Meitantei

Chapter 7: Hits and Misses

"How's your tea, Kudou-kun?" Reiko-san asked. For a moment, Shinichi had to scramble to figure out what she had asked as his brain hadn't registered her question. His mind was focused on the case, idle chatter lost like so much white noise.

"Fine, thank you," Shinichi responded distracted, noticing only after he responded that his teacup had yet to be filled. His non-existent tea was fine. Reiko-san laughed at Shinichi's sheepish grin.

"I said, 'How do you take your tea, Kudou-kun?'" Reiko-san inquired again.

"Ah? Sorry," Shinichi apologized, laughing a little as he rubbed the back of his head apologetically. He looked to his side to see the maid, Kyoko-san, holding out a tray with four different teapots along with sugar cubes, lemon wedges, orange wedges, cinnamon, honey, milk, and cream.

Shinichi looked at the tray and all the different fixings for tea.

"Such an array of things to put in tea," Shinichi murmured.

"Of course! My uncle used to travel to many different places. You probably guessed that the four pots have white, chai, green, and black tea. Making sure to prepare everything beforehand means that you can pick and choose what you like."

"Ah," Shinichi murmured. Personally he thought it would have been more practical and a lot less wasteful just to have a hot cup of water with a tea bag, but nodded his agreement as he explained what he would like, letting Kyoko-san fix it for him. Watching her, he was fondly reminded of Ran who would always fix tea or other drinks for the clients who came into the Detective Mouri Agency.

"Kyoko-san," Shinichi said suddenly, almost startling the maid. The teapot chinked against the cup as her hand slipped in surprise, her trembling stilling as she apologized for her clumsiness. He smiled reassuringly at her, and she smiled back at him, shyly.

"Y-yes?" she asked. Shinichi took in the way she looked at him before casting her eyes downward. While she was nervous around her, Shinichi's instincts told him that most of her nerves were the nervous actions of a shy girl around a boy rather than a killer around a detective. Most of them.

"Kuroba-kun said that you were the last person he spoke to before Motoyama-san died."

"Ah, yes. When Kuroba-kun came over to choose birds, he always wandered through the bird sanctuary for a while. He and Motoyama-sama spoke briefly that morning before Kuroba-kun went to spend some time with the doves and pigeons. He's very particular when he comes to look at the birds and spends time with them before he chooses which ones to take home. In fact, when he came that one time when he looked over the jewel, which, I guess was the last time he was here before Motoyama-sama died, Kuroba-kun didn't find any doves he had felt were "right" for him. Motoyama-sama, however, had received some new birds and had invited Kuroba-kun over again. Since Kuroba-kun usually takes a while to choose, Motoyama-sama invited him for lunch. Motoyama-sama has always been a big fan of magicians and invites them to do magic tricks for him and the staff, and he always really liked Kuroba-kun's tricks since he knew Kuroba-kun's father," Kyoko-san explained in detail.

"Was there anything different about Kuroba-kun or Motoyama-san that day?"

"No, nothing. That's why it was so unexpected with what happened."

"Did he have his bag with him when you saw him?"

"Yes."

"Kuroba-kun said he came looking for you while looking at the birds."

"Ah, yes. He said he'd been looking for Motoyama-sama to let him know that one of the birds had an injury. Kuroba-kun had been handling the doves and noticed that one of them had a cut. He offered to bandage it himself, so I gave him some ointment and bandages. It just…it seems so strange that someone who would be worried about the birds would hurt anyone."

"We didn't see Kaito-kun for sometime after that. However, we knew that he couldn't have stolen the jewel before then since Ueda-san didn't come back from cleaning the jewel until after Kyoko-san had given him the bandages," Reiko-san interjected.

"Was that part of Ueda-san's usual routine, to clean the jewel?"

"No. In fact, it was odd. But Ueda-san said that my uncle told him to do it, and Kyoko-san says she heard my uncle ask him. Perhaps seeing Kaito-kun again happened to make my uncle remember the last time Kaito-kun was here we had all looked at the jewel. That could have prompted him to think that the jewel should have a thorough cleaning."

