Suddenly, all the lights went out; the kitchen was almost completely dark, only the display of Sera's phone gave some light.
"W-what's happening...?" Sonoko asked with a shaky voice.
"A blackout...?" Sera said.
"Alright, we should see if we find some candles or something." Shinichi said.
Unbeknownst to the teenagers, the adults or the police force inside the building, the long-haired still watched the mansion from not so far away. The storm wasn't merciful and she was soaked; her clothes were supposed to be rainproof, but at these floods that came down from sky, every piece of textile would've surrendered. As the lights inside the mansion went out, a smile crept onto the woman's face. Still firmly grasping her knife, she thought about what her next move should be.
Chapter 8 - The Investigation, Part II
The thunderstorm was wailing against the mansion. It didn't seem to get any better; in fact, Shinichi was pretty sure the storm was actually getting worse. Atleast the regular lightnings illuminated the rooms of the mansion for a few short moments, but that was the only positive thing he could make out of that storm right now.
Rummaging the kitchen didn't get them any candles, but atleast they found a flashlight in one of the drawers. Shinichi put his phone away in favor of it; the three girls did the same, as the ray of the flashlight was brighter than all of their phones combined and now, in the face of a blackout, it was probably a good idea to save battery. When the group was ready to leave the kitchen and search for the others, they heard footsteps approaching the kitchen. It was Yui, with a lit candle stand in one hand, who was already looking for them too. She told the teenagers that they were gathering everybody in the dining room again, since staying alone in your room in the complete dark wasn't really save.
On their way to the dining room, Shinichi had to think about what Sera did while they tested their theory about the tomatoes.
Shinichi turned his eyes away from the pitcher and towards the female detective. To his surprise, she wasn't really paying attention to their experiment and just stared at him.
"Sera? Do I have something in my face now?" Shinichi asked.
"The...Wizard..." Sera whispered absentmindedly.
Shinichi wasn't really sure why she behaved that way and why she whispered the words 'The Wizard'. Sure, he did say 'Abracadabra', because he almost felt like one of these stage magicians when he made the tomato magically rise with the salt, but why would she be so shocked by that?
'The Wizard...the wizard...her snaggletooth...Ran mentioned she also remembers her, and always hears rippling waves when she runs off...wait a minute...' Shinichi thought, as a few memories suddenly came back to him.
Seagulls called. Waves rippled. Shinichi could smell the salty seawater.
"You're a wizard, right?" A young girl in a bathing suit asked, smiling broadly, exposing a snaggletooth on the left side of her mouth.
And as quickly as it came, the memory faded from Shinichi's mind. He covered his face with his free hand and groaned. 'That was not enough...why can't I remember more?...that young girl...she has to be Sera, right?...hmm...but that doesn't really tell me anything I didn't already knew...argh, why does my memory have to fail me on this?!...'
"Shinichi? Are you alright?" He heard Ran ask him.
"Huh?"
"You were looking like you were in pain..."
"Ah, no, you see..." Shinichi glanced towards Sonoko, Sera and Yui, who were weren't paying them any attention right now, but were still in hearing range. He moved closer to Ran and whispered in her ear. "...I was just thinking about what we talked about in the forest, you know, having met Sera somewhere before. And I just had some sort of flashback, to a situation at a beach, where I met a girl that surely was Sera...but she was very young..."
Ran gasped and looked at Shinichi for a second. He didn't know what to make of her reaction, but she continued, whispering like he did. "Now that you mention that...I think I remember too...a little grinning girl..."
"...in a bathing suit..." Shinichi added.
"...and she said something...'You're-'" Ran continued, but Shinichi interrupted her.
"'You're a wizard, right?'" He finished the quote.
"Yes!" Ran whispered. Then realization hit them both. "So, wait...we both remember that...so that means, we met her both at the same time..."
"It certainly seems that way...there was a beach...so, we met her when we were on a beach trip?"
"Probably. Although that doesn't help me much with remembering specifics, since we went on countless trips together, several of them to a beach..."
"But what about 'The Wizard'...? She muttered those words earlier too...when I jokingly imitated a magician..."
"So...does that mean you are 'The Wizard'? Did she ask you that back then...?"
"Possibly...but I can't quite remember..."
Suddenly, Sonoko's voice interrupted their whispers. "Hey, you two, do you think this is the right time for some lovey-dovey chit-chat?"
Startled, Shinichi and Ran automatically backed away from each other. "What-" The two of them started in unison, but Sonoko was having none of that. She just continued to talk over them, while they entered the dining room.
