Chapter Text
The best of intentions I lay at your feet
And I need you to see past the worst part of me
Logically, Masumi knew the first thing to do was properly establish everyone’s alibis.
Problem being, well, the time of death. She still hadn’t quite figured out what was going on with that. And trying to figure out where everyone had been and doing for an entire two days—Thursday and Friday—would be difficult. With the support of the police it would be perfectly possible, but she was on her own and the people around her were dismissive at best and hostile at worst.
To them, she was just a kid.
It really put the situation of “Conan” in a new perspective. Masumi already respected his skills, but maybe what was equally impressive was how he’d mastered implementing them, despite being handicapped by his own apparent age. Shinichi could get entire rooms of dubious onlookers to consider his words while talking out the mouth of a first-grader.
If Conan could do it at seven, Masumi had to be able to do it at seventeen. There was no excuse.
She walked through the reports again: two witnesses placed the victim, Arata, in the garden on Friday. Masumi didn’t trust that in the slightest. Why would Arata arrive at the mansion and not tell his sister he was there? Especially considering he was coming from the hospital. And why would only two people have seen him, when everyone was rushing around, checking every detail? That suggested he was hiding, but there was no reason for him to. It just didn’t make sense.
If it was true, he was hiding something from his sister—to be more specific, there was something his sister would have discovered had he been seen by her, something he didn’t want her noticing.
If it was false, the two witnesses were colluding on some matter. Which would lead to the most probable conclusion: that they were the culprits.
Except, there was the questionable time of death. If the culprit, or culprits, deliberately sped up the progression of rigor mortis to obfuscate the time of death, why put forth an account that gave away the tampering?
No, that wasn’t right. If she was assuming the witnesses were the culprits, then their claims were false and the time of death was right, not at all messed with. In that case, the claims served to set up alibis. It wouldn’t matter if they didn’t have alibis for Thursday night if Arata was supposedly still alive on Friday.
Wasn’t that a little bold? Or had it just been improvising, because they had never suspected there would be someone who could estimate the time of death already in the building? The only way to find out would be to ask for said alibis. She’d just have to convince everyone to go along with it, somehow. Except that wasn't going to be easy, since the victim had been in the hospital in Tokyo Thursday evening. The idea of him checking himself out and coming all the way out into the mountains and then being murdered before sunrise was hardly plausible to Masumi herself. It would be nearly impossible to sell the idea to the others.
She kept that in mind as she returned to the living room, keenly aware of the tension blanketing the people within. The fire had everyone nervous.
Sonoko was the first to approach her, with her brow furrowed with stress and anxious eyes. “Figure anything out, Sera-san?”
“I keep getting stuck,” she admitted. “The body is at least a whole day older than it should be, based on everyone’s testimony. It doesn’t make any sense.”
She thought she’d kept her voice low, enough not to be overheard, but Mariko’s shoulders rose and the woman sent her a withering glare out of watery eyes.
"Or you're just wrong! You're not an expert! You might be totally misreading the rigor mortis or whatever its called!”
Masumi’s first instinct was to deny it, but instead she paused.
Because, well, that was a possibility.
She could be wrong.
But she wasn’t. She remembered the facts about rigor mortis clearly. And Masumi had done this before. Years ago, she’d spent hours and hours memorizing everything she could about determining the time and cause of death of a human being.
She couldn't be wrong.
Could she?
If there was somebody else, like Conan, or a forensic investigator, they could look at the body and second her conclusions.
But there wasn't anyone. Masumi was alone: no police, no Conan, no big brothers. She had to solve this on her own. But it wasn’t a simple case: several possible culprits that she knew of, one victim that could have died anytime between Thursday and Saturday, and absolutely no police. No cell signal, and no internet either.
She was completely on her own.
…And so was everyone else. None of them had any sort of contact with the outside world. Undoubtedly, that was the most interesting part. Who among them could set that up? And how? Had something happened to the closest cell tower? Wasn’t that too extreme?
Who would go to such an extreme?
And why?
If someone really had gone so far as to sabotage the cell signal, they couldn’t just be scared of being uncovered. That kind of thing took forward planning, resources, and specific supplies. It wasn’t something just anyone could pull off. And if they just wanted to cover up their crime, there were easier ways to do it. They could have found a way to dispose of the body. Even if that wasn’t easy either, there had to at least be a method more efficient and more reasonable.
