Hi Everyone! I'm back a day early! SO, sorry but I didn't get to write as much as I thought. My vacation was more of a 24/7 nonpayed babysitting trip. Don't get me wrong, I love my young cousins but c'mon, the oldest one is eight years younger than me and they are all VERY clingy. Okay, enough about that.
This is fairly filler-ish, but it will probably answer a lot of questions I've been getting and brings in another character who I'm sure you've all been waiting for!
Also, THank you so much for everyone who commented favorited and reviewed! When I finally could get wi-fi I had 35 emails, most of which were from you guys! It both made me really excited and crazy cause I couldn't ever check it. Also, I've been trying to reply to reviews, but I just couldn't for the last chapter sorry!
Anyway, here is the next chapter, I hope you like it.
DiScLaImEr: I dOn'T oWn
Satou sighed as she glanced at the paperwork on her desk. It seemed like they had questioned people for hours the day before, but she still couldn't see any way this was helping Takagi. They had, however, practically confirmed their suspicions of a group. Nearly everyone who confirmed that they had been approached about their crimes had identified the interviewer as either the child or white-haired man. There had been perhaps one or two others, but the majority was those two. However, no matter the person, the story was the same, always a school project or magazine interview. Megure had told her the other day that every magazine and webezine in Japan as well as many of the major ones in other countries, no one had heard of these murder centered articles. None of the schools knew anything about the boy's so called project either.
The paperwork on her desk was half reports she still had to fill out and half information the others had gathered on their searching. She knew from talking with them that it was just more of the same thing she'd found. Though they were now fairly certain of the groups existence, they still had next to no information about them. They only knew their M.O and what two, three if you count the kidnapper, of them looked like. She reviewed their descriptions in her mind, getting an uneasy twinge when it came to the boy. There was always a twinge when she thought about that boy. There was something unsettling about it, but she couldn't think of what. Of course there was the pitying disgust everyone felt when thinking of a child living out a life of crime, but she felt something more. Some strange unease that came from the though of his criminal child being connected to the kidnapping. She couldn't place the feeling and decided to worry about it later.
She'd had yet another sleepless night and, as was becoming usual, had come early that morning. This time she had driven right past the discouraged looking Detective Boys and had gone straight to her office, hoping to finish the paperwork in time to go off again. They had already questioned everyone whose crimes had already been replicated and many of those whose crimes had not been. Several of these people had been interviewed as well, prompting the officers to warn some of the people who matched the more specific M.O.s. That, in Satou's opinion, had been the most fruitful thing yet to come of this whole questioning endeavor. With another sigh the woman officer got to work on her paperwork, going swiftly through the mountain of forms.
She was just finishing up the last of everything when the yelling started.
"WHAT DO YOU MEAN I CAN"T HELP? I've been on hundreds of cases before this. I've even been on cases WITH both of them! I'm the great teen detective of the west for crying out loud! If Kudo was here you'd let him solve it!"
Satou smiled to herself, she knew that voice. She also knew it was the voice of someone who could help. She rose and walked over to where Megure was attempting to argue with the hot-headed teen.
"W-well perhaps but-"
"I'm every bit as good as Kudo! 'Sides I know the kid! I can't just sit back and watch while hes been kidnapped going through who knows what."
"We don't want any civilians on this case, and-"
"YEAH RIGHT! You look me in the eye and tell me Mouri isn't doing everything he can, and Agasa, and those kids, and probably every other stinkin' person the kid knows. I bet Neechan is out there right now looking for a kidnapper to karate chop!"
"Perhaps but that just proves that there are already too many non-officers working on this case. Also, practically everyone in this station is technically too close to this case to really be working on it. We don't need one more person like that."
"But I can HELP! You know that! 'Sides, I'm gonna investigate no matter what, so you may as well just let me in so that it can be more productive."
"I-"
"I'll take him with me, Megrue-keibu." Satou finally called out. The portly inspector turned to her in surprise.
"Ah, Satou-kun. You're here early again."
The woman nodded. "Yes, I want to solve this before its too late. He can come with us today, he may be able to find out something that we missed."
After giving the woman a hard look the inspector nodded, "Fine. Debrief him before the others show up and you have to leave."
"Yes Sir!" She saluted, then turned to the Osakan teen. "Come with me to my desk, I'll tell you what we know. Just be warned: it isn't much."
The woman led the teen back to her desk and caught him up with the more delicate information they had obtained. As she told him about this new mysterious organization the teen listened with a grim seriousness. When she had told him all of the information they had, the young detective wearily rubbed his forehead and muttered to himself. "Man Kudo, whats with you and getting tangled up with all of these big criminal groups?"
"What?"
