Artemis stood back and watched from the sidelines as Daiki Kubo's body was exhumed. He was the former head of the Tohoku regional chapter of the Order of Van Helsing, and now he had been rotting in the ground for about six months.

"You see it too," he heard Yamato state from his position to his right.

"I do," Artemis confirmed, frowning. "It doesn't clear a damn thing up."

Yamato smirked and said, "That's because you're not used to working with the dead."

"Does it tell you something?"

"It does, but I want to confirm it with the coroner here first. I will wait to say what I think since it could skew the investigation if I'm wrong."

"He'll give you his findings?" Artemis asked, pleased. He was glad he took one thing off of Luna's "Hack List," as she called it.

"He will. He was my intern ten years ago. We've kept in touch over the years."

Artemis chuckled and teased, "You seem close to your current intern."

"If that were Mamoru over there, I wouldn't have to stand behind this line with you, but I get your point." The current series of events had left Artemis and Yamato standing off to the side as the exhumation took place.

When Luna had called in the anonymous tip, the police had taken a cadaver dog out to the property looking for a body. Once it was confirmed that someone had been buried under the rose bushes, as the tip had said, they secured the scene and put up a tent over the site.

The various police departments then proceeded to process the scene meticulously. The fact that the potential corpse's son had recently turned up dead in Tokyo convinced everyone that there was something more than a simple homicide going on.

Yamato, knowing about the tip Luna called in and the results of the cadaver dog search, called his former intern and asked if he and a detective friend could come along and witness the processing of the scene. He had explained that there had been a related murder in Tokyo, and he was hoping to discover if the same person did the killings. He then promised to share his report on the autopsy of Sora Kubo, the dead man's son.

Artemis shook his head sadly at the tragic loss of life. "You think that it does clear something up that he's wearing his ring?"

"I don't think it's his," Yamato stated. "But like I said, I want to be sure."

"You can tell that from here?!"

Yamato shook his head, "No. I think the ring at the scene of his son's murder is his. So it's curious to me that he's found wearing a ring after all."

"The puzzle keeps getting weirder," Artemis grumbled. "Why do you think it's his ring at the murder scene? He couldn't have been involved. He apparently had already been dead for months."

"I believe someone really wants these murders linked together. Look how tall Daiki is and how large his hands are. The ring at Sora's murder scene was enormous."

"But he's wearing a ring. How would one fit on him if his ring size is that distinctive?"

"I think his right hand was mangled like that," he said, pointing at the gnarled hand of the corpse. "I think it was an attempt to hide what they had to do to force that ring on his finger." Yamato worried that the murderer would be someone supernatural or related to someone who was. He realized they might not be the only ones trying to take down The Order. This unnamed individual just might be doing it by trying to expose the group, though. The latest events only added to his list of theories.

Detective Itsuki walked into the morgue and noticed that not only was Yamato there, but so was his intern Mamoru. "I hope I'm not interrupting."

"Not at all," Yamato said, not looking up from the file he was reading. It was the preliminary autopsy report on Daiki, and he figured Itsuki had questions about it. He was right. The ring was smashed on Daiki's finger after death. And knowing that the detective had seen the design of the ring drawn by his grandmother years ago. He figured that would pique his interest.

"That ring…" Itsuki said, trailing off. "Why did the ring show up at both crime scenes?"

"Tell me more about your grandmother," Mamoru asked. Yamato just nodded, letting him take over. He was the boss in the morgue, but Mamoru was King and in charge of anything supernatural. "Yamato mentioned some of what you said. I know that your grandmother told you not to trust a man wearing that design."

"And I didn't think anything of it until it appeared on that first ring. She was an alcoholic, the non-functioning kind, and I thought she was bat-shit crazy."

"Did she ever claim to be an Oracle?" Mamoru asked. Usagi had explained to him how many low-level Oracles had drinking problems. They had just enough power to hear and sense things but not enough to really do much with it. The constant noise and partial visions drove them up the wall, and many used alcohol to quiet that part of their brain.

Detective Itsuki looked at him with wide eyes. "Yes, but she also claimed her fat lazy cat was the reincarnation of Sun Tzu, and he gave her military secrets. I didn't believe her when she said stuff like that, and being an Oracle sounded even crazier."

Mamoru nodded thoughtfully. "And she showed you a drawing of that design?"

"Yeah. I had to have been about six. It stuck out to me since she was super dramatic about it. She showed me the drawing and then made me sign in blood that I would stay away from people that wore that design."

Yamato returned a bit from the conversation and tried to figure out what was bothering him. Yes, he had made sure the detective's story was true; his grandmother had been arrested several times for public intoxication, but something felt off.

"Whose blood?" Yamato asked, wanting more information.

"She cut her finger, and I had to sign in her blood."

Yamato wanted to call bullshit on that. From everything he had learned, he believed she wouldn't use her own blood. It would have to have been Itsuki's. There wasn't any magical significance to using someone else's blood. The source of the blood ritual mattered a lot.

He watched Mamoru react and saw he noticed that fact, too. Listening as Mamoru asked, "Her blood? That must have been upsetting at such a young age." Yamato frowned slightly as he watched Itsuki's facial expressions. It felt to him like he wanted to be called out on the lie about the blood, like he was trying to trick them into revealing something.

Itsuki said, "Yeah, her blood."

Yamato felt it was telling that the detective had focused on that part and not the implied question about it bothering him when he was young.

Mamoru nodded slowly. "You originally asked about the ring."

Mentally saluting Mamoru for that change back in topic, Yamato said, "We just gather facts. We'll let the detectives do the detective work."

"Do you know anything about that insignia?" Itsuki pressed.

"Should I?" Yamato responded.

The detective frowned. "I got the impression you knew something about it."

Yamato knew he hadn't said or done anything to give that impression. He had been conscientious to keep his secrets to himself. "I don't know why. Did you need anything? We don't have the report ready if your Chief asks for it. I can call you when it's done."

Then Yamato realized Mamoru had asked about her being an Oracle, and he hadn't asked what that was. He had given something away.

Itsuki shook his head and headed to the door to leave. When he got to it, he stopped and said, "I don't need a call. Just email it like normal." He then left the morgue.

Once he did, Mamoru listened and waited for Itsuki to walk away from the door. He had listened closely with his hybrid hearing from the other side for three minutes before saying, "He's gone. He's our top suspect now, right?"

Yamato nodded and said, "Hell, yes, he is." He then called Luna. "Luna, please find out more about Detective Itsuki's grandmother." She quickly agreed, and he hung up the phone.

Mamoru leaned up against Yamato's desk and said, "His stories discrediting his grandmother are over the top."

"I checked," Yamato replied. "She was an alcoholic, but I agree with you. He's trying too hard. And yes, I think we should look into him as a possible suspect. He could have thought she was lying her whole life and then found out she wasn't in the end and felt guilty." He thought about how he claimed she believed the mice in her house were aliens. It had felt odd to him when she said that, but he didn't think too much of it then.

"And calling her crazy helps how?"

"It could be to hide the fact he murdered someone. He might feel it's okay since he killed someone for her already."

Mamoru said, "The blood thing was a lie. Why, though?"

"I think he was trying to get us to reveal if we know anything about the supernatural. He was trying to trick us into correcting him."

"Artemis will need to be told. I'm glad you got Luna researching the grandmother."

Twenty minutes later, Luna called. Itsuki's grandmother had died under unusual circumstances, but no investigation had been launched to figure out what had happened. No alcohol had been found in her system.