File One Hundred and Forty-Four: The Rise of the Dead
It was already eleven o'clock in the morning and Hakuba felt absolutely and irrevocably done with this whole ordeal.
On the bright side, it didn't seem like it would take much longer ─ which was fortunate, because that certain pricking on his skin was becoming more noticeable by the second, burning against his skull with urgency. He needed to wrap this up as soon as possible, it said to put a stop to this series of unfortunate incidents that had been occurring, one after another, wreaking havoc in a forest that stood silent and calm, regardless.
So that there were no more victims, none further than those three.
Henry Evans, who had been shot to death yesterday morning.
Fred Palmer, found dead under mysterious circumstances only a few hours prior.
And Akako-san, who had gone missing about the time of Evans' demise. Clearly, there was a connection to all of that, and he was just beginning to see it. But there was so much lacking, so much for him to uncover and piece together, that he was almost starting to lose heart.
Almost.
According to the forensics, Palmer had given his last breath somewhere between two and three o'clock in the morning and, while the mysterious circumstances would have him screaming bloody murder any other time, it did not exactly look like one. At first glance, at least.
A heart attack had done the deed. Sudden yet violent, it had just decided he wasn't going to beat any longer. Just like that, it had been game over.
"It just… It can't be…"
Hakuba glanced over his shoulder. Lily was holding her hands over her chest as she watched, horrified, at the spot where Fred's body once lay at ─ not that she could actually see it, but seeing that the police investigators were practically swarming that spot, Hakuba could see where she had gotten the idea from.
"All those legends about this forest… About the ghosts…"
Harold grimaced. "Fred liked to joke about that. Ghosts."
"He kind of was asking for it, wasn't he?" Jennifer joked, though her shaky tone was betraying her.
They must have told him about that, Hakuba assumed ─ about that terrified expression fixated on Palmer's face, even in death. Although he was quite skeptical about the part concerning supernatural forces and the like, he would admit that there was certainly something unusual about this case; the reports might have called it 'heart failure', but everyone else who had seen his body could tell that it had been fear.
Palmer saw something before his death. Something that freaked him out enough for his heart to stop beating.
There was a light tapping on his shoulder. "Uh, Mr. Detective?" Hakuba hummed to let Harold know he had his attention. He hesitated, pausing long enough to, Hakuba assumed, gather his words before continuing, "This inspector told us you called us here?"
Said inspector had yet to stop staring at him, one eyebrow lifted above the other. Hakuba ignored him in favor of nodding.
"I'd like your collaboration for this case," Hakuba said. The three tensed up as one, to which he offered a satisfied smirk, and when nobody protested, he said, "I'm afraid I know little about this forest. So, if you don't mind, would you please be so kind as to tell me anything about this place?"
The three exchanged dubious glances, so he added, "Anything you can think of. It'd be of great help."
"Uh, I'm not sure…" Lily scrunched up her eyebrows in consternation. "I've never been here before, to begin with."
"Yeah, me neither," Harold said, glancing over to the inspector. "Before this inspector brought us here, that is. For whatever reason."
The inspector looked as if he wanted to know the true reason for all of this too, but Hakuba couldn't be bothered to acknowledge it. Not because he had a great, unbelievable plan in mind for all of this, unbelievable as that sounded, but because Hakuba himself wasn't sure what to expect either.
To begin to unravel a mystery, he needed someone to slip up somewhere. The supposed scene of the crime seemed like the ideal situation for the criminal to do so ─ assuming there was a criminal to begin with.
"Well, I have." Jennifer admitted. "I used to play around here when I was a little kid but," she shrugged, "I haven't gotten in too deep in, though."
"That's understandable," the inspector said with a nod of his head. "It would be awful if a young girl wound up lost in a place like this…"
She, however, shook her head, and looked back ahead; her eyes narrowing, an odd glint taking over her gaze, for some mysterious reason Hakuba had yet to deduce.
"I was chased away every time," she said.
A shiver ran down the inspector's spine. "W-Who…" He coughed, clearing his voice, and started over again, "Who was chasing you away?"
It was as if he hadn't spoken at all, for there was not a hint of a reaction on her part. She just continued to stare, as if she could see something beyond what any of them could, far away from their reach.
"Haven't you heard? There are stories," she said, her voice soft and even, if somehow distant. "There are stories of children. Children that wear white that roam this place, keeping travellers away..."
Her hands rose to rest over her forearm, as if her body warmth was, suddenly, leeching away without clear prompting. "Even now… can't you feel it?" Her eyelids slid close, eyebrows scrunched together. "That piercing gaze of the trees, the murmur of human souls that beg you to leave… It's said, too, that if you listen closely… you'll hear. You will hear the shuffle of leaves and feet."
With her voice waning and disappearing from existence, silence began to drift in, sinking into their breathing to rest into their shoulders ─ heavy as a presence that could not be overlooked. Yet, as the wind whispered in Hakuba's ear, there was nothing as an absolute silence, it simply did not exist; it spoke of wind rustling against the leaves, of the flapping of a bird's wings echoing somewhere in the distance, and more. Much more than his brain could probably comprehend.
Eventually, he fell on the realization that the leaves did not sound like leaves, but as rustling of clothes. The flapping became more like tapping ─ of feet against the ground ─ and the voice of the wind began to resemble something more human than anything else.
But his eyes saw nothing but a forest. Lacking, yet full of life, all at the same time.
"That just gave me the chills," commented Lily. Her laugh sounded tense. "And it's not even Halloween season yet."
"Hey, can't we leave?" Harold didn't look any better. His face was pale, too pale to be considered healthy, at any rate. "That's at least three people dying here. I don't want to be the fourth."
Lily glanced over at her friend in askance. "Three?"
"Don't tell me you didn't see it? The tombstone we passed by earlier!" Lily's puzzled blinking instigated a huff out of him. "Come on, really? You know, the one with the creepy plastic soldier figure dropped at its side! There's no way you didn't see that!"
"Oh, I've seen that too! It's so creepy!" Jennifer said, though she was smiling in a way that Hakuba wouldn't exactly describe as 'disturbed'. "But, if I remember correctly, it was supposed to be placed on top of the stone… I wonder who dropped it."
