“You are beneath me, You can never beat me,’—that’s what the messages are saying. Which means... he’s not trying to make everything go right and avoid getting caught, he’s after something more than his goals... or making fun of us is his primary goal? Who is ‘us’? The police? The LAPD? Society? The U.S.A.
There must be was wrong. Maybe there wasn’t.
“Something that should be here, but isn’t… something missing, that used to be here... the Wara Ningyo? No, those were a symbol of the victims, not a message… the bedroom. ..oh, right! The occupant! The bedroom’s occupant isn’t here.”
Something missing, something no longer here. Like the room’s owner, Believe Bridesmaid.
Misora took out the photographs again and looked carefully at the two pictures of Bridesmaid’s corpse- one taken at the scene, and one taken during the autopsy. If the killer had left a message on his body, it was obviously not the rope marks, but the knife wounds in his chest. Like Misora had said to L, normally these would be taken as a sign of a personal vendetta, but now that she thought about it, they weren’t natural. In the photo from the scene, the body was on its back, wearing a T-shirt which had a few bloodstains on it... but the T-shirt itself wasn’t damaged at all. Which meant that after the killer had murdered him, he had taken the T-shirt off, cut up the body with a knife, and then put the T-shirt back on. If this was a simple grudge, he would have just cut right through the fabric. Was there a reason he didn’t want to damage the T-shirt? But he didn’t seem to mind if it got bloodstained... and the T-shirt definitely belonged to the victim. It was one he always slept in...
“If you… look at them right... these marks... do look like letters... sort of…” You had to twist the picture around a lot, though.
“V... C... I? No, M... another V... X? D... and that’s three l’s in a row... L? That looks like L… hmm, feels like I’m forcing it...”
This only worked if you were looking for it. It wasn’t like kanji or Hangul—alphabet letters were constructed of simple lines and curves, and any random scratch marks, whether with a pencil or knife, would look like something.
“Normally I’d like to see what the detectives in charge think, the people actually involved in the case... but I don’t have a badge at the moment, so that’s out of the question. Of course, L’s probably handling that side of things for me.”
Misora was starting to appreciate how much harder it was to work on your own, without the support of the organization. She had always felt out of place in the FBI, but she was just now realizing how much she had taken advantage of the resources it offered.
“I guess I should check the other rooms... seems sort of pointless. But if he wiped all the fingerprints in the house…” she murmured, and turned to leave the room.
But then it occurred to her that there was one place she hadn’t checked yet. Under the bed. Easy enough to overlook, and far more likely than under the carpet or behind the wallpaper—it seemed fairly
unlikely that the police had missed such an obvious blind spot, but it seemed worth crawling under there, just to be sure. There might be something new she could see from down there. For this reason, Misora crouched down next to the bed...
And a hand reached out from underneath it. “…?!”
Misora jumped backward instantly, forced down the surge of emotions this sudden turn of events stirred up, and put her fists up. She didn’t have a gun with her—not because she was suspended, but simply because she had never really gotten used to carrying one around. With no gun, she had no trigger to pull.
“What… no, who are you?” she roared, trying to sound intimidating. But the hand was joined by a second hand, as if her voice was just the wind blowing, and a body followed it. A man, crawling out from under the bed.
How long... had he been here...?
Was he under the bed this whole time? Had he heard her talking to L?
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