Advent Drabblender - Door Two.
The next part of the whodunnit: You've Dug your own Grave, Now lie in it - Chapter Seven.
This will be unlocked after Christmas, as will the other drabbles/chapters I post in the framework of the Advent Drabblender. Until then, it's only for the flist. :)
Chapter Seven
Mamoru's flat, once so tidy and organised, was looking more and more like the office he and Noboru shared in the police station. There were two empty pizza boxes on a stack of old letters and postcards from Usagi, a number of Minako Aino's CDs, copies of Ami's journal and last but not least a picture of the white cat Mamoru had seen earlier this afternoon. Noboru was currently leaning against the wall and devouring the last slice of the triple cheese pizza, speaking with his mouth full and thus turning his words into gibberish.
"Thash sh sho weird, ishn't it?" Gulping the rest of the food down, he continued, more intelligible this time. "Minako and Usagi adopted cats at the same time, Usagi dies, Minako dies, and her cat finds its way to Usagi's mother who lives in a completely different part of the city. If that's a coincidink, I will come to the office tomorrow dressed like Teno, complete with blonde wig and all."
Mamoru laughed and leaned back in his chair.
"Now you're making me wish it's a coincidence. Just to see Teno's face. And then yours after she beats you into a bloody pulp."
"She's all smug; stupid woman is convinced that Kaitou Ace is going to show up any minute now. If I were the secret lover of a murdered pop sensation, I wouldn't walk into the nearest police station and go all 'hey, here I am, did you want something?' and hope for the best. No way. I'd hide where I can never be found." Noboru plonked down on Mamoru's couch and leaned back. He rubbed his eyes; this case was wearing him out. If there was one thing he needed right now, it was a solid twelve hours of sleep. After a good night's fuck with a gorgeous woman he had yet to find, that is.
"I'm surprised that press hasn't gotten wind of Ami and Kino." The TV had been running 24/7 since the two man had decided to solve the case together despite the Chief Inspector's orders. The news had little to offer, and while this was theoretically good, it was nevertheless frustrating Mamoru to no end. There were never any straight-forward answer, and Teno's plan had come to a standstill.
"The Chief Inspector knows that this needs to stay secret until we find the connection, otherwise our killer will just run and hide, and we're never seeing him again. Which I think is precisely what Ace is doing now, hiding."
"Any luck finding Rei Hino?" Mamoru grabbed the remote and turned the volume down until barely a whisper could be heard. Noboru scratched his nose.
"Nope. Which I still can't wrap my mind around, by the way. I mean, hello! She's a senator's daughter, for crying out loud. How difficult can it be to find her?"
"Does her father know anything?"
"Man, you don't keep up with the news, do you? Senator Hino died one and half years ago."
Mamoru scowled, and his eyes darkened. "Same time as Usagi died. So no, didn't watch the news then. Any chance it was murder?"
Brushing over the fact that he had just put his foot massively in his mouth, Noboru shrugged and lit a cigarette with a wry smile. "Depends on what you think about the cigarette industry."
"So we're talking cancer?"
"Aye."
"Stop smoking then, you idiot. Don't even know when you picked that filthy habit up. Where does the paper trail lead us?"
Noboru examined his cigarette, and decided to ignore Mamoru's warning. "She attended the T*A Private Girls School, a Catholic school run by nuns and graduated there at the same time as Usagi, Minako, Ami and Makoto did at Juban high school. No contact to her father other than birthday cards from her ninth birthday onwards. She lived with her grandfather until the old man died, he was a Shinto priest and ran the Hikawa shrine. She inherited the shrine and closed it. And here the story ends, nothing else there. No credit cards, no mobile phone contracts, nothing. The waitresses at Hino's café said that she was last seen about the time of her father's death. Which means that she might be our first victim."
"Do we have names of anyone else she was associated with? Friends, other family, colleagues?"
"The shrine hired a help the summer Hino turned 16. His name is Yuichiro Kumada. Other than that, it was only Hino and her grandfather." Noboru got up and began to walk useless little circles around the couch.
"Great. What happened to Kumada?"
"What makes you think that something happened to him?"
"Noboru, you don't exactly have your happy face on." Noboru stepped into the hallway and looked in the mirror, returning seconds later.
"I see what you mean about the face." He sat down on the couch again. "Kumada moved to the States two years ago. He lives somewhere in the mountains, and has neither phone nor email."
"Great." Noboru began to look for an ashtray, and after not finding one anywhere near him, threw his cigarette into Mamoru's water glass. To say that his partner was not impressed was an understatement, but once again, Noboru shrugged it off and just continued the conversation.
