"You know for a fact it's him?" L said. "How?"

"I have indirect evidence," Katherine said. "Nothing anyone on the investigation team would believe, of course. In a case this odd, the evidence is destined to be odd as well. While I couldn't prove it to the team in a thousand years, I'm just happy knowing I solved the case myself."

"So then, you won't tell me what evidence you have, I'm guessing?"

"If I come to the conclusion that you trust that I'm not Kira and that I'm not working for Kira, then I will."

"I –"

"Your word won't be convincing enough proof of it, by the way," Katherine said. "I'm going to need viable evidence of it."

"Like what?"

"Hmm… let me think for a minute."

Katherine had taken the situation exactly where she had been planning to take it. She would indeed show L the evidence she had against Kira if he trusted her enough with one piece of information that no one else – except possibly Watari – knew. This was the only way she could see to trick him into telling her his name. That way, she would be able to use her own Death Note to keep Kira or the second Kira from killing him with either of theirs. The situation was perfect; if he didn't give her his real name, then she wouldn't give him assurance that he was right through the entire Kira case.

"How about," she said slowly, "your real name."

He looked back at the television screens, biting his thumbnail. Was this more reason to believe that she was Kira, that she was attempting to trick him into giving her his real name? If she was Kira and he did give her his name, he would be killed. If this was just a matter of confirming trust, then he would have evidence against Light Yagami. What evidence was it, though? Was it really that crucial? He would have to find that out first.

"First," he said, looking back at her, "what evidence do you have?"

"Well," she said, "I know how he kills, for one. I also know all the little traps that he has set up outside his door, so if it's necessary to prove it with any more than the evidence I have, then I could have cameras set up in his room."

"Why my name?" he asked.

"It's perfect proof that you don't believe I'm on Kira's side," she said. "If you have even the slightest suspicion that I'm on Kira's side, then of course you won't give me your name. However, if you believe that I am completely devoted to the downfall of Kira, then you will. It's simple and easy to understand."

She had quite a few doubts that this method would work as she watched him think. He was a sore loser, much like Kira himself was, and giving his name to any person would be a sort of failure for him, just as showing his face had most likely been. After staying in the shadows for such a long time, things were finally starting to come into light, probably much faster than he had ever planned them to. She knew he still had to be suspicious that she was Kira, but there was at least a fraction of a chance that this might work.

"How about you show me one piece of evidence first?" he said.

"No," she said with a sigh. "That means you won't trust me until you have evidence against Light. Can't have that."

Damn… he thought to himself. This means I may have to in order to see this evidence… if she's not bluffing about it, that is. If she's not Kira, then she has no reason to need my name, does she? Light was at least right about the fact that we have no idea where she came from. She doesn't seem like she could be Kira. She values friends above all other things, so she definitely wouldn't have killed one of them… of course, if that was just an act as well… that makes things even more confusing… if I do die, then there are people who can take my place, but in a case like this, I'm determined to put an end to it. If there's no other way to get this evidence, I may have to tell her my name.

"How do I know you're not bluffing?"

"Well," she said, "that's where the whole 'trust' thing comes in. If you can trust me enough to give me your name, then you should be able to trust that I'm not bluffing, shouldn't you?"

"It's difficult to trust someone that no one knows anything about."

"I knew that was going to come up," she said. "I could tell you the name of the orphanage I did time at, but there's no way to trace me to it. I was just another Jane Doe in that place. It was in a town called Newmarket-on-Fergus. When I escaped, I moved to the other side of the country – the eastern side – to a town called Trim. There's a really nice castle there," she added thoughtfully. "I know that none of this could possibly be proven without evidence, however. I'm fully aware of that. It's as I've said before. In the eyes of the law, I may as well not exist. And so, I understand if you can't trust me. I'm not saying you should or you shouldn't. I'm merely saying that if you do decide to trust me, I can show you evidence that Light Yagami is Kira. It's not a matter of facts, seeing as there aren't any about me."

She knew he wouldn't agree to her terms if he was asking so many questions that she couldn't answer. However, the contemplative look on his face made her somewhat hopeful that maybe he would give in to the request. She couldn't yet tell him that if he did give her his real name, she could keep him living until he died of natural causes. Not even a Shinigami could kill him. She'd done the same already for everyone else in the investigation team. Now he was all that was left…. After a few minutes, he sighed.

"Fine," he said. "You win. Whatever information you have better be enough to compensate for this. My real name is L. L Lawliet."

Yes! she thought to herself, barely managing to suppress a triumphant cheer. I win and Kira loses! Now he can't kill anyone on the investigation team.

