Verdict, Ch. 5
Title: Verdict
Author: fffriction1984
Chapters: 5/??
Genre: AU, crime, suspense, het, general, action (in bits, I guess)
Warnings: violence in parts, I’m toying with a lot of clichés here, characters acting OOC, English is not my mother tongue
Rating: NC17 to be safe
Pairings: none (though there might be one temporarily or smth)
Characters: the usual suspects I’d say; Danger Gang, Gazette, Alice Nine, Screw, Dir en grey, more to come
Disclaimer: I only own the idea but I am in no way affiliated with the aforementioned bands or make any money through this.
Comment: This idea hit me in the middle of the night while I was raging mad at some noisy people, so much that I wanted to kill them. Instead, I sat down and began writing this. This doesn’t really have anything to do with the hot white rage that filled me before, but I kinda like the direction this is heading. lol.
Synopsis: What would you think if an armed task force stormed into your apartment without so much as a warning?
Hiko came back to the police station in the late afternoon after she had slumbered away on the couch in Takashima’s apartment for about fifteen minutes before waking up with a start and noticing where exactly she was and that she shouldn’t be sleeping there. After looking for further evidence for about one hour she had gone back to the latest crime scene to get updates of any kind. She was told they found hair of a third person and that hair didn’t belong to the roommate of the victim as it was red, naturally red, yet they had no idea who that person was or if she was involved in the murder. But other than that there was hardly any information that was new to her, so she made her way back to the police station rather quickly and rather dissatisfied.
Upon getting to the police station she received some less joyful news:
“What do you mean, Takashima’s out on bail?! Another woman died last night and you just let him go?!” she burst out as her colleague Tora told her the news.
“He had an alibi for the whole time, for when that woman was obviously killed, Hiko. He’s been at work, doing overtime and he even said who was able to witness that he did and they confirmed he’s been working until about 8 pm, we captured him at 9 pm, right? That Inoue Thera was already dead by 7 pm, according to what the autopsy report says.” Tora answered calmly, with a cigarette between his lips. “Also, his lawyer told us to make a drug usage screening and he’s completely clean. There are no traces of any prohibited substances in his blood or his hair or anywhere else. He doesn’t smoke and maybe drinks a bit too much alcohol, but that guy has never touched drugs.”
“So what? I already told you that he doesn’t necessarily uses drugs himself just because they were found at the crime scene! Maybe he just bought them and gave them to the victim so she wouldn’t struggle against him or something!”
“But you shouldn’t worry, alright? He’s on house detention, by the custodial judge. He’s wearing an electronic shackle; he won’t go anywhere.”
“When has he left?” she asked, fumbling her cigarettes out of her pocket.
“Some ten minutes ago, with his lawyer.”
“Great…!”
“Come on, what’s going to happen anyway? The guy wouldn’t even be able to leave his apartment without getting harassed by the press if he wouldn’t have to wear that shackle that glues him to his home.”
“Yes and now, while thinking this over, it might have been wrong to pass his picture to the press without previously interrogating him.” Hiko admitted before lighting one of the slim white cancer sticks.
The Chief Inspector, a middle-aged man with wavy, almost light brown hair who went by the name of Hayashi Yoshiki, entered the office room Hiko and Tora shared and looked at her rather sternly. “I couldn’t help but overhear your conversation, and about that, Kobayashi-san… You know that I never questioned your methods before because you always delivered solid results and evidence, but Takashima is actually considering pressing charges against you, or a disciplinary complaint.”
“On which basis?” she asked back, in a fair bit of a shock.
“Because giving his picture to the press damaged his reputation. He is not yet proven guilty, is he?”
“Sure, but… the evidence is speaking against him, Chief Inspector.”
“Also, sending the Task Force to capture him was unnecessary as we had him under surveillance and he has in no way ever indicated he would try to flee because he had no idea that we were already watching him… We’ve got him covered.” he said sternly. “And I only tell you this once: If I ever see you acting premature like that, I’ll take you off the case and suspend you. Are we clear?”
“Yes, of course, Chief Inspector.” she nodded, biting her tongue though. It didn’t get better as Tora sneered at her after the Chief Inspector had left the room. “You better stay silent right now, seriously… You should help me with this, we’re a team after all.”
