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The diluted sunshine of early morning was seeping between the curtains as Yosano set a pile of paperwork on her desk. She yawned and wiped her mouth with the back of her hand. “Ranpo, I’m starting to think you had the right idea about blowing off work today.”
From across the office, the other detective groaned as he turned on the coffee pot. “I haaaaate opening up this early. Whose idea was it to have our hours start so early?”
“Well, you better send your complaints to San Diego. Surely Fukuzawa-sensei will be sympathetic to your night owl tendencies.”
“Sheesh. No need to be mean, Doc.” Ranpo opened a window glumly and stared out at the mid-dawn grey of the sky. “Well, at least we have some time to relax without any children running circles around us.”
They continued setting up the Agency for business, occasionally shouting something from across the room at each other. Ranpo wanted to know where the dark roast coffee beans were, Yosano needed to find out where Haruno kept the phone book, Ranpo had forgotten to turn the sign on the door from ‘closed’ to ‘open,’ Yosano had knocked a bottle of rubbing alcohol from one of the infirmary shelves in her drowsy shuffle around. It was a long process.
Eventually they slumped into the nearest seat available and waited for the first sign of work. The harbinger of trouble to come was the trilling first bar of a pop song; Yosano’s latest ringtone.
“Whoever is calling me must know that we’re terribly understaffed,” Yosano mused. She dug around in the deep pocket of her skirt for her phone. Her expression twisted from faux-upset to real shock, however, when the police emergency number flashed across the screen.
Ranpo raised his eyebrows. He stopped rifling through his bag of chips as she picked up the call.
“It’s Minoura,” said the voice over the phone. Minoura’s voice was scratchy with sleep, but somewhat morose. “We've got an urgent update for you all, connected to the robbery cases that you’ve been investigating."
“Hey, we weren’t the ones on that case!” protested Ranpo. His eyes were closed, hands folded over his stomach as he reclined on one of the Agency’s many overstuffed couches. “Curses. The others just had to abandon their work on us.”
From behind him, the fax machine began sputtering out papers.
“We’re sending a few copies of the previous reports, and the first crime scene observations from early this morning. As of right now, there’s one victim killed and another in the hospital. A surgeon and his wife. Both attacked last night in their home in what we’re thinking is a home invasion gone wrong.”
Yosano pressed the phone between her shoulder and ear as she stood up from her chair. “We’re on our way.”
She hung up, and turned to cock an eyebrow at Ranpo. “Come on. There’s no slacking off when we’re their only options.”
“More like their only hope,” Ranpo snorted. He pushed himself up from the sofa, straightened his cape, and tossed his crumpled-up chip bag into the nearest trash can. “They’ll never solve anything on their own if we keep helping out like this…”
Minoura looked up from where he bent over a chalk outline. “Oh,” he grumbled, “it’s the boy detective.”
Ranpo, unfazed, shimmied under the nearest string of caution tape and strode towards the policeman. “Minoura-san! How goes it?”
“Well, it’s going about as well as it can on the day of a murder,” the man answered gruffly. He stood up and cracked his back, the tails of his coat swaying with each motion.
Yosano turned to where Minoura was looking, then frowned at the sight of a gurney– weighed down by a body bag –being wheeled from the front door of the home. There was a swarm of paramedics and police officers around the body, but she could see a forehead poking out from the unclosed bag. And she could also see the red spatter of a bullet wound before the gurney was loaded into a waiting ambulance.
“So,” she started, “the murdered victim was Abe Misaki?” Yosano reached into her tote bag and tugged the case files out from underneath a hairbrush and a tin of breath mints. “Don’t think I’m uninformed. Though your department didn’t deign to give us details past this one file–”
“You’re the doctor.” Minoura turned away from a rapidly-departing Ranpo to face her. The flash of a forensic photographer’s camera by the front door highlighted the unshaved shadows of his face. “Why are you here?”
“Hmmph, assuming I don’t appreciate some hands-on duties every once in a while?” Her lip curled as she started flipping through the folder in her hands. “And if you have to know, the rest of the Armed Detective Agency is out on various jobs. It’s just us two.”
Minoura shrugged, nestling his hands in his pockets. He looked back over his shoulder and said, “Whatever it takes to get this case solved. I don’t love our little Master Detective’s attitude, but I can already tell that he’s sniffing out the culprit. It’s in the report we faxed you, but the criminal was able to break into houses and steal documents from safes or hidden compartments. That’s why the Special Division is sniffing around here as well.”
Yosano nodded. She picked at the corner of one of the documents in her file, a long list of the things stolen in the most recent break-in. “You probably know that this is connected to the latest robberies of surgeons’ homes, but I’d like you to know that this may not only be limited to them. Ask your department to put out warnings for citizens.