"I see," Shinichi murmured, sipping at his tea thoughtfully.

Shinichi looked over at Reiko-san. At cursory glance, she was the person with the most gain from her uncle's death. As her uncle had no children, she was the sole heiress to his substantial estate. However, she seemed especially grief-stricken about both her uncle's death along with her parents' recent deaths – both of whom had died in a car accident less than a month before her uncle had died.

He asked about the relationship Motoyama-san had with Ueda-san, Nakahara-san, and Kyoko-san. Everyone seemed to be on good terms with Motoyama-san. Frowning, it seemed very hard to find anyone with a plausible motive to want to kill Motoyama-san. Instead, he tried asking about how everyone reacted to Kuroba-kun. That led to no new leads. Everyone had loved the young magician, and apparently Nakahara-san and Ueda-san had both been on good terms with Kuroba-kun's father. No one had an apparent motive to want to frame Kuroba-kun either.

Yet there were things that reeked of the whole ordeal being contrived. If it was an accident, why wouldn't someone come forward? Why was Kuroba-kun being made the fall guy?

Shinichi thought of the quote from the Sherlock Holmes' short story, The Adventure of the Norwood Builder, "I know it's all wrong. I feel it in my bones. There is something that has not come out."

There were too many clues pointing at Kuroba-kun for it to have been an accident. And ironically enough, the fact that there were so many clues pointing to Kuroba-kun made Shinichi feel more confident that it wasn't him.

If Shinichi's thoughts on the trick were true, it was likely that person was the culprit. But if so, what was the motive for killing Motoyama-san? And why go through all the trouble of blaming it on Kuroba-kun? Perhaps there was something in the distant past that had never been forgiven or only recently discovered.

After they finished with the tea, Reiko-san took him on a tour of the bird sanctuary. Reiko-san seemed content to quietly let him look over everything without chatter to fill the silence as he worked.

The first area Shinichi had wanted to look at was the entrance from the top floor where the video footage began. His first impression was that the poor lighting of the upper level made it hard to truly determine what was going on from inside the bird sanctuary, especially with the grate blocking off the area.

Remembering that Kuroba-kun had said that he hadn't heard the door open and shut, Shinichi had Reiko-san help him by opening and closing the door several times while he waited in the room where Kuroba-kun had been located. It was audible each time. Not to mention that every time the door opened and closed, the birds squawked at the noise. Surely Kuroba-kun would have at least noticed the birds' reactions? The only time the birds didn't react, and the only time when Shinichi couldn't hear it was when he had Reiko-san close it quietly.

Shinichi even had Reiko-san talk in a normal level voice and then a loud voice to emulate how her uncle sounded when yelling as Shinichi had heard on the video. Due to the birds squawking randomly in the room her was in, it was hard, but not impossible to hear Reiko-san's voice when she spoke at her regular volume, but far easier to hear when yelling. Her uncle's voice would have been even louder.

Assuming Kuroba-kun was telling the truth, Shinichi had found his first major clue.

Shinichi looked at the entrance to the inner room in the bird sanctuary, placing his hand on the floor by the door. Frowning, he stood and walked over to the door that led down to the bird sanctuary. He pressed his hand to the floor near the caged door, noting that it was a stone colored concrete.

"You said the police didn't find anything slippery on the floor?" Shinichi asked as he put his hand on the cage door and gave it a few tugs, testing its strength and durability.

"That's what they reported."

Shinichi stood up and unhooked the door pushing on it a few different ways, letting it swing in and out. He had to stop his actions as a few birds came closer to the door. He understood why having an antechamber of sorts before entering the bird sanctuary was necessary – it helped give a small area to usher in any birds trying to get out, but he didn't quite understand the need for the entrance to be so high.

Frowning at the results of the impromptu tests he'd just done, he came to the conclusion that the door had to have been closed lightly for it not to have latched. Motoyama-san should have run into the door and had to have opened it for it to swing forward. He understood why the police believed it to be an accident; the last person to latch the door was Motoyama-san. Unless he had purposefully let it close gently, the door would have latched automatically.