The conversation carried on, yet the high school detective felt as if he had heard enough. Slowly, as if not to make himself noticeable, he slipped away from the group, only drawing the inspector's attention with a wave of his hand. Noticing this, the man moved closer, allowing himself to be led somewhere away from the conversation and unwelcome ears.
"Tell the forensics to run some tests," Hakuba told him right away. "Have them check for…"
As the murmured words from the teenager crossed his ears, the inspector could not help his eyes from snapping open with surprise. "Are you serious?" he asked, eyebrows raised in disbelief. "What does that have to do with-?"
Yet Hakuba wasn't looking at him. His eyes had long come to rest on the group that, blissfully unaware of everything beyond themselves, continued to converse without a care in the world.
They narrowed. "Everything," he said.
Ironically enough, the moments after the blood-curdling scream she had heard before were nothing but silent.
Probably, the absence of both detectives had contributed to that, but she couldn't exactly tell they were to be the blame for it. They weren't, at least, directly responsible for her discomfort; even the slight shifting in her seat was noisy enough for gazes to fall on her.
One of them was eager to fill this awkward silence with anything, the other mostly indifferent, though it seemed to be strangely attentive to all her movements.
Perhaps she should have followed Conan and Sera, Ran considered. Had she done that, she wouldn't be here right now, sitting in Sera's living room with a smile she hoped looked not as forced as it felt to her, and her friend shooting her indiscreet glances her way every once and then.
Yet, there was not anything else she could have done. Not after spotting that one girl making a heel-turn the moment Sera ran away with Conan, heading back inside without a further thought. Because, even though her instincts were roaring not to let Conan go off while there was a murderer out there, she knew she could trust Sera to keep him safe, despite her being so untrustworthy about other matters, apparently.
This one little girl, though… She couldn't pinpoint why, but Ran had the feeling she shouldn't let her off her sight.
"What is it?"
Ran flinched as she looked up. Mari was narrowing her eyes at her, but then again, that seemed to be the norm lately. Maybe that was just the way her eyes were, and she was overreacting again, probably.
"Is there something you wanted to ask me?" Mari asked again.
Ran supposed she had been too obvious with her staring, but she supposed she couldn't be blamed. She was no detective, not even a proper investigator, so there was no wonder she couldn't manage such a thing.
"I was wondering, uh…" She hesitated. Sonoko was giving her the raised eyebrow again, but she ignored her. "Have we met before?"
Mari's eyes opened ever so slightly, as if taken aback by her question.
"Eh?" Sonoko had a similar expression on her face, only that more exaggerated somehow. "You know each other?"
That was what she wanted to know, actually, so she answered with nothing but a hesitant shrug, fixing her attention back to the younger girl to wait, patiently as she was known to be, for the answer to her question. By the time she had focused on Mari, however, she noted that some of the tension that had been so evident in her posture just now had vanished, and her stoic features had gone rigid again.
"I doubt it," Mari finally said, calm and composed ─ it almost made her wonder if the surprise she had spotted in that face had been nothing but a trick of the light, but Ran knew it had happened. "Masumi and I only moved to Japan a month ago. I've never been to this country before, either."
Ran did not know what to make out of that statement, honestly.
"Is it alright, though?" Sonoko pipped in suddenly. "Isn't Sera-san older than you?"
Mari looked as though she couldn't understand what she was talking about.
"In Japan it's considered rude to call older people by their names and without proper honorifics," Ran explained, with a light smile on her lips. "We're a bit weird, aren't we?"
"Oh, right. She's a foreigner." Sonoko stared at her for a second, then added, "Her Japanese is pretty good, though."
"His Japanese is perfect as well," Mari said, only to receive a pair of confused blinking before she continued. "Masumi said he's from America. That boy, Edogawa Conan."
Despite herself, Ran felt herself flinch.
"Ah, the brat? Well, he used to live here-"
"He has been living in Japan for quite a while!" Her interruption surely did not go unnoticed by her best friend but, hopefully if she kept on talking, it wouldn't be as noticeable. "It did take him a little to get used to it, he had a lot of time…"
"How much is 'a lot of time' for a child?" wondered the blonde girl. "The boy can't be older than eight."
"That must be…" Sonoko murmured, eyebrows scrunched up together as she was trying to calculate it mentally. "About two years, right?"
"Maybe a little more than that, yeah."
When the front door opened right afterwards and Sera came in, followed closely by Conan, Ran had to physically fight the urge to breathe out in relief ─ partly because the arrival of her small charge who was bound to wind off in every sort of trouble, though that was a feeling she, sadly, had already grown used to deal with. Partly because of something else entirely.
Mari turned her eyes away from her and posed them on the youngest of the room. Ran didn't.
"So?" Sonoko asked. "Who died this time?"
There was a sigh. "You…" Conan began. "I don't think you'll like this, Ran-neechan."
Ran whipped her head back and found the boy staring at her, so for a moment in which she was trying to grasp the situation she wasn't paying a lot of attention to, she blinked. His words were processed slower than they should, but eventually, she caught on to what they meant ─ and what they probably suggested.
"Wait," she started, wide-eyed. "Don't tell me the victim was actually…?"
Conan stared some more, then jumped slightly. "Ah, no, no. It was his assistant."
Ran eased up some, but the frown on her face remained. "Oh," she muttered. Because, even if she didn't want the author of the romance novel she had been invested in for so long, it didn't exactly mean she was relieved. Somebody had died, the fact had not changed.
"He probably killed her, though," Sera added.
"Eh?!" exclaimed Sonoko and Ran, in unison. But then, they paused, realizing that they hadn't been alone, really, and that there had been a third, younger voice joining their expression of utter shock and bewilderment.
Sera's expression was priceless, though, as she looked down at the little boy. "What, you didn't know?" she asked, and Conan blinked back cluelessly, in response. "But back then…" Conan tilted his head slightly as he listened. "When we looked at each other, I thought, we," she pointed at herself, then at the child, and then back, "had, like, an understanding."
"I can't exactly read minds, Sera-neechan."