Not leaving home for longer than the normal work day, making sure that doors are locked, all of those things. It didn’t seem from the previous break-ins to involve more than one person, so emphasize watching out for suspicious lone figures who start showing up in these classy neighborhoods.”
“Alright, alright,” Minoura sighed, digging in his coat pockets. He pulled out a lighter and a burnished silver cigarette case. “Want a smoke before you go in there?”
“Not at all, thank you. I’ve got to keep from poisoning myself.” She finished skimming the last of the reports and slid the files back into her bag. Her heels clacked as she passed Minoura, heading towards the house’s front porch.
Ranpo had long since disappeared inside, probably quite intrigued by the story trailing from the foreboding entrance.
For one, the shattered flower vase and clods of dirt all over the front porch. The body had been found inside the house, so why the broken vase? The thief-turned-killer had probably knocked it over. Very unprofessional.
Nodding at a policewoman milling in the genkan, Yosano continued into the home. It was an awfully pretty place, and she found herself admiring the modern architecture and enormous glass walls even as she tried to focus on the crime scene.
Evidence bags were being stuffed left and right, officers scooping up what looked like medical paperwork strewn wildly across the neutral-colored hardwood floor or shards of glass beneath picture frames.
Before Yosano scaled the stairs to the second story, she paused at one of the cracked sheets of glass.
In the undamaged photo beneath was a smiling family: one unremarkable man she supposed must be the victim Abe Misaki, a pretty young wife with dyed-brown hair, and a small girl of maybe eight years old. They were posed in a public park, standing at the edge of a red-and-white-checked picnic blanket. The daughter held a grey puppy in her arms.
“Takara-chan is away at school,” murmured a reedy voice from behind Yosano.
She startled, whipping around and readying to slam her purse into the person behind her.
But it was just a young-looking paramedic, who cowered and shrunk back against a silver accent wall. “I’m sorry!”
“Who taught you manners, girl?” huffed Yosano. She tucked a curl of her hair back behind her ear. “And what were you saying?”
“The daughter, Abe Takara. She and my younger child are in the same class.” The paramedic unpeeled herself from where she’d cringed against the wall. “I don’t do investigations like you, Detective-san, but I think that maybe the evil person who did this knew about Takara-chan being away at school.
I had to look around upstairs, you see, where Abe Misaki-san’s body was found. And the door to Takara-chan’s room wasn’t open. The criminal didn’t even try to look around in there.”
“I see. That’s interesting. Thank you.” Yosano turned away and started up the stairs. She was halfway up the spiraling steps when Ranpo called something out from above her.
“Hey! Yosano-san! There’s a total motherlode up here!” He leaned over the glass-and-metal railing, waving something in one hand.
“You can’t just grab things from a crime scene!” she chided. Yosano continued upwards and saw that Ranpo was waving a sheaf of papers, plain black text on white paper. “Are those the victim’s papers?”
“The other victim,” Ranpo answered. “They were sticking out of the drawer of her nightstand table.”
Something under Yosano’s eye twitched. “So you just opened up her personal belongings? Let me tell you, I wouldn’t let that stand for a minute–”
The detective snorted and shoved the pile into her hands. He declared, “It’s not as if she can protest it when she’s in a coma. And anyway, it’s very illuminating stuff. Our dear Abe Katsuko had a mysterious pen pal.”
Yosano leaned against the banister and started reading. Half of the letters were typed in plain black, and the signature beneath them read Kinsei Miruhone in katakana. From what Yosano could skim over, the grammar seemed atrocious and there were half-hearted attempts to translate words from English in incorrect hiragana.
The rest were signed by Abe Katsuko, and written in neat blue pen. Those were much less remarkable, mostly polite inquiries about Kinsei’s daily life and questions like, “How do American housewives spend their time?” A few questions about the “Miruhone” family, but those ceased after Kinsei seemed to make no effort to respond to that line of inquiry.
An honest attempt to break the language barrier? To bridge the gap between the homemakers of two different cultures?
Ranpo leaned over her shoulder, playing with his pair of glasses as he waited for her to finish reading. “So? Does this strange American pique your interest?”
“Yes, well . . . We had been wondering why the Special Division had no records on an ability user with the power to find and thieve from hidden places. Do you think that this foreigner is the gifted culprit?”
“I am absolutely sure of it! We figured that Katsuko-san was collateral damage, but maybe she was also a target. She was being used for information about her husband, probably.” Ranpo stood up straight, spine going rigid, and lifted his glasses to his face. “We’re close to a breakthrough, I can tell!”
