If we must discuss why L so adamantly refused to reveal himself, we can explain it very simply: doing so was dangerous. Very dangerous. While the world leaders should make efforts to ensure the safety of all the finest minds, not only for detectives, the fact is that tile current societal systems do not allow for this, and L believed he had no choice but to protect his mind under his own power. By simple arithmetic, L's ability in 2002 was the equivalent of five ordinary investigative bureaus, and seven intelligence agencies (and by the time he faced off against Kira, those numbers had leapt upward several more notches). This is easy to think of as a reason to respect and admire someone, but let me say this as clearly as possible: that much ability in one human is extremely dangerous. Modern danger management techniques rely heavily on diffusing the risk, but his very existence was the exact opposite. In other words, if someone was planning to commit a crime, they could greatly increase their chances of getting away with it by simply killing L before they began. That was why L hid his identity.
Not because he was shy, or because he never left the house. To ensure his own safety. For a detective of L's ability, self-preservation and the preservation of world peace were one and the same, and it would not be correct to describe his actions as cowardly or self-centered. While I don't personally relish the thought of comparing them, if Kira had had the ability to kill someone by writing their name in a notebook only then he would hardly have publicized that fact for exactly the same reasons. The most intelligent people disguise the fact that they are intelligent. Wise men do not wear nametags. The more people talk about their own skills, the more desperate they are—their work should speak for itself.
So whenever L was working, he would usually have someone else as his public face—and in this particular case, the FBI agent Naomi Misora was filling that role. Misora understood this right from the very beginning. That she was L's shield. And just how much danger her direct link to L put her in...
Misora tried many times to figure out Ryuzaki's true nature, but no matter how optimistically she viewed the situation, she was never able to view it as anything better than, "He probably didn't hear much of the conversation," and that supposition never felt very secure. If Ryuzaki had noticed the connection between Misora and L, and he leaked that information in the right places, then she would be in grave danger before you could say... before you could even think of saying anything, and the thought of that made even Misora nervous. And given Ryuzaki's obvious deductive abilities.., a day after they had solved the message hidden in Believe Bridesmaid's bedroom, Misora had begun to wonder if her own deductions had not been guided by Ryuzaki's skillful lead. At the time, she had felt like it was all her doing. But thinking back on it, the page numbers, the laps around the book—she had only noticed it because Ryuzaki had laid the groundwork. Had there been any real reason for her to go through the book herself, reading out each word? She couldn't dismiss the idea that this had all been a performance to make Misora feel like she was taking part in solving the riddle, and that he had neatly allowed her to make the final breakthrough after carefully solving everything else for her. All this might be nothing but paranoia brought about by the pressure of having L backing her... but discovering the name of the second victim on Believe Bridesmaid's bookshelf was a big score for her investigation. She had checked afterward, and the second victim was the only person in the entire Greater Los Angeles area named Quarter Queen but this came as no relief.
August 16th.
Naomi Misora was downtown, on Third Avenue, visiting the scene of the second murder. She did not know her way around the neighborhood, so she had to puzzle over a map to find her way here. Without knowing when a fourth murder would occur, part of her Ii.id wanted to come straight here from Believe Bridesmaid's, but she had other things to check up on first, so much evidence to sift through, and given the problem of transportation, she had ended up waiting till the next day. It was now three days since the third murder—nine days, four days, nine days, and if the killer planned to kill after four days again, then the next murder would happen tomorrow, but she had no other choice. No way to prevent it from happening. So she did the only thing she could do. Search for evidence that would allow her to take on the approaching crisis.
According to L's investigation, a detective named Rue Ryuzaki had actually been hired by Believe Bridesmaid's parents—and not only them, but relatives of the second victim, Quarter Queen, and the third victim, Backyard Bottomslash, had asked Ryuzaki to investigate the matter as well. This was a little too good to be true, in Misora's opinion, but if L said so, she had to accept it. There was no room for doubt. But even L had not yet managed to dig out anything about Ryuzaki's background, so she had been asked to keep watching, to cooperate with Ryuzaki and pretend they were investigating the matter together.
Had L really reached no conclusions about Ryuzaki at all? Misora spent a few minutes pondering this question. Perhaps explaining it to her would simply be too dangerous... Misora never thought for a moment that L was giving her all the information he had. Ryuzaki might fall into that category—but this might also be baseless paranoia. Ryuzaki was certainly suspicious, but he had not done anything overtly evil, so it didn't go past that.