Except he basically had done such a thing; he clearly remembered having exchanged looks with that detective over there, feeling as though they had reached the same conclusion without the use of words, and concluded that the novelist Hiura Keigo had to be the killer.
But as it stood, Mari's gaze, sharp as a hawk, was still drilling holes in the back of his head. It was honestly unnerving.
Seeing that Sera was too busy staring at the boy as though he had grown a second head, Ran stepped up. "Why do you think he did it?" she asked her.
Sera blinked at her, as if waking from a long dream, before responding, "Well, he kind of mentioned being writing romance novels while she was dying, even though we had yet to tell him the time she actually died."
In tears, mind you. Though crocodile tears were more like it. To be fair, his involvement in her death wasn't as much of a logical conclusion as a hunch, as Hiura had shaken the suspicion off him claiming that she had been supposed to show to his room but failed to, hence the conclusion he supposedly had jumped into.
Minazuki Chiaki was the victim's name. She was twenty-nine, nearly thirty, and the talented assistant of famous novelist Hiura Keigo. Found in nothing but a bathrobe on the floor at her hotel room, her body had shown clear signs of being strangled, so if it hadn't been obvious as it was, no, it had not been a natural death. It never was, anyway.
The body had been discovered by a hotel bellboy, who had been told to bring champagne to her room at exactly 6 PM, only to find the key card stuck in the door, leaving it slightly ajar, and then, obviously, her body. Apparently, the champagne had been requested by Hiura himself, who occupied the room directly above hers ─ to celebrate the novel he thought he would finish by that time, but conveniently didn't get to.
Finding himself unable to finish the last pages ─ which Conan completely believed, but for the wrong reasons only ─ he had left his room to buy some cigarettes from the vending machine two floors below. It was on his way back that he had heard the bellboy scream and came into knowledge of the tragedy that had befallen him. Supposedly.
Well, he supposed it didn't exactly matter if he thought of him as extremely suspicious if he didn't have any proof. The bastard had called those three editors to eat in his room, so he had built himself a pretty solid alibi ─ he couldn't have left with those three noticing, so that was that. But he wasn't exactly with them, under the pretense of taking a bath, so maybe there had been a way.
A way he had yet to figure out, though.
A knock on the door, along with the calling of, "It's Takagi," from the other side, gathered everyone's attention. In came the aforementioned detective, an apologetic smile on his face as he did so. Understandable, thought Conan, since he had just told Sera and him that they were free to go for the time being ─ not even fifteen minutes must have passed, so he figured it would be important.
But what they were asked, however, was far from what he would have imagined.
"What?" Sera raised her eyebrows. "The caps for the shampoo and conditioner are missing? The ones from the victim's room?"
Well, that was random. Apparently, they couldn't find them, not even in the drain.
"We wouldn't know," replied Conan, glancing towards his fellow detective and back at Takagi. "Since we were only at the main entrance."
That surprised him, for some reason. "Then you weren't the ones who knocked over the table?"
"Table?"
"Most of the room was undisturbed, but somehow just the table was knocked over," explained Takagi, giving him an odd look.
It was as though he couldn't grasp the fact that they, detectives who knew how to preserve a crime scene, hadn't been the ones to make such a mess. If you asked Conan, being suspected of such a thing should be the most surprising, if offensive, thing of it all.
But he let that slide in favor of processing the new bout of information; apparently, over the table that was reported to be knocked over, had been a can of beer. It had ended on top of Minazuki's open suitcase, staining the clothes with it.
Quite the big suitcase, interesting enough, but oddly empty for its size. Consisting of only clothes, makeup, tablet and a backpack, there was nothing extremely relevant about it.
"Oh, right!" Takagi suddenly said. "There was an old postcard in one of the backpack's inside pockets. It was postmarked twenty years ago, and the sender was Hiura-sensei."
That successfully gathered Conan's interest ─ and brought that same old irritation back to his system. The victim had an old postcard from the prime suspect of her murder, and he didn't think it was relevant enough to be remembered?
Immediately, his mind went back to the rumors about them dating, even though he was married. At first, he had dismissed them as plain dumb gossip that inherently had no sense whatsoever, but now he was just starting to reconsider.
Was there another reason for her to keep it, so closely guarded at that?
"It says 'What a cute story. When I write a story like this, maybe I'll name the heroine after you'," Takagi said. "But it's addressed to Ota Jun, not Mizunashi Chiaki."
So it wasn't her? Conan hummed to himself, slightly disappointed. Here he had thought this would be the clue to figure out the motive behind the crime…
"O-Ota Jun?!" Ran's sudden yell all but made him jump out of his skin, but he turned slowly either way. The girl appeared to be beyond shocked, a fact which the boy wasn't entirely sure how to take. "Did you hear that, Conan-kun?!"
"Yeah?" He blinked, genuinely not understanding.
Seeing this, she huffed in what he could interpret as annoyance, not helping at all with the current situation. "That's the name of the heroine!" Conan was drawing a blank. "Ota Jun, from The Phone, the Ocean, and I!"
"... Oh."
"Oh?" Sonoko pushed forward, raising an eyebrow. "You read the whole thing and don't even remember the heroine's name?"
"W-Well," he started, only interrupted by his own nervous chuckle. "I only read… one chapter. Little after it was released, actually. Because Ran-neechan recommended it to me."
She gave him a look ─ that of utter betrayal, one that seemed so foreign to that face of hers.
"Eh? But last week…"
"Ran-neechan was excited because of some new development in the story, so I thought I could…" He twiddled with his fingers, then deflated with a sigh. "I didn't make it halfway through the second one."
Takagi laughed at that. "I thought you were an avid reader-"
"Just because I like to read doesn't mean I like to read everything." Conan turned his head away, a hint of annoyance glinting as he narrowed his eyes at nothing in particular. "And the fact that the heroine couldn't figure out the identity of the guy sending her messages was a bit frustrating…"
And that must have been a sight to see. More than once had his brother caught him scowling at the book, because they had been living together back then, and at all times he hadn't been able to hide his amusement. Conan remembered flinging the book to his head once.
"Eh?!" Ran exclaimed. "You know who it is?!"
"You don't? It's obviously-"
"No, don't spoil it!"