"Oh! Uh, nothing. Sorry, I was- uh, thinking about something else." Satou looked at Hattori suspiciously, but didn't press the matter. Hattori was a horrible liar, which meant that he wasn't used to it. Which meant that if he did lie, it was about something important and even though he was bad at lying, he was great at being stubborn. Pressing the matter would be a fruitless waste of time.
"So what are we doing now?" Hattori asked after a moment. Satou had to fight to keep back her sigh as she answered. It felt like this was a fruitless waste of time as well.
"The only thing we can do is try and find out as much information as possible about this group. We have several people looking into it in different ways. We, Shiratori-san, Chiba-kun and I, have been questioning people we believe may have been contacted by this group to discus their crimes. It looks like today will probably be more of that."
"But how will that help us find them in time! We only have, what, four days left? There's no way we'll find out enough about these people in time just from asking people who aren't even in this group what they know. It's not like any of these people we're gonna question would actually know where one of their hideouts is! This is completely useless, there's gotta be something more we can do!" Satou caught her breath as the boy spoke aloud the thoughts that had been plaguing her. She kept her eyes on the floor as she answered, trying to hide the hopeless sadness in their depths, but her voice betrayed her by showing it all the same.
"I know. But here's nothing else we can do. We tried to use traffic cameras to follow his car but it was an extremely nondescript make and color. There are hundreds of them on the streets and he used a few fairly rural roads. The license plate was a fake, and according to paperwork the house the kidnapper had been in was empty and he didn't even exist. It's like he completely disappeared, and we may not see any trace of either of them until the time limit was up." Four days, that was all the time left. Four days. In four days she would be looking into Takagi's dead eyes, knowing she had failed yet again to save a man she loved. Four days.
Hattori said nothing. He was trying desperately to think of some way to track his friend and the shy officer. They couldn't do it by his car, or by the man's personal record, he hadn't contacted them in any way, and the kidnapper himself hadn't really had any distinguishing features, such as scars or tattoos, they could use to track him. What else was there? Kudo's badge and his tracking devices were all found in that guys house, but didn't his glasses also have a tracking feature? Nah, if that was working then Agasa and the little girl would have found him already. He frowned to himself, had those two been able to find anything? He hadn't talked to them about the kidnapping yet, maybe they knew that it was actually Them. He shuddered. He didn't think it was Them, call it a gut instinct, but the little girl would know for sure. He should go see them. Looking down slightly at a list of people Satou had to talk to today he saw the address of a house he knew was only a block away from the old professor's. He rose his eyes to the gloomy looking officer.
"Well then, what are we waiting for? Anything is better than just sitting around here doing nothing!" He would convince her to go to the professors when they got close, until them he would just have to see what they could gather from the questioning.
The female officer smiled at the boy's enthusiasm. She hated this despair, worry, and sadness. IT made her seem weak, and Satou Miwako was anything but weak. She would focusing on doing for now and she would be strong. She had to be strong. They would find a way, they always did. And now Hattori was with them, the boy who had pulled off miracles nearly as much as Conan, especially when with Conan. When the two young detectives were together it seemed as if the impossible became improbable, and the improbable was possible, likely even. And technically they were working together. Both boys were working to free Conan and Takagi. Though they were not side by side, they were still working together and with those two, anything was possible. And maybe Takagi being there helped too, just maybe.
Hattori sighed as he stood up to leave. They'd already been to three houses and were finally leaving the one closest to the professors. The man they were speaking to now, a murderer whose crimes had not yet been replicated, had nearly the same story as the first two they'd spoke to. In fact, nearly everything had been the same. At every house they would get upset about the police coming and refuse to talk, then Satou would convince them to speak with her somehow and they would be let in and led to a living room. Hattori was slightly glad that the female officer was there, every time some guy yelled about not talking to the police about anything the detective wanted nothing more than to have his bokken in hand and smack the guy upside the head. He was pretty sure they wouldn't have gotten to far doing things his way. He could tell that she was just as frustrated as he was, she was just hiding it so that they could actually speak to the people.
Anyway, after they were let in Satou would ask them about people coming in and asking about their crimes and they would remember someone talking to them months ago, they would be asked to give any information they could and then Satou and Hattori would leave. This most recent guy claimed to have been interviewed by some kid for a school project. They had confirmed it to be the Hayao that they already knew about. Hattori felt the same twitch of unease that the female officer had about the child, but he too couldn't exactly place it. Whenever he tried he had a mental image of what he imagined the boy to look like next to Kud- no, next to Conan. The two would stand side by side, apparently only a few years of age between then, with mirroring smirking expressions and Hattori would feel a chill run down his back. That was as far as he got however, and put aside those thoughts because they wouldn't help him solve the case in any way.
Sitting in the passenger's side of the car, he turned to speak with the woman driving. He felt a moment of relief that it would be only the two of them. He wasn't sure if Shiratori would have let them stop had he been there. Megure had let Hattori and Satou go alone because the two that usually accompanied to woman hadn't come in as early as she had and they had a boatload of paperwork to do. When the two officers finished they would go out as well, but with a different list of suspects to question.