"I'd say we go back to Aino's penthouse and look for evidence again. We need to go back to the beginning, there are too many dead ends where we are now."
Mamoru crossed his arms in front of his chest. "Search warrant for Hino?"
"On what account? Knowing the dead girls' club?"
Mamoru closed his eyes, and Noboru cursed. Foot, mouth, again and that in less than three minutes.
"Fuck. I mean sorry."
"It's okay. Not your fault that one of the victims is my wife."
"I should really learn to keep my mouth shut at times, shouldn't I?"
"Naw, you're good. So no search warrant. How else can we find her?"
"We could send Nigoshi on her trail. He owes me, and he's good at finding people."
"Hmph. So are you. This has got to be the first time that you're not finding someone you're looking for."
A wistful expression crossed Noboru's face and he looked outside the window at the darkening sky. Soon the stars would come out to illuminate his failure. "Not the first time, no."
"Elaborate." Mamoru's interest had been peaked. He knew too little about his friend, and these rare moments of insight were all the more precious for it. But Noboru reached for the jacket he had tossed on the couch when he arrived, got up and strode to the door, calling over his shoulder as he went. "Doesn't matter. No use crying over spilt milk."
"Sure?"
"Yeah. So here's today's version of our to-do list: check Aino's penthouse, check Ami's house, and begin searching Kino's home. Oh, and if we could find out which motive the killer has, that would be swell, too."
And with that, Noboru grinned and left.
*
Minako Aino's penthouse didn't hold many surprises.
"Where are the pictures of her and Usagi? I can't believe she didn't have any, she must have hidden them. But where? And why?"
Mamoru looked around, his eyes finally settling on a ventilating shaft.
"Maybe up there?"
Without hesitation, Noboru grabbed the desk chair, put it under the shaft and climbed up, a screwdriver already in hand. He always carried one with him, along with a notepad, two pens (just in case he lost one), a lighter and a bottle of water. He was nothing if not prepared.
"Nothing here but dust."
Mamoru frowned, slowly turning on his heels to get a better view of the room.
"Under her mattress?"
"The forensic people took the whole thing with them to check for traces of DNA, remember?"
"Right. Erm..."
"Let's look at the desk again. All the important stuff was in there and we might have gotten a little sidetracked after finding the NC-17 shots."
They made their way over and emptied the desk systematically. They found nothing that seemed even remotely connected to the case, and both men were growing impatient.
"There has to be something! The woman didn't have a safe deposit box, had only this property and never ever visited her childhood home. And after years of friendship, you accumulate some shit, you just do."
Noboru gave the desk a random kick, prompting Mamoru to laugh. They hadn't noticed the tall figure entering.
"Now, Inspector Sanjoin, careful. This may be evidence."
Both Noboru and Mamoru whipped around, only to find Katsurou Hanzo standing in the doorway, looking very much like a teacher that walked in on his students setting the school mascot on fire.
"What are you doing here?" Noboru asked with more than a little resentment, "the dead have been transported to your little dungeon over a week ago."
"Teno was in my... little dungeon, as you so aptly called it. She told me that you wanted to search Aino's apartment again, and felt that it was fruitless." Katsurou looked at Mamoru. "Given the recent developments in this case, I'm inclined to disagree and thought you might need some help since I assumed your partner was still banned from working with you."
"Mamoru wasn't banned from working with me, he was banned from working period," Noboru murmured disgruntledly and turned his back on the coroner to give the desk another kick.
"That's very nice of you, Katsurou." Mamoru managed to look thankful, even though he wasn't sure that he wanted the man here. In front of Katsurou Hanzo, he couldn't afford one moment of weakness and if they really did find some additional information connecting Aino to his late wife, then control might be hard to come by. Shuffling his feet, he watched Noboru trying to adjust to Katsurou's presence. In other circumstances, it might have actually been funny.
"So I take it you have looked at the ventilating shafts?" The coroner's green eyes scanned the room.
"Yes, but there was nothing in them."
"Many desks have secret drawers, have you checked whether this one does?"
"No." Noboru's answer was sullen.
"Allow me, I'm an expert in finding them." Katsurou spoke politely, and Mamoru could tell that the coroner was trying not to offend Noboru. Mamoru could also tell that all of this effort was destined to go to waste.
"I thought you were an expert in finding out how people died?" Arms crossed in front of his broad chest, Noboru glared at the coroner.
"That too."
"And where does your expertise on desks come from?"
"I build them."