The thought of seeing him crawl around the crime scene on all fours again today was undeniably depressing (she'd bad nightmares about it. Misora normally took forever to wake up, but this particular dream sent her flying out of bed). And at that moment, on August 16th, at ten o'clock in the morning...
Naomi Misora was assaulted.
She was taking a shortcut through a deserted, dark alley when someone hit her from behind with a blackjack. Or, rather, failed to hit her—since she ducked in time, and avoided it. A blackjack is a light weapon—a very simple affair, consisting of nothing hut a little bag filled with sand. Its simplicity made it very easy to conceal, and it was an undeniably effective weapon. She heard it slicing through the air as it brushed past her hair. Misora had been in danger since the moment she agreed to be L's hands, eyes, and shield, so she was not terribly surprised, and reacted quickly. It managed to drive all thoughts of Ryuzaki out of her mind instantly, which was fine by her. She hit the asphalt with both hands, pushing down to power her legs upward twisting sideways upside down, sending her foot toward her assailant's chin. She missed. But no matter—the main goal of this movement had been to turn herself around and get a look at her assailant. There was only one, and he was wearing a mask. She was surprised at the lack of backup, but in addition to the blackjack, he was carrying a hefty club in his left hand, putting her at a distinct disadvantage. This was no ordinary thug. Like the day before, Misora did not have a gun. And, obviously, no badge or hand cuffs. Running would have been the most logical choice, but Misora did not have the kind of retiring personality that would allow her to run when attacked. Her nickname in the FBI was Misora Massacre, Clearly, there was a certain degree of malice behind the name, but it was not entirely without cause. She bounded upward, landing with her legs apart, her right hand in front of her face and her center of gravity low, facing her assailant and swaying slightly, ready to fight.
He hesitated for a moment when he saw her stance, but then swung at her—not the blackjack, but the club. Her upper body swayed, dodging it—and then she did a sort of cartwheel across the width of the narrow alley, aiming to slam her heel into her assailant's temple. He dodged again, but their fight was over. Misora had no intention of running, but her opponent did not seem to be as fiery. While Misora was getting to her feet, he spun around and ran away. Misora briefly considered chasing after him and took a couple of steps in that direction before abandoning the idea. She was pretty sure her assailant had been a man. She was pretty sure she could take him in a fight, but not in a footrace. She was not a strong runner. She didn't want to waste the energy.
She brushed her hair back into place, pulled out her cell phone, and called L. The phone rang, but nobody answered. The century's greatest detective was a busy man, and probably hard to reach outside of appointed times. Fortunately, she had not been injured, so the report could wait. Perhaps getting to the crime scene quickly was a better idea being attacked like this had only increased Misora's suspicions concerning Ryuzaki. There was no way of telling if her assailant had been someone involved in the case, or someone who had nothing to do with it but knew about her connection to L, but either way, based on the timing of the attack, the odds of Ryuzaki being involved were not terribly low.
Perhaps she should check into him herself, instead of leaving the investigation up to L... if only for self preservation. She considered calling Raye, and having him check it out secretly, but first Misora left the alley behind.
As expected, Naomi Misora had not come after him.
He left the alley and jumped into the sedan that he'd left on the main road with the engine running. He turned a few corners quickly and checked the back mirror then parked in the lot he had picked out in advance. The sedan was a stolen car and would not lead back to him, so he had planned to abandon it here. One eye on the security cameras, he left the parking lot on foot, leaving the mask, blackjack, and club behind in the car. He had shoved them all under the seat. Leaving no fingerprints.
He had never planned to do anything to Naomi Misora today, not there. He had just been making a pass at her, to test her ability. He had attacked from behind, but not intended to hurt her and certainly, he had no intention of killing her.
So there was no way she would die.
He had known she would dodge.
But even so, even with that in mind, that woman was impressive. Dodging his attack without even turning around, and moving instantly to an attack of her own—he could see why L was using her as his pawn. She had brains and guts as she must.
She had the right.
She was worthy of being his opponent.
The assailant cracked his neck.
And with his head still hanging at an odd angle, he walked on down the street.
Misora's attacker...
The man behind the Los Angeles BB Murder Cases, Beyond Birthday, walked on down the street grinning cruelly.