“I’m just saying that you’re maybe losing sight of the big picture. There’s more than just him. We should investigate on the two other suspects more thoroughly, too.”
“And why’s that? There was absolutely no link to any of them with the last three murders…”
“But there is with this one. The semen we found on the victim wasn’t Takashima’s, according to forensics. He didn’t strangle this one, quite obviously.”
“Then who’s is it?” Hiko asked before pressing her lips together.
“Niikura Kaoru’s. I already sent two officers to have an eye on him and I’m going to pay him a visit later today.” the tall detective answered. “You should go home and sleep, you’re on your third shift right now…”
“Yes, you’re probably right… I just don’t understand how this is all linked together, you see? With all the evidence, everything that seemed to prove Takashima’s guilty and now Niikura comes in again…”
Niikura Kaoru was a 35 y/o man of middle height, tattooed all over, with an extensive criminal record but without a proper job; he’d been a part-timer for most parts of his life; he was a prime suspect in the case as well. He’d been in jail five times already for minor offenses like assault, theft and handling stolen goods and he was also known to have a name, a small name, in the drug scene of Tokyo, yet people were convinced he had done much more than what he had been sentenced for. It’s never been proven but he was also said to have connections to a local Yakuza-group; there was evidence he did the dirty work for the Yakuza at least. To make a long story short: Niikura Kaoru was a really complicated character, he was moderately dangerous and violent, hard to evaluate, hard to watch, not that easy to catch and even harder to be proven guilty as people would lie for him to give him a valid alibi despite him being a small fish.
So far he had always gotten out of jail before his sentence was over as prison psychologists predicted he wouldn’t commit any crime ever again, yet he always had only a few months after getting out before he’d be in handcuffs again, he was a classic, textbook repeater.
But from what Hiko knew Niikura and Takashima were completely opposite, in appearance, presence and past. And it disturbed her a great deal that they hadn’t even looked at the older man anymore after getting all this evidence against Takashima. According to the file Takashima and Niikura didn’t know each other, they weren’t acquainted and there was no possible way their paths had ever crossed, with Niikura being a little, almost meaningless criminal and Takashima being a college graduate with a clean slate, whose worst confrontation with the law was a speeding ticket for doing 140 km/h on a freeway. On the other hand the police knew better than to underestimate Niikura; he might not have a splendid job career, but he was anything but stupid. He was an intelligent man and he had committed far more crimes than what he had been sentenced for - he simply knew how to cover up his crimes.
Then again his fingerprints were found in the apartment of the second victim, and ever since then, he was kept under a lose surveillance. He didn’t seem to be stepping out of line though, that was when the evidence against Takashima became heavier and heavier and therefore the surveillance on Niikura was dropped.
“And you’re sure you want me to go home now? I’m just saying, we should maybe capture Niikura right now, before he can do anything stupid or flee or whatever.” Hiko said but yawned nevertheless.
“Oh come on, Hiko. We’re enough men to get a grip of him, alright? Just go home and sleep and come back tomorrow… I’ll fill you in then.”
“I already hate this. I mean, is this shackle thing really necessary?” the blonde asked as the officer closed the cuff around his right ankle. “I won’t run away. I don’t see why I should run away, because I didn’t do anything.” Uruha went on trying to convince the officer of unlocking the cuff immediately.
“Nice try, but believe me, everyone tells me they’re not going to run, and most of them do.”
“But I won’t, because I’m innocent!”
“Alright, I get it. So listen: If you move away from this station,” the officer pointed towards a black box he had set atop the kitchen table, “for more than 50 metres you won’t be able to count to 50 before we have already caught you again and put you back into the cell at the police station. Don’t unplug it, don’t try to drown it or anything else, because that would result in the same as it would if you tried to run away. But if you destroy this box, you’ll also have to pay for the damage. Are we clear?”
“Yeah…” Uruha said with a frown and looked down at his ankle with that ugly black electronic shackle.
“And there’s no way to get around this shackle-thing?” the lawyer Kai asked.
“Not right now, no. But you might only have to wear the shackle for a few days tops, depending on the investigations.”