"I can't believe it! You have had all this beautiful, murderfree time to talk about your relationship today, but no, what time do you choose? After a murder has happened, in a thunderstorm, during a blackout!"
Since they had already entered the dining room, where Tamami, Jinsuke, Sumika and Yui's two colleagues already waited, Shinichi and Ran got some unwanted attention due to Sonoko's rant. With all eyes on them, the two of them couldn't help but to blush a little, even though they didn't do what Sonoko said. Ran nudged her friend in the side. "Sonoko! Knock it off, we weren't..."
"That's what you say everytime! Ran! There is a crazy murderer out there, that Woman in Red...she's still lurking out there and you're just-"
A chair screeched, as Jinsuke stood up. "What makes you say that the Woman in Red is still out there? The police detective told us she's dead!"
"But I saw her!" Sonoko replied, making everyone anxiously look at her.
"S-Sonoko..." Ran stuttered.
"When was that?" Shinichi inquired.
"And where?" Sera added.
"Shortly before the blackout, when we were still in our room. I looked out the window and there she was!" Sonoko pointed a finger to a nearby window. "She leaned against a tree and observed this mansion! A woman with long hair!"
'What the...?' Shinichi thought and looking around the room, everybody seemed to think that as well.
Jinsuke audibly swallowed. "B-but, the police thinks she's dead. Right?" He looked questioningly over to Yui.
"C-could the umbilical cord that was used for the DNA test, belonged to someone else then?" Tamami chimed in.
Yui sighed. "That's impossible. The mother of the Woman in Red didn't want to accept that her daughter was dead. It's why she hid the umbilical cord from the police in the first place. Also, we do have statements from other relatives." Yui put down the candle stand down on the table, where they also had some more lit candles. Apparently, the police officers were more successful in their search for candles. "But, there are a few inconsistencies."
Shinichi raised an eyebrow. "For example?" He asked curiously.
"The raids on the other holiday mansions. We're getting reports about mysterious raids on them at this time of the year, for over ten years now. But they weren't like the harmless pranks, that you guys described earlier." Yui replied. "You know, throwing objects to break windows and stuff. No, on these other incidents, there were indications that the locks were picked and that someone lived in these mansion for a period of time." She thinkingly raised one hand to her chin, recounting the facts. "And there were some statements by people, who said to have seen an unknown person in the forest. That's why the prefectural police couldn't say for sure, that the skeleton in the swamp was the body of the Woman in Red..."
"S-so...she's still out there?" Tamami shyly asked.
"Or if not she herself...than someone else? An imitator? The prankster that did the things to this mansion?" Sumika speculated.
"And what if that person is really coming to get us all?! Or worse, what if its a ghost?!" Jinsuke said, now starting to panic again.
"That's rubbish." Sera's spoke sharply, silencing the three adults at once. "There are neither ghost, nor phantoms in this world. And no witches and no magic either. That's just fantasy and belongs into novels, but it has no place in the reality of our world. Ain't I right, Kudo?"
Shinichi nodded. "Right."
"So, just stay calm!" Sera continued. "Whatever Sonoko saw out there or whoever it was, after all it'll just be a human being, made out of flesh and blood like everybody else. And that is something I can take care of with my jeet kune do and Ran with her karate."
"Y-you're right!" Ran agreed with her friend, shaking off an initial scare at the prospect of a ghost killer.
Now Yui curiously gazed at Sera. "I've been meaning to ask you this earlier. Who are you exactly? You don't seem like an ordinary classmate of Ran-chan and Sonoko-chan, you seem more like Kudo-kun..."
"You're right about that. I'm Masumi Sera and I'm a high school detective as well!" Sera answered.
"She's the little sister of one of our classmates back from our high school days. We invited her and her friends to come here, so she can investigate all of the mysterious incidents that happened in the past few years." Tamami added.
Jinsuke continued. "Her brother didn't have time. But he told us that his little sister just returned from America and was bored anyway."
Yui turned back to Sera again. "From America?"
"Yeah. I lived there for the past three years. I came back recently, since I really missed Japan." Sera turned to Shinichi and looked at him with a smug grin, which left him in confusion.
Yui didn't notice that and focussed back on the situation at hand. "Anyway, now for the bad news. I called our headquarters and they told me that a lightning has hit the transformer station for this region, so everyone around here is currently sitting in the dark as well. The problem is that the ongoing heavy thunderstorm is making it nearly impossible to fix that problem right now." The mood in the room wasn't getting any better with that and Yui had even worse news. "And that's also another problem for us: I wanted to get another squad car here, so we can all leave this place. Headquarters told me that that is impossible right now. The massive downpour has made the already bumpy roads around this area completely unpassable. Additionally, the storm caused a vast amount of trees to fall and further obstruct the roads. And again, with the thunderstorm still raging on, the fire departments and emergency services cannot head out to fix the roads; even if the storm'd be over soon, it'll still take them a while to free route into this area. Bottom line: we're pretty much stuck here for atleast until tomorrow noon."