"Sorry?"
"It's a hobby. Woodwork." Katsurou shrugged out of his trench and put it carefully over the back of a chair. It looked expensive, well worn and even better cared for. You could tell that the coroner didn't by his clothes for the sake of fashion, but for durability. Noboru was grinning from ear to ear.
"You built desks in your free time? See, Mamoru, I told you he doesn't have a girlfriend!"
Resisting the urge to smack Noboru's head against a wall or bury his own in his hands, Mamoru shot the coroner an apologetic smile.
"I would appreciate it if we could focus on the case and not my private life. I believe you were busy searching this place, weren't you, Sanjoin?" While speaking, Katsurou's knocked on the table, tracing his fingers over the cherry wood.
"Yeah, I was, but since you are so good at it, why don't I just sit back and wait until you find the necessary evidence within three minutes of your arrival and- WHAT THE FUCK!"
With a look that could only be described as triumphant, Katsurou Hanzo offered Noboru the small secret drawer he had pulled out of the desk. "And just so you know, it only took me two minutes to find it."
Minako Aino hadn't hidden much in the drawer. In fact, there were only three pictures in there. One was from the same series of pictures Mamoru had seen at Usagi's house. It showed five pretty teenagers, all laughing for the camera. Now, all but one of them were dead. The second picture was a portray of a man. It was black and white, but you could nevertheless that he had curly blonde hair. And yet...
"I'm fairly certain that this is not Kaitou Ace...," Mamoru said while bringing the photo even closer to his eyes. He squinted.
Noboru held the the third picture in his hands, his face heavy and suddenly without colour.
"Well, and I'm absofuckinglutely certain that this is you."
He threw the third picture on the desk's smooth surface and 19 year old Mamoru Chiba smiled back at them. He wore the uniform of his youth, his trademark green jacket and the black turtle-neck he had recently taken to wearing again because of Setsuna's marks on his body. The boy in the photo clutched some medicine books, and his smile was genuine, almost infectious. Mamoru remembered when and by whom it had been taken. The first day of university, Motoki insisted on documenting it to prove that it did really happen.
Katsurou picked the picture up. Something had caught his eye when Noboru tossed it on the table. He turned it, and there it was. On the back, someone had jotted down a single word with purple ink.
Endymion.
*
The three of them drove to Ami's flat soon after. They took Katsurou's car, so the coroner drove, Mamoru took the passenger seat and Noboru folded all of six foot and four inches in the back-seat of the silver Lexus GS.
"I'm taller than both of you, so why am I in the back?" Katsurou didn't bother to answer, and Mamoru shot his partner a pleading look, one that asked for patience and good behaviour, two things Noboru wasn't even sure he had in him right now. Not after Hanzo butting in and doing his work for him. So instead, Noboru retaliated by shoving his knees in the back of Mamoru's seat, but Mamoru didn't even notice it as he began to talk to Katsurou about woodwork and the different types of secret drawers one could build into a desk. The conversation kept the widower's reeling mind pleasantly busy, but every once in a while the obvious questions resurfaced, demanding his attention as if he should know the answers by heart. What or or who was Endymion and why had Aino scribbled it on the back of the picture? Why did she even have a picture of him? When they arrived at their destination, Mamoru practically jumped out of the car. He strode inside the house quickly, wondering whether this was the place where they would find another hint in this scavenger hunt the murderer made them play.
Ami's flat was quiet. Little spoke of the suffering that had taken place here; there weren't even blood stains.
Where Minako's house had been a crime scene from the start, all three men felt that Ami's house had been a home, and one that dearly missed its former inhabitant. The books on the shelves were accumulating dust, the leaves of the plants in the living-room were drooping and drying up and the milk in the fridge had gone sour. Ami's small study was very tidy, only a laptop computer set on the desk. There were no stray pages of reports, no thumbed-through magazines, not even candles. This was the room the bright doctor had reserved for working: there was nothing personal to be found here.
Mamoru flipped the laptop open and found that it wasn't even protected by a password. Either Ami Mizuno had not kept her secrets here or she didn't have any. Indeed, the computer held little information aside form work-related documents, and this time, they found no secret drawer in the desk. Pictures of Usagi and Ami decorated the walls in the hallway, the story of a friendship there for everyone to see, and Mamoru remembered having taken quite a lot of them himself.
In the back of the wardrobe in the bedroom, Noboru found a pink box with concert tickets, CDs and pictures of Usagi, Aino and Ami, but there was not even a hint that Ami had known Rei Hino and Makoto Kino.