"Ah, Misora. You're late," Ryuzaki said without turning around, the moment she entered apartment 605
where Quarter Queen had lived. "Please try to be on time. Time is money, and therefore life." Sigh...
He was not down on all fours. She had come in just as he was inspecting the top shelf of a chest of drawers. But it was hard to think of this as nice timing. The drawer happened to be filled with the thirteen-year-old victim's underwear. Ryuzaki looked less like a detective investigating the scene than a pedophile stealing panties. Not the best way to start the day. She'd been planning to funnel the frustration from her fight in the alley into a fairly aggressive approach to Ryuzaki, but he'd already yanked the rug out from under her. If it was deliberate, she would have been impressed, but that seemed unlikely, It seemed much more likely that Ryuzaki actually did have a fetish for children's underwear.
Misora sighed again, looking around the room—the entire apartment was smaller than Believe Bridesmaid's bedroom. The standard of living gap alone made it hard to see any connection between the first and second victims.
"We're talking a single mother here, right? Who has now moved hack in with her parents? It must have been devastating..."
"Yes. These apartments were built for college students, intended to house only one, so a young girl and her mother living here attracted a fair amount of attention. I asked around a little this morning, and heard many interesting things. But most of them were already in the police report you showed me yesterday. The mother was out of town at the time of the murders, and the body was discovered by a college girl who lived next door. The mother first saw her daughter's body in the morgue." As she listened to Ryuzaki speak, Misora checked the walls for the holes where the Wara Ningyo had been nailed. Of the four walls, the front wall with the door in it—did not have a hole, but the other three did. Like in Believe Bridesmaid's bedroom, these holes indicated the location of the dolls.
"Something bothering you, Misora?"
"Yes... yesterday, we…" Misora said, emphasizing the plural, "... we decoded the message the killer left at the scene of the first murder, but... the Wara Ningyo and the locked room remain mysteries."
"Yes," Ryuzaki said, closing the door and dropping down onto all fours.
But unlike the first scene, two people had lived in this room, and there was quite a lot of furniture—the place was a mess. It looked rather difficult to crawl around in. Nevertheless, Ryuzaki persisted, and remained like that all the way to the other side of the room. Misora wished he would give up.
"But Misora, I don't think it's worth wasting much time on the locked room issue. This is not a mystery novel—realistically speaking, it's quite possible he simply used a spare key. There are no keys that can't be duplicated."
"True enough, but do you really think this killer would do something so prosaic? There was no real need to create a locked room in the first place. But he did so anyway. In which case, it might be a kind of puzzle..."
"Puzzle?"
"Or a game of some kind."
"Yes... yes, maybe..."
Misora looked back at the door she'd just come through. The design was different from the first murder scene (the difference between the front door of an apartment and the interior door of a house), but the construction and size were basically the same. A generic lock, simply made—very easy to break in when the house was empty by drilling through the door and turning the latch from the inside (known as a thumb turn lock) but obviously, there had been no holes in the door at any of the three scenes.
"What would you do, Ryuzaki? If you were trying to lock it from the outside?"
"Use a key."
"No, not like that... if you'd lost the key."
"Use a spare key."
"No, not like that... you don't have a spare key, either."
"Then I wouldn't lock it."
"…"
Not that he was wrong.
Misora reached out and shook the door.
"If this were a mystery novel... locked rooms are always created by a trick, like with a needle and thread, or... I mean, we call it a locked room, but these are just ordinary rooms, so they're never that secure. They aren't like Bridesmaid's bookshelves—they've got plenty of gaps and chinks around the frame. String could get under it easily... run a bit of string under the door, and tie it to the edge of the latch, and pull it..."
"Impossible. The gap isn't that big, and the angle would kill the force applied. You could try it out, but too much of the string would be pressed against the door. Before you could ever turn the latch, all the power you put into it would be eaten up pulling against the edge of the door. Pulling the door toward you."
"Yeah...but a lock this simple doesn't leave much room for a trick. The doors in detective novels usually have much more complicated ones."
"There are many ways to create a locked room. And we can't rule out the possibility that he had a key.
More important, Misora, is the question of why the killer made a locked room. He had no need to make one, but he did so anyway. If he made a puzzle, why did he do it?"
"As a game. For fun."
"Why?"
You could ask that about any of this.