Only a few minutes later Uruha was alone in his apartment and started cleaning up the mess the police made at the place. In due course he found an empty card board box on his living room table; a box coming from the Computer Corner to which he had sent his external hard disk a few weeks ago to get the data saved, but there was no trace of his hard disk and that angered him a little. There was an interesting story behind that, and he would learn that this story obviously was of high importance only a few hours later when his phone would ring.
In the meantime Niikura Kaoru stood at the window of his apartment, with the lights off, a cigarette between his lips and the telephone pressed to his ear. “No, I swear…! Someone’s watching me! They’re onto me!” he hissed into the phone and stepped back from the window. “I need to get away, now!”
“Now now, Kaoru, calm down, will you? They can never prove you did anything. You have an alibi.” a soothing voice on the other end of the line said.
“Then why are they watching me? You promised me they wouldn’t come and watch me! There’s a car and I can see two plainclothes officers sitting in that exact same car! I mean, come one, why would two men sit in a car in front of an apartment complex all day long, if not to observe someone like me, with my criminal record?!”
“Come to speak of it, where’s the other girl? I heard they only found that black haired one in the apartment…?”
“Well, she is… How do I say this… Let’s say, I disposed of her where they won’t find her that soon…” Niikura replied and slumped onto his hand-me-down couch before stubbing his cigarette. “But if they find her, then I’m screwed. Really. We might be able to put the blame for the first one on Takashima, but I doubt that will work with the redhead, too… And I swear, I’m not going to jail again, with a lifelong sentence for murder, just because you want revenge for something that happened years ago!”
“Kaoru, you shouldn’t forget that you owe me a big favour…” The voice on the other end of the line took up sharpness, sounding almost menacing.
“Owing you a big favour equals with going to jail for you?!”
“Why do you panic? Need I remind you of the two other women you… disposed of in the last years and me making it look like someone else did it?”
“I should’ve known you were going to blackmail me… I should’ve known…”
“I’m not blackmailing you, Kaoru. But you scratch my back, I scratch yours. It’s that simple. Just don’t panic and stay where you are.”
“Sure…"
archive
a/n: Took a while but there it is, the new chapter, with a new character and a twist.
Author: fffriction1984
Chapters: 5/??
Genre: AU, crime, suspense, het, general, action (in bits, I guess)
Warnings: violence in parts, I’m toying with a lot of clichés here, characters acting OOC, English is not my mother tongue
Rating: NC17 to be safe
Pairings: none (though there might be one temporarily or smth)
Characters: the usual suspects I’d say; Danger Gang, Gazette, Alice Nine, Screw, Dir en grey, more to come
Disclaimer: I only own the idea but I am in no way affiliated with the aforementioned bands or make any money through this.
Comment: This idea hit me in the middle of the night while I was raging mad at some noisy people, so much that I wanted to kill them. Instead, I sat down and began writing this. This doesn’t really have anything to do with the hot white rage that filled me before, but I kinda like the direction this is heading. lol.
Synopsis: What would you think if an armed task force stormed into your apartment without so much as a warning?
Hiko came back to the police station in the late afternoon after she had slumbered away on the couch in Takashima’s apartment for about fifteen minutes before waking up with a start and noticing where exactly she was and that she shouldn’t be sleeping there. After looking for further evidence for about one hour she had gone back to the latest crime scene to get updates of any kind. She was told they found hair of a third person and that hair didn’t belong to the roommate of the victim as it was red, naturally red, yet they had no idea who that person was or if she was involved in the murder. But other than that there was hardly any information that was new to her, so she made her way back to the police station rather quickly and rather dissatisfied.
Upon getting to the police station she received some less joyful news:
“What do you mean, Takashima’s out on bail?! Another woman died last night and you just let him go?!” she burst out as her colleague Tora told her the news.
“He had an alibi for the whole time, for when that woman was obviously killed, Hiko. He’s been at work, doing overtime and he even said who was able to witness that he did and they confirmed he’s been working until about 8 pm, we captured him at 9 pm, right? That Inoue Thera was already dead by 7 pm, according to what the autopsy report says.” Tora answered calmly, with a cigarette between his lips. “Also, his lawyer told us to make a drug usage screening and he’s completely clean. There are no traces of any prohibited substances in his blood or his hair or anywhere else. He doesn’t smoke and maybe drinks a bit too much alcohol, but that guy has never touched drugs.”