The same reasoning applied if they had another target. There was simply better ways.
“Mariko-san,” she said, as a thought occurred to her. "Why was your brother in the hospital?”
The woman was still upset with her, but Airi placed a comforting hand on her shoulder. Meeting her friend's gaze for a moment, Mariko seemed to lose the worst of her anger. Mariko’s eyes turned to her hands, and after a moment, she began to speak.
"Arata is—was—a security guard. He got injured at work earlier this week. I don't know the details, but his company was hired to guard a jewel, and some thieves attacked them. Two of his coworkers were killed."
Masumi considered the story; she herself had heard of the robbery on the radio. The media were covering the incident ferociously, since the event itself had been very high profile. The number of witnesses was astounding, considering the battery took place on a crowded road of traffic. But most of the eyewitness reports were practically useless; most everyone who had been present had been too panicked and confused to remember details clearly.
Only a single guard had survived, and yet, now he was dead, kilometers away. Yamaguchi Arata had a very unlucky last week alive.
But the body put the death days ago, maybe even before the robbery. It was impossible for Yamaguchi Arata to be in Tokyo and the mountains at the same time. And then two witnesses claimed to have seen him alive Friday. Just going on those accounts, that put the time of death any time between Friday afternoon and now, Saturday night. That lined up with the whole being alive enough to go to work thing. If not for that, the two witnesses would definitely be the most suspicious: again, they could have be collaborating to obscure the facts of the murder.
But the victim really had apparently been still alive, and really in Tokyo, guarding a jewel. So, there had to be a trick with the body, and something had increased the rate of decomposition and made the rigor mortis progress so far in just twenty four hours.
Masumi had never encountered a case like this before, especially not without police backup.
She had a body that made no sense at all, and there was still the burnt bridge.
Why? Why try to set the bridge on fire with such an unreliable method as rigged lights? Why set the bridge on fire at all? To trap the manor's residents? Why? Was there another target that the culprit didn't want to escape? Were they all targets? To keep them from getting help? And just what the hell happened to the cell phone tower?
She was going in circles. No matter which direction she looked at the case from, she kept getting stuck on the tower, on the bridge, on the body. It was getting her nowhere.
Maybe she was missing something. And looking around the room at all the anxious faces staring back at her wasn't helping.
Forget the alibis.
“I’m going to check the bridge again.” She told Sonoko. Somehow, Masumi felt like she was on the brink of figuring something out. It felt like if she could just unravel one little string from this tangled knot, the whole debacle would come loose. She didn't really think she'd find that string by the bridge, but the fresh air might help clear her head.
Outside, it was getting cold. The dark had fully moved in, and even with the manor lights and her phone light, there was little more to see. Even so, Masumi wouldn’t go back inside with nothing to show for it. Instead she sat down on the steps and felt the chill seep through the denim of her jeans, and breathed in the cool air. Sitting out in the breeze, all by herself, it was easier to think.
There had to be some benefit for the culprit, to explain all the odd details. Some convenience the rigged light and the sabotaged cell signal provided. Something like establishing an alibi, or allowing the culprit to “be” in two places at once. They wouldn’t have to lift a finger to start the fire, after all. The lights switching on would do that for them. So they could have been anywhere else at the time, establishing an alibi or something worse.
If she could just figure out what that benefit was, then surely, the rest would follow.
“Do you think she found anything?” Aoko asked. She was watching Sera through the window, eyes settled on the lonely figure silhouetted against the porch lights.
“It doesn’t look like it, does it?” Akako hummed, leaning against the wall alongside her. She had a pack of Tarot cards in hand, but was doing little more than shuffling them. Maybe she found the motions comforting. Kaito did. Shuffling cards helped him think.
It was dark now, which made the clearest image in the window her own reflection, drawing her attention to her own miserable appearance. Her skin still seemed a little too pale, and her messy hair was tied up in a bun that was more a knot than anything else. Aoko looked a mess.
One body, and she was falling apart at the seams.
“So this is what real detective work is really like, huh?” She found herself saying.
“Not as glamorous as the movies.” Akako mused. Unlike Aoko, she looked completely put together. Unfazed. “I suppose it’s because Hakuba-kun usually makes it look so easy.”
He did, didn't he.