Conan would have said something, but he would rather not remind her that she wouldn't get to read the final chapter of her beloved novel, unless he was willing to write it from prison. Were that to be the case, though, he highly doubted she would get it the following week as scheduled. Or the one after that.
"This story you're talking about…" Conan and Ran immediately looked away from each other, and turned to Sera instead. "Can you tell me what's about?"
Conan grimaced. "Are you sure you-?"
"Sure!" Ran pounced, grinning brightly enough to rival the sun. "I'll tell you all about it!"
The boy sighed at the sight. Watching her falling into an excited ramble about the contents of the novel she loved so much, the kid wondered if that was what he looked like whenever he talked about Sherlock Holmes. His friends would probably agree, though, so he made a mental note not to ever ask about it.
The story was simple enough, even though it felt infinitely more complex as Ran retold every detail she could remember, and unfortunately for him, she had an excellent memory. In the book, the heroine found a scratched up cell phone on the beach, an unreleased model she was planning to buy the following week, when a suspicious mail popped up, asking her age. Despite what common sense would have dictated, she wound up talking long enough to figure that she was talking with someone living in the future, where things had apparently gone amiss.
So, it was up to her to prevent it from actually happening… Conan had nodded off before he could learn what her plans were for that, so that was as far as he knew.
All he remembered was her asking the mysterious person, several times throughout the chapter, about his identity, about his relationship with her. The answer was always the same.
'The Phone, the Ocean, and I'. At that point, Conan had genuinely regretted reading that thing, and decided never to come into near contact with Ran's suggested literature.
"He's a bold writer, though. He doesn't have any time left but he invited the editors watching him into his room to win them over," Takagi commented, then laughed. "If I were in his situation, I would probably shave my head in desperation and ask for more time… Oh, he already has a shaved head."
At that moment, Conan seriously wondered how he hadn't noticed such a thing before, when it was so obvious that it hurt.
… Maybe he shouldn't have hated on Ota Jun so much for being so clueless.
The one from the book, of course.
Though he supposed it didn't really matter, for the puzzle he had been attempting to solve for so long was finally complete ─ the motive, as well as the execution, was crystal clear to him. Not to say, though he didn't physically possess the proof to link the murderer to the crime, he knew where he could find it.
Therefore, there was nothing else for him to do ─ nothing but to help prepare the actual detective in the room for her deduction show. Given the grin that had spread all over Sera's face, he had the feeling he wasn't the only one indulging in that certain line of thought.
"Detective Takagi, Detective Takagi," he called, tugging on the hem of the aforementioned detective. Once he gathered his attention, he smiled as adorably as it was humanly possible, and opened his mouth.
Then he froze solid. He sensed Sera's gaze as she peered down at him, and could have sworn he felt the confusion emanating from her, which he tried to dispel with a nervous laugh of his own. "Just come here," he muttered, blocking out Takagi's surprised yelp as he was dragged away from the hotel room by a mere pint-sized elementary student.
Sera followed, not without pausing to tilt her head at the scene. The door was soon closed behind the trio, left alone for Mari to narrow her eyes at it.
Even after he was out of sight, the boy did not stop running. The risk of being heard through the doors was all too big ─ probably, he couldn't tell for sure ─ so he wasn't about to stand there, and say something that would make him… more suspicious, he guessed?
For some reason, that one girl named Mari made his skin crawl.
He wasn't content enough to release the disconcerted police detective until they had reached the main hall. Takagi stumbled forward as the grip on him vanished, and for a moment, he did nothing but stand there. And breathe.
Conan watched him lean against a wall, heavy breathing shaking his body.
Without even batting an eye, he told him, "We need a suitcase."
Takagi turned to look at him, and managed a breathy, pathetic, "Wha-?"
"A large one, preferably the same size as the one found in Minazuki-san's room," Sera added, casually crossing her arms over her chest. She paused as if to think, "We need to take the weight of the body into consideration," then brought her finger to caress her chin as she added, "We need to put something inside."
It would be ridiculous to think that it was possible to hide such a violent flinch from the attentive gaze of the two detectives, but Conan tried anyway. The attention fell on him in any case, so he supposed he still didn't have it as a great actor like his mother once was.
Sera was blinking at him, but then, her eyes snapped open. "Oh, sorry," she said, her lips curved into an apologetically, genuine smile. "I mean putting rice bags inside."
Though he shrugged and muttered an inaudible, "I knew that," Conan could not help but let his shoulders drop as tension leached from his body. It was nice to know he wasn't about to be confined inside a suitcase and be thrown over the veranda ─ even though he was aware of the trick, and that it would only mean being passed over to the floor beneath, he didn't think it would do much to settle his nerves.
"I'm not about to throw you inside that thing," said Sera. Probably, she had mistaken his pensive silence with hesitance on her actions. "I learnt my lesson."
This time, he successfully suppressed a wince, though his cheeks must have warmed at the embarrassing memory ─ that cooking show that went wrong, the demonstration of that trick that also had gone poorly; his onset of panic at being locked into a chest, albeit momentarily, was not what Conan would call a fun moment to relive.
"I remember that," said Takagi, his smile a bit more tense than usual. "I was surprised to learn that Conan-kun is claustrophobic…"
Yeah, thought the child. I was, too, actually.
"Man, I got an earful from Ran-kun at the time," commented Sera, chuckling at the memory that crossed her mind, though Conan could easily see the sweat collecting at her brow. "Though I kinda deserved that." She paused long enough for a shiver to overcome her, before adding, "Even Sonoko-kun called me heartless."
"Heartless is a bit…" Takagi trailed off.
"To be fair, she actually said, 'and here I thought Shinichi-kun was heartless'."
Conan flinched at that, again. Of course, Sonoko had to go and say such unnecessary things.
"I didn't peg him as that type," added the girl as an afterthought. "Then again, I don't know him well…"
"S-Sonoko-neechan actively enjoys being mean to Shinichi-niichan." He knew his voice had failed him, and was extremely conscious that, right now, he might as well be swimming in his own sweat. But he grinned regardless. "So maybe you shouldn't think much about it…"
Takagi hummed, deep in thought for some reason, and Conan felt like he could willingly die at that very moment.