Yosano rolled her eyes, but she couldn’t help but smile with how thoroughly she had been immunized to his dramatic sensibility. It didn’t even surprise her when Ranpo shouted “Ultra Deduction!” and scared the breath out of a police officer walking out of the study with an evidence bag.
Ranpo whirled on one foot. His cape spiraled around his body as he posed and started talking: “This Kinsei character was using Katsuko-san for information about her husband. Just look at their second letter, and all the questions about Abe Masaki’s career and schedule. If the Abe family was the target, the previous break-ins must have been Kinsei mining for information.
This foreigner was dedicated to hunting Abe Masaki down. The destruction of the happy family, the violence exerted against the peaceable wife, the straight line made to the office where Masaki sat– this was a crime of revenge!”
Yosano tucked the letters under one arm to clap politely at his theatrics. “So. We just need to find Kinsei before they leave Yokohama? That seems easy enough.”
Ranpo nodded. “Yes. They seem to have very little grasp of Japanese, so they probably had trouble finding a place to stay in between their robberies. Maybe they’re even wandering the streets as we speak. But this only means that they’ll have an easier time leaving Yokohama, so we’ll have to track them down soon. If only we had a foothold in America, in which case we could get KInsei arrested the second they stepped off of the plane home.”
Sighing, Yosano slipped the papers into her bag. “Well, Fukuzawa-sensei is in the States to try and make that happen. Will you make sure Minoura-san sends us the rest of the details from here and the autopsy results? I’ll go try and make contact with the Americans we do have a relationship with.”
Yosano twirled a rotary phone cord around one finger, sipping from a carton of juice that had come with her boxed lunch. It was only one in the afternoon and she still felt fatigue dragging at her eyelids. She rubbed her eyes, then dialed a number she had to read out of a classified binder. In fact, any communication along this line was meant to be so covert that she couldn’t use her personal cell.
The phone only rang once before the call was picked up.
“Uh, erm, yes? This is, uh, Manhasset Security speaking?” came the thin, high-pitched voice over the phone. “Hello?”
“Hello,” Yosano said, idly scratching the edge of her lip with a long red-painted nail. “Is that you, Alcott-san? Or do I have the wrong secretary?”
“Oh! You! You’re the, uh, doctor of the Armed Detective Agency. I think. Sorry. Are you Miss… Yosano?”
“That’s me.” She pushed the leftovers of her lunch away and spread the case files in front of her. “Listen, Alcott-san, we’ve got to find an American with an ability related to locating and breaking into hidden locations. The Special Division for Unusual Powers has less than zero influence outside of Japan, so they’ve got to find and interrogate this criminal before they leave the country.”
“I s-see. Hopefully all is well with the Agency…” Scuffling noises and loud clacking of keys become audible. “Manhasset Security has exclusive access to the Eyes of God, as you probably know. But, er, the… remains of the Guild have not got the sort of documentation on gifted individuals that Japan’s Special Division has.”
Yosano snorted. “You Americans don’t even have a national ID system, as I’m told.”
Louisa May actually laughed at that, a sort of choking on air that was quickly muffled. “Yes, well. Uh, Mr. Fitzgerald has tried his best to keep up with the continuous changes in the gifted population. It’ll take some time for me to run the records. Sorry. But we should have it done by the late afternoon.”
“No, thank you very much. That’s more than enough. My partner doesn’t get back to the office until noon, anyway. You’re a dear, Alcott-san.”
“Oh, uh, well. Um, thank you, Miss Yosano. I’ll do my best.”
The call ended a millisecond after Alcott’s goodbye, and Yosano sighed. She leaned back in her chair with her juice box, sipping slowly to savor the sugar-saturated taste.
What was she to do? Pore over ever more of the documents that the police had given her?
There were only a few interesting details, though Yosano struggled to tie them together without the brazen self-assurance that Ranpo had.
Ranpo had been correct about the crime of passion angle, as everything supported the idea that Kinsei had made a beeline for Abe Misaki in his study upstairs, only pausing to take Abe Katsuko out with a swift blow to the forehead with the same gun used in the crime. The latter had laid on the kitchen floor downstairs for the entirety of her husband’s murder. Had Misaki not heard the struggle downstairs, the breaking of a dish that had left ceramic shards across the floor? Was he too engrossed in his work to care about what his wife may have been doing?
And the murder weapon. A small-caliber gun had been used, which seemed quite likely seeing as most women wouldn’t want to be toting a firearm that they couldn’t fit in a purse. Flakes of dirty rubber, apparently similar to that of gardening gloves, had been found among the spots of gunpowder left after the fatal shots.
