Chapter 3: The Case

The current case was... Disturbing. It was a case which had Toichi on edge, and which bothered him greatly, though he wouldn't let such a detail show to the world at large. Only his wife seemed capable of knowing when his emotions were unsettled and twisted; when he was troubled and worried. He never knew how she did it: He'd often check the mirror to see if there were any indications on his face, any discoloration on his skin... He'd even check his heart beat and ensure that it was kept perfectly under control, and yet, somehow, she always knew not only when he was upset, but also exactly what had him agitated and flustered on the inside. Even more remarkable, she usually knew how to fix it, regardless of the issue.

Either which way, Toichi was disquieted with his current case, and with Chikage off to Italy, he would have to settle himself.

The Fishy Magician did, of course, have a name: Minamoto Futsuji. Minamoto had been an active and world-renown magician for over thirty years. Despite the fact that he was not the most talented of magicians, and was known mostly for his ability to cater to a younger audience, most magicians he met were still rather fond of him; Kuroba Toichi had not been an exception when he first met the man nine years prior. The man was kind, gentle, and energetic in his older age (being around the age of sixty), and most of all, he was clearly fond of children. He'd had three sons and two daughters himself, all grown and living their own happy lives at this stage in life, and he'd been happily married until his wife's passing seven years past.

The details for the case Toichi was working, as far as he knew them, were as follows: Something had begun going horribly wrong at Minamoto's shows. Not at all of them, and not everywhere, but still, something began to happen. Four years ago, children who attended his shows began to disappear. They went missing, sometimes during, sometimes before, and often after his performances. They were always between the ages of three and seven, more often times being male rather than female. It wasn't at every performance that a child went missing and, specifically, they only disappeared from shows which were being held in Japan. No children had been reported missing from any of Minamoto's international performances, and of the shows held in Japan children only went missing from a third of them, almost exclusively from larger audiences where he was performing at public events.

In total, over the past four years, an unnerving thirty-two children had gone missing; eleven girls and twenty-one boys. Most had been taken from different shows, one per performance, except for three cases in which two children had gone missing on the same night. Of the thirty-two total children who had disappeared, thirty of them were still filed as missing.

Based on what he had gathered so-far, Toichi believed that, most likely, Minamoto had a crazed fan who began to attend his performances and steal children from them. This explained why children didn't tend to go missing from private events, with the exception of two cases, and would also justify why children only went missing in Japan. If Minamoto himself, or someone who was needed for his performances (such as an assistant) was the culprit, then the reason for children to only go missing from Japan would be left unexplained. More likely, it was someone who lived in Japan and therefore could not easily attend international shows.

Moreover, it was entirely possible that children were not only disappearing from the magician's performance sites: There was no way, as of yet, of knowing if this single culprit only took from the Fishy Magician's audiences. It was entirely possibly, likely even, that more missing child cases related to this one culprit. For a sick bastard looking to kidnap some children, a world-renowned magician's children show was a good place to take them from, with large numbers of them gathered in a single location and busy, distracted crowds which were easy to get lost in. The show itself provided an easy diversion for anyone wanting to take children, and as-of-yet there had been no evidence collected about when or how the children were taken. Apart from parents reporting that their children were missing and detailing what the last time they'd seen them was, as well as when they noticed their absence, there was nothing to even suggest that children had been going missing.

The most disturbing factor of the whole case was the two children which had been found...

Of those reported missing from the shows, only two of the thirty-two had been discovered, both long dead by the time they'd been noticed. One was buried under a tree in a local park, dug-up by a stray dog and decayed by two weeks. The other washed up on the shore-line just outside of Yokohama. It was theoretically possible that the other thirty children had not met this fate: That these two had actually been the work of a second culprit...

But Toichi doubted it. Such thinking was wishful, at best, and more likely the truth was that the bodies of the others had simply not been found. It did seem as though the culprit knew how to dispose of a body to a rather thorough degree.

Both of the ones which had been found were little boys, and based on what little evidence could be retrieved from their bodies... Toichi couldn't even begin to imagine such horrible things happening to his own precious son. The thought alone was almost enough to make him gag; almost enough to effectively wipe his Poker Face clean off.

When three weeks ago he'd gotten ahold of the case files (via less than legal means) detailing what known atrocities had been done to the boys, he'd been unable to prevent himself from leaving his workroom, entering his son's room, and pulling his sleeping child into a tight, protective embrace. He had remained there with his only child secured against his chest until morning, when Kaito had ultimately awoken to find his wakeful father holding him before uncomprehendingly squirming out of the embrace and going to the kitchen for breakfast.

Toichi, phantom thief though he may be, was not cut out for seeing such violent images as the ones depicted in the police reports, and as a father, it had been painful beyond imagine to picture his own son in such a state.

The only thing, in fact, which could possibly be worse was facing that image not in his own mind, but in reality.