Yet when Motoyama-san had moved backward as depicted in the video, the door had swung wide open. The defense could argue that since Motoyama-san had been the last person to close the door, then it had to have been accidental. Unfortunately, it now made sense why the prosecution was going for manslaughter. Even if it was accidental, the threat had caused Motoyama-san to back into the door, causing him to fall. It did at least mean nothing was tampered with on the door. If something had been tampered with, then the prosecution would have likely tried to charge Kuroba-kun with full out murder.

Filing all of these points away, Shinichi continued his onsite investigation. The Motoyama complex was multiple stories high, and the entrance to the bird sanctuary from within the home facility was connected to the third floor.

"Why is the entrance located on the third floor rather than the first?"

"My uncle said it was the best vantage point. My guess is that he wanted us to have the view the birds have," Reiko-san supposed as she took a step forward and wrapped her fingers around the wires.

For a moment, as Shinichi looked out at the open area of the bird sanctuary through the wire gating, he felt like he was the one trapped in a bird cage.

"It's as though they're all leaving me. First Kanaria-chan, then my dear parents, and now my uncle," Reiko-san murmured to herself. She reached through the caging, gently touching a mostly empty thistle feeder.

"Kanaria-chan? Was Kanaria-chan a canary?" Shinichi asked.

"Kanaria-chan was a bird my uncle had gotten for me from one of his American friends. She was actually an American goldfinch, though I didn't know she was called that until after I had named her. At the time, my uncle's friend told me she was a wild canary, but it's better known as an American goldfinch. I had her for several years. She was fascinating to watch eat. We had a special thistle feeder for her. The holes were placed below the rings and Kanaria-chan would hang upside down to eat." She pointed to the rungs and then to the holes located, not above the perching points, but below them on the thistle feeder.

Shinichi didn't say anything. Birds really weren't his thing. While he knew about different birds from reading about them and being dragged along on bird watching tours with his parents, he probably wouldn't want to own a bird of his own. Still, it sounded interesting, nonetheless.

"Years ago in coal mines, miners used canaries to see when deadly, natural gasses had been released. If the canary died, it warned the miners they needed to evacuate. It seems her death was warning me of more disasters to come," Reiko-san sighed.

It definitely was like a "canary in a coal mine" scenario. A crisis had definitely happened after the death of the bird.

When Reiko-san asked if he would like to see videos she'd taken of the bird, Shinichi quickly redirected her attention to looking at the room off to the left in greater detail. Birds weren't that interesting in comparison to solving a murder.

"This is the room where we hold birds for those who are going to buy them," Reiko-san clarified. Shinichi looked in the room, noting that most of them were either song birds or doves, birds that one could find at just about any kind of pet store. He looked up and down at the cages in the room, looking for anything out of the ordinary.

After he had looked at the room more thoroughly, Reiko-san took him into the sanctuary for him to look at the area while she continued to talk about the different types of birds that called the Motoyama Bird Sanctuary home.

Shinichi investigated the spot where Motoyama-san had landed. He pressed his palm down along the ground. Even though it was covered it dirt – trekked in from the natural landscape below – it was only a thin layer in that area. Looking at the rest of the sanctuary where plants and trees grew, he noted the strange layout.

"This is concrete as well. The same kind," Shinichi noted, digging enough in the dirt to expose the concrete. His eyes narrowed as he eyed the wall near the area.

"It wasn't a very high fall, but the officers said because there was only a thin layer of dirt on top of the concrete and the angle that he landed, that my uncle died."

As she spoke, Shinichi ran his eyes along the brick wall, his eyes scanning the painted scenery on the bricks.

"I see," Shinichi murmured to himself.

"What? What do you see?" Reiko-san asked.

"This was definitely murder. A premeditated murder. I still have a few more things I need to investigate to get everything together, but then I will explain to you what happened to your uncle."