At least Yosano had ideas about that. She chewed the end of her pen in between jotting down notes. For one, the killer wearing gardening gloves couldn’t have been anything but a lack of better options. Squeaky, hard-to-bend rubber gloves had to rank low on the list of things to wear to a murder.
And what picture did that paint? A housewife (Yosano felt truly that Kinsei had not been lying about that part of her life) driven by revenge, sans family, struggling to find out information about the target of her rage. Packing only what equipment she had on hand was to be used during the crime. Then hopping on a plane to Yokohama with the barest grasp of the language, and ransacking any house belonging to a surgeon in the hopes that it was her target. It painted a grim picture.
And a sad one. Something bad had happened to Kinsei Miruhone, something that drove her to toss her life away.
A cacophonous ringing shattered her contemplation, and Yosano realized that the pen had slipped out of her grasp. It sat placidly on the scribble-filled page of notes. A clock blinking on the far edge of the desk read 12:03 PM. The phone rang again.
She picked it up. “Hello, this is–”
“I’ve gotten us an hour-long visit to Abe Katsuko-san,” announced Ranpo. “Get to Yokohama Municipal Citizen’s by two, alright?”
“Wait, what for? Am I being licensed to use my ability on her?”
“No. I’ll explain when you get here.”
“Alright.” Yosano stood up and grabbed her purse from where it was slung over the back of her chair. She cast one last look towards the collected papers on her desk. Then she was headed out of the Agency, locking the door and using her free hand to reapply her lipstick.
Abe Katsuko looked small in her hospital bed. Electrodes and an IV drip snaked out from underneath the white sheet she lay under. Her brown hair trailed limply across the pillow. A bandage covered her forehead.
The hospital room was large, so Ranpo and Yosano sat on two plastic chairs a meter away from the foot of the bed. Ranpo stretched his legs out, idly tapping his toes against the pale-tiled floor. He checked his watch and said, “It’s only a few more minutes until she gets here.”
Yosano hummed something in response, but she stayed leaned over, head balanced on her hand as her elbow rested on one thigh. She crossed her legs and adjusted her skirt. Her thoughts hummed in time to the fluorescent lights above them.
Abe Katsuko was in stable condition, though doctors had no idea when she’d wake up. Hopefully in the next three days. However, that was practically guaranteed to be after Kinsei escaped back to the United States. Without the power of Thou Shalt Not Die, she’d have to recover the old-fashioned way.
“They should license the use of my ability,” Yosano muttered darkly. “What’s the big deal, anyway. I’d be saving her from brain damage.”
Ranpo turned to shoot her a look. He was fidgeting with his glasses in his lap. “Well, I totally agree with you. It was the ruling of the Special Division themselves that Abe Katsuko was already in stable condition, and hadn’t consented to any medical procedures of that caliber. And she probably wouldn’t like it if she woke up and some stranger was standing over her with a bloody scalpel.”
“You know I’ll– I mean, I’d make it neat. And besides, it’s wrong to let her languish like that when the most capable surgeon in Yokohama is sitting at her bedside.”
“You know who’s the least capable surgeon in Yokohama?”
Yosano raised an eyebrow. She sat up and stretched her arms above her head. “Who?”
Ranpo made a face like he was about to tell a joke, then said, “The late Abe Misaki, apparently.”
“Eh?” She felt her expression knit into confusion. Yosano reached for her bag on impulse to pull out the collated case file she’d made before leaving the Agency. “There wasn’t anything about the victim’s professional history in what the police gave us.”
“Exactly. So that’s why I left the crime scene and went to Yokohama General Hospital, his workplace, immediately after. As I can actually speak Japanese, I got information about this surgeon a lot faster than Kinsei could have. And the information is actually pretty damning.”
Yosano looked back to where Katsuko lay. “Go on.”
“It turns out that Abe Misaki has actually been pretty damn shoddy in his work. Twenty-one investigations about mistakes made during surgeries, nine negligence cases made, all but one settled outside of court… Four people were killed by this guy. And that’s just his day job.
He also consulted at a plastic surgery clinic with an awful history of botching liposuctions and skin grafts. If you want me to recite the details, I can, but I know not everyone has my stomach for these things.”
“Don’t patronize me,” Yosano chided, swatting Ranpo’s leg with her folder. “And I get the idea. Do we think that the Miruhone husband was one of the people killed?”
“I know it,” Ranpo replies. “Once this visit is over, we’ll go back to the Agency and we can sort through the records of those four people. You get Alcott-san’s record of ability users, then we have Kinsei in the bag.”
Yosano nodded, but frowned as she once again looked back to the hospital bed. The monitors beeped softly. “Do you think that his wife knew?”