"Hey, we're pretty close to the professor's house, mind if we stopped real quick?" Heiji asked. Miwako glanced at the car's clock, a little past one.
"As long as you don't mind missing our lunch break. I want to cover as much ground as possible."
Heiji nodded even as his stomach gurgled. He was pretty hungry but he wanted to find the kidnapped boys as much as she did. Besides, who knew how much food Kudo was getting, he could be starving for all he knew.
Satou started driving to the professor's oddly shaped house and Hattori tried to think of a way to get rid of her. He couldn't ask about Them, or the tracking glasses, or anything like that if she came with, but he didn't really have a good excuse to ask her not to come. By the time they reached the house, he still had no clue what to do, he never was good at making stuff up. Luckily the woman hesitated instead of getting out.
"Is this something you want me to come with you for or will you be fine if I go off to get something while you're in there. I'll be right back to pick you up for the rest of this list."
Oh thank goodness, the teen though as he got out of the car. "That'll be fine. It should only take a few minutes, just pick me up when you're done." If he had his bike neither of them would have to wait at all, but it was back in Osaka. He headed up to the house as the officer drove away. He only had to knock twice before the door was opened and a serious little girl glared at him.
"What?" Haibara asked, sounding annoyed. Her expression lightened slightly when she saw who it was and she stepped back to allow him to come in. "Oh, its you. Finally got here huh?"
"OI! I woulda gotten here sooner but the train was delayed by a murder and I had to solve it before we could get here!"
"We?"
"Yeah, Kazuha came too, she's with neechan. That's not important right now though. Have you been able to find anything about where Kudo is?" The girl glared at him.
"Don't you think if I did then the police would know about it. I not like some kind of detective idiot that tries to do everything by himself and ends up making everyone worry about them." Hattori wasn't sure if the insult was directed at him or Kudo so he didn't comment on it, instead simply voicing his next concern.
"Well, I thought if it was... you know, Them, then you wouldn't tell the police." The cynical girl rolled his eyes and fixed on Hattori a glare that said 'are you really that stupid'.
"There is no way that its Them. There is way too much evidence. If it was Them then they would have never found that box with the victim's clothes in it. The clothes would have either been brought with them, or the house would have been burned down. Also that traffic cop never would have seen them, and any neighbors who saw anything would've been dead by now. No, this is someone else entirely."
Hattori rolled his eyes. Sure, when you say it like that everything seems so obvious. "What about his glasses, can't you track him on those."
Ai shook her head. "No. We tried but something is jamming the signal. Kind of like going into a tunnel blocks your phone calls."
Hattori sighed. Well, that was just great. He was about to say something else when the table vibrated. Whatever he was going to say quickly changed into, "Hey isn't that Kudo's phone?"
Ai nodded. "Hakase was fixing it. Ran keeps calling. This will be the-" She checked the screen, "Thirty-first missed call. In a few seconds you should hear her voice message if she leaves one."
"Shinichi, please pick up! Please! I know you have a case, but there's a really serious case here too! Please, they can't solve it without you. Shinichi pick up! Please!..." There was the sound of someone grabbing the phone and Sonoko's voice yelled out of the device. "OI! Idiot detective freak! Pick up the phone your wife need you! The brat with glasses is in trouble and he needs your help! PICK UP THE PHONE! Why are you never around when your wife needs you! You don't deserve her! You better get your butt down here and solve this case or I'll make sure she finds someone who'll actually take care of her and the kid! IDIOT, IDIOT, IDIOT!" With that last phrase a dial tone filled the room, and Hattori whistled.
"Wow." Ai nodded, and Hattori continued. "Why don't you use the voice changer? Comfort her or something."
Haibara once again flashed her you-are-an-idiot glare. "Because the voice changer is in the evidence room of the police station."
"You have a spare."
"Yes but it is broken and Hakase and I have better things to spend time on then trying to fix it. Namely, finding Kudo-kun."
"Alright, alright, jeeze." From the corner of his eye Hattori Saw Satou's car pull into the driveway. "Well, That's my ride. I gotta go. If you find any information, call me."
The girl, already back to her computer, only nodded. Heiji walked out, but as he did so he heard her low voice. "Good luck Hattori-kun. Find that idiot, bring him back."
Returning to the car, Hattori was greeted to the greasy yet satisfying smell of fast food. Satou sat with two takeout bags next to her, eating a sandwich one-handedly.
"We need all the energy we can get, and if you've been sleeping like I have been then you're probably running low." Hattori grunted in gratitude and dug into the bags, taking a huge bite of the first burger his hands touched. He mentally sighed in satisfaction as he took another huge bite. He'd barely eaten in his worry for Kudo earlier. He'd been starving.