SailorStar9: With Chapter 132 posted, I present Chapter 133 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: Established!Furuya Rei (Amuro Tooru)/Mizuno Ami
Disclaimers: I own absolutely nothing, except this plot and pairing.
Chapter 133: Takagi and Date and the Notebook Promise, Part One
Time passes...
The Detective Boys were returning to Professor Agasa's house after visiting him at the hospital when they came upon Detective Takagi taking down a robber, Detective Sato intervening to put the robber down with an over-the-shoulder throw.
"The suspect was apprehended at 11:04am." Takagi reported. That's Date-san's handwriting. He opened his notebook to see a single paragraph written by his late senior. Meeting Takagi on Sunday. Isn't this...? He remembered. "Seeing Date-san's note reminded me of the past." he told Sato, shaking out of his reverie.
"So, what's the note say?" Sato asked.
"It's this one." Takagi pointed. "'Meeting Takagi on Sunday.'"
"I'm actually more interested in the numbers and symbols below it." Sato pointed out. "Is it a code that start with an asterisk and ends with a pound sign? Did Date-san say anything about it?"
"No." Takagi recalled. "All I remember is he saying 'Come with me next Sunday.'"
"Can I see?" Conan piped in. "I might be able to figure it out."
"This looks like a time, date and business address to me." Fumio peered over Conan's shoulder after Sato handed the notebook over.
"Codes like these are used to send messages from pay phones and landlines to cell phones." Conan added.
"Did Date-san say anything else when he invited you?" Sato asked. "What does that mean?" she twitched, Takagi repeating what Date told him. "Don't tell me you two visited some kind of questionable business."
"Date-san died in a traffic accident right after he told me." Takagi protested.
"It's not a questionable business." Conan supplied. "Because this business is..."
At Cafe Poirot...
"Everything happens in Poirot, huh?" Fumio noted amusedly.
"Is this really the shop written in Date-san's notebook?" Sato was confused.
"It's you kids." Azusa turned to the group that had entered. "Welcome. You're with the kids today?" she noticed the two detectives. "Table for eight." she called.
"So, how do the numbers written in Date-san's notebook indicate this place?" Sato had sat Conan and Fumio opposite her and Takagi.
"It's simple." Conan pulled out his smartphone. "First, calling the SMS center of a phone company from a touch-tone phone will play an automatic message. Follow the instructions and enter the receiver's phone number. Begin your message with *2*2, compose a message using two numbers per character according to this table and finish by putting two ##s at the end. Azusa-nee-chan, can you use this method to send the numbers in this note as a message to my phone from the cafe's phone?"
"Sent." Azusa inputted the message and Conan showed the two detectives the new message.
"Sunday afternoon, 12pm, Beika City 5-6." Takagi read the message. "Poirot window seat. Wear a red necktie and wait."
"Wow, I didn't think this service they offered when pagers were still being used still existed." Fumio gawked.
"But what does this message have to do with Date-san telling me he'd make a man out of me?" Takagi wondered.
"Judging from the contents of the message, perhaps he'd turn you into a proper police detective by letting you solve a case." Amuro suggested, serving up the complimentary iced water. "It sounds like someone was trying to make a shady deal here."
"Has he always worked here?" Sato blinked.
"His name is Amuro-san." Takagi supplied. "Not only he is Fumio's father, he's also a detective."
"But he's right." Sato agreed. "It's likely he meant to come here with you, arrest the people making a shady deal and let you take the credit."
"That was a year ago and Date-san is dead." Takagi reminded. "There's no way to confirm it now."
"But why the specific instruction of wearing a red necktie in the window seat?" Fumio pondered.
"So, they could see if the person they were meeting arrived without going inside the store." Conan reasoned.
"And what were they going to do once their presence is confirmed?" Fumio inquired.
"If it were me, I'd leave something under the table." Conan spoke. Tape? He peered under the table and saw the ripped off scotch tape. "Azusa-nee-chan, did you see anyone sit here and remove something with tape on it from under the table? Or anyone who asked to switch seats with someone else to sit here? Since it was around 12pm a year ago, it wouldn't surprise me if you didn't remember."
"I didn't notice anyone like that." Azusa racked her memory. "I did find a gaming device with tape on it on the floor by the window seat. Let me go get it."
"That's odd." Sato frowned. "After confirming the other person arrived, whoever sent the code probably used some function of the gaming device to communicate with them."
"So, how could they forget the device they used to communicate." Takagi followed her thought process.
"Even if they erased their communication, it's hard to imagine they accidentally left it behind." Conan pointed out.
"Perhaps, whoever was supposed to show up never did and the gaming device fell naturally to the ground after some time." Fumio proposed.
"That's a Game Man7." Genta instantly recognized the portable gaming device Azusa brought out.
"Looks like the battery's dead." Fumio noted, Conan pressing the 'On' button to no avail.
"When I found it, some game was in sleep mode." Azusa supplied.
"Do you remember seeing anyone suspicious looking into the cafe?" Takagi asked.
"I'm not sure I saw anyone suspicious." Azusa recalled. "I remember the gesturing boy really well, though. A car parked in front of the cafe for about five minutes on Sunday afternoon. The boy in the back folded his thumb and then gripped and released his remaining four fingers."
"Was that boy a foreign kid?" Fumio instantly recognized the gesture.
"He was blond, so probably." Azusa nodded.