Even though he had thought so sly and cunning, capable of crafting the perfect crime without nobody being the wiser, all that Hiura Keigo had proved that night was that he was better off sticking to his cheesy romance novels. For he was to ever try his hand into mysteries, well, Conan was sure to stay a mile away from them.
Unless he was incredibly dense, downright a professional denialist of the fundamental truths of this world, the guy must have realized this as well. Specifically, the moment he saw a large suitcase plopping down on his balcony.
Despite him trying to pretend otherwise, it was pretty obvious that Minazuki had been strangled in his room, not hers. It wouldn't be hard to convince her to come in disguise so as not to encourage all of those rumors that had been circulating around lately about them being lovers.
And so Minazuki came, dressed as a hotel bellhop to deliver the wine. Keeping the editors busy eating guaranteed that nobody would notice if she didn't walk out of the room ─ none of them were none of the wiser of the poor woman passing away in their vicinity, or her body being left to grow cold inside a suitcase. Little did any of them know then that, after their departure, Hiura had lowered it to her room with the help of a rope and the veranda of his balcony.
Without a body, it wasn't hard for him to walk out of his room and get into hers, in order to set the crime scene. All he had to do was to put a bathrobe on her, and it was all done. How had he done it so quickly, one may ask? Easy, she had already been naked to begin with.
Since she had undressed on her own. Having been told she smelled, the woman hadn't hesitated, no doubt preparing herself for what it had been, unbeknownst to her, her last shower ever.
Though he might not have accounted for the smell and dampness of a hair the victim had not gotten to dry herself ─ the sound of a hair dryer would have been suspicious as hell considering he was practically bald. He thought it was fixable, that spilling some beer would do the trick.
Conan wondered if his father would be disappointed if he ever heard of this case.
"Hiura-sensei took the caps off the bottles in the victim's room for the same reason," Sera said, looking at the culprit straight in the eyes. "You had to replace the caps the victim washed down the drain after she used yours. After all, there's no reason for you to use shampoo."
Hiura only scowled, doing little to deny the accusation. Sera only smirked in return, remarking that he still might have them in his person, and sure enough, the clattering of tiny bottle caps resounded in the hallway leading to his own room, a look of utter defeat shadowing his face.
"I'm not a mystery writer, after all," he murmured.
Conan rolled his eyes ─ as if that wasn't obvious as it was.
Though, come to think of it, romance and drama were inherently connected, most of the time. So, he supposed that he must have had a reasonable motive ─ for the lack of a better word, because there was hardly a thing as a reasonable motive to kill someone else, though he could understand some ─ for murdering a woman in cold blood.
All hope melted into disappointment as he confessed that he had killed her, the talented assistant that had sole-handedly revived his career, because of what Conan would describe as a bout of unfounded paranoia ─ unfounded, because he would like to differentiate himself from this man. He might be prone to paranoia, true, but at least he liked to believe there was a bit of a reason for them. Then again, he supposed it was not 'paranoia' if there were people out there who would be willing to kill you and those you loved.
Whatever. Hiura Keigo was… something different altogether.
"She came up with most of the story," he confessed, referring to the novel Ran would probably never get to read the final chapter of, The Sea, Phone, and I. "It was based on an old fan letter. You can't even call it my work."
Conan knew what he was talking about; Ota Jun, the mysterious person he had exchanged letters with, at least once in the past. He kind of suspected where things were going, but here, he was hoping for some unexpected turn of events.
He later confirmed it; it was a fan letter he had discovered while cleaning, written by a grade school student. When told about it, Minazuki had gotten invested in his project of a new novel based on the letter; choosing the title herself, revising his writing until it was nothing less than perfect, Conan could not understand how this man hadn't been able to see something that obvious.
"I didn't understand why she worked so hard on it. Every time I asked, she would smile and say I would understand, eventually. Then a weekly magazine accused us of being lovers… That's when I became certain! This woman intended to steal my family, my status, my honor and my money for me and-!"
"How did you manage?"
Hiura halted mid-sentence. There was that young bespectacled little boy again, eyeing him with wide innocent eyes ─ a look he replied with a confused one of his own. The detective had just told him, hadn't she? So why was he looking at him like that, as if he hadn't heard a word he had said?
"How did you manage to become such a famous novelist?" asked the boy. He blinked once, then turned his head slightly to one side. "You mean that your inability to connect the most obvious facts in real life doesn't affect your ability to connect plot points throughout your story? That's pretty amazing."
The novelist hesitated, unsure of how he was supposed to take… whatever that had been.
"That's without taking into consideration your inaptitude to plan ahead." The comment rolled off Conan's tongue easily enough. Somewhere in the background, he thought he spotted Megure gawking at him, and he might have heard Sera snickering, too, but it didn't deter him at all. "Even if you got away with it, how did you plan to write the final chapter when you didn't even know what your novel's title actually meant?"
"What are you talking about, Conan-kun?" Megure said. "Of course Hiura-san-"
"I don't know."
"What?"
See? Told you. Conan could not keep on it any longer, his eyelids lowering as he stared, unamusedly, at this sorry excuse of a novelist that had committed the worst sins humanity had ever known, and not even for a good enough reason. This was the worst, considered Conan ─ well, not the worst, worst, he supposed. There was still Gin. And Vodka. And several others that would probably beat him in that category, but he supposed it didn't really matter.
"She loved you."
A set of three puzzled glances fell on him, and he felt himself try and shrink away at the sudden, unexpected reaction ─ there was an inspector and a detective, had they seriously failed to deduce that on their own? You've got to be kidding me.
"You know, 'The Sea, the Phone, and I'?" Conan tried, but the man before him was as clueless as always. At least it got Sera to step back, frowning as she pondered about it, so he supposed that was something. "In English, those words sound like teru, shi, and ai. Read it backwards."
Aishiteru, which meant 'I love you' ─ finally, Hiura's eyes flew open in realization. Which begged the question as to how this man had managed, even if he got a lot of help from his deceased assistant, to write a novel without even realizing that the 'mysterious sender' was just the heroine's loved one from the future. I thought it was obvious?
"T-There's no way a child's explanation could be…" Hiura began.
