“Get it now, old guy?” The boy smirked with satisfaction as if he could read Fukuzawa’s mind.
“Wh-why do you look so serious, Fukuzawa? Just get rid of the boy! I’ll raise your payment, so please don’t let him mess things up more than he already has. The fate of the company—”
“Kid, I understand why you doubt that the hit man over there is the culprit.” Fukuzawa had already regained his composure. His expression was like a waxed mirror without a single ripple or smudge. “But the victim’s clothes had the assassin’s fingerprints on them. All ten fingerprints are there in a position as if he pushed her. How would you explain that? You may be just a child, but I won’t allow you to call the secretary a murderer without sufficient evidence.”
“You’re joking, right? What is this? A test? Do I get points for every obvious detail I list in the end? Sigh. The city really is a mystery to me.”
“Let’s hear the evidence,” said Fukuzawa with a little force.
From his point of view, he was simply trying to express a little sincerity. However, the air in the room instantly grew tense, and it felt as if the temperature had dropped a few degrees. Any ordinary street thug would have cried and run off if they heard that voice.
“Oh… Yeah, okay.” The boy’s expression turned solemn, and he closed the window. “The first thing the secretary did was innocently tell the president to look outside in order to lure her to the front of the window. Once she let her guard down, he pushed her out.”
“Absurd…”
“This place is authorized personnel only, right?” continued the boy while ignoring the secretary seething with anger. “No matter how good of a hit man he might be, it would be impossible for him to reach the window without the president noticing. I mean, the desk has a clear view of the entrance. Plus, if the president fought back, the fingerprints wouldn’t be positioned as if he pushed her out the window but rather as if he threw her out. Otherwise, it would be unnatural. But there were ten fingerprints on her clothes, right? I heard you two talking while I waited outside the room. That means the president didn’t feel like she was in any danger until the moment she was pushed. In other words—”
“It was someone she knew.” Fukuzawa finished his sentence.
Just who was this boy? He was very observant. While he flouted every behavioral norm imaginable, he could process all the necessary information. But that alone…
“Your argument could be more convincing,” claimed Fukuzawa. “The president could’ve coincidentally been standing in front of the open window when the assassin sneaked in.”
“So she had it open on such a windy day?” The boy furrowed his brows. He had a point.
“Even then, that isn’t enough to prove it was someone she knew,” asserted Fukuzawa. “There’s something called common courtesy in the adult world. Mistakenly treating someone you just met as a criminal has consequences, even if you are joking.”
“Yeah, I get it! I get it! Enough.” The boy puffed out his cheeks. “Come on, who cares about manners? I’m telling the truth, and that’s all that should matter. Anyway, as I was saying… The reason why the hit man’s fingerprints are on her clothes is because the secretary forged the evidence. My father once told me that fingerprints were easy to falsify. Mr. Secretary, you used to be a public prosecutor or something, weren’t you? After all, ‘hook ’em and book ’em’ is actually popular jargon among police, surprisingly enough.”
Now that he mentioned it, the secretary did say something about being scouted by the president at his last job.
“Look at how easy it is: You make a mold of the hit man’s fingerprints with putty or something, then just put it in a plastic—”
“P-preposterous!” Spit flew out of his mouth as the secretary yelled in rage. “Even if I did know how to fake fingerprints, I couldn’t possibly take a mold of the hit man’s fingers without being killed! Fukuzawa, I’ve heard enough. Just get rid of this brat for me.”
But Fukuzawa didn’t say a word. He silently stared at the boy across from him, who then smiled back.
“You’re kinda sharp, old guy. Anyway, how the secretary got the mold of the hit man’s fingers was simple. He was the one who hired the assassin.”
The employer?
The one who hired the hit man wasn’t a third party interested in overturning the company? Then why is the hit man even here?
“The assassin won’t listen to anyone unless it’s an order from his employer. Plus, the employer would be able to get his fingerprints without even rubbing putty on his fingers. He could get the hit man to hold something made of a soft material and have him come to the building at a specified time.”
“Wait. This hit man isn’t your usual street thug. He’d need to be paid an obscene amount of money. Your average office worker wouldn’t be able to afford him.”
“Then don’t pay,” the boy said impatiently. “You could just tell the hit man to come here for a meeting or to discuss payment. Then all you need to do is get his fingerprints and make up some sort of excuse to get him to come on another day. After that, you can have your guards catch the hit man once he figures out it’s a trap and tries to escape. Then, bam. Saved yourself some money. You can’t beat free. Even cheaper than the boxed lunches they sell at the train station… Man, all this talk about food is making me hungry. Can I go grab something to eat?”