“So what? I already told you that he doesn’t necessarily uses drugs himself just because they were found at the crime scene! Maybe he just bought them and gave them to the victim so she wouldn’t struggle against him or something!”
“But you shouldn’t worry, alright? He’s on house detention, by the custodial judge. He’s wearing an electronic shackle; he won’t go anywhere.”
“When has he left?” she asked, fumbling her cigarettes out of her pocket.
“Some ten minutes ago, with his lawyer.”
“Great…!”
“Come on, what’s going to happen anyway? The guy wouldn’t even be able to leave his apartment without getting harassed by the press if he wouldn’t have to wear that shackle that glues him to his home.”
“Yes and now, while thinking this over, it might have been wrong to pass his picture to the press without previously interrogating him.” Hiko admitted before lighting one of the slim white cancer sticks.
The Chief Inspector, a middle-aged man with wavy, almost light brown hair who went by the name of Hayashi Yoshiki, entered the office room Hiko and Tora shared and looked at her rather sternly. “I couldn’t help but overhear your conversation, and about that, Kobayashi-san… You know that I never questioned your methods before because you always delivered solid results and evidence, but Takashima is actually considering pressing charges against you, or a disciplinary complaint.”
“On which basis?” she asked back, in a fair bit of a shock.
“Because giving his picture to the press damaged his reputation. He is not yet proven guilty, is he?”
“Sure, but… the evidence is speaking against him, Chief Inspector.”
“Also, sending the Task Force to capture him was unnecessary as we had him under surveillance and he has in no way ever indicated he would try to flee because he had no idea that we were already watching him… We’ve got him covered.” he said sternly. “And I only tell you this once: If I ever see you acting premature like that, I’ll take you off the case and suspend you. Are we clear?”
“Yes, of course, Chief Inspector.” she nodded, biting her tongue though. It didn’t get better as Tora sneered at her after the Chief Inspector had left the room. “You better stay silent right now, seriously… You should help me with this, we’re a team after all.”
“I’m just saying that you’re maybe losing sight of the big picture. There’s more than just him. We should investigate on the two other suspects more thoroughly, too.”
“And why’s that? There was absolutely no link to any of them with the last three murders…”
“But there is with this one. The semen we found on the victim wasn’t Takashima’s, according to forensics. He didn’t strangle this one, quite obviously.”
“Then who’s is it?” Hiko asked before pressing her lips together.
“Niikura Kaoru’s. I already sent two officers to have an eye on him and I’m going to pay him a visit later today.” the tall detective answered. “You should go home and sleep, you’re on your third shift right now…”
“Yes, you’re probably right… I just don’t understand how this is all linked together, you see? With all the evidence, everything that seemed to prove Takashima’s guilty and now Niikura comes in again…”
Niikura Kaoru was a 35 y/o man of middle height, tattooed all over, with an extensive criminal record but without a proper job; he’d been a part-timer for most parts of his life; he was a prime suspect in the case as well. He’d been in jail five times already for minor offenses like assault, theft and handling stolen goods and he was also known to have a name, a small name, in the drug scene of Tokyo, yet people were convinced he had done much more than what he had been sentenced for. It’s never been proven but he was also said to have connections to a local Yakuza-group; there was evidence he did the dirty work for the Yakuza at least. To make a long story short: Niikura Kaoru was a really complicated character, he was moderately dangerous and violent, hard to evaluate, hard to watch, not that easy to catch and even harder to be proven guilty as people would lie for him to give him a valid alibi despite him being a small fish.
So far he had always gotten out of jail before his sentence was over as prison psychologists predicted he wouldn’t commit any crime ever again, yet he always had only a few months after getting out before he’d be in handcuffs again, he was a classic, textbook repeater.