It made Noboru immediately suspicious. Someone who didn't even use a passwort on her computer would surely see no need to hide pictures of laughing friends. He put the box on the bed and prowled the apartment again, his eyes scanning the walls and eventually, he called to the two other men from the hallway.
"I think the murderer took something after he killed her. Look, here's an nail in the wall, but there's nothing hanging from it. Might have been a picture of the two other girls, might have been the group picture. Looking at this place makes me think that Ami wasn't the sort of person to leave unused nails in the walls - it's too homey and tidy for that."
Mamoru inched closer and examined the wall by looking over his partner's shoulder. Katsurou remained in the bedroom and flicked through the pink box, picking up a picture every once in a while. The blonde in the pictures didn't look a bit like the corpse he had on his examination table two weeks ago. She was bubbly, pretty, alive. He traced her face with his finger, and wondered why the pretty school girl had turned into the vixen singer the world came to know her as. When the coroner felt Noboru's eyes on him, he slowly put the pictures back in and the lid on the box. The two men stared at each for a moment, but then Mamoru spoke and broke the building tension.
Grieve was tugging at Mamoru's shoulders as he said that he didn't remember what had been hanging from this nail despite having been to Ami's place several times when his wife was still alive, and Noboru instinctively cracked a joke to make Mamoru feel better. His partner rewarded him with a hesitant smile, and took out his camera to take pictures of Ami's flat.
They left not a bit smarter than they had arrived, and yet they had spend all afternoon and the evening's first hours searching the place. It was moments such as these that made their so hard, Mamoru thought. You find one hint, think that you're finally making a step in the right direction only to walk right into a dead end. So the murderer had taken something from Ami's flat. They didn't know what it was, and Mrs. Mizuno could only come to the flat to tell them whether or not she was able to identify the missing item tomorrow morning. Right now, the older woman was working in the hospital, saving lives and trying to cope with her daughter no longer being there beside her.
Mamoru was quiet, even more so than Katsurou, and the silence in the car drove Noboru to distraction. He looked outside and noticed that the stars were hidden behind heavy grey clouds; it would rain soon. When they dropped him off in front of Aino's building so that he could pick up his car and Katsurou offered to drive Mamoru home, Noboru stayed behind, wondering why it felt that he was losing his best friend to a man who didn't even know what friendship was. The silver Lexus turned around the car, and was gone. Pushing his hands into his pockets, Noboru walked to his car.
*
The bar was seedy. Small, crowded, smelly. The sawdust on the floor was littered with old cigarette stumps, bottle caps and a few other things that found their way to the floor of a bar in the wrong end of town.
The clientèle consisted of mainly middle-aged men with violent faces and their rather too pretty girlfriends. Upon closer examination, you could tell that the women's' skirts were just a bit too short, their make-up just a bit too bright and their heels just a tad too high.
It was here that the only clue to Rei Hino's whereabouts had lead to.
Noboru had played one of his usual tricks and distributed pictures of Rei Hino to the city's taxi drivers, asking them for help. The inspector felt that it was the least he could do now that Katsurou Hanzo had found the little secret drawer. It wasn't too long before one of the taxi drivers came forward and told the inspector that he remembered having chauffeured the woman to The Crow, the very bar in which Noboru was now standing. Unfortunately, the driver wasn't able to pinpoint when he had taken the pretty girl here, he only remembered her because of her startling violet eyes. He described her as breathtaking.
Ordering a beer, Noboru sat down at the bar, subtly scanning the crowd's for Hino's now familiar face. Would he really find her here? A senator's child, a priest's granddaughter in a bar that was infamous for the young and desperate hookers that frequented it. Knocking his beer back, Noboru decided that it was a very real possibility. It wasn't any unlikelier than a pop star going down on her lover in an alley and befriending the paparazzi who witnessed the act. It wouldn't even be any odder than Aino's cat finding a new home halfway across the city with Usagi's mother. Hell, it wouldn't be odder than catching Katsurou Hanzo looking at a picture of Minako Aino with a forlorn expression in his soulless eyes. No, in this case it didn't matter whether something seemed probable or not.
Out of the corner of his eye, he noticed someone sliding on the bar stool next to him.
"Hello lover."
The voice was dark, soft, sweet, familiar. It was the sort of voice that made husbands leave their wives, emperors destroy their kingdoms and fools rush to their certain death.
It was dangerous.
It was his heroin.
When Noboru turned his head, he saw the woman he had been looking for. The only one beside Rei Hino he hadn't been able to find despite trying so hard.