Yeah, there's no way you didn't see it either. "Well, it was written by a child, you know."
Hiura stared cluelessly.
"Do yourself a favor and apply the same method to Minazuki Chiaki-san's name." It seemed like he didn't want to do himself a favor, because his expression didn't shift, so Conan sighed, and added, "Minazuki becomes June and the 'aki' from Chiaki turns into 'Autumn'. So backwards, Ota Jun."
And backwards he stumbled, his face pale with the realization that had fallen on him all too late to do anything to fix it. His mistake, his sin, all too heavy to bear, sunk on his shoulders, his legs giving in as he dissolved in tears; no doubt wishing, with all his mind, that he, too, was capable of changing the past. Like the protagonist of a story that would forever remain incomplete; undeserving of an actual ending that its real creator, unfortunately, received on its stead, all too soon.
With sunset edging closer, finally, finally, it came.
It was about 8 PM when he was approached by the inspector, an envelope in hand and an expression of plain confusion drawn on his features. Hakuba paid no mind to it, knowing that all those questions were about to be answered, leaving behind no stones to be unturned, that concerned this overly-complicated case, that was.
The paper slid from the envelope in a single, swift motion. Eyes narrowed onto its form, glided across as they took into its contents, and stopped.
Hakuba failed to contain his laughter.
"What's so funny?" asked the inspector, eyebrows furrowed to indicate he did not like what he was hearing.
The three suspects were giving similar looks. This, of course, did little to intimidate him.
"To think it would be this simple," Hakuba said as the laughter died down. He gave the piece of paper one last look, then shaking his head as if he couldn't believe what he had come across, passed it back to the dumbfounded inspector. "But, as expected, there isn't anything even remotely supernatural about this case."
Everyone was silent as the inspector scanned the report on his hands. "The test for blood alcohol content came back positive," he stated, his voice hinting that he wasn't entirely understanding what was going on."Seems Palmer was drunk last night." His eyebrow raised suddenly, though, and added, "Really drunk."
"That… sounds like Fred," commented Lily, after a lengthy pause. "But what does it have to do with anything?"
"He couldn't have drunk that much, even someone like him," added Jennifer, though the tone of her voice indicated some degree of doubt in her own words. "Not enough to kill him."
"But he did."
As the last rays of light painted the sky with its beautiful golden radiance, every single gaze fell on a certain figure whose voice had just reached their ears. He did not respond to it, nor did he move his attention away from that small, old-fashioned pocket watch lying on top of his palm.
"Time is but a continuous flow," murmured the detective, soft as if in something akin to a trance, watching as the hands of that clock moved. "It pushes forward, relentlessly; a force nobody can ever fight against."
It tickled once, then twice, and at the third, he closed it shut.
"August 21st, 8:35 PM, Henry Evans was murdered here, in this Wistman's Wood, by a single shot to the head," he said, his gaze unwilling to leave his fisted hand, wrapped around his watch. "The murder weapon was, evidently, a gun. Forensics must have confirmed by now that it's actually Ms. Bell's, right?"
Jennifer froze in her spot. "Wait-"
And the inspector flinched, gave the report one last check over before nodding. "It was a perfect match," he said. "No fingerprints were found, though."
"Of course there were none. Even the most foolish of criminals would try to get rid of their fingerprints." Hakuba's lips curved into a smirk. "Even though their identity is incredibly obvious."
"Wait a moment!" Jennifer took a step forward, suddenly pale at the clear accusation thrown at her. "I didn't do it! I-" She shot a look towards her female friend, but she remained quiet, wide-eyed like a deer caught in headlights. "You were there with me, right?!" Lily looked away, biting her lip. "Lily!"
"You cannot force her to testify on things she can't be sure about," Hakuba said, shaking his head. "Since she took a shower, she can't say she has been keeping an eye on you at all times."
"But she said it before, did she?! That it wasn't long enough to go to the forest, kill someone and come back!" She was screaming now, probably out of desperation. "Besides, didn't you just say it? Henry died in the morning. Lily showered just before going to bed!"
Hakuba took a moment, for motives that the woman could only attribute to him pondering about her words. But then, he raised his head and uttered, "You were going out with Mr. Evans, were you not? Henry Evans, I mean."
Jennifer tensed, and almost immediately, Lily's head snapped towards her, a look of utter disbelief ─ and then betrayal ─ crossing her face. "You didn't. Jenny, you-"
"Mr. Palmer had the evidence to prove it. In his phone," Hakuba continued, not allowing the argument to drag any longer ─ he was short in time, after all. They could settle it later, were they wish to do so. "If you think about it, a forest is the best place to confront a friend about it. Nobody would be able to overhear their conversation."
He looked back to the front, his gaze narrowing at somewhere in the distance, where his eyes could not reach. "But it is also the best place to murder someone. Trees are silent witnesses, after all."
This time, it was time for Harold to gasp. "You aren't saying that Fred…" He shook his head, and more forcefully, added, "But wasn't the gun under a safe box? Jenny said that nobody could ever tell the passcode-"
"-nobody… in the world of the living. I'm assuming it was the date where they met, or something of similar sentimental value for the two of them."
Jennifer bit her lower lip and refused to elaborate any further.
So Hakuba did it in her stead. "Since Mr. Evans and you were lovers, you wouldn't hesitate to open the door for him, even though Ms. Morgan was right there, showering in the room next to you."
Harold sent her a look of incredulity, but as it was, Jennifer could do nothing but to shrink at the glare her once beloved friend, Lily Morgan, was sending her. Hakuba coughed, and was pleased when the three heads moved to him once more.
"You were drinking until late, if I'm not mistaken." Jennifer nodded, so he continued, "Did you, perhaps, lose consciousness because of-"
"Yeah, yeah, I passed out drunk," she snapped, her eyebrow twitching. "So what?"
"That's when Evans stole your gun and left the room before Morgan returned," said Hakuba, absolutely gone past the point of being fazed about anything else, including, but not limited to, Jennifer's growing impatience with him. "He kept it until he met with Palmer the following morning."
