Scarborough Fair
Summary: Kuroba Kaito finds himself in a sticky situation when he's kidnapped by a man who's also guilty for the abduction of three others. How can even the Kaitou Kid escape drug-induced paralysis, a psychotic doctor, a blackmailed housekeeper, and a mansion filled with traps and dungeons?
Pairings: Very minor hints.
A/N: I own nothing except Dr. Hailey, Anita Hailey (though I don't own their names), Kojima Daisuke, Diana, Colin, Armagnac, Champagne, Cognac, Amaretto (though I don't own their designs) and 'A'. Okita Soshi and Nagashima Shigeo are actual DC people. Think Yaiba and Yoban Saado. Title comes from Simon and Garkunkel song. Also loosely based around Mothy's song, 'Little Garden Girl' feat. Hatsune Miku. May be called alternate name of 'Clockwork Lullaby 2'.
Prequel: "Swing Low, Sweet Chariot"
Side Story: "Clockwork Relations"
"In the last three hours, a hundred policemen managed to interview and clear a surprising number of thirty people and twenty three residences from our list," Detective Sato announced, before her face fell. "That narrows the list of possible suspects down to . . . ten."
"We can't be issued ten search warrants," Inspector Megure looked like a migraine was coming up under that eternally present hat of his. "Getting one alone based on the circumstantial evidence and the profile alone will be hard enough. Narrow it down further."
"Did anyone see anything suspicious down at the houses of the suspects?" Detective Sato suggested. "Anything? Even something just a bit out of the ordinary might help."
No one really volunteered information, fearing that they'd look like an absolute idiot not just in front of everyone, but also the very popular female detective.
Takagi took a chance and raised his hand. "Err, this wasn't on the house itself, but one of my suspects had Conan-kun there. He thought it was the house where the kidnapper lived."
No court would have taken up a request for a warrant based on the sole factor of a seven-year old boy being around the suspect. The Police Force in Beika – and, for that matter, any place the smarter-than-average boy visited to more than once – knew better than that. Just the fact that Edogawa Conan was there meant that something would happen at the suspect's house. Whether it was related to the kidnappings or not . . . .
They'd find out. "Which house was it?" Inspector Megure barked as everyone immediately began to get ready.
Takagi flipped open the notebook to the marked page. "Dr. Andrew Hailey's, sir!"
Three people were already working on it, pulling up files from the police database.
"Anything else about him?"
Takagi ran his thumb down the page. "He had a housekeeper, a woman named Diana Smith. Partly foreign."
A search done on Diana Smith brought up a missing person's profile with the picture of the very same woman. "Sir, we can get that warrant through this."
"Get the files and go. I want that warrant in my hands by the end of this hour," the inspector ordered. "And someone call her family to inform them that she's alive!"
Kaito frowned. Was it his imagination . . . or were his fingertips twitching?
No, he wasn't hallucinating with hope. The tips of his fingers were actually trembling, and although they were like a dug addict's, it was movement.
It felt beautiful.
But the movement – small as it was – got him thinking. He'd always had a fast metabolism – the reason why he could eat ice cream as much as he wanted and still never get fat – and his physical fitness was close to the top. His body must have been wearing out the drugs faster than they were being dripped into him.
With what felt like an effort to lift a building off the ground, Kaito slowly and deliberately tapped his finger against the table. It wasn't much – the drugs were still coming into his system – but it caught the others' attentions. Judging from their widened eyes, it wasn't something that they could do.
Chalk one up for the Kaitou Kid.
Sending a thank you to Lady Luck, he began to move his fingertips as much as he could. Maybe if he could move them far enough, he'd be able to eventually reach and get the IV drip off of his arm, wear the remaining drugs out, and then help the others. Okita and Nagashima would probably be able to take on anything thrown at them, and Kojima could tag along behind them, scaring people with his swearing.
His thumb joined in on the weak scratches his fingers were making as they tried to pull his arm to the source of his paralysis.
Diana-san's husband had driven over to the station as soon as he had gotten the phone call. "You found my wife?" he demanded the moment they brought him in.
"Yes."
"Where is she?" he demanded before they could quite give an explanation. The man was also a person of mixed descent like his wife, and would have been very attractive with his fine features, curling light brown hair and green eyes had it not been for the obvious lack of care he gave to his appearance, as well as his nervous twitching and the deep, dark bags under his eyes. "She's okay, right?"
"Colin-san, I'm going to have to ask you to take a deep breath," Sato advised. "Sit down, and breath. Would you like some coffee?"
The restless man shook his head, and all but collapsed into one of the uncomfortable seats. "No, no coffee . . . ."
"This is your wife, correct?" Takagi showed him the photo of Diana-san. Colin took one look and gave a furious nod. "When did you last see her?"
This was just to make sure that he wasn't some fraud trying to benefit from this. Even with the seemingly-proper papers, there were still quite a lot of people – jerks – who liked to take advantage of other people's confusions and sorrows. If his information matched, then he could be trusted.
"I last saw her two months ago when . . . when she was loading her things into the trunk of the taxi, before she was about to go on her trip to her mother's."
That matched the report. "Why was she leaving?"
"About four months ago, our son, he was at the day care center – he was only two – and he fell down and hit his head on – on a metal slide, and he died at the hospital. The therapist suggested after . . . about two months of therapy that she spend some time away, to, to clear her head, and get comfort from a maternal source. I was going to meet her up at my mother-in-law's a few days later, but then when Diana's mother called to ask when she was coming, I tried calling her, and she - she wouldn't pick up."