Nobody said a word for a while, just staring somewhere; everyone silently tried to fathom their situation. Yui broke the silence, to get information about the supplies that were in the villa. Luckily, with the things Jinsuke bought earlier, they had enough food and water to make it through the entire next day, if the rations for every person would be portioned economically. That would still leave without enough for the following day, but nobody seriously thought, that they'd be stuck here for more than one day; or atleast nobody wanted to imagine that.
"Anyway, Sera-san, do you have the photos of the pranks that Sumika-san made with you right now?" Yui asked the female high school detective.
"No, I have them in my bag." Sera replied.
"Alright, I'd like to see them and ask you two..." Yui also pointed at Shinichi now. "...some more question, so we'll head to the guest room where you have left your backpacks." Yui grabbed the candle stand again, before giving instructions to her two colleagues. "You stay here and watch over the others. We'll be back shortly."
The officers nodded in response. Yui headed for the corridor, with Sera and Shinichi, who still had the flashlight with him, in tow. When they were on the corridor, Shinichi turned to Yui.
"Say, why isn't that big, scary inspector with you?" He asked. "What was his name again? Kansuke Yamamoto?"
Yui chuckled. "Ah, no, it's Kansuke Yamato, actually. But I have to admit the names are similar, it's a pretty common mistake that people make. Although, I wouldn't really call him scary..."
Shinichi shrugged. "That's just how Conan-kun described him to me. Big, dark-skinned, one-eyed with a scar and a bit scary."
"Oh, really?"
"Yeah, apparently he left quite the impression on the boy; but he also said that the Inspector is very competent."
"Yeah, that's much pretty much Kan-chan, alright..."
"Kan-chan?" Sera asked curiously, after listening quietly so far.
Yui nearly jumped and seemed a bit flustered. "Ahaha, I-I mean, Inspector Kansuke Yamato...I just call him Kan-chan sometimes, because I've known him for so long..."
"I see."
'And with sometimes, you mean always, except when you're asked or reprimanded about it...' Shinichi snarked to himself. This was stricly Conan information though, so he couldn't say that comment out loud, even if he wanted to. Instead, he followed up on his first question.
"Anyway, so, why isn't he here? This murder scene is within his jurisdiction and you're in his squad, right?" Shinichi inquired.
Yui nodded. "That's right, but he is currently conducting an important interrogation together with his colleague, Inspector Taka'aki Morofushi. Apparently, that interrogation is directly related to the upcoming press conference about the Woman in Red case tomorrow. From what I heard, Inspector Yamato and Inspector Morofushi have been working on that case for a very long time now."
Shinichi nodded thoughfully, satisfied with her answer.
Yui continued on a different subject. "By the way: when I contacted Inspector Yamato earlier about this case, he told me to take Conan-kun along for every room inspection I was planning to do, but he was surprised and a bit disappointed, when he heard that Ran-chan came without the boy."
Shinichi raised and eyebrow. "Really, he has so much faith in Conan-kun?"
"It certainly seems that way."
Shinichi felt a bit honored. It shouldn't have come as a surprise to him, since Inspector Yamato had already shown signs of wanting Conan's help more than Kogoro's at the Red Wall case, but hearing it this directly that an Inspector advised his subordinate to take Conan with him, made Shinichi a little proud of himself. Even Inspector Megure was always just kind off tolerating Conan; not intervening much when he was on a crime scene, true, but it was almost always just silent, passive approval. Unlike what Inspector Yamato did apparently. For a second, Shinichi was concerned, that the awareness of Conan's intelligence by the Nagano police could potentially be dangerous to be his identity, but he quickly discarded that thought. After all, the FBI also knew how smart he was and he managed to hide his identity from them as well.
"Well, Kudo-kun, atleast you're a worthy replacement for Conan-kun." Yui said.
"Huh?"
"From what you shown me so far, you're just as capable as he is and I mean that as a compliment."
Sera patted Shinichi on the shoulder. "Yeah, Kudo is great, just like Conan-kun. I heard, that he taught the boy how to be a detective, ain't that right?" She grinned smugly at him. Somehow, Shinichi didn't quite like that grin.