Aoko turned away from the window and slumped against the wall. Gravity had her sliding all the way to the floor, which worked for her just fine. She didn’t really feel like standing anymore anyway.
“I wish he was here.” She admitted. Her fingers were still trembling a little, and she wrapped them over her legs and tucked her face into her knees.
Hakuba had a way of just making all the pieces fall together neatly. He made it seem like the details of a case were like a perfect little puzzle they could just snap together and be done with. But without him there, it seemed like nothing was that easy, or that simple.
Akako’s manicured nails curled over her shoulder. “Don’t worry. Nothing is going to happen. Sera-san will sort this out, and then we’ll all go home in the morning.”
Aoko peered at her, unable to keep a little incredulity out of her voice. “That’s it? We just leave everything to her? We just sit here and do nothing and expect her to solve everything on her own?” Her voice had risen without her meaning it to, and Akako's hand slipped away. “We should be helping her!”
By the end, her voice had risen a touch too much, a bit too loud. Akako stared down at her with eyes that were narrow and dark. While the statement settled between them, almost tangible in its unexpected weight, Akako took a deliberate breath.
“...You say that,” she said, and her lips were quirking up in that same incomprehensible smile she always wore. Mocking, Kaito had once called it, and Aoko had scolded him for it. Now, she wasn't so sure he was wrong. “But how exactly?”
Akako's voice was very light. Pleasant and patient. It just frustrated Aoko further.
The how wasn't the point!
“She shouldn’t have to solve this on her own!” She tried to explain. “Especially not with everyone fighting her. That’s not fair at all!”
It wasn't right that they were expecting a seventeen year-old girl to handle this sort of crazy situation on her own. They should all be doing their part to help.
"Maybe." Aoko glanced up. Akako was shuffling again, but with a bit more purpose. For a second, her eyes slid shut, before snapping right back open. She flipped the top card over and revealed it: Judgement. “I don’t think it matters what’s fair and unfair. She is a detective. We are not.” She extended the deck towards Aoko, and recognizing the gesture, she reached up and drew the top card. Flipping it over, Aoko winced when she was met with the Fool, reversed. Seeing it, Akako let out a soft little chime of a laugh. “Neither of us know anything that could help her.”
Aoko got the message. She gave the card back and hid her face in her knees. “...You’re saying we’re useless.”
Next to her, shuffling once more, Akako didn't deny it. For a while, it was quiet again, nothing but the soft sound of paper against paper, and then the noise of rising voices arguing in the den began to trickle back in. Listening to them, all Aoko could feel was desolate.
“...Why are we even here?” She wondered aloud, but it was a question they both already knew the answer to. She was the reason they were there. Because she thought she was up to sticking her nose into a possible murder investigation and dragged them right into the path of another.
She was the same age as Sera. Her father was even an investigator. She should, could, know all about this stuff.
But she didn’t.
Saying she was going to catch KID, saying she was going to find the guys that hurt Kudo Shinichi—that had been some bravado, hadn’t it? But the truth was she didn’t have any idea how to do either of those things. The only reason they had gotten anywhere at all with either was because they had Hakuba, and instead of learning anything from him, she had just been counting on him to do everything for her.
Aoko had just been bossing everyone around. Hakuba was doing all the work, Kaito and Akako had been taking up all the slack and she had just been tagging along. The simple truth was that in the so-called brigade she’d formed, she didn’t actually bring anything to the table. No skills, no knowledge. Nothing but bullheaded stubbornness without any skill to back it up. She went on and on about justice, but here there was a crime before her eyes, and she was completely useless without Hakuba and Kaito. She couldn’t investigate like Hakuba, she couldn’t improvise like Kaito, and she couldn’t even keep it together like Akako.
“I’ve just been storming around, acting like somebody else will solve the problem for me if I just yell about it loud enough, haven’t I?” It was painful to realize, but there was no denying it. It was shameful she hadn't recognized it sooner. “The truth is, I can’t do anything myself.”
Akako didn't lie to her and say it wasn't true. She didn't protest at all. Aoko felt the weight of Akako's gaze on her face, and it felt a little like being laid bare and judged for everything she was worth. It was difficult to not curl up further, to hide behind her knees and hair.
Once more, the deck of cards was extended towards her.
“Do you want to learn?” Akako asked. it might have been a trick of the light, but her smile seemed a little softer. “How to be a detective?”