"But, hold on!" Harold suddenly said, waving his hands in front of him in an attempt for him to stop. "My brother was the one who died first! It's as if…"
"He wanted to kill Mr. Palmer instead? Well, he actually did. To prevent his marriage from being ruined." When there was nothing but silence and it looked like nobody would ask anything, the detective carried on. "But Mr. Palmer must have caught on and shot Mr. Evans with the gun that was brought to end his life."
With the sun finally finding shelter beneath the horizon, the shadows began to grow. Hakuba hardly looked away from the forest. It was almost as if he could see, but not quite make out, something white fluttering with the breeze before it hid again behind a large tree.
This time, though, he wasn't alarmed.
"A witness has reported a little girl on the scene," he said. "Although we have yet to determine her identity, her implication on the case is clear. We found bloodstains to prove it."
Next to the body, the blood had been smudged over the corners, signs that now he identified as someone with a small complexion, most definitely a young child, kneeling next to the deceased Evans.
"This girl was roaming the woods on her own, probably walked closer after hearing the shot and tried to help him." Little had she known then, Hakuba added in the privacy of his own mind, that the victim was beyond saving. "Mr. Palmer saw her and chased her."
Hence the smaller bloody footprints that connected the scene of the crime and the tombstone Akako had been searching for.
"On her way, she found someone else and sought her help."
Lily tilted her head in confusion. "Someone else?"
Hakuba hesitated before answering, "A friend of mine who went missing at the time of the murder."
"Oh…"
"She dropped her phone while running away, and then it was taken by Mr. Palmer," Hakuba continued, as if Lily had not made a single sound at all. "Then, fearing the consequences of being found with it, he buried it."
He knew he had, because he had seen the marks on the ground, next to the tombstone. The size, the location where he had found it, and the dragging marks; everything clicked together if there had been the place where Akako's phone had been hidden, all this time.
Until night came, naturally.
"He came by to fetch it that night, on an alcohol-induced whim that must have seemed like an incredibly thought-out idea to get away with his crime. Little did he know he was being watched."
Finally, he raised his head, eyes flickering until they met with the culprit's, and the frown, already carved into his features, deepened.
"In his inebriated state, Mr. Palmer turned around. To him, it must have felt as though the hands of a clock were moving backwards…"
The culprit began to grow pale, and despite himself, Hakuba found that smug smirk rising again; his once damaged pride welling up in his chest as he confirmed his suspicions. For once and for all, the mystery was solved.
"... thus allowing his eyes to witness the most horrifying, unbelievable sight."
Though slowly, Lily was the first one to realize the silence that had befallen them, but regardless, she couldn't even risk breathing so as not to shatter it into pieces. Blinking once, then twice, she began to turn, and sure enough, her eyes began to widen at the figure that stood, quietly still, directly behind her.
While the dim light of the night that steadily crept in kissed his features, the shadows smudged over them only partially.
Her voice was caught in her throat.
"That of the dead rising from their grave."
Before her stood her beloved fiancé.
No, not him, she realized upon the next blink. Biting his lip, Harold looked away, and then she knew; this detective had hit the nail on the head, even if her own brain was far from processing everything as it was.
"You look a lot like your brother, Mr. Harold Evans," stated Hakuba, satisfied with the result.
Genetics could be quite strong, Hakuba had come to learn over the years. He, himself, had been witness to it; there was a certain pair of brothers that he could think of, hadn't it been from the huge age gap, he would probably never be able to tell them apart.
Well, there was also Kudo and Kuroba, he later realized. But they weren't related, strangely enough. Should he check later? Probably not, it was not relevant nor his business, but certainly, it was something to ponder about later.
As it was now, he had a case to wrap up. His hand slid inside his pocket, took something out, and held it up for everyone to see.
"It's the thing!" exclaimed Jennifer, pointing over at the plastic soldier figure Hakuba had in his grasp. "The weird thing that was on the tombstone!"
Hakuba nodded. "If I'm not mistaken, it's your first time seeing this, right, Ms. Morgan?"
Lily nodded, hesitantly.
"You two, however, mentioned having seen this before, correct?" Both Harold and Jennifer nodded at the same time. "Are you sure you saw it on a tombstone?"
"Of course!" Harold exclaimed, just beginning to feel annoyed. "I told you, didn't I?"
"Yeah!" Jennifer agreed. "I've known this place for practically all my life! I would-"
"Yes, you would." Hakuba interrupted. The woman found herself faltering when the teenager turned to the man standing right beside her, and asked, "But would you, really? You mentioned you have never been here until this day."
He glanced over at the inspector as he said, "When this inspector brought us here, we passed by that place. I swear I saw it."
Hakuba shifted his attention to the plastic soldier, turning it over in his hand as he hummed.
"Isn't it curious? I could have sworn it had been in my pocket at that time."
Seeing the man wince in realization was almost satisfying, but Hakuba knew it wasn't over. Not yet, at least.
"Oh, but don't misunderstand me ─ I do believe you saw this. You were the one to mention that it was a soldier figure, after all. But the timing is what is off."
"You don't mean…" Jennifer breathed out.
"As his older brother, you must have learnt something. I'm not certain if it was from Mr. Evans himself, or because you had a hunch, but you followed Mr. Palmer into the woods, and there, you saw this." Hakuba held it up to the suspect, before pocketing it, and resuming from where he had left off. "My friend's phone was hidden next to the tombstone, after all. You saw him burying it out and stepped out to confront him."
"Then, he mistook him with the brother he killed," reasoned the inspector, nodding as he began to see where all of this was heading. "He got a heart attack and died."
Harold flinched, opened his mouth as if to protest, yet deflated with a heavy sigh before he managed a single word.
"Curiously enough, my friend's phone was the same model as our second victim's, and first victimiser," Hakuba added. "When you saw Mr. Palmer digging it out, you thought it was his. The phone with the evidence; the proof that would sullen your brother's name."
His hand instinctively reached into his pocket. Hakuba pointed at him, regardless.
"Koizumi Akako-san's phone, you have it right there. It proves you were here the night Fred Palmer died. Am I wrong, Mr. Evans?"
It took a moment, a moment longer than Hakuba would have wished to be, but eventually, the man gave in. Head hung low in defeat, he plucked out what he had been carrying with him all that time and revealed, with yet another sigh, the phone Hakuba had been searching for all along.