"Then," she said, picking up her bag and walking over to where L was sitting. She sat on the table in front of that chair and pulled a black notebook out of her bag. "If you trust me, then you will believe this. If you don't, all you'll need to do to believe it is to look at the television screen and – not yet!" she said, laughing as he started to look around her to see the television screen. "And they said you were smart…" She shook her head and handed him the notebook. "This is Kira's weapon."

"A notebook," he said blankly as he took it from her. "Hmm."

She stood up and moved out of the way of the television screen. "Now look at the screen and tell me if you notice anything different."

He looked up, clearly not expecting much of anything to have changed. That made the sudden appearance of the beast standing behind Misa Amane all the more frightening and strange. His eyes widened and his mouth opened a little at the sight of the thing. He stared at it for a while before regaining the ability to speak.

"R… reaper?" he said uncertainly.

"Exactly," Katherine said, taking a seat back at the table. "That notebook your holding isn't exactly like the ones that Kira and the second Kira have used. I'll start by telling you the common rules, though.

"Basically, if you see one of these lying on the ground and you pick it up, it becomes yours. Once a Death Note lands in a human world, it belongs to that world. However, whatever Shinigami – meaning reaper, they're just technically called Shinigami – dropped it will have to follow the person who picked it up. That's one rule.

"The notebook itself, now. If you write a name in the Death Note while knowing the face of the person whose name you write, that person dies in forty seconds of heart failure. If you specify the cause of death, the person will die of that. Once you specify the cause, you will have six minutes and forty seconds to manipulate the actions the person takes before they die. For instance, you could have someone hi-jack a bus, then jump off and get struck by a vehicle and die like that. The only way to get rid of the Death Note is to tell your Shinigami that you would like to forfeit it. Once you touch a notebook, you can see the Shinigami it belonged to. Those are the primary rules. Following?" she added, seeing the blank look on his face.

"Yes…" he said. "I was expecting something strange with the Kira case, but this is just incredible."

"Yeah," Katherine said. "I can definitely agree there."

"What are the different rules for that one?"

"This one," she said with a smile, "is special because it didn't belong to just any Shinigami – it belonged to the king of their world. With this notebook, you touch it and you can see every Shinigami in the human world. They don't know you can see them unless you walk up to them and say 'hello,' though. Like most humans, they can't read minds. The greatest thing about this note, however, is that I can keep people alive with it. By writing a name down on a page of this Death Note, it gives me forty seconds to change my mind, basically. I can either wait out the forty seconds and let them die, or I can tear the page out and burn it. That also makes the person whose name was on said page invincible to any other Death Note, be it one in the hands of a human or one in the hands of a Shinigami. Aihara-san, Matsui-san, Asahi-san, and Mogi-san have already been made immune, because I knew their real names. That's the only reason I was being stubborn about it. It requires sacrifice on my part as well," she continued. "If I save one life, it takes a year off of my life. Another ability this Death Note has is that when you do kill someone with it, it adds a year to your life. I could never think of killing anyone, though. While I don't know how many years I have left, I'm going to have faith that it's more than one for the sake of the investigation, seeing as I don't want anyone to get killed."

"How does this prove Light Yagami has a Death Note?"

"When he comes here tomorrow," Katherine said, "his Shinigami will be with him. They aren't allowed to leave the humans that they are bound to by the Death Note."

"Then why don't you have one?"

"Mine's too busy lording his power over another world to come visit me," she said, glaring at her Death Note. "Lazy son of a bitch….

"What's really coincidental about all this is that the second Kira's Shinigami is the one that told me about the rules of the Death Note. I had doubted my sanity until I saw that girl talking to that particular Shinigami. Now I know I'm not insane and that just makes things even harder because I was hoping there would be an easier solution to this case.

"Any more questions?"

L thought for a moment, and then looked back at the television. "Do they really only eat apples…?"

"I don't think all of them do," Katherine said, laughing. "When I've seen Light before, though, I've seen his following him around begging for an apple as though he were trying to get cocaine from a drug dealer. I think that was around the time the team had his house filled with cameras. He couldn't eat apples, then, as all that those watching would have seen was an apple disappearing into thin air. Poor thing went through apple withdrawal, it was absolutely pitiful."

"This is going to be a really hard case to prove if this is true," L said, shaking his head. "I can see the Shinigami, but I don't know if I want to believe it's there."

"It is," Katherine said. "No point in denying it. You'll be even more inclined to believe it when Light comes back. His Shinigami is a right side scarier than the second Kira's, I'll warn you."

"Scarier than that?" he said, looking at the television screen as she stood, taking her bag to the other chair. "Is that even possible?"