Why send a crossword puzzle to the LAPD, why leave a message on the bookshelf... and most of all, why kill three people? If the killer had a clear motive, then what was it? Even if the killings were random, something must have caused it... L had said so. But they still had no idea what linked the victims together.
Misora leaned against the wall and took some photographs out of her bag.
Pictures of the second victim killed in this room—a young blonde girl, wearing glasses, lying on her face. Looking closely, her head had been dented in the shape of the weapon, and both her eyes had been poked out. The eyes had been crushed after death—like the cuts on Believe Bridesmaid's chest, this was mutilation of the corpse, with no relation to the cause of death. She had no idea what the killer had used to destroy the eyes, but trying to imagine the mental state of someone who could poke the eyes out of a cute little girl made Misora feel a little sick. Misora might be an FBI agent, but she was not prone to fits of righteousness—but there were some things that were simply unforgivable. What the killer had done to this second victim clearly fell into that category.
"Killing a child... how horrible."
"Killing an adult is also horrible, Misora. Killing children or adults—equally horrible," Ryuzaki said, unaffected, almost
Indifferent.
"Ryuzaki..."
"I've checked everything once," Ryuzaki said, standing up. He rubbed his hands on his jeans.
Apparently he was at least aware that crawling around on the floor would make his hands dirty. "But I didn't find any money."
"You were looking for money?" Like a thief
An extremely blatant one.
"No, just in case. One possibility is that the killer was after money, but in that case, the second victim is significantly more impoverished than the first and third victims. There was a chance they were hiding something, but apparently not. Let us take a break. Would you care for some coffee, Misora?"
"Oh... sure."
"One moment," Ryuzaki said, heading for the kitchen. Misora wondered if he had jam in the fridge again but decided that she didn't care. She abandoned that line of thought, and sat down at the table.
She had somehow missed her timing to tell Ryuzaki about being attacked. Oh well. She might as well avoid mentioning it, and see how he reacted. She had no proof her assailant had anything to do with Ryuzaki, but not telling him made it easier for her to catch him off guard.
"Here you are."
Ryuzaki came back from the kitchen, carrying a tray with two cups of coffee on it. He placed one in front of Misora and the other opposite her, then pulled out the chair and assumed the strange sitling position he had demonstrated the day before, with his knees pulled up against his chest. Ignoring the matter of manners, it looked extremely difficult to sit like that—or was it? Misora wondered, and took a sip of coffee.
"Augh!" she yelled, spitting it out. "Cough... hack... urrghhh…"
"Something wrong, Misora?" Ryuzaki asked, innocently sipping his cup. "Once something has entered your mouth, it should never be spit out like that. And those terrible moans do nothing for your image, either. You are quite beautiful, so you should try to present yourself accordingly."
"M-murderously sweet... poisonous!"
"Not poison. Sugar."
"…"
So you're the killer?
Misora looked down at the contents of her cup... which was less a liquid than a paste. Less like sugar dissolved in coffee than sugar moistened with coffee—a gooey, gelatinous mass glistening majestically in her cup. While her attention had been distracted by Ryuzaki's posture, she had allowed this substance to touch her lips...
"I feel like I drank dirt."
"But dirt is not this sweet."
"Sweet Dirt..."
That sounded like an avant-garde piece. The diabolic gritty feeling in her mouth would not go away.
Across from her, Ryuzaki was happily sipping away... lapping away. Apparently he had not made Misora's cup this way out of sheer spite, but this was, in his view, a perfectly normal amount of sugar.
"Whew... coffee always picks me up," Ryuzaki said, finishing his cup and what must have been at least two hundred grams of pure sugar. "Now then, to business." Misora would have liked to get up and go wash the sugar out of her mouth, but she tried to ignore the impulse. "Go ahead," she said.
"About the missing link."
"Have you figured something out?"
"It seems the killer was definitely not after money... but last night, after I left your company, I noticed something interesting. A connection between the victims that nobody seems to have picked up on."
"What?"
"Their initials, Misora. All three victims have rather unique initials. Believe Bridesmaid, Quarter Queen, Backyard Bottomslash. B.B., Q.Q., B.B. Both their first and last names begin with the same letter... what is it, Misora?"
"Nothing..."
Was that all? Her disappointment had clearly shown on her face and interrupted Ryuzaki's line of thought, but she couldn't even be bothered to try and cover. What a pointless waste of time. Misora had noticed that the moment she first saw the victim's names. It wasn't worth bringing up like this.