“I’ll treat you to whatever you want after this, but finish talking first,” Fukuzawa replied patiently.
“Tch. Fiiine. The reason he hired a high-level hit man was probably because they’re tight-lipped. I mean, as you can see, he isn’t telling us who hired him, and he probably still hasn’t even figured out he was set up.”
It made sense. The more qualified and expensive the hit man, the harder it would be to get him to sell out their employer. That was what made them so expensive, after all. On the job, Fukuzawa had crossed blades with a few assassins before, but the highly skilled ones never betrayed their employer. There were even some who, after being captured, committed suicide with poison that they had hidden on their person.
So the secretary used this to his advantage?
“But, hey, I’m sure he’ll talk once he knows he was tricked, so how about asking him yourself?”
Fukuzawa instinctively looked back. The hit man was on the other side of that closed door, still tied to that chair on the ground.
“L-lies! Everything you say is a lie!” screamed the secretary. “A murderer’s confession is inadmissible! It would be no better than a delusion at worst and an assumption at best! If you truly believe I was behind this, then prove it!”
“Ha-haaa! I was waiting for you to say that.” The boy’s lips mischievously curled. “People who ask for evidence during a murder are usually the ones who did it. Hmm… If you need proof, then how about these piles of documents? The reason you’ve been lining up these papers was so that nobody could come in here. Why, though? Because there’s something in here you don’t want them to find. After all, you still have evidence to forge even after killing her. I mean, it would be unnatural if there were fingerprints on the president’s clothes but nowhere else in the room, wouldn’t it? You’re doing this to buy time.”
“That’s your evidence?”
Fukuzawa placed a finger on his chin and began to ponder.
“That’s a lie! I refuse to let someone call me a criminal for simply arranging some papers! I was organizing these! Or are you saying you can prove that wasn’t what I was doing?”
“Sure am.” The boy nodded as if it were obvious. “When I first walked in, I switched out one of the documents with a guide on pinworm removal when you weren’t looking, but you didn’t even notice. What happened to your special methodology with how you had to line up the documents in a certain way?”
“Wha—?”
The secretary couldn’t even manage a single word; it got stuck in his throat. Fukuzawa’s gaze turned sharp. “Is he right?”
“He, uh…”
/> Fueled by rage, Fukuzawa quietly took a few steps toward the secretary.
“Th-this is a misunderstanding!” the secretary cried. “I—I just didn’t feel like bringing it up at the moment! I was planning on giving him a stern warning later for his prank, so I let it go for now, but—”
“See?” The boy ducked his head. “I didn’t switch any of the documents.”
The secretary instantly stopped breathing. His pale expression got even worse until he was as white as snow.
“What’s the meaning of this?” Fukuzawa took another step forward.
“Th-this is, um…”
“I didn’t know the late company president very well, but she really trusted you. Said you were a talented secretary, and she was so glad she hired you. Why did you do it?”
“N-no… I didn’t. She…” The secretary took a step back, utterly overwhelmed. “I was nothing more than a capable secretary to her. That was it. But for me…that wasn’t enough.”
All of a sudden, Fukuzawa heard a thud from the room next door. He turned around in surprise and violently threw the door open. The room was empty. The chair was on the floor, but its legs where the rope tied around were snapped off. All that was left was the chair itself—the assassin was gone.
“Get down!” Fukuzawa screamed out as he took another step farther into the room. Lowering his hips, he slid a leg across the floor, drawing an arc to turn his body before ramming his shoulder into the opened door. There was some resistance. The assassin, who was hiding behind the door, let out a suppressed groan. Fukuzawa then pulled the door while reaching for the hit man, but nobody was there. The hit man wasn’t on the floor, either. He had leaped into the air, almost touching the ceiling as he dodged Fukuzawa’s grasp. Still in midair, he kicked off the wall and got far away from the door before kicking off the ground and creating even more distance between them. With the sack still on his head and his arms tied behind his back, the assassin lowered his stance as if he were a wild animal. All he could use freely were his legs, yet he was able to evade Fukuzawa’s preemptive strike with no sight or hands. Fukuzawa unconsciously clenched his teeth.
“I don’t want to fight you,” said the assassin through the sack on his head. His voice was muffled; it was high for a man’s voice but low for a woman’s, and it projected well.
A boy.
Fukuzawa didn’t reply. Hardly even leaning forward, he kicked off the floor and closed the distance with a technique known as shukuchi—a bit of footwork that used the martial artist’s body weight to instantly bring them into range with their opponent. From an outsider’s perspective, though, it would probably have appeared as if Fukuzawa disappeared and teleported in front of his opponent.