The question startled her. It wasn't the kind of reply she'd expected at all. But she considered it seriously, staring at the intricate pattern inked in the back of Akako's cards.
“...I don’t know.” She said finally, drawing another card. “I suppose it’s a bit late to be saying that, huh?”
Aoko flipped it over. It was the Fool again, right side up.
Akako straight up laughed at her.
Groaning, Aoko shoved the card back in the deck and cursed herself for getting caught up in Akako's tricks again. It was a good thing Kaito wasn't around to see it.
Still shaking with repressed mirth, Akako accepted the card back and tucked the whole deck away in her purse. She interrupted Aoko's fuming with an extended hand of manicured nails.
“Better late than never." She said as she tugged Aoko up off the floor. "Shall we see if we can’t start our first lesson?”
So deep in her own thoughts, the creak of the door nearly gave Masumi a fright. She was on her toes and in stance before she even registered that she was moving, only to be met with two pairs of curious eyes.
"Good evening." Koizumi smiled. Despite the stress of the day, she seemed at ease. Masumi was starting to find that a little odd; it was rather strange for a teenage girl to be so unflappable in this kind of twisted situation, right? It was more normal for someone to react like Nakamori behind her, a bit more reserved and twitchy.
Regardless, neither of them were the culprit. "Hardly." Masumi chuckled as she forced herself to relax. She was way too keyed up. "What's up? Everything alright?"
"We got a little tired of everyone arguing inside." Koizumi chuckled, and yeah, Masumi could hear them if she tried. She didn't envy Ran and Sonoko, who were undoubtedly trying to keep order in the manor as best they could. "May we join you?"
Even though she'd come out to be alone, Masumi found she wasn't adverse to the idea. She sat down on the steps again and patted the tiled stones next to her. "Can't promise I make the best company at the moment, but have at it."
"Were you thinking about the case?" Koizumi sat down daintily, but Nakamori just slumped down like someone had cut her strings. "We'd love to hear your thoughts. We can't call ourselves detectives, but we're eager to learn."
"I'm not sure I've got anything worth calling thoughts at this point, let alone anything worth learning." Masumi dragged out a smile for her. It probably looked more self-deprecating than anything. "There's just not enough evidence to make any sense of any of it."
"Well, what's troubling you the most? Maybe it will help if we go through it together." That didn't seem to be a bad idea at all. Bouncing ideas off her family or Conan had always helped before. She didn't think either of them were remotely on that level, but there was no harm in giving it a try.
"...The body." Without a doubt. "I just can't think of a viable way to speed up the process of rigor mortis."
Over and over again, she went over what she knew about the process of decomposition, trying to find a way. Everything she came up with seemed too farfetched, or at least noticeable. There had been no evidence of any particular tampering on the corpse when she checked it.
Koizumi tapped her lips with a long, delicate finger. "And you're sure you're interpreting it right?"
"I'm sure."
No question about it.
"How can you be so sure?" The question caught her by surprise; not the actual question, but how it was asked. it came from Nakamori, who spoke up for the first time since Koizumi led them out. Masumi had half assumed Nakamori was checked out of the conversation, and that Koizumi had just been trying to distract the girl in a less hostile environment. But Nakamori's eyes were shockingly focused, for all that there was a sort of desolation in her eyes, something brittle Masumi couldn’t recognize. Her tone of voice was challenging, or even incredulous. It was wondering. Maybe even envious.
Ah.
Of course.
Nakamori's first murder investigation. Masumi knew exactly how life-changing those were. That was the thing with crisis situations: they were a fierce catalyst for change in people, bringing forth the best and the worst. Whichever Nakamori was facing within herself right now wasn't really Masumi's business.
She had a case to solve, as a detective. And as a detective... "A detective has got to trust her own observation skills first and foremost. It's the most important part." A keen sense of observation was useless if one didn't trust it. "I have confidence in myself."
Nakamori's lips pinched together. "That must be easy for you, Sera-san.”