Finishing up, Shinichi had hoped to speak with Ueda-san and Nakahara-san, but as they were both out, Reiko-san invited him back another time.

From what Kisaki-san and the police already investigated, Nakahara-san and Motoyama-san were together the entire time from when Kuroba-kun left them until the time that Nakahara-san made the video. It wouldn't have given him enough time to tamper with his cell phone to fake the video before they entered the room. The maid, Kyoko-san, gave testimony that she had heard Motoyama-san ask Ueda-san to clean the jewel. Ueda-san confirmed that Motoyama-san had asked Nakahara-san to video tape the birds in the sanctuary as he was leaving the room with the jewel when they walked by.

It was only a few minutes after they left that Nakahara-san came running to them asking for someone to call an ambulance. It did not give him enough time to have videotaped Motoyama-san's death, steal the jewel, plant it in Kuroba-kun's bag, and return. Ueda-san, Kyoko-san, and Reiko-san were all in the dining room together for several minutes before Nakahara-san came to get them.

Ueda-san said that he had not finished cleaning the jewel until after he had seen Motoyama-san and Nakahara-san enter the bird sanctuary. That was the time that Nakahara-san had heard Motoyama-san tell him to clean the jewel, though Kyoko-san had also heard Motoyama-san ask Ueda-san to clean the jewel as well.

Cleaning the jewel couldn't have taken more than a minute, but he had returned to the dining area with Kyoko-san and Reiko-san directly afterward.

These testimonies helped to strengthen each other's alibis. They were all pieced together in such a way that others could verify their alibi, but still leave times where the person was alone. While it was possible that more than one culprit was involved, Shinichi didn't think so. But still…

What was it? What was Shinichi missing?

His musings were interrupted when he received a text from not only Satou-keiji but Takagi-keiji and Yumi-san asking him where he was while also inviting him out for karaoke. Again.

Idly, he really hoped they weren't trying to set him up with someone. Why were they so insistent he come to karaoke with them?

Kaito leaned back on his jail bed, looking at the ceiling in apathy. Gray stone faded from years of exposure looked back at him, just as apathetically. Kaito was so bored that he wished that there were ceiling tiles he could count. Looking at the TV for the umpteenth time, Kaito decided not to mess with it. Right now, the only show he had access to was an annoyingly hyper cook was explaining how to prepare a simple dinner. Every now and then it talked about garnishing the meal with f-fish something-or-other, so he'd turned the stupid thing off. Why they were letting prisoners watch cooking shows, he could only guess. Was it for torture, knowing that they couldn't make it themselves? Was it to hope that some of the inmates would suddenly have a hankering for culinary creativity and volunteer for kitchen duty? Or was it to entice Kaito to want to dismantle the thing in utter boredom? Which, really, would be no problem at all.

In addition to the electronics in the TV, the bed sheet was more than enough for what he needed to break out of the detention facility.

On the off chance that he was convicted, Kaito would definitely make a run for it from wherever he was moved after his conviction, but he sincerely hoped it didn't come to that. With how things were developing, he had become infinitely more hopeful since yesterday. He had been extremely surprised when Kudou Shinichi had turned up in order to ask him about Motoyama-san's death, and even more hopeful when it was quite obvious that Kudou wasn't going to rat him out (right away) despite obviously hinting that he believed him to be Kaitou Kid.

It wasn't like that was the first time a detective had accused him of being Kid. Even if Kudou pressed the issue later, he could do what he did with Hakuba and ignore him. Still, the fact that Kudou didn't think he'd stolen the jewel meant a lot more to him than he would ever admit.

Kaito's first thought was that Hakuba had contacted Kudou about his problem, but threw that thought out after questioning Kudou about it before he'd left. Quite frankly, Kaito was a little concerned that he hadn't heard back from Hakuba about the case. He'd assumed that the British detective would have come up with the murder suspect by now.

For some reason, the fact that Kaito hadn't heard any sort of taunting deductions from his fellow Ekoda alumni left him feeling uneasy. If Hakuba hadn't found a culprit yet, what did that mean for Kaito? Knowing that things could have come up didn't help Kaito much. The thought that he'd been pushed to the side made his stomach do flip-flops.