Akako's phone.
"He was crying," he finally said, in a whisper. "When he came to me the night before… before that happened to him."
"Henry?" Jennifer asked, hesitantly.
Harold nodded. "He confessed he was cheating on Lily. He also confessed that Fred knew all about it and had called him, so obviously, I suspected him when he appeared dead the next morning. So I… followed him." He paused, swallowing, then shaking his head, as if trying to get rid of a terrible memory ingrained in his mind. "I didn't imagine it would come to this. If only I knew…"
"Why didn't you say something, then?!" argued Lily. "Anything at all-!"
"Because he loved you." Lily froze at the response, her words dying at the back of her throat. "He was going to break up with Jenny, and was determined to make up for his mistakes in the best way he could."
The woman gazed at him, her eyes wide with something akin to surprise, growing with each second in which she did nothing at all besides standing there, quietly still as if she could bend with the forest if she tried hard enough. But eventually, the words must have finally pierced through the fog of shock that clouded her mind, and the tears slowly peeked out from her eyes.
"He lied to me," came out in a faint whisper. "He even wanted to kill someone else instead of telling me the truth." Her voice grew louder while her tears grew thicker as they flowed freely, rolling down her cheeks and cascading down to the ground. "He was willing to murder an actual human being, can't you see that?!"
"Nevertheless, he was my little brother." When Harold's breath hitched and his hands went to bury his face, they knew that the woman had not been the only one pushed past her limit; the only one whose heart had been shattered into tiny pieces. "I… couldn't allow his name to be sullen. No matter how much of a monster he actually was."
Hakuba watched, impassively, as the man fell to his knees and dissolved in tears. The inspector standing close to him, though, took a tentative step forward.
"I was too scared…" Harold murmured. "I just wanted to confront Fred about it, but I didn't want- I didn't kill him. But I thought, if I came up clean to the police, you would think…"
He choked on another sob. The inspector watched him for a moment, then released a long, heavy sigh, and told him, "You won't be charged with murder. It was an accident."
Harold lifted his head sharply, eyes wide with both surprise, and maybe, a bit of hope.
"But I can't say you aren't in trouble for obstructing the investigation," he added and crouched next to him. "You're still coming with us."
The man took his time to breathe, then shakily nodded at the inspector and stood up.
In silence, high school detective Saguru Hakuba watched him being taken away by the police, thus marking the end of this series of borderline-supernatural tragedies that had befallen these woods.
The case was closed, and the remaining people disbanded right away. Lily and Jennifer walked away silently, probably heading somewhere more privately to have a long chat. The police left right afterwards, too, now that their job was done ─ nobody wanted to be in that place for further than necessary, and though he was still skeptical about what they thought hid in that forest, Hakuba could understand.
He was the last to leave. He sent one look over his shoulder, smirked to himself, before walking away.
It would be fine, he reflected.
"It's not fine!"
Though he would probably not openly admit to it, Hakuba had been startled at the sudden outburst. This man, who he had learned to be Akako's butler ─ servant, according to him, but he would let that slide because what ─ had not looked like the type to react so strongly.
But he had obviously been worried. Concern could shape people into something entirely different from what they truly were.
"You caught the criminal who was tormenting Akako-ojousama-"
"Actually, he was murdered-"
"-so where is she?" Hakuba did not answer that one, at least as quickly as the man would have liked him to. "Didn't you find her?"
"I don't need to."
The man halted, watching as the detective breathed out slowly. He was giving him a look then, once he ascertained he wasn't going to be interrupted, he leaned back into his seat.
And had the gall to smirk.
"Because she's going to walk herself out of the woods. All on her own."
"Wha… What in the world are you talking about-?"
And then, his words faltered, his thoughts melting, dissolving in a pitch black void of nothingness as he, ever so slowly, began to turn around ─ alerted by nothing, nothing but a noise that he could only decode as the creaking of a door.
"For the woods have ears of their own," Hakuba's voice only partially reached him, serene but ominous somehow, it rang from somewhere far away. Eyes, already wide as they were, began to grow beyond what should be possible, unable to look away. "Beyond any shadow of doubt, my deduction must have reached her."
It was as if the teenage detective was unaware of it, but somehow, the man could tell that he was. Arms crossed comfortably over his chest, he was sure to be perfectly aware of it; about the presence that calmly, steadily, creeped up on him.
"There's nobody to hide from. Not anymore."
When the figure stopped right behind him, Hakuba finally threw one last glance over his shoulder, and that same smirk full of arrogance and confidence all the same became all the more prominent.
"Welcome back, Akako-san."
Akako returned the smirk with one of her own, nodding back just as politely at the detective; a sight that, for her most loyal servant, currently on the verge of tearing up in a forgotten corner of the room, was still unable to wrap his head around. He watched her, gawked as if she was nothing but an illusion that was about to disappear in any second; and saw something akin to, dare to say, mirth, gleam in those scarlet eyes of hers, though, and he knew.
He knew she was there, safe and sound.
The detective's eyes had lowered from her face to her arms, where she was cradling something he couldn't remember seeing before ─ a fiery red diary, clutched to her chest almost protectively.
Akako's gaze shifted back to the older man. "Would you be so kind as to prepare some tea for this detective and myself?" she asked, her voice soft yet somehow firm, just the way he remembered it to be.
Then again, she met eyes with the detective. He was frowning in what he would assume to be suspicion, but she was giggling, likely amused by his disposition.
"I imagine you have a lot of questions. We should get comfortable, in that case."
For it seemed as though there would be a long night ahead of them.
A/N
Hating my past self for choosing to type English dialogue in italics... That was a pain to type.
Anyways! A few days ago, I posted a prequel to this fic. It's about the events leading to Shinichi joining the Black Organization, but there's only one chapter so far. It's named The Memoirs of Kudo Shinichi, if you want to check it out.
BT: Yeah, I saw that, too! It's been a while since we last saw him… Really excited for that!
CherryGirl 21-6: Sure will do ;) And yeah, I'm probably not going to cover that case. Not sure if I'll extend the Sera and Mary storyline for much longer…