Ranpo shook his head. “Honestly, no. What kind of guy would let his pretty trophy wife know about something that threatened his successful career–”
Someone knocked at the door. Blurry figures moved behind the glass window, then the door handle rattled. A very small figure stepped through the door, then flew at Katsuko.
“Mama!” cried Abe Takara, landing against the bed and reaching for Katsuko. She had to push herself up on tiptoes to even see over the edge of the bed. “Mama, wake up!”
A frazzled-looking woman followed the child. She was well-dressed, with a bit of antique European flair in her tweed jacket, but her hair was a mess and there were bags under her eyes. “Takara-chan, please,” she pleaded as she rested her hands on the little girl’s shoulders. “Don’t cry, that won’t help anyone.”
“I didn’t expect her to bring the daughter,” Ranpo hissed under his breath. He stood up and made his way over to the woman. “Hello, ma’am. I hear you’re the au pair of the Abe family?” His voice was calm and friendly, but Yosano could practically see the mental script he read from. Ranpo hated the sound of crying children.
“Mama, wake up,” wailed Takara. She grabbed a fistful of bedsheet and pressed her face into it, already sobbing with all the force her small body could muster.
“LIsten, ma’am, I asked you to come here because we’re looking for the criminal who did this to Abe Katsuko-san. Could we talk in another room? I wouldn’t want either of you to have to stay in such a tragic place.”
The au pair nodded awkwardly, shooting a look at Takara before slipping out of the room.
Ranpo shot an aggravated look at Takara’s back, then mouthed, “You should get her out of the room first.”
So it was just Yosano left, sitting in her plastic chair, watching a girl cry over her mother’s unconscious body. She stood up and walked over. “Hello there, Takara-chan.”
Takara looked up, eyes soggy with tears and nose wet with snot. “Who are you?” She sniffed and looked back at her mother.
“I’m Yosano Akiko. I’m a doctor.”
“Can you make Mama wake up?”
“We’re trying to do that, Takara-chan. What matters is that you stay strong until she wakes up.” Yosano patted Takara on the head, then just as quickly pulled her hand away. She didn’t talk to children, not really. Dealing with the little monsters that occasionally were involved in cases went to Atsushi and Kunikida.
Takara pressed her face back into the bed, making a sad warbling noise.
Yosano didn’t remember being eight years old. But she did remember crying over bodies. The thought sent a little shudder down her body. It was different here. It was different.
“Takara-chan, your mama wouldn’t want to see you upset like this. Not when she’s going to get better. I promise it.” Her hand moved up to her head, tracing the graceful lines of her hairpin. Something was hardening in her chest, conviction calcifying until she could barely feel her heart beating. She knew what to do, just as Ranpo knew what she would do even before herding a potential witness out of the room. Damn whatever the Special Division said. “Will you go find where your nanny went?”
Takara looked up, having stopped sobbing. She looked almost fearful as Yosano gazed down at her. But the girl nodded, wiping her nose. “You better help Mama get better.” Then she scurried out of the room.
Once the door clicked shut behind her, Yosano stood in the nearly silent room, listening to Katsuko’s soft breathing and the beep of the monitors stationed sentrylike at her bedside.
Yosano sighed and pulled the blinds of the room’s large window down. Once the initial adrenaline of her decision had washed evenly throughout her veins, she just felt a pleasant buzz. It was no big deal to break the rules just once. Her ability wouldn’t take so long that the hospital machines would register their patient as dying. Maybe Katsuko’s miraculous recovery could be attributed to her daughter’s presence. Something pleasant like that.
She leaned over Katsuko and grabbed the woman’s head in both hands. Yosano was almost too focused on using the technique she’d been taught by a soldier fifteen years ago to register the crack of Katsuko’s neck breaking.
Thou Shalt Not Die activated in a blast of white light. Butterflies peeled from Yosano’s skin, bright spots of wings dancing in the corners of her vision. The woman on the bed writhed once, twice as her neck vertebrae snapped back into place. Her nerves were set back into place with a hum of vital energy that made Yosano’s stomach lurch.
Abe Katsuko woke up and shrieked, “Where am I?! What happened?!”
“AHH!” Yosano screamed back, putting on her best face of shock and disbelief. Ah, she hadn’t had time to roll the blinds back up. That was suspicious. “She’s awake! Doctors! Doctors! She’s awake!”
A physician came rushing in at the commotion, white coat flaring as he threw the door open. “Abe Katsuko-san?”
Yosano made a show of trembling away, but the doctor was focused on the woman in her bed as she gasped for air and threw her hands around.