The magician hated to admit it, but he felt rather lonely. Kaito had gotten a letter from Aoko about how he better not have been trying to be like that stupid Kaitou Kid by stealing something and that he had better not have done a prank that got someone killed. Really, he couldn't believe that she would think that. Well, okay, so he was Kaitou Kid and he did steal things, but the wording of her letter hadn't really been all that reassuring. He was sure that she thought he was innocent, but it was still a punch to the gut for her to say it in such a way.

His mother and Jii had been, unsurprisingly, more understanding, definitely believing in him. Heck, even Nakamori-keibu had been more understanding than Aoko. Kaito wasn't all that surprised that Hakuba suspected him of the jewel theft, even if the detective was wrong.

Kaito was definitely grateful that Kudou didn't seem to believe he'd done it, though his mind was still trying to figure out how he'd gotten pulled into his case. He mentioned a blue parrot, but he was sure Jii would have told him if he was going to ask Kudou for help. The thought that Kisaki Eri, a lawyer known for never losing a case was accepting help made him feel that his situation was a little more complicated than he realized. He really wished he was able to move about freely and check what was going on and find out just what was on that damned video.

Out of the corner of his eye he saw a few birds flying by. Looking out the window for any signs of doves or other messenger birds heading his way, Kaito craned his neck to take a better look. He was definitely grateful that Jii had been sending him regular messages. He'd seen his mother a few times and was grateful that she had also sent an additional message here and there via what he was coming to think of as bird mail.

When Kaito saw one of his beloved birds flying for his window, Kaito grinned widely as it landed on the sill. Straining his neck for him to take a look at the message, Kaito had to do a double take as the coded message sunk in.

The grin dropped from his face.

As the bird flew away, at least he had his answer as to why Hakuba hadn't contacted him. The message from Jii was short; Hakuba was in the hospital fighting for his life.

Looking back and forth between the TV and the bed sheet, Kaito would admit that he was very tempted to break out to find out just what the hell was going on.

After leaving the crime scene, Shinichi mused over a few things that Kyoko-san had said. If she had been the last to see Kuroba-kun, and if she had then heard Motoyama-san tell Ueda-san to clean the jewel...

Shinichi really wanted to talk with Ueda-san and Nakahara-san. However, since Nakahara-san and Ueda-san had traveled to procure more birds and wouldn't be back until the next day, Shinichi would just have to wait.

Instead, he turned his attention to his phone, looking at the multiple text messages asking him to come to karaoke. It wouldn't have been so bizarre if it weren't for the fact that they also asked where he was. Why did they want to know where he was?

On a whim, he checked his phone for news stories. His eyes widened upon reading the second headline in the list:

"Famous Detective Hakuba Saguru-sama Hospitalized After Attack from Fanatic Kid Fan."

Shinichi sucked in a breath, hoping his fellow detective was okay. He wondered what had happened to him. However, it explained a few things, like why Hakuba-san had not shown up when he had said he would to investigate. As he'd said he was going to come over yesterday, but had never shown up at the Motoyama Bird Sanctuary, it meant that the incident happened the day before.

Hakuba-san had gotten one up on the assistant, and Kid's fans wanted to make sure that Hakuba-san didn't put their beloved magician behind bars. Shinichi shook his head at the irony. Hakuba-san was actually trying to help get Kid out of jail...kind of.

No wonder Division One was worried about him. He was the one who usually attracted the type of danger that Hakuba-san had befallen. Shinichi would be on the lookout to make sure that Kid's fans didn't attack him. Worst case scenario, he supposed he would tell them how he was doing his best to get Kid out of jail.

Speaking of which, he pulled out his cell phone and made a call to forensics. He had a few things he needed to ask them about said thief's case.

Continued in Chapter 8: Suspicious Parties…

So, for those of you wondering why Hakuba hasn't played a more active part in Kaito's case, that's why. Hope you enjoyed the chapter!

~ Jelp