Swallowing down the lump in his throat, he inclined his head and welcomed doom.
"Hello Beryl."
This will be unlocked after Christmas, as will the other drabbles/chapters I post in the framework of the Advent Drabblender. Until then, it's only for the flist. :)
Chapter Seven
Mamoru's flat, once so tidy and organised, was looking more and more like the office he and Noboru shared in the police station. There were two empty pizza boxes on a stack of old letters and postcards from Usagi, a number of Minako Aino's CDs, copies of Ami's journal and last but not least a picture of the white cat Mamoru had seen earlier this afternoon. Noboru was currently leaning against the wall and devouring the last slice of the triple cheese pizza, speaking with his mouth full and thus turning his words into gibberish.
"Thash sh sho weird, ishn't it?" Gulping the rest of the food down, he continued, more intelligible this time. "Minako and Usagi adopted cats at the same time, Usagi dies, Minako dies, and her cat finds its way to Usagi's mother who lives in a completely different part of the city. If that's a coincidink, I will come to the office tomorrow dressed like Teno, complete with blonde wig and all."
Mamoru laughed and leaned back in his chair.
"Now you're making me wish it's a coincidence. Just to see Teno's face. And then yours after she beats you into a bloody pulp."
"She's all smug; stupid woman is convinced that Kaitou Ace is going to show up any minute now. If I were the secret lover of a murdered pop sensation, I wouldn't walk into the nearest police station and go all 'hey, here I am, did you want something?' and hope for the best. No way. I'd hide where I can never be found." Noboru plonked down on Mamoru's couch and leaned back. He rubbed his eyes; this case was wearing him out. If there was one thing he needed right now, it was a solid twelve hours of sleep. After a good night's fuck with a gorgeous woman he had yet to find, that is.
"I'm surprised that press hasn't gotten wind of Ami and Kino." The TV had been running 24/7 since the two man had decided to solve the case together despite the Chief Inspector's orders. The news had little to offer, and while this was theoretically good, it was nevertheless frustrating Mamoru to no end. There were never any straight-forward answer, and Teno's plan had come to a standstill.
"The Chief Inspector knows that this needs to stay secret until we find the connection, otherwise our killer will just run and hide, and we're never seeing him again. Which I think is precisely what Ace is doing now, hiding."
"Any luck finding Rei Hino?" Mamoru grabbed the remote and turned the volume down until barely a whisper could be heard. Noboru scratched his nose.
"Nope. Which I still can't wrap my mind around, by the way. I mean, hello! She's a senator's daughter, for crying out loud. How difficult can it be to find her?"
"Does her father know anything?"
"Man, you don't keep up with the news, do you? Senator Hino died one and half years ago."
Mamoru scowled, and his eyes darkened. "Same time as Usagi died. So no, didn't watch the news then. Any chance it was murder?"
Brushing over the fact that he had just put his foot massively in his mouth, Noboru shrugged and lit a cigarette with a wry smile. "Depends on what you think about the cigarette industry."
"So we're talking cancer?"
"Aye."
"Stop smoking then, you idiot. Don't even know when you picked that filthy habit up. Where does the paper trail lead us?"
Noboru examined his cigarette, and decided to ignore Mamoru's warning. "She attended the T*A Private Girls School, a Catholic school run by nuns and graduated there at the same time as Usagi, Minako, Ami and Makoto did at Juban high school. No contact to her father other than birthday cards from her ninth birthday onwards. She lived with her grandfather until the old man died, he was a Shinto priest and ran the Hikawa shrine. She inherited the shrine and closed it. And here the story ends, nothing else there. No credit cards, no mobile phone contracts, nothing. The waitresses at Hino's café said that she was last seen about the time of her father's death. Which means that she might be our first victim."
"Do we have names of anyone else she was associated with? Friends, other family, colleagues?"
"The shrine hired a help the summer Hino turned 16. His name is Yuichiro Kumada. Other than that, it was only Hino and her grandfather." Noboru got up and began to walk useless little circles around the couch.
"Great. What happened to Kumada?"
"What makes you think that something happened to him?"
"Noboru, you don't exactly have your happy face on." Noboru stepped into the hallway and looked in the mirror, returning seconds later.
"I see what you mean about the face." He sat down on the couch again. "Kumada moved to the States two years ago. He lives somewhere in the mountains, and has neither phone nor email."
"Great." Noboru began to look for an ashtray, and after not finding one anywhere near him, threw his cigarette into Mamoru's water glass. To say that his partner was not impressed was an understatement, but once again, Noboru shrugged it off and just continued the conversation.