“My husband, my daughter,” Katsuko was babbling. She swept her hair away from her face just to claw at her well-formed cheekbones in bewilderment. “I thought I was dead, are they dead, what happened?!”
She was just as attractive in a state of frothing panic as she was in her family photos, Yosano thought with a bit of admiration. Yosano ducked out of the room to see Ranpo and the au pair waiting outside, the former hiding a bit of smugness. Takara was already rushing out from around the two of them and jumping bodily into the hospital bed with a joyous shout of “Mama!”
Ranpo linked his arm with Yosano as she passed by, and the two of them headed down the hallway out of the hospital.
“That was a good thing you did,” he declared, “but it was totally unnecessary. Because I’m great at gathering information.”
“I wasn’t going to interrogate her,” Yosano sniped back. She could tell that she was grinning from ear to ear. “I needed to save her from that brain damage and all.”
Once they arrived back at the Agency, Ranpo flopped onto the nearest couch as Yosano sat back at her desk. “Ugh, I’m too tired to go through Abe-san’s records. Can you let me take a nap?”
“Hey. We have to actually narrow down the options before Alcott-san calls us back.”
“Fine, fine.” The detective sat up and adjusted his hat. He reached into his coat and tossed her a stack of papers, held together by an alligator clip. “Out of the four people killed, all died in what were meant to be routine surgeries. Two were foreigners. One was American, but his name was Mickey Grafton, not Miruhone.”
“So that must be Kinsei’s husband,” Yosano said. She tapped her pen against her lip. “Kinsei is a fake name, then?”
Ranpo was unwrapping a lollipop, but stopped long enough to sigh, “Yep. Once Alcott-san calls back with an actual identity for us, we can track them down.”
Almost as if fate had lent them an ear, the phone rang so loudly that Yosano shoved herself away from the desk.
“Speak of the devil,” Ranpo hummed. He worried the lollipop wrapper between two fingers. “I wonder if they were actually able to find records, do you think?”
“Don’t jinx this for us,” hissed Yosano, picking up the phone. She brought it to her ear, already demanding, “Do you have news for us, Alcott-san?”
“Ah, um, er. Yes.” Louisa May’s voice was nearly a whisper. There was a pregnant pause. “Yosano-san, we’ve got a match. Sue Grafton, née Sue Kinsey Millhone. She has the ability A is Alibi , which allows her to retrieve items secreted away as long as she can visualize them.”
Ranpo piped up, “Her marital status? Any family in the picture?”
“She’s a widow. Her husband was Mickey Grafton of Santa Teresa, California.”
California? Close to where the rest of the ADA was. But that must have been sheer coincidence.
“He was a security guard of the Guild until his demise one year and a month ago.”
Yosano stood up, phone cord trailing her as she grabbed for her bag. “Thank you, Alcott-san. We’ll take it from here–”
“No! There’s m-more, there’s… Listen! Mr. Fitzgerald owns the bank that their joint account is filed under. He tracked her credit card. She– she’s here. In Yokohama. Her last purchase was, uh, um. At a convenience store, I’ll send you the address, f-for gasoline, a bottle of red wine, and a b-box of matches.”
It was Ranpo’s turn to stand up, throwing the stick of his lollipop into the nearest wastebasket. “I know where she’s going!”
“Thank you,” Yosano repeated. Her blood was pounding in her head, and she barely heard Louisa May’s mumbled words before she hung up. She slung her bag over her shoulder and dashed for the infirmary.
Ranpo was on her heels as she fumbled to unlock a metal cabinet by her desk. He stood back to avoid being hit by the steel door as she threw it open. “Will we really need all that?”
She withdrew her medical bag and felt the heft of the oversize cleaver tucked into its sheath at the bottom. “Yes. Go get the car started.”
It crowded on the streets, all rush hour congestion and people milling around as they escaped from their white-collar jobs. Yosano weaved the Agency-owned car through the traffic. She cursed as she nearly ran a curb.
Ranpo slouched in the passenger seat. His fingers grabbed at the fuzzy pink dice hanging from the rearview mirror.
“Hey!” Yosano snapped. She wrenched the steering wheel to avoid a pedestrian crossing the road with a cadre of dogs. “I’ll crash this car, and I won’t use my ability on whatever paste is left of your body, you hear me?”
He frowned at her. “That was really mean.”
She released a breath through gritted teeth, still staring at the choked roads ahead of her. “Sorry. But seriously, it’s not going to do us any favors if we flip the car over on the way here. Who put up those dice, anyway?”
“Dazai.”
“Why am I surprised?” Her eyes twitched as she had to turn across three lanes to avoid making a U-turn. “Anyway, have I got the directions right?”
