SailorStar9: With Chapter 38 uploaded, this is Chapter 9 of this fic. (Sighs) Guys and girls, is it too hard for you to leave a review, instead of just putting this fic up on your favorited list and story alerts?
Pairings: Furuya Rei (Amuro Tooru)/Mizuno Ami
Disclaimers: I own absolutely nothing, except this plot and pairing.
Chapter 39: Regrettable and Kind Alien
Time passes...
"It makes you doubt if he had any sense." Genta mused, the Detective Boys were standing at the bottom of the stairs of an abandoned temple which was the crime scene of a Hanzaki Yasuo who had fallen down the stairs the previous night after apparently being frightened by the appearance of an alien.
"How could he kill someone by pretending to be an alien?" Ayumi wondered.
"What a good-for-nothing adult." Mitsuhiko remarked.
"You're wrong." Matsumoto Kota objected. "Don't speak so poorly of Takedera-san. It's my fault, probably."
"Probably?" Fumio echoed. "Who are you?"
"I'm Matsumoto Kota." Matsumoto introduced himself. "Takedera-san always plays with us at the children's center on his days off. I think that's why..."
"He was hoping to find witnesses so word would spread." Conan noted.
"So he wasn't good-for-nothing." Mitsuhiko remarked.
"Sorry for insulting him." Genta apologized.
"But, in the end, he did cause an accident." Fumio reminded.
"Hey, onee-san." Conan called, seeing Nakashima Arisa and Trummelperman Susan place flowers against the wall of the staircase. "Are you the people who were present when the accident occurred yesterday?"
"Yes." Trummelperman nodded. "Who are you kids?"
"I'm Takedera-san's friend." Matsumoto replied.
"Could you tell us what happened last night?" Conan asked.
"Actually, would you like to see?" Nakashima pulled out her phone and opened up the photo she had taken. "There's this video, too." she played the clip she had recorded.
"Could you show me the photo again?" Conan requested. "Could seeing this alien really have scared him?" he mused.
"It's clearly a poorly-made costume." Haibara deathpanned.
"We knew what he was because he called himself an alien." Nakashima explained.
"But the late Hanzaki-san descended the stairs, was surprised when he saw the alien below, and fell when he tried to run." Conan ran up the staircase and reenacted what Hanzaki did. "But how did Hanzaki-san know it was an alien?"
"Because he called himself an alien, right?" Ayumi guessed, after Nakashima and Trummelperman bid farewell to the kids.
"Is it even possible for him to hear that from all the way up here?" Fumio posed a question.
"It certainly is strange." Haibara agreed. "I wonder what Hanzaki was doing here, too."
"Considering the temple is abandoned, he couldn't have been visiting it." Fumio reasoned.
"There might be something behind last night's incident." Conan concluded.
"First, we should investigate this Hanzaki guy." Genta declared.
"My neighbor Hanzaki?" Tamai Tsuneyuki echoed, when the Detective Boys visited him at his unit.
"Your downstairs neighbors said he was friendly with his next-door neighbor." Conan nodded.
"Neither of us had anything to do since we're unemployed." Tamai chuckled.
"What was he like?" Haibara asked.
"An unlucky fellow." Tamai replied. "Six months ago, he was laid off from the factory he was working at, and last night he was supposed to get paid, but... whoops." he stopped himself.
"Whoops?" Fumio repeated.
"Hanzaki was blackmailing someone." Tamai relented. "He went out last night to get some money from them."
"Now that Hanzaki-san is dead, this person X he was blackmailing must be relieved." Conan noted. "Do you know who he's blackmailing?"
"No way." Tamai answered. "You want to investigate for yourselves? He never locked his front door. He said he had nothing worth stealing."
"There aren't any clues about who X is." Mitsuhiko remarked, the kids were searching Hanzaki's room.
"This room sure stinks of cigarettes." Genta complained.
"He was a heavy smoker." Tamai supplied.