"I'd say we go back to Aino's penthouse and look for evidence again. We need to go back to the beginning, there are too many dead ends where we are now."
Mamoru crossed his arms in front of his chest. "Search warrant for Hino?"
"On what account? Knowing the dead girls' club?"
Mamoru closed his eyes, and Noboru cursed. Foot, mouth, again and that in less than three minutes.
"Fuck. I mean sorry."
"It's okay. Not your fault that one of the victims is my wife."
"I should really learn to keep my mouth shut at times, shouldn't I?"
"Naw, you're good. So no search warrant. How else can we find her?"
"We could send Nigoshi on her trail. He owes me, and he's good at finding people."
"Hmph. So are you. This has got to be the first time that you're not finding someone you're looking for."
A wistful expression crossed Noboru's face and he looked outside the window at the darkening sky. Soon the stars would come out to illuminate his failure. "Not the first time, no."
"Elaborate." Mamoru's interest had been peaked. He knew too little about his friend, and these rare moments of insight were all the more precious for it. But Noboru reached for the jacket he had tossed on the couch when he arrived, got up and strode to the door, calling over his shoulder as he went. "Doesn't matter. No use crying over spilt milk."
"Sure?"
"Yeah. So here's today's version of our to-do list: check Aino's penthouse, check Ami's house, and begin searching Kino's home. Oh, and if we could find out which motive the killer has, that would be swell, too."
And with that, Noboru grinned and left.
*
Minako Aino's penthouse didn't hold many surprises.
"Where are the pictures of her and Usagi? I can't believe she didn't have any, she must have hidden them. But where? And why?"
Mamoru looked around, his eyes finally settling on a ventilating shaft.
"Maybe up there?"
Without hesitation, Noboru grabbed the desk chair, put it under the shaft and climbed up, a screwdriver already in hand. He always carried one with him, along with a notepad, two pens (just in case he lost one), a lighter and a bottle of water. He was nothing if not prepared.
"Nothing here but dust."
Mamoru frowned, slowly turning on his heels to get a better view of the room.
"Under her mattress?"
"The forensic people took the whole thing with them to check for traces of DNA, remember?"
"Right. Erm..."
"Let's look at the desk again. All the important stuff was in there and we might have gotten a little sidetracked after finding the NC-17 shots."
They made their way over and emptied the desk systematically. They found nothing that seemed even remotely connected to the case, and both men were growing impatient.
"There has to be something! The woman didn't have a safe deposit box, had only this property and never ever visited her childhood home. And after years of friendship, you accumulate some shit, you just do."
Noboru gave the desk a random kick, prompting Mamoru to laugh. They hadn't noticed the tall figure entering.
"Now, Inspector Sanjoin, careful. This may be evidence."
Both Noboru and Mamoru whipped around, only to find Katsurou Hanzo standing in the doorway, looking very much like a teacher that walked in on his students setting the school mascot on fire.
"What are you doing here?" Noboru asked with more than a little resentment, "the dead have been transported to your little dungeon over a week ago."
"Teno was in my... little dungeon, as you so aptly called it. She told me that you wanted to search Aino's apartment again, and felt that it was fruitless." Katsurou looked at Mamoru. "Given the recent developments in this case, I'm inclined to disagree and thought you might need some help since I assumed your partner was still banned from working with you."
"Mamoru wasn't banned from working with me, he was banned from working period," Noboru murmured disgruntledly and turned his back on the coroner to give the desk another kick.
"That's very nice of you, Katsurou." Mamoru managed to look thankful, even though he wasn't sure that he wanted the man here. In front of Katsurou Hanzo, he couldn't afford one moment of weakness and if they really did find some additional information connecting Aino to his late wife, then control might be hard to come by. Shuffling his feet, he watched Noboru trying to adjust to Katsurou's presence. In other circumstances, it might have actually been funny.
"So I take it you have looked at the ventilating shafts?" The coroner's green eyes scanned the room.
"Yes, but there was nothing in them."
"Many desks have secret drawers, have you checked whether this one does?"
"No." Noboru's answer was sullen.
"Allow me, I'm an expert in finding them." Katsurou spoke politely, and Mamoru could tell that the coroner was trying not to offend Noboru. Mamoru could also tell that all of this effort was destined to go to waste.
"I thought you were an expert in finding out how people died?" Arms crossed in front of his broad chest, Noboru glared at the coroner.
"That too."
"And where does your expertise on desks come from?"
"I build them."
"Sorry?"