“Yep,” Ranpo answered. He took his glasses out of his pocket and put them on. Maybe he didn’t want to distract her by shouting his “ability” name, as he was already diving into a monologue: “Imagine you had been forced to uproot your life in sunny California to move here, where you didn’t know the language and had no friends, all because of your husband’s new job.”
Yosano snorted and pressed on the accelerator. “I’d never go to such great lengths for a man.”
“Now, imagine that your husband’s job paid well, well enough that he could go to a prestigious surgeon for a common surgery. But he died. So poor Sue Grafton is left a widow in a place she doesn’t know, bereaved and confused, has to move back home. But she puts the pieces together. Finds out that her husband died of medical negligence.
A plan starts to form. Find the surgeon who did this, get close enough to the family to find out where they live, plan a murder, buy a nice round-trip ticket so you can get back to Santa Teresa when it’s all done.”
“Sounds great– Damn it! Get out of the way, lady!” Yosano shoved a middle finger at the car tailgating them.
They were entering a nicer area of the city, one branching arm downtown, a ways away from where the Agency was nestled. Classy shopping malls and even classier restaurants. Crucially, upscale medical clinics. For people rich enough to have their fat lasered away and their skin poked and prodded back into suppleness.
“The ultimate act of revenge, a final explosion of catharsis when beating a fellow housewife into a coma and shooting a defenseless man from behind doesn’t satisfy. Burning down the very place that killed the love of your life!”
They turned, car wheels screaming beneath them, into a parking lot. Yosano slammed the brake and Ranpo choked as the seatbelt drove the air out of his lungs.
They were parked in front of Abe Misaki’s private clinic and they were leaping out of the car and they were already sprinting for the small figure inside of the closed building.
Yosano leaped over the pile of glass shards made by the broken door, her cleaver in her hand. She lunged for the person inside, who came into focus as a small American woman wearing ragged clothes and holding a red can of gasoline. Her blade came down in an arc.
Blood sprayed. Bone shattered. Thou Shalt Not Die roared to life. It filled the darkened building with an eye-searing light, butterflies fluttered in luminous clouds around Yosano.
She slammed Sue Grafton to the ground, grabbing and holding her arms behind her back. Grafton was disoriented. The American barely put up a fight, eyes rolling back into her head like they were trying to see where the cleaver had been driven in.
Behind the two, a grimacing Ranpo squelched through the blood soaking the carpet. He lifted up the can of gasoline and set it on the reception desk. “I’ll dial the police, then. Would you like to be the one to explain the use of your ability?”
“What for?” panted Yosano. Her knee dug into Kinsei’s– Grafton’s back. “We caught the criminal they were after. They won’t care enough to go after us, not when we went out of our way to help and were this successful in a day.”
“Yes, I know your intellect is almost comparable to mine, Yosano-san. But there’s brains and goo everywhere. It’s gross.”
Sue moaned in pain. “Mickey…”
Yosano looked down. A bit of pity wrenched in her chest as she took in the other woman’s dishevelment. Sue had dark caverns beneath her eyes; torn clothing spattered with blood, dried to the color of rust; and ratty, uncombed hair. So Yosano spoke in halting English, weighing each word on the scale of her tongue: “Grafton-san. What you’ve done will not be met kindly. The government will not have mercy. But I know you are hurting.”
With a soft sob, Sue turned to hide her face in the carpet. She muttered, “Kill me now.”
“I can understand what you’re saying,” Ranpo said blithely in English. He looked around, then hopped onto the reception desk to sit by the gasoline can. “And you saw what this doctor can do. You could have doused all of this in gasoline and lit it up, and she’d have us healed before the first smoke cloud formed.”
“Are you seriously trying to stroke my ego right now?” asked Yosano in Japanese. Her ears pricked at the sound of sirens in the distance. “If you really want to show your appreciation, deal with the police for me.”
“Fiiiine. But only because I like you, Yosano-san.”
She smiled at him. Yosano really did feel cheerful now that the case was over, despite the murderer-slash-grieving wife pinned beneath her in a sopping puddle of blood. Maybe once the adrenaline had dissipated, she’d be able to better formulate a response to the situation. But she just shrugged and replied, “I like you too, Ranpo-kun. Especially when you stop slacking off on work.”
It was dim outside, and the rising sun was blocked from view by a blanketing marine layer.
“Ugh,” Ranpo whined. “When will I ever be allowed to catch an ounce of sleep? My eyes are melting out of my head.”
“Don’t give me an invitation to use you as a guinea pig,” Yosano snickered. “And the others will be back later today. Did you hear the news about the kidnapping case that Kunikida’s little team was sent out on?”