"Ryuzaki... do you know how many people there are with alliterative initials in the world? In Los Angeles? There's only twenty-six letters in the alphabet, which means by a very rough calculation about one in twenty-six people has a name like that. Not even worth calling a connection."
"Oh? And I thought I was on to something Ryuzaki said, dejected. It was hard to tell how much of his reaction was genuine.
He appeared to be sulking, a trait which, in him, was not at all cute.
An absolutely terrible way to present oneself.
"I mean, you yourself are Rue Ryuzaki—R. R."
"Oh! I hadn't noticed."
"This is pointless."
She should never have expected anything from him. All that nonsense about him leading her through the deductions yesterday had been nothing but paranoia.
R.R.?
"Misora."
"Eh? Oh, what?"
"Since my deductions have come to naught, do you have any good ideas?"
"No, not really. I'm in the same boat as you... can't think of any real course of action except looking for another message, like we did yesterday. I feel like I'm dancing on the killer's palms, which irritates the hell out of me, but..."
"Then let us dance. Playing your enemy's game until he relaxes and lets a hint drop is a perfectly good strategy. So, Misora, if there is a message here... then where?"
"Well, we can at least guess the contents. Presumably the message has the third victim's name, Backyard Bottomslash, or her address. The crossword puzzle led to the first case, the book pages led to the second case, so..."
"Yes, I agree."
"But where that message is hidden, I have no idea. If we can figure out some sort of pattern, that would help us catch him, but..."
Something that should he here, but wasn't.
Ryuzaki had described it that way.
Referring to the victim, and to the bookshelves.
Was there something like that here? Something that should be here, but wasn't? Something that should be here but isn't here was starting to sound like a linguistic Mobius strip.
"So," Ryuzaki said. "If whatever we find will simply point us to the third victim, then perhaps it would be more effective if we skipped this scene and went right to the third one. After all, our goal is to prevent the fourth murder as well as solve the case."
"Yeah."
She was the one who had pointed out the chances of a fourth murder... but Ryuzaki's reaction had suggested he had been well aware of this possibility, which was why she hesitated now.
"The third murder has already happened, and we can't prevent that, but there is a chance that we can stop the fourth. Rather than waste time looking for a message when we already know what it says, it would be far more constructive to look for a message leading us to the fourth victim."
"But that just feels so submissive ...like we're following his lead. I mean we might miss an important clue to his identity if we skip this room. Even if there isn't some clear evidence, we might get a feel ing or a hunch that will help us out later. I agree that preventing the fourth murder is important, hut if we focus on that too much, we'll lose the chance to get aggressive, to take control of the situation."
"Don't worry. I'm a top."
"A top?"
"An aggressive top," Ryuzaki said. "I have never once been submissive. One of the few things I can boast about. I have never even been submissive to a traffic signal." (Madi says: LOL YAOI WUT)
"You really should,"
"Never."
Adamant.
"Preventing the fourth murder should lead us directly to identifying and arresting the killer. This is what my clients want, more than anything. But I see your point as well, Misora. I'm already finished checking the room over, so while you are doing that, I would like to think about the third murder, Do you mind if I look at the file you showed me yesterday once more?"
"Work different angles? Fine by me..."
She'd never intended to cooperate with him anyway.
She took a binder out of her bag, checked to make sure it contained the file on the third murder, and handed it across the table to Ryuzaki.
"And... these are the crime scene photographs..."
"Thanks."
"But like I said, there haven't been any breakthroughs. The con tents are the same as yesterday."
"Yes, I know. But there were a few things I wanted to double check... but this is a horrible picture, isn't it?" Ryuzaki said, putting one of the photographs down on the table where Misora could see it. It was a picture of Backyard Bottomslash's body. Misora had witnessed many horrible things during her career at the FBI, but this picture was so grotesque it gave her chills every time she saw it. Compared with this picture, cuts on a chest or crushed eyeballs were nothing.
The body was lying on its back, and the left arm and right leg had been chopped off at the root.
There was blood everywhere, all over the crime scene.
"They found the right leg abandoned in the bathroom, but they still have no idea where the left arm is.
Obviously, the killer took it with him. But why?"
"That question again? But Ryuzaki, isn't that another example of something that should be there, but isn't? In this case, the victim's left arm."