"What are these characters from?" Ayumi gawked at the stuffed toys on the table. "He has so many."
"They're karaoke giveaways." Tamai explained. "He goes there all the time. Maybe he was blackmailing someone at the factory." he wondered. "I think it was last month."
"He was trying to get rehired at the factory he was laid off from." Conan concluded.
"If they had the power to do that..." Haibara trailed.
"It could be his former superior from the factory." Conan reasoned.
"Is that..." Fumio noticed the calendar on the wall. "Did Hanzaki-san work for Sanko Heavy Industries?"
"It's a top-ranking company." Mitsuhiko gaped.
"Of course not." Tamai snorted. "Hanzaki worked for one of Sanko's subcontractors."
"We'll just investigate something else." Conan remarked, seeing how the factory was closed since it was on the weekends. "There is something I want to ask about the alien."
"We understand that you did it for Kota-kun, but I was wondering where you got the idea to become an alien." Conan stated, having brought the newly released Takedera to a nearby park.
"I'm actually not the one who came up with the idea." Takedera admitted. "I asked for advice from a fellow member of the children's literature club from my college days, my friend Omi Akira. I just took his idea."
"Omi-san sure has some interesting ideas." Fumio noted.
"We once put a play for children about aliens." Takedera beamed. "We made the costume for that play."
"So that's why it was so non-threatening." Mitsuhiko realized.
"Omi probably feels bad about last night's accident, too." Takedera sighed. "He recommended that I appear around eight at night. He recommended that location, too. But everything backfired."
"Just to confirm, your friend, Omi-san, is the one who recommended that the alien appear at 8 pm at the bottom of the Beimyoji's steps?" Conan inquired.
"Yeah." Takedera nodded. "Omi knows the place very well. He lived there until he got a job and started living at the Sanko Heavy Industries employee dorm."
"Would we be able to see Omi-san if we went to the employee dorm?" Conan asked.
"He said he goes to the gym on his days off." Takedera recalled.
"Omi-san went out last night at 7.30." Mitsuhiko voiced, the group having gathered the information they needed from the employee dorm.
"It's just a twenty minute walk to Beimyoji from here." Ayumi added.
"He'd easily make the alien's 8pm appearance." Genta noted.
"Apparently, he works in the production management unit." Haibara stated.
"He's also responsible for coordinating with subcontractors, so he's in the position to influence hiring decisions." Conan expressed.
"And thus, the connection between him and Hanzaki-san." Fumio related.
"Omi Akira-san must be X." Mitsuhiko concluded.
"It wouldn't be strange if he associated with Hanzaki-san, and it's possible Hanzaki-san had something on him and was blackmailing." Conan mused. "But there's something I don't get. Omi-san asked Hanzaki-san to come to Beimyoji at 8 so he could give him the money." he stated, the group walking off.
"Then, he convinced him to start walking down the stone steps." Mitsuhiko added. "He had him spot the alien played by Takedera-san. He made him panic so he would fall. In other words, this was a premeditated murder carried out by Omi Akira-san to silence Hanzaki-san, who was blackmailing him."
"But, there wasn't any guarantee that he would panic." Conan pointed out. "And would an alien that non-threatening really scare an adult?"
"But he was really scared." Ayumi reminded.
"He screamed." Haibara confirmed.
"That's what I don't get." Conan stated. "There's no reason he should've been scared. Could Omi-san have set something up?"
"What if that scream wasn't Hanzaki-san's but Omi-san's?" Fumio voiced.
Could it be? Inspiration stuck Conan when he looked up to see the throat clinic's advertisement on the lamp post and recalling Hanzaki had a packet of medicine from the same clinic, the ashtray filled with cigarettes and the karaoke stuff toys.
"You were right on the money." Mitsuhiko beamed, the group exiting the clinic to confirm their suspicions.
"Now we can corner the killer." Conan stated.
"He even left evidence." Haibara added.