She couldn't help but laugh. “It’s not. We all doubt ourselves sometimes, right? We all get things wrong sometimes too." Masumi had certainly been wrong her own fair share of times. "But we have to believe in ourselves anyway. As a detective, you have to believe in your own senses. You have to trust in your own observations and memory. If you get caught up in the all the things you could be remembering wrong, you'll never reach any conclusion at all. When you’re a detective, people are going to lie and try to trick you. You have to trust yourself more than you trust anyone else." It's not like doubting herself would get her any closer to the people she was chasing, after all. But sitting outside in the cold of the mountains with two practical strangers that were looking to her for some guidance, she couldn't help but feel a little inadequate. She couldn't help but laugh a bit, trying to ease some of the tension in the air. “Well, I say that but…I’m not doing a very good job of putting my money where my mouth is, huh? I’m no wizard…”
Masumi wondered what he’d do in her position right now. She pictured Conan’s sharp blue eyes, piercing through her, and the unsatisfied twist in his lips. Somehow, it was a motivating image.
“A wizard?” Nakamori echoed. “Like KID?”
The thought of that guy immediately soured her good mood. Especially in comparison to Conan. “No! He’s way better than that thief!”
Nakamori's eyebrow rose. “A better wizard than a guy that can change faces?”
Change faces?
Change faces!
“That’s it!” One moment, she was sitting, and the next she was on her feet. “It wasn’t the culprit that needed to be in two places at once, it was the victim!”
She'd finally caught that loose string, and as expected, a single tug was all it took to have the whole knot unwinding. Masumi didn't wait, practically throwing herself through the door. Koizumi and Nakamori scrambled after her as she burst back into the manor and charged for the stairs. In no time at all, she was skidding to a stop before the crime scene. It was still just as grisly a sight as before, but this time, Masumi didn't focus on the corpse, or the blood splatter. She was looking for something much more inconspicuous.
"What are we looking for?" The girls behind her were gasping for breath as she tugged on her gloves, and she couldn't stop grinning if she tried.
“A way for Yamaguchi Arata to be both dead and alive!”
"What?"
She started at the corner furthest from the door, and least touched by the light shining in from the hall. She felt along the edges of the floor, picking through the uncleaned debris of renovation. Behind a scrap of a plank leaning against the far wall, she found it.
“Here it is!”
In an instant, both other girls were looking over her shoulders as she held a small black box aloft. “What is it?”
A probably inappropriate amount of satisfaction worked its way into her voice as she inspected it. “A listening device!”
Neither girl matched her excitement. Instead, Nakamori's head tilted questioningly to the side. "You mean the culprit left this? Why?"
“So he would know if the body was found.” Masumi practically waved it in their faces, but was careful to not let them touch it. The chance of fingerprints being on the little device were slim to none, but she was cautious regardless. “Pop quix! What does this mean?”
“Er, uh—” Nakamori stammered! “He was worried about someone finding the body?”
“Wrong! If he was worried about that he would have done a better job of disposing of the corpse! What this means is that the culprit isn't actually here after all!”
Nakamori stared at her, uncomprehending, but Koizumi perked up. “I see…if they were here, they wouldn’t need a listening device. They would be able to hear the body being found with their own ears after all.”
“Exactly!”
“I don’t understand.” Nakamori's brow scrunched up. “So the culprit isn’t actually among us?”
“The lights could be rigged ahead of time.” Masumi explained. “Same with whatever took out the cell signal! Once the culprit heard your screaming over the tap, he could remotely trigger both!”
“But why?”
“To delay the medical examination of the body as long as possible. Another day or two and even a medical examiner would struggle to identify a specific time of death, and certainly not one that could definitively challenge the witness testimonies!" It might have worked too, except for the introductions of some factors the culprit could never have accounted for. "Except the culprit didn’t know there would be someone already here that could determine the time of death! He didn’t account for someone realizing that Yamaguchi Arata died Thursday!”
Koizumi crossed her arms. “What do you mean? You think the men that saw Yamaguchi-san lied?”
Next to her, Nakamori shook her head furiously. “Even if they did, we know he was in Tokyo on Thursday! He was at work! He got hospitalized! He couldn’t have already been dead!" Nakamori swung around to face Masumi, and Masumi met her dead on with a smile. "He couldn’t be dead here and alive there!”
And it was that same idea that had stumped her for too long. But—“There is a way!" She could practically feel herself vibrating. "A way for him to be guarding a gem in Tokyo while lying here dead.” As expected, she was met with two uncomprehending stares, same as her own only minutes before. But now that she had the answer, she could scarcely contain it. “After all, there is one, isn’t there? A jewel thief that can steal faces!”
Kaitou KID!
And every little word I say
Keeps getting twisted
Coming out wrong