"The killer needed to cut off the left arm... but he did not bring the right leg with him. He just tossed it into the bathroom. What does that mean?"
"Either way, we're going over there this afternoon... but I'd like to spend a few hours here first."
"That sounds fine, Oh, yeah, there was a photo album belonging to the victim in that cabinet, Misora.
Probably worth checking out. You might be able to find something about the victim's personality, or her friends..."
"Okay. I'll do that."
Ryuzaki turned his attention back to the file, and Misora stood up and made a beeline for the bathroom sink. She could no longer bear the grainy feeling in her mouth. She quickly gargled, but once was hardly enough, so she repeated the action two or three times.
She considered trying to contact L again. There had been no answer earlier, so... no, yesterday had been a house, but in a tiny apartment like this there was no getting away from Ryuzaki. Even if she called from the bathroom, he wouldn't even need to move over to the door to hear her. She would have to tell L about the attack eventually... or was that not something L would care about?
Misora looked up and saw her face in the mirror.
Naomi Misora.
This was her.
That much was clear.
Everyone knows the sensation of staring at a word for a long period of time until you start to wonder if it is really spelled correctly. In the same way, it was possible to doubt oneself, to wonder how long one could really be oneself. Was she still herself?
Which is why this was so important.
Why she stared at her reflection, confirming it again.
"But does L do the same?" she wondered suddenly. The century's greatest detective, someone who never showed himself in public, his identity unknown. How many people could say for sure that L was L? Was there anyone at all? Naomi Misora had no way of knowing, but she wondered if L, looking in a mirror, would even know who it was looking back at him.
"A mirror... a mirror?"
Hmm.
She almost had something there.
A mirror... right and left reversed in the reflection... reflected light... light reflecting off a smooth surface... glass, silver nitrate aqueous solution... silver? No, the material didn't matter, it was the quality that was important... that quality... the reflection of light... no, the reversal of right and left... in opposition?
"Opposition... the opposite... reversed!"
Misora bolted out of the bathroom, back to the table. Ryuzaki looked up from the file in surprise, his black-rimmed eyes opening wide.
"What's wrong?" he asked.
"The picture!"
"Hunh?"
"The photograph!"
Oh, you mean from the third crime scene?" Ryuzaki asked, placing the photograph on the table once more. The corpse, with the left arm and right leg severed. Misora pulled two other photographs out of her bag and placed them next to it. Crime scene photos of the first and second victims. Pictures of all the victims, showing the condition in which they were found.
"Notice anything, Ryuzaki?"
"What?"
"Anything about these photographs strike you as unnatural?"
"They're all dead?"
"Being dead is not unnatural."
"How philosophic."
"Be serious. Look—the bodies are in different positions. Believe Bridesmaid is on his back, Quarter Queen is on her front, and Backyard Bottomslash is on her hack. Back, front, back." And you see a pattern in this? Connecting it to the nine days, four days, nine days between the murders? Meaning that tomorrow the fourth victim will be found lying on her front?"
"No, not at all. I mean, that might be true, but... I was thinking of a different possibility. In other words, the very fact that Quarter Queen's corpse was left lying on her front is itself unnatural." Ryuzaki's reaction was not very satisfactory—at least, it didn't look that way Perhaps what Misora was trying to say wasn't getting across. She'd only just hit upon the idea and was talking quickly, fueled by excitement, without fully thinking it through, so that was understandable. "Let me think a minute," Misora said, sitting down in the chair next to him.
"Misora, when thinking, I recommend this posture."
"'this posture'?"
With your knees against your chest like that? He was recommending that?
"Seriously. It raises deductive ability by forty percent. You must try it."
"No, I... um... well, okay."
It wasn't like he wanted her to crawl, and it couldn't hurt to try. It might help her calm down a little from the high of inspiration.
She assumed the posture.
"…"
She regretted it a lot.
Even sadder was the fact that her ideas fell into place.
"Well, Misora? You mean Quarter Queen being on her front is a message from the killer? Pointing to the third victim..."
"No, not a message—this is the missing link, Ryuzaki. An extension of what you said about their initials..."
Two weird people sitting weirdly explaining weird bits of deduction was, Misora worried, a scene of overwhelming weirdosity. Nevertheless, she pointed to each of the pictures in turn, feeling that she had long since missed her chance to put her feet back on the floor. And this posture was a great deal easier to maintain than it looked.