He was definitely getting edgy, like a cornered, starved animal. Sato stepped in, deciding that he was the person he claimed to be. "Colin-san, when was the last time you got sleep?"
"I don't know," he groaned. "You'll get her back, right? Safe?"
And this was where the speculations came in. "Colin-san," Takagi tried to be gentle. "We think that your wife is part of the kidnappings going around. Have you heard about the Clone Kidnappings?"
"Diana would never," he drew his own conclusion at the question, nearly rising out of his seat at the implied suggestion. "She can't even kill a spider!"
"She might have been forced to take part," Takagi added in, remembering her pale, scared face. "If the kidnapper threatened someone close to her, then she might have felt that she had to."
Inspector Megure was a bit harsher. "We can't completely rule out the chances of it being consensual. Would you like to be escorted back?"
Colin Smith took a deep breath before releasing it. He repeated the action several times till he looked somewhat composed on the outside. Instead of a man who looked ready to jump off a building screaming, he looked like he'd settle for ripping his hair out. Not much of an improvement. "Just find her," he begged. "Please."
"This is your brilliant idea?" Haibara Ai demanded as Kudo began to cover the windows with duct tape. "Breaking into the house of a deranged kidnapping doctor?"
He didn't even power up his shoes before taking a kick at the glass window. His sneakered foot just bounced off like it was a wall. "Reinforced glass," he noted, and turned his shoes on. "This might make some noise."
His foot made contact with the window again, only this time, with the amount of force put behind it, his kick-empowering shoes pushed through and broke the window. The sound was muffled, but it had still been loud.
She looked around. No one sneaking around the woods – other than themselves, of course – with a sadistic smile and a chainsaw. "This is completely unnecessary."
"C'mon, Haibara," he said as he began to clear away any glass fragments that would result in them being cut. "Where's your adventurous spirit?"
"Oppressed by my sense of survival, and my common sense," she deadpanned. "Two things you sadly lack."
"Yeah, well," he wriggled in through the small space he had created. "I told you – I have a nose for this kind of stuff."
"It's more like you're a magnet for danger," but she climbed in after him, because he was ridiculously reckless and stupid, even if he was a genius detective, and someone needed to keep an eye on him.
Kudo looked around. "Guess this is the spare room."
"Or, you know, the gas chamber, for the unwanted guests."
He shot her an exasperated look before turning the knob. "Shh."
She briefly weighed the pros and cons of murdering him before deciding to let him live. His detective friends would probably find out it was her, anyways. Far too many of them around him.
Outside the completely empty room with the broken window, the hallway turned two ways. Kudo jerked his head to the closest direction. "I'll go this way. Call if you get into trouble."
"Likewise," she replied before making her way down the left side of the hallway. There were a few rooms. Every one or two metres there was a door, all labelled neatly. 'Office', 'Library', 'Sewing Room', 'Storage'.
She turned a corner and stopped in front of one door. Unlike the others, white and labelled with a small, plain, boring plastic sign next to the door, this one had been painted pink. The flower-decorated plaque proudly proclaimed this room to belong to 'Anita'. Around five metres down the hall, there was one last door before the hallway became a dead end.
She walked up to the last door, but didn't open it. Unlike Kudo, she had no intention on checking inside of each and every room. That not only became stressful on her nerves, but she had no way of defending herself. No super-powered shoes, no ball-dispensing belt, no tranquilizer-shooting watch . . . though the first two wouldn't really do her as much good as it did for Kudo, she admit.
And speaking of the Great Detective of the East, she heard footsteps coming down. About to call out his name and a snarky comment, she paused, dread filling her stomach. The footsteps were too heavy, too loud to belong to a seven-year old child.
Stay, and get caught by a most-likely merciless man who had kidnapped people for some unknown reason. Or . . . she eyed the lone door behind her.
Praying to whichever god was patron to adult-shrunken-back-to-children, she opened the last door as quietly as she could and snuck in.
The man codenamed as 'Armagnac' came out of the interrogation room with a disgusted look. "He threw up," he said aloud, informing the other three in the room of what they already knew.
The woman with brown hair looked up at him from her files. "Will he work with us?" Champagne asked. If he wouldn't, she might as well have killed him at his kidnapping three months ago. It would have certainly saved her a lot of sleeping time. Beauty sleep was essential, especially to her day job, and whatever god there was in the world knew that she had lost a lot of it because of this so-called bio-chemistry genius.
A glance through the one-sided glass showed a shivering, broken man strapped to his chair. "Does it look like he'll be working on any chemical formulas for us?" Armagnac gestured.
"So mean," Champagne curled her lip. "You're the one who scared him."
The other man, the one with the highest rank amongst their team of four, didn't even pay attention. He was too focused on the last woman, the one in the lab coat with long hair. "Amaretto?" his voice was soft, and gentle. Armagnac smiled his usual dead smirk at the irony. The demon who ordered the deaths of hundreds, Cognac, was being gentle.
The scientist looked tired, but she still gave her husband a smile. "It's the only way."
"A risky way," Armagnac wiped his hand with a handkerchief before he carelessly tossed it away. The silk, expensive, limited brand handkerchief fluttered down onto the floor, wet with blood and bile. "Can't imagine Gin agreeing to it. There's an actual chance of – brace yourselves – failure."
"That Person agreed," his grip on his wife's hand tightened. "It's a second chance for you, Amaretto. Be careful."
She gave a slight laugh, one on the edge of hysteria. "As long as I don't have to go back to . . . back to the Stem Project . . . I'll do anything."