"It's a hobby. Woodwork." Katsurou shrugged out of his trench and put it carefully over the back of a chair. It looked expensive, well worn and even better cared for. You could tell that the coroner didn't by his clothes for the sake of fashion, but for durability. Noboru was grinning from ear to ear.
"You built desks in your free time? See, Mamoru, I told you he doesn't have a girlfriend!"
Resisting the urge to smack Noboru's head against a wall or bury his own in his hands, Mamoru shot the coroner an apologetic smile.
"I would appreciate it if we could focus on the case and not my private life. I believe you were busy searching this place, weren't you, Sanjoin?" While speaking, Katsurou's knocked on the table, tracing his fingers over the cherry wood.
"Yeah, I was, but since you are so good at it, why don't I just sit back and wait until you find the necessary evidence within three minutes of your arrival and- WHAT THE FUCK!"
With a look that could only be described as triumphant, Katsurou Hanzo offered Noboru the small secret drawer he had pulled out of the desk. "And just so you know, it only took me two minutes to find it."
Minako Aino hadn't hidden much in the drawer. In fact, there were only three pictures in there. One was from the same series of pictures Mamoru had seen at Usagi's house. It showed five pretty teenagers, all laughing for the camera. Now, all but one of them were dead. The second picture was a portray of a man. It was black and white, but you could nevertheless that he had curly blonde hair. And yet...
"I'm fairly certain that this is not Kaitou Ace...," Mamoru said while bringing the photo even closer to his eyes. He squinted.
Noboru held the the third picture in his hands, his face heavy and suddenly without colour.
"Well, and I'm absofuckinglutely certain that this is you."
He threw the third picture on the desk's smooth surface and 19 year old Mamoru Chiba smiled back at them. He wore the uniform of his youth, his trademark green jacket and the black turtle-neck he had recently taken to wearing again because of Setsuna's marks on his body. The boy in the photo clutched some medicine books, and his smile was genuine, almost infectious. Mamoru remembered when and by whom it had been taken. The first day of university, Motoki insisted on documenting it to prove that it did really happen.
Katsurou picked the picture up. Something had caught his eye when Noboru tossed it on the table. He turned it, and there it was. On the back, someone had jotted down a single word with purple ink.
Endymion.
*
The three of them drove to Ami's flat soon after. They took Katsurou's car, so the coroner drove, Mamoru took the passenger seat and Noboru folded all of six foot and four inches in the back-seat of the silver Lexus GS.
"I'm taller than both of you, so why am I in the back?" Katsurou didn't bother to answer, and Mamoru shot his partner a pleading look, one that asked for patience and good behaviour, two things Noboru wasn't even sure he had in him right now. Not after Hanzo butting in and doing his work for him. So instead, Noboru retaliated by shoving his knees in the back of Mamoru's seat, but Mamoru didn't even notice it as he began to talk to Katsurou about woodwork and the different types of secret drawers one could build into a desk. The conversation kept the widower's reeling mind pleasantly busy, but every once in a while the obvious questions resurfaced, demanding his attention as if he should know the answers by heart. What or or who was Endymion and why had Aino scribbled it on the back of the picture? Why did she even have a picture of him? When they arrived at their destination, Mamoru practically jumped out of the car. He strode inside the house quickly, wondering whether this was the place where they would find another hint in this scavenger hunt the murderer made them play.
Ami's flat was quiet. Little spoke of the suffering that had taken place here; there weren't even blood stains.
Where Minako's house had been a crime scene from the start, all three men felt that Ami's house had been a home, and one that dearly missed its former inhabitant. The books on the shelves were accumulating dust, the leaves of the plants in the living-room were drooping and drying up and the milk in the fridge had gone sour. Ami's small study was very tidy, only a laptop computer set on the desk. There were no stray pages of reports, no thumbed-through magazines, not even candles. This was the room the bright doctor had reserved for working: there was nothing personal to be found here.
Mamoru flipped the laptop open and found that it wasn't even protected by a password. Either Ami Mizuno had not kept her secrets here or she didn't have any. Indeed, the computer held little information aside form work-related documents, and this time, they found no secret drawer in the desk. Pictures of Usagi and Ami decorated the walls in the hallway, the story of a friendship there for everyone to see, and Mamoru remembered having taken quite a lot of them himself.
In the back of the wardrobe in the bedroom, Noboru found a pink box with concert tickets, CDs and pictures of Usagi, Aino and Ami, but there was not even a hint that Ami had known Rei Hino and Makoto Kino.