"The victims' initials—B.B., Q.Q., B.B. Having both initials be the same isn't enough to be a missing link, but... both the first and the third victim have the same initials—B.B. If the second victim's initials were B.B. instead of Q.Q., then that would be a missing link, right?" By simple arithmetic, twenty-six times twenty-six equals one in 676 people. Moving from matching initials to only one letter narrowed the odds by that much... and given how rare names beginning with B were, the actual number was even lower.
"An interesting theory. But Misora, the second victim's name is Quarter Queen, and her initials are Q.Q. Are you implying that perhaps she was killed by mistake? That the killer was aiming for someone with the initials B.B. and accidentally killed a Q.Q. instead?"
"What are you talking about? The message at the first scene clearly said Quarter Queen. There's no mistake there."
"Oh, right. I forgot."
Had he really forgotten? The phrase seemed phony... but if she puzzled out every one of Ryuzaki's reactions, they'd never get anywhere.
"Nine days, four days, nine days. B.B., Q.Q., B.B. Back, front, back. It's certainly possible to see this as alternating, like you suggested, and I certainly considered the idea, but... the killer's exacting approach to things makes that seem unlikely. Doesn't suit his personality. People that anal usually behave more coherently..."
"But the murder methods—strangulation, blunt force trauma, stabbing... they don't show any kind of consistency."
"Except that they're consistently different. He's painstakingly trying something new every time. But alternating is different from varied. Which is why, Ryuzaki, when I was looking in the mirror a moment ago, it hit me—B and Q are shaped the same."
"B and Q? They're completely different!"
"As capital letters. But what about lower case?" Misora said, drawing the letters on the table top with her fingertip. b and q. Over and over. b and q. b and q. b and q.
"See? Exactly the same shape! Just the other way around!"
"So that's why she's face down?"
"Exactly," Naomi Misora nodded. 'A rough estimate of one in 676 people have the initials B.B., so if we take that as the missing link, then the killer must have had a lot of trouble finding victims. One was easy enough, but two, three, even four... even more so. He had no choice but to use a Q.Q. instead."
"I agree with everything except that last sentence. I don't believe it would be easier to find someone with the initials Q.Q. than it would be to find someone else with B.B. Even if it was, I think it's better to view the replacement as part of a puzzle designed for the investigation team. If they were all B.B.
right from the start, the missing link would have been too obvious. But this is only supposition. No more than a thirty percent possibility."
"Thirty percent..."
Annoyingly low.
If this were a test, she'd have failed.
"Why?"
"According to your theory, your conclusion is that all of that tells us why Quarter Queen was found lying face down. Face down led you to reverse theory and to b and q... but this progression doesn't work logically, Misora."
"Why not?"
"Lower case," Ryuzaki said. "Initials are always capital letters."
"Oh..."
Right.
Initials were never written lower case. They were upper case every time. Quarter Queen was always Q.Q., never q.q. Just as B.B. was never b.b.
"And I thought I was on to something," Misora said, burying her face in her knees.
So close... but even the assertion that a killer this anal would never alternate had been more than a little bit of a stretch. But even so, the connection between b and q seemed so meaningful...
"Come now, Misora. Don't be so disappointed."
Sigh...
"Frankly, I'm glad your theory was wrong. If Quarter Queen had been killed as a substitute... that's a horrible reason for a child in her teens to die."
"Yeah... if you put it that way..."
Mmm? Misora frowned, suddenly. A moment before, Ryuzaki has insisted there was no difference between killing a child and killing an adult, but the motive for it bothered him? A reason like this one...
did that have anything to do with anything? A child in her teens...
A child? A child?
A little child?
"…No, Ryuzaki."
"In this case—lower case is perfect," Misora said, her voice shaking.
Shaking with anger.
"That's why the killer chose a child."
A thirteen-year-old child.
Her initials.
Upper case, lower case.
"Because she was a child—lower case. And that's why she was face down—upside down!" It would be some time later before Naomi Misora realized that it was Ryuzaki who had enthusiastically pointed out the matching initials, who had pointed out that the victim was a child, and who had given her the sugary coffee that had sent her into the bathroom, where the mirror provided the inspiration she needed to figure things out.
But either way... the Los Angeles BB Murder Cases.
The missing link had been found, the critical detail that would, in later years, give the case its name.