Misora put her hand to her mouth, thinking. Buying the potential victims’ cooperation sounded fine... she didn’t know who the patron was backing Ryuzaki, but she should be able to get that kind of funding herself if she asked L. Ryuzaki would become Blues-harp Babysplit, and she would become Blackberry Brown...
“And we shouldn’t call for police backup, right?”
“Yes. We might be able to protect the victim’s life, but the scale of the operation would be too large. The killer would be more likely to escape. And our deductions are not enough evidence to make the police take action, anyway. Our reading of the killer’s message is accurate at a ninety-nine percent chance, but however good it sounds, we have no proof. If they tell us it’s all rootless speculation, we’d be done for.”
“‘Rootless.”
“With nothing to support it.”
She was pretty sure there was a different word for that. But he had a point.
If she asked her boyfriend in the FBI, Raye Penber... no, she couldn’t do that. Misora was suspended and she’d told Ryuzaki she was a detective. Her actions of the past week could get her in hot water if the agency found out. Even if she was really working for L she couldn’t exactly admit that in public... “The killer is presumably working alone, but, Ryuzaki, when ii comes time to arrest him there will be a struggle.”
“Don’t worry. I can take him one on one. I may not look it, but am quite strong. And you’re trained in
Capoeira, right?” “Yeah, but...”
“Misora, can you use a gun?”
“Eh? No, I ca... can, but I don’t have one.”
“Then I shall prepare one. You should be armed. So far this was merely a detective war with the killer, but from here on our lives are on the line. You should be ready for anything, Misora,” Ryuzaki said, biting his thumbnail.
And so...
With any number of inconsistencies and anxieties, Naomi Misora spent the night in a hotel in West L.A. She called L from her hotel room and asked him for financial backing, and to check up on all the evidence they had uncovered. She wondered if L would suggest that lying in wait was too dangerous, and they should make the safety of the potential victims their first priority, wondered if he would oppose the strategy Ryuzaki had suggested, (part of her had hoped he would), but L seemed to be quite in favor of it. Misora asked him two or three times if she could really trust Ryuzaki, but he said again that there was no harm in letting him proceed. But of course, by the 22nd, everything would be resolved...
“Please, Naomi Misora,” L said. “Whatever you do, please catch the killer.” Whatever you do.
Whatever. “Understood.”
“Thank you. However, Misora, while it is true that we are unable to ask for help publicly from the police, I can supply some private backup. I plan to station a few individuals working directly for me in the area around the condominiums. They do not need any solid proof to activate, Of course, they will keep their distance, but...”
“Okay, sounds good.”
When her conversation with L was finished it was past midnight—it was already August 21st. She would have to spend the entirety of the 22nd in Pasadena
“Wait,” she murmured.
As cobwebs formed over her mind, she murmured, “Now... when did I tell Ryuzaki about the
Capoeira?”
She didn’t know.
And there was one other thing she didn’t know. Something she didn’t even know she didn’t know.
Something that she was never to know. No matter what she did, she had no way of knowing. That this killer, Beyond Birthday, could tell someone’s name and time of death just by looking at their face, that
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