"Oh, is that so? You taught him everything he knows?" Yui asked.
Shinichi regained some of his composure. "Yep, everything and a little bit more." He winked to emphasize his cheeky comment, prompting another small chuckle from Yui.
The three of them reached the room. With the light provided by Yui and Shinichi, Sera took out the photos from her backpack and handed them over to the police detective. Yui looked through all of the photos, which depicted the incidents over the last few years. "I see." Yui said. "These incidents are kind of bizarre indeed. Smashing a window with red apples, clogging the boiler with red petals, splashing the door with red paint. And now, filling the bathtub with red tomatoes, except this time, there also a dead body alongside the deed. Red, red, red, red; red everywhere. Everything seems to be a reminder about the Woman in Red."
Yui moved one of photos closer to her face. "Wait a minute...this photo looks much older."
Sera glanced over her shoulder to see which photo she was looking at. "Ah, that was taken twelve years ago, around noon of the day when the classmate of the adults went missing." The photo depicted Tamami, Jinsuke, Masaie, Sumika and said classmate, Satoko. Sera pointed to exactly that girl in the middle. "This one. Her name was Satoko Imoto; she's the one that drowned in the swamp when the skeleton of the Woman in Red was found."
Yui raised an eyebrow. "Strange. She's wearing a beige-colored cardigan, right?"
Sera glanced to the photo again and nodded. "Yeah."
"But when she was found, she wore a red raincoat with long sleeves. According to Inspector Yamato atleast."
Sera and Shinichi sharply turned to her. "What...?" They both asked.
Yui continued. "The ones who found the knife in the vacinty on the swamp back then, were indeed Inspector Yamato and Inspector Morofushi, both still in training back then of course. Both of them like to argue about that case at every possible time ever since. Inspector Yamato claims, that the skeleton that was found alongside the body of Satoko wasn't the Woman in Red. Inspector Morofushi on the other hand claims, that the skeleton had to be the Woman in Red by a probability of about 80 to 90 percent. So, when it turned out recently that skeleton was indeed the Woman in Red, Inspector Morofushi wasn't too surprised. Kan-chan still doesn't want to accept that though..."
"Ahem..." Shinichi cleared his throat, prompting Yui to blush again.
"Ah, I mean Inspector Kansuke Yamato doesn't want to accept that, of course. Anyway, the two of them wanted to interrogate the police officer who was the first one on the crime scene, 15 years ago. Apparently, he quit the force and is now working at a pachinko parlor..."
Yui was interrupted by her phone ringing. She took it out of her pocket and looked on the display. "Ah, speaking of the devil..." She accepted the call. "Hello, Kan...erm, Inspector Yamato?...Yes...What, a mistake in the report? Of what kind...Hello?...Kan-chan, hello?" Yui looked at her phone in confusion. "Huh? No service all of a sudden?"
Sera and Shinichi instinctively checked for their phones as well.
"I have no service either." Sera said.
"Same here." Shinichi added.
Yui shook her head and put her phone back into her pocket. "I guess the storm has now also struck the cell phone base stations for this region. It was already a wonder we had such a good connection in this remote area until now, but I guess we're really out of luck. No electricity, no way to get from or to this place, now no cell phone coverage and still an unsolved murder at hand..."
Sera and Shinichi, who were now standing behind Yui, looked at each with a questioning look. They both smirked and nodded, before stepping closer to Yui.
"Well, we can't do anything about the infrastructural problems..." Sera started, making Yui turn around to them.
"...but about the murder case..." Shinichi continued. "We can solve that and present you with the culprit!"
A/N: Alright, that does it for this chapter. A few things about the adaption aspect of this story: generally, I have raised the stakes with this chapter much more than in the original. In the manga case, the storm isn't this bad; the blackout still occurs, but it doesn't turn into a scenario where the people in the mansion are cut off from civilisation and their phones also still work fine. In the manga case, Yui's call with Inspector Yamato gets interrupted because her battery is empty, which I didn't like too much, so I combined it with the general outage of service.
Additionally, I cut out the attack of the Red Woman, that occurs shortly after the blackout, since it didn't serve much purpose in the manga case after all was said and done; and I wanted to keep a meeting of the Red Woman that observes the mansion with our protagonists for a later chapter and to make that more unique, I didn't want her to directly clash with anyone beforehand.
Anyway, it looks like Sera and Shinichi will reveal the truth about the case in the next chapter, but will the truth about the case the only truth that will be revealed? Stay tuned and remember to review; it really helps me to keep writing and to get a sense for what you want to see.~21.06.2015