grumbled- reaching for volume containing K's of the phone book. He quickly located the K's and ignored his friend's snickering in favor of pressing on. Soon enough, Heiji had let it go and was helping Conan- both of them skipping over any male names. Wait a second. The name 'Kuroba' was ringing a bell somewhere in the back of his head. He should know that name-he did know that name but he couldn't quite place where. Kuroba… The late magician was named Kuroba Toichi so…-Wait. Magician? Hadn't his mom said she and Vermouth had both learned their disguise techniques from a famous magician and he'd thought before that Vermouth's disguises were as good as Kid's. Was it possible that they had both learned from Kuroba Toichi? And if so, that meant that Kaitou Kid had a connection to the Black Organization- wheather or not he was aware of it, Conan didn't know.
"Oi, you find anythin' Kudo?" Hattori was still looking through the list of K's. Conan shook his head- he could explain his theory to Hattori after they had hunted down and found Kaitou Kid. He did, however, have a moment of genius and pulled up a file on Kuroba Toichi- it listed he had a son, as expected- Kuroba Kaito on June 21st of the same year Shinichi had been born and that after the magician died in an unfortunate accident his wife, Kuroba Chikage, never remarried. A conversation Shinichi had briefly had in the past with the thief led him to believe that Kaitou Kid's mother was none other than the Phantom Lady. If that were the case than his mother must have held some kind of intelligence and would have known that listing herself in the phonebook would be far less suspicious.
"Look for Chikage Kuroba." Conan told his friend- both detectives starting their search anew. He wasn't wrong was he? He'd gotten to his conclusion awful fast after all, but if Kid were still alive why wait so long to reappear? It was likely that the son, Kaito, had happened upon his dad's secret and took up the cape and monocle after him-but why? There had to be a reason, right? Boredom? Revenge? But then… why would Kaitou Kid want revenge? Well, he reasoned, guessing some more. If Toichi was the person to teach Vermouth the art of disguise than it would make sense that the organization had the thief killed after they were done with him. It was certainly their style- but so would be to kill the young Kuroba and the wife. It was possible, he supposed, that that accident hadn't really been an accident but a very clever trick devised by… someone.
"There!" Hattori pointed to a name. "I take it tha's Kid's mom?"
"Mm." Conan nodded, grabbing the agency phone and dialing the number on the page his friend was pointing at. Kaitou Kid found- now to force a meeting.