"But we could've found the killer earlier if if his neighbor would've told us." Genta remarked. "He must've realized what was going on with Hanzaki-san."
"There was no way." Haibara protested. "Not even the news reported that he screamed."
"But when I borrowed his toilet, he told me." Genta recalled.
"He must have realized the inconsistency then." Haibara realized.
"Oh no." Fumio breathed. "Tamai-san couldn't have..."
"I won't let you kill anyone else." Conan declared, his flying soccer ball managed to knock Tamai off Omi.
"What do you kids want to talk about?" Takedera had also arrived. "Omi? What are you doing here?"
"Omi-san knew the late Hanzaki-san through his job at the factory." Conan began. "Blackmailed by Hanzaki-san, Omi-san decided to silence him."
"As evidence of that, he even tried to kill me." Tamai snapped.
"I was trying to teach you a lesson since you were throwing around nonsensical accusations." Omi chuckled. "Last night's death was an accident, right?"
"He was scared by my alien costume." Takedera stated. "The women who witnessed it told the police the same thing."
"But, Takedera-san, normally no one would believe that costume is an alien." Conan remarked.
"Not unless you heard the person wearing it call himself an alien." Mitsuhiko added.
"But Hanzaki-san couldn't have heard you from up here." Ayumi pointed out.
"There are only four people in this world who could've recognized that as an alien." Conan declared. "Takedera-san who played the alien, the women who heard him call himself an alien, and Omi-san who suggested the idea in the first place."
"But Hanzaki-san thought it was an alien, too." Omi remarked. "That's why he became frightened and screamed..."
"He couldn't have." Fumio cut him off.
"That's quite the assumption." Omi stated. "Only he'd know what he thought it was..."
"Hanzaki-san had acute laryngitis." Fumio voiced, before Omi could make up anymore excuses. "Both his neighbor and Hanzaki-san thought it was a cold at first. But actually, it was acute inflammation of the vocal cords due to overworking his throat. He couldn't even speak normally, so there's no way he could've screamed."
"Then, the scream I heard..." Takedera blinked.
"It could only be played by the man who knew you were playing the alien and was here with Hanzaki-san, Omi Akira-san." Conan replied. "Last night, Omi-san asked Hanzaki-san to come here. After knocking him out, he waited for Takedera-san's alien to appear. Then, he pushed him down the stairs and killed Hanzaki-san, making it look as though he was frightened by the alien and accidentally fell. You couldn't just let him fall to his death. The police might suspect foul play and thoroughly investigated the incident. To make them believe it was an accident, you needed witnesses like Takedera-san and the two women."
"He's delusional." Omi chuckled.
"Apparently, he doesn't know about the evidence." Haibara noted.
"Last night, one of the women who witnessed the incident took a video." Conan stated. "If the police analyze the voice recorded on the video, they'll know whose voice it was."
"I had no idea his vocal cords were giving him trouble." Omi confessed. "That annoying raspy voice of his... I thought it was an act to intimidate me. Hanzaki saw me shoplift something from a convenience store. As an employee of Sanko Heavy Industries, even a crime as petty as shoplifting could land me in serious trouble. I was thinking about how to silence him when you asked me for help and the idea came to me. I realized I could use this naive idiot, who still cares about kids and is satisfied with working at a third-rate company."
"Did you call shoplifting petty?" Genta frowned.
"Mitsuhiko, hit it." Fumio gave the freckled boy the go-ahead.
"Omi Akira-san, you're a good-for-nothing adult!" Mitsuhiko declared.
Later that night after dinner...
"Aliens?" Amuro mused amusedly after Fumio excused himself from the dining table. "I can't believe children these days still believe such things."
"Technically, wouldn't the other Senshi and me be considered as aliens, too?" Ami reminded. "We were reincarnated beings from the planets, after all."
"Semantics." Amuro shrugged.
SailorStar9: Any OOC-ness is regretted, by the way. *Sighs* Don't you just hate plot bunnies sometimes? Read and review.