"That's the 'signal for help' gesture originally from Canada." Conan revealed.
"That boy is most probably the subject of the deal." Fumio reasoned. "But if it happened a year ago..."
"It didn't happen a year ago." Azusa supplied. "It just happened last week. The car was parked in a spot visible from this table." she glanced at the direction the car was parked at. "In the rear window, like I said, he repeatedly grabbed his thumb with his other four fingers while looking this way the entire time the car was parked. Since he does it every week, I thought he remembered me and was saying hello."
"That boy has been coming here every week?" Conan gaped.
"I only started noticing about six months ago, though." Azusa added.
"Tou-san." Fumio turned to his father.
"I started my shift in the morning today." Amuro answered. "But most Sundays I don't start until 1pm."
"Didn't Date-san invite you here a year ago?" Sato asked Takagi. "Then the deal written in Date-san's notebook about wearing a red necktie in the window seat at Poirot must've ended a long time ago. Maybe that boy had nothing to do with the deal."
"Detective Takagi, do you remember anything else?" Conan pressed. "Any cases Date-san was involved with concerning young boys?"
"A kidnapping of a foreign boy?" Sato exclaimed, after Takagi recalled a certain memory.
"Something like that happened a year ago." Takagi nodded. "A French car maker named VP Pierre Cassel was working at his company's Japanese branch. The kidnappers took the youngest of his two sons; Alain Cassel-kun, was seven at that time. Witnesses saw two men kidnap him while he was playing with friends in a park. The next day, the culprit called from a payphone demanding a 50 million yen ransom. The police traced the call back to the payphone's location, but the culprit narrowly escaped and was never heard from again. It's still an unsolved case."
"But, Date-san transferred to the MPD after Matsuda-kun's death." Sato pointed out. "Since coming here, like us, he worked in violent crimes, dealing with murders and armed robberies. Aren't kidnapping the purview of special victims? Why are Date-san involved in that case?"
"Date-san lived next door to VP Cassel." Takagi explained. "He was asked to join the investigation since he knew the area. I lived relatively nearby, so I was also invited."
"I remember now." Sato gasped. "The suspect was a member of the Deisan Group, who was arguing with the car maker over land rights."
"That's what the investigative team thought." Takagi nodded. "But Date-san had his eye on a former gang leader named Kido Natsufusa with a lot of gambling debts. The day after the ransom call, we went to his apartment and staked it out all night. On the third night, a drunk struck Kido with a beer bottle, putting him in a critical condition. Kido angrily pushed the drunk when he chastised him for his long phone call. He said he got upset and hit him with a bottle he found lying around. Later, Date-san found something resembling a note near the phone booth. He told me to call the forensics, so I did. When he handed the note to them..."
"What's Kido doing now?" Sato pressed.
"He was unconscious for a while, but he took a turn for the worse and he died about a week after the incident." Takagi sighed.
"If Date-san copied these numbers into his notebook while he was waiting for forensics, and the kidnappers were never heard from after that, then it's practically certain Kido kidnapped
Alain Cassel-kun." Sato concluded.
"The question is: why is the deal still ongoing even after a year?" Fumio pointed out.
"It's possible Kido had a lackey." Conan concluded. "If his boss Kido asked him to drive the kidnapped boy to the cafe every Sunday at 12pm, and he doesn't know Kido died, it's possible his lackey was still faithfully carrying out those instructions."
"He might've told him not to contact him until the deal was made." Sato agreed.
"Today is Sunday." Ayumi stated.
"And it's 11:54 right now." Genta added.
"In five minutes, the kidnapper's accomplice will show up in a car outside this window." Sato realized the implication.
"I've got a red necktie." Conan took off his Voice-Changing Bowtie. "Maybe we can pretend we're here to meet the kidnapper."
"But if they realize it is a trap, they might drive away." Sato reminded. "The boy's life would be in danger. It'd be ideal if we could make the culprit get out of the car. To do that, we need to know how they intended to retrieve the ransom money."
"They said in their phone demand to put it in a duralumin case." Takagi took over. "They specifically demanded a 15-centimeter thick 50 by 30 centimeter case."
"This might be unrelated." Azusa spoke up. "I once saw a thin line drawn in permanent marker on the sofa next to the window seat. It was drawn on the seat towards the wall, forming a triangle. There was also a paper bag with handles between the seat and the floor."
"The culprit probably intended to give the following instructions to whoever brought the ransom money." Amuro realized what was going on. "Place the duralumin case on the line drawn on the sofa diagonally, creating a triangular space. Pretend to fill the paper bag with money while hiding the money in the triangular space. Pay for your meal and leave the store with the empty paper bag. It would look like only the empty case was left behind, so the culprit could enter the cafe and remove their coat, concealing the case and the money with it. Then they'd remove the case from beneath their coat and hand it over to an employee as a lost item. Finally, they'd secretly pack the money into a bag they brought into the cafe."
"We need to charge this Game Man7." Conan remarked.
"We're charging it right now." Ayumi chimed in.
"Azusa-nee-chan, do you still have the paper bag?" Conan asked, already putting together a plan. "Alright then, will the rest of you follow my plan?"
"Understood, captain." Fumio grinned.
SailorStar9: Any OOC-ness is regretted, by the way. *Sighs* Don't you just hate plot bunnies sometimes? Read and review.