But from what Hiko knew Niikura and Takashima were completely opposite, in appearance, presence and past. And it disturbed her a great deal that they hadn’t even looked at the older man anymore after getting all this evidence against Takashima. According to the file Takashima and Niikura didn’t know each other, they weren’t acquainted and there was no possible way their paths had ever crossed, with Niikura being a little, almost meaningless criminal and Takashima being a college graduate with a clean slate, whose worst confrontation with the law was a speeding ticket for doing 140 km/h on a freeway. On the other hand the police knew better than to underestimate Niikura; he might not have a splendid job career, but he was anything but stupid. He was an intelligent man and he had committed far more crimes than what he had been sentenced for - he simply knew how to cover up his crimes.
Then again his fingerprints were found in the apartment of the second victim, and ever since then, he was kept under a lose surveillance. He didn’t seem to be stepping out of line though, that was when the evidence against Takashima became heavier and heavier and therefore the surveillance on Niikura was dropped.
“And you’re sure you want me to go home now? I’m just saying, we should maybe capture Niikura right now, before he can do anything stupid or flee or whatever.” Hiko said but yawned nevertheless.
“Oh come on, Hiko. We’re enough men to get a grip of him, alright? Just go home and sleep and come back tomorrow… I’ll fill you in then.”
“I already hate this. I mean, is this shackle thing really necessary?” the blonde asked as the officer closed the cuff around his right ankle. “I won’t run away. I don’t see why I should run away, because I didn’t do anything.” Uruha went on trying to convince the officer of unlocking the cuff immediately.
“Nice try, but believe me, everyone tells me they’re not going to run, and most of them do.”
“But I won’t, because I’m innocent!”
“Alright, I get it. So listen: If you move away from this station,” the officer pointed towards a black box he had set atop the kitchen table, “for more than 50 metres you won’t be able to count to 50 before we have already caught you again and put you back into the cell at the police station. Don’t unplug it, don’t try to drown it or anything else, because that would result in the same as it would if you tried to run away. But if you destroy this box, you’ll also have to pay for the damage. Are we clear?”
“Yeah…” Uruha said with a frown and looked down at his ankle with that ugly black electronic shackle.
“And there’s no way to get around this shackle-thing?” the lawyer Kai asked.
“Not right now, no. But you might only have to wear the shackle for a few days tops, depending on the investigations.”
Only a few minutes later Uruha was alone in his apartment and started cleaning up the mess the police made at the place. In due course he found an empty card board box on his living room table; a box coming from the Computer Corner to which he had sent his external hard disk a few weeks ago to get the data saved, but there was no trace of his hard disk and that angered him a little. There was an interesting story behind that, and he would learn that this story obviously was of high importance only a few hours later when his phone would ring.
In the meantime Niikura Kaoru stood at the window of his apartment, with the lights off, a cigarette between his lips and the telephone pressed to his ear. “No, I swear…! Someone’s watching me! They’re onto me!” he hissed into the phone and stepped back from the window. “I need to get away, now!”
“Now now, Kaoru, calm down, will you? They can never prove you did anything. You have an alibi.” a soothing voice on the other end of the line said.
“Then why are they watching me? You promised me they wouldn’t come and watch me! There’s a car and I can see two plainclothes officers sitting in that exact same car! I mean, come one, why would two men sit in a car in front of an apartment complex all day long, if not to observe someone like me, with my criminal record?!”
“Come to speak of it, where’s the other girl? I heard they only found that black haired one in the apartment…?”
“Well, she is… How do I say this… Let’s say, I disposed of her where they won’t find her that soon…” Niikura replied and slumped onto his hand-me-down couch before stubbing his cigarette. “But if they find her, then I’m screwed. Really. We might be able to put the blame for the first one on Takashima, but I doubt that will work with the redhead, too… And I swear, I’m not going to jail again, with a lifelong sentence for murder, just because you want revenge for something that happened years ago!”
“Kaoru, you shouldn’t forget that you owe me a big favour…” The voice on the other end of the line took up sharpness, sounding almost menacing.
“Owing you a big favour equals with going to jail for you?!”
“Why do you panic? Need I remind you of the two other women you… disposed of in the last years and me making it look like someone else did it?”
“I should’ve known you were going to blackmail me… I should’ve known…”
“I’m not blackmailing you, Kaoru. But you scratch my back, I scratch yours. It’s that simple. Just don’t panic and stay where you are.”
“Sure…"
archive
a/n: Took a while but there it is, the new chapter, with a new character and a twist.