It made Noboru immediately suspicious. Someone who didn't even use a passwort on her computer would surely see no need to hide pictures of laughing friends. He put the box on the bed and prowled the apartment again, his eyes scanning the walls and eventually, he called to the two other men from the hallway.
"I think the murderer took something after he killed her. Look, here's an nail in the wall, but there's nothing hanging from it. Might have been a picture of the two other girls, might have been the group picture. Looking at this place makes me think that Ami wasn't the sort of person to leave unused nails in the walls - it's too homey and tidy for that."
Mamoru inched closer and examined the wall by looking over his partner's shoulder. Katsurou remained in the bedroom and flicked through the pink box, picking up a picture every once in a while. The blonde in the pictures didn't look a bit like the corpse he had on his examination table two weeks ago. She was bubbly, pretty, alive. He traced her face with his finger, and wondered why the pretty school girl had turned into the vixen singer the world came to know her as. When the coroner felt Noboru's eyes on him, he slowly put the pictures back in and the lid on the box. The two men stared at each for a moment, but then Mamoru spoke and broke the building tension.
Grieve was tugging at Mamoru's shoulders as he said that he didn't remember what had been hanging from this nail despite having been to Ami's place several times when his wife was still alive, and Noboru instinctively cracked a joke to make Mamoru feel better. His partner rewarded him with a hesitant smile, and took out his camera to take pictures of Ami's flat.
They left not a bit smarter than they had arrived, and yet they had spend all afternoon and the evening's first hours searching the place. It was moments such as these that made their so hard, Mamoru thought. You find one hint, think that you're finally making a step in the right direction only to walk right into a dead end. So the murderer had taken something from Ami's flat. They didn't know what it was, and Mrs. Mizuno could only come to the flat to tell them whether or not she was able to identify the missing item tomorrow morning. Right now, the older woman was working in the hospital, saving lives and trying to cope with her daughter no longer being there beside her.
Mamoru was quiet, even more so than Katsurou, and the silence in the car drove Noboru to distraction. He looked outside and noticed that the stars were hidden behind heavy grey clouds; it would rain soon. When they dropped him off in front of Aino's building so that he could pick up his car and Katsurou offered to drive Mamoru home, Noboru stayed behind, wondering why it felt that he was losing his best friend to a man who didn't even know what friendship was. The silver Lexus turned around the car, and was gone. Pushing his hands into his pockets, Noboru walked to his car.
*
The bar was seedy. Small, crowded, smelly. The sawdust on the floor was littered with old cigarette stumps, bottle caps and a few other things that found their way to the floor of a bar in the wrong end of town.
The clientèle consisted of mainly middle-aged men with violent faces and their rather too pretty girlfriends. Upon closer examination, you could tell that the women's' skirts were just a bit too short, their make-up just a bit too bright and their heels just a tad too high.
It was here that the only clue to Rei Hino's whereabouts had lead to.
Noboru had played one of his usual tricks and distributed pictures of Rei Hino to the city's taxi drivers, asking them for help. The inspector felt that it was the least he could do now that Katsurou Hanzo had found the little secret drawer. It wasn't too long before one of the taxi drivers came forward and told the inspector that he remembered having chauffeured the woman to The Crow, the very bar in which Noboru was now standing. Unfortunately, the driver wasn't able to pinpoint when he had taken the pretty girl here, he only remembered her because of her startling violet eyes. He described her as breathtaking.
Ordering a beer, Noboru sat down at the bar, subtly scanning the crowd's for Hino's now familiar face. Would he really find her here? A senator's child, a priest's granddaughter in a bar that was infamous for the young and desperate hookers that frequented it. Knocking his beer back, Noboru decided that it was a very real possibility. It wasn't any unlikelier than a pop star going down on her lover in an alley and befriending the paparazzi who witnessed the act. It wouldn't even be any odder than Aino's cat finding a new home halfway across the city with Usagi's mother. Hell, it wouldn't be odder than catching Katsurou Hanzo looking at a picture of Minako Aino with a forlorn expression in his soulless eyes. No, in this case it didn't matter whether something seemed probable or not.
Out of the corner of his eye, he noticed someone sliding on the bar stool next to him.
"Hello lover."
The voice was dark, soft, sweet, familiar. It was the sort of voice that made husbands leave their wives, emperors destroy their kingdoms and fools rush to their certain death.
It was dangerous.
It was his heroin.
When Noboru turned his head, he saw the woman he had been looking for. The only one beside Rei Hino he hadn't been able to find despite trying so hard.
Swallowing down the lump in his throat, he inclined his head and welcomed doom.
"Hello Beryl."