Ranpo was face-first in a cupboard, rooting around for breakfast. “Uh, something about it being an unequivocal success and them being heroes and getting free food at diners in Sapporo forever.”
“The first two were right, but the last one sounds good too.” Sweeping away a coil of rope that had been draped over the back of Dazai’s chair, Yosano started to neaten up the desks of the other detectives. “Personally, I’d like to be in San Diego right now. Kyouka and Kenji must be having a great time on the beach.”
“That is, if they haven’t been roped into giving a speech at the embassy like Fukuzawa-sensei.”
“Wouldn’t you like a nice beach vacation?” Yosano sighed theatrically and flopped onto a couch. “Maybe we should work extra-hard today so we can use our PTO soon.”
Ranpo sat down next to her and offered her a slice of French toast. “I don’t think we could go a whole week without being folded into a case. Think of what could go wrong. The remains of the Rats in the House of the Dead could start plotting to bomb the beach during tourism season. Someone in the Special Division could close down all the nice inns as part of a sting operation.”
“Where did you even get this toast?” Yosano demanded. She took the thick slice of brioche, admired the dusting of powdered sugar and spread of raspberry jam, and took a large bite. “Mmm, this is delicious.”
“I hid it in the mini fridge yesterday while you were organizing the infirmary.”
Yosano took another bite and, talking around the wedge of toast in her mouth, huffed, “You should share food with me more. I barely have the time to scope out new places to get food.”
Ranpo took a bite of his toast and continued his rant: “Anyway, our vacation plans would have to be foolproof. I asked Fukuzawa-sensei to book me a train ticket to Akihabara, so I could go to one of Poe-kun’s book signings. And the subway was closed for the day because the Homicide Detective ended up derailing a train full of hitmen!”
Humming sympathetically, Yosano finished her brioche and licked her fingers. The mention of homicide had already dampened her mood. “Listen, Ranpo…”
“What?”
“Well, did you ever hear back from MInoura-san about what happened to Sue Grafton-san?”
“Ah. Well. He left a message on the answering machine. Basically, she’s in prison now but the Guild is looking to extradite her. Thanks to their wonderful secretary, it looks like Fitzgerald-san is going to have his way and take Grafton-san back to America.
She might as well have been pardoned and given a pension. Maybe she’ll be hired as a thief. Maybe she’ll get depressed on go back to Santa Teresa, where she’ll live in some little shared home and spend all her time jogging up and down the boardwalk.” Ranpo started eating another slice of French toast.
Yosano exhaled. “How callous. I do feel for her, you know.”
Cocking his head, Ranpo turned to look at her. His lips had tiny grains of powdered sugar on them. “And you cracked her head open with a cleaver, which was pretty justified but still very brutal.”
“Alright, well. At least she’ll have time to reflect in jail.” Yosano wiped her fingers on Ranpo’s cape, ignoring the aggrieved noise he made. “Should we thank the Guild for their help? I’d hate to be indebted to them.”
“Only Alcott-san helped us. Let’s just send her a gift basket.”
Chuckling, Yosano stretched her legs out in front of herself. She mused, “Do you think she likes chocolates?”
Ranpo scoffed. “She’d like literally anything you send her. The woman is hellishly underappreciated, considering that she practically runs a security firm and secret society.” He finished his second piece of toast and dusted the powdered sugar off on Yosano’s skirt.
She swatted his hand away. “Okay then. I’ll send over some flowers and chocolates. What else is on the agenda for today? Even more murder investigations?”
“I hope not. Let’s just order take-out for lunch and nap ‘till the others get here.”
“That’s a great idea. Just what I’d expect from our Master Detective, huh?” Yosano made a show of yawning and folding her arms behind her head. She was excited to nap on company time and be paid just the same as if she’d been hunting down terrorists.
Ranpo tapped something on his phone, then grinned. “How about hamburgers? With avocado, too, like they eat in California.”
“Fine, fine, you little comedian. Don’t wake me up until the food is actually at the door, alright?”
“Alright, Yosano-san.” Ranpo patted Yosano’s shoulder and nestled into the opposite side of the couch. He finished placing the order and leaned back. His eyes closed. “Yosano-san?”
“Eh?” She let one eyelid open, just enough to see the emerging sunlight casting rays across Ranpo’s contemplative expression. It was warm, now, and the Agency offices were all the more inviting when bathed in the warm tones of morning.
“Thank you for helping with the case. It went a lot faster with you there. And it was fun, for a murder and all.”
Yosano smiled and closed her eyes again. “You’re already paying me back with lunch, Ranpo-kun. But thank you, too.”