"Yeah," Katherine said. "You'll also hear him talk now, too. He's really quite a smart ass, and you'll be relieved to know he's not on anyone's side. So, Light doesn't have a reaper on his side, just one that's following him around because he finds this whole Kira mess amusing. Now."

She pulled a lighter and a pen out of her bag, opened the notebook, and tore a page out of it. She walked back over to the table and sat down at its side.

"You'd best be telling the truth about your name," she said, "or your life will still be threatened by Kira. I'm not going to ask if you are or not. There's no way of telling if this works or not, the only way to tell will be if Kira kills you. I know it does work, though. If that bastard Al had just given me his real name, he wouldn't have died, but it's too late for that…"

If she's telling the truth, then she's taking a year off of her own life just to save mine… L thought to himself, watching his name be written on the piece of paper. There's no way she can be Kira if she's keeping us from being killed. She could be lying, but I don't think she is for some reason…. With as much acting as she does, I shouldn't trust her, she could be killing me right now, but I still do trust her. Why?

Katherine quickly crumpled the paper into a ball, set it in an empty cup, and held the lighter to it. With a click of the lighter, the paper was burning.

"I'm mostly inclined to believe that this works because the even if part of the paper remains after forty seconds, the person whose name is written on it doesn't die," she said. "I admit, not proudly, to testing it on someone else before I used it to help the team. If it hadn't worked, then that person would have died. I hate that I did that, but I didn't want to end up killing anyone on the investigation team after the loss of Usata-san. That would have been horrible. I'm not like Kira in that sense. In fact, I'm the exact opposite. If I were to kill a single soul, I'd never forget it. Even if it were a complete accident, I'd never forgive myself. Kira is a brutal serial killer, he's the only person whose life I could take without feeling a bit of remorse. Which is why," she said, reaching back to the chair and retrieving her Death Note, "I need someone else to hold on to this. Someone who wouldn't write Light Yagami's name in the note, even though there is a one hundred percent chance of him being Kira. Given enough time, I know I would. That's why I can't keep it. My spies both know about Kira, who he is and everything, so they wouldn't be able to hold on to it, either…"

"That could definitely be a problem," L said. "If Light Yagami dies of a heart attack, people will believe it was Kira's doing."

"I know," Katherine said. "That's why I have to do this." She turned to face L and held the note out to him. He looked at it, seeming rather incomprehensive about what she was implying. "Here," she said, holding it out a little further. He slowly reached forward and took it. "You trusted me with your name," she said. "I know that barely anyone knows your name, so I definitely trust you with this. This way, even if I were Kira, I couldn't kill you, as I've just given you my weapon. However, it's only in your possession. By the rules, it belongs to me until I forfeit it. If you ever write down a name, it adds to my life. If you ever burn a name, it takes away from it. So basically," she said, "my life is bound to that Death Note. Will you hold onto it for me?"

Is she serious…? L wondered, looking at the cover of the notebook. If she is, then she's definitely not Kira. Kira would never give up something like this just to avoid suspicion. I can understand why she doesn't want to hold onto it; killing Light Yagami would leave the case unsolved. But I don't see why she wants me to hold onto it. She's basically entrusting me with her life by doing this, and I barely trusted her enough to give her my name. And if Kira ever got his hands on this notebook and found out its secrets, he could kill her. If Kira is Light Yagami, he definitely wants to kill her by now. He could do that with this… if he got his hands on it, she'd die. I can't let that happen. I'll have to hide it somewhere no one could ever find it.

"Please," Katherine said quietly, her eyes wide with hope. "There's no other way to ensure that Light Yagami will be caught and sentenced fairly. I'll kill him if that stays in my possession. As Kira, he used Al's death as nothing more than a taunt, knowing full well that he wasn't a real murderer, and that he was my friend. He was only doing it to try to weaken my will, to make me feel like it was really my fault, and it worked…. For that, I want him dead. I want to be the one to kill him, but I really don't want to destroy the entire case with my own brash actions. Killing him would be a temporary solution, but it would leave his Shinigami in charge of that Death Note again, and he'd just drop it again to amuse himself, which would start the whole thing over again. I have low self control when it comes to things like this, which is why it should be in the hands of someone who won't act recklessly. So keep it, and don't give it back to me until Light Yagami has been executed by the law rather than anything else. Please?"

Slowly, he nodded. "I will."

She stood and walked around to the side of the chair. Completely alarming him, she bent down and looped her arms around his neck.

"Thank you," she said faintly.

"Y… your welcome."

She let go and walked back over to her chair. She picked up her bag and sat down, leaving him with the same sense of confusion that she always left him with.