After covering several yards in the blink of an eye, Fukuzawa reached around and grabbed the back of his opponent’s collar, but the assassin didn’t even try to resist. Instead of fighting it, he jumped backward with it, pulling Fukuzawa and himself near the wall. By the wall was a desk with a fountain pen, a notepad…and the assassin’s pistol. While being pushed, he reached back for his gun. That was his plan all along. However, it would be impossible for him to use it properly with his hands tied behind his back, Fukuzawa determined. He kept hold of the assassin’s collar and decided to slam him against the wall. The desk was knocked over, sending stationery all over the room. With his opponent against the wall, Fukuzawa pressed his elbow against the assassin’s chest, holding him in place like a thumbtack. The assassin’s hand holding the gun creaked and cracked as it was smashed between his back and the wall. There was almost nothing he could do with the pistol in this position.
“Drop the gun,” demanded Fukuzawa. “You may be my business rival, but you’re only guilty of trespassing as of now. You’d get off easy.”
“I don’t need forgiveness.” The hit man’s voice was close to a murmur, since his lungs were being crushed. “There is no forgiveness in this world. There is only retaliation—revenge against those who betray you.”
The assassin then lifted his feet off the ground. Even Fukuzawa wouldn’t be able to support the young man’s weight with only one arm. The assassin’s back slid against the wall to the floor before he suddenly twisted his body around completely, hips-first. He immediately fired his gun from behind his back. There were two shots.
“Guh…”
Fukuzawa turned around. Two bloody holes were carved in the secretary’s chest in the next room over. Blood gushed out of the wounds, dyeing his chest crimson. The assassin had shot the secretary—with his hands tied behind his back.
The secretary looked at Fukuzawa one last time, his expression twisted in agony, before drawing his last breath and collapsing. The hit man’s shots were unbelievably accurate. Despite not being able to see and having his hands tied, he was able to precisely hit his target. To top it all off, he paid no attention to Fukuzawa in spite of the fact that they were in the middle of battle.
“There is only retaliation—revenge against those who betray you.”
Fukuzawa faced the assassin, then slammed him against the floor. He kicked the gun into the corner of the room.
“You bastard…!”
He ripped off the sack covering the assassin’s face. He was young, with short hair that had a reddish tinge to it. The boy’s dark-brown eyes were frighteningly vacant, void of even a fragment of emotion. The young assassin didn’t say a word; he stared back at Fukuzawa.
Fukuzawa suddenly recalled a rumor he had heard about a young redheaded hit man who wielded two pistols and coldly killed his targets while never showing any emotion. His skill with a gun was supernatural, and he could fire from any position and still not miss. It was as if he could see the future. He was a living nightmare for people like Fukuzawa whose job was to protect others.
That young assassin’s name was something like…Oda.
Fukuzawa grabbed the assassin’s collar, then wrapped his other arm around the boy’s neck and put him in a rear naked choke, restricting the blood flow to his brain via the carotid arteries. If this kid was that assassin, then leaving him conscious in this room was no different from letting a cat play on the control panel to a nuclear bomb. The boy looked back at Fukuzawa with lifeless eyes—not the way one would expect a boy to look at the person choking them unconscious. Before long, the assassin quickly passed out without even showing any signs of resistance. He probably wasn’t interested in anything other than shooting the secretary. Only after making sure the assassin was unconscious could Fukuzawa finally let out a deep breath.
“So that’s the hit man?”
Fukuzawa turned around toward the voice coming from the other room. “Call an ambulance. And the police,” he ordered.
“Wouldn’t the police be enough? I mean, the secretary’s already dead. More importantly, I’m out of a job now, so could you help me out?”
Fukuzawa’s head was spinning. What was wrong with this kid? What just happened?
“Call an ambulance first!” Fukuzawa stood up and began to walk away.
“Hey, don’t just leave me here. What happened to taking me out to eat? You said it like I could go wherever I wanted and eat whatever as much as I wanted. That’s what you meant, right? You meant we could talk about my situation while we eat, right? Right?”
Fukuzawa somehow managed to keep his legs from giving out from underneath him.
“You—”
The young man with cropped hair beamed, radiating innocence and mirth.
“The name’s Ranpo Edogawa. Don’t you forget it!”
Fukuzawa felt as if he were watching a nightmare play out before his eyes. The boy, who introduced himself as Ranpo Edogawa, was eating red bean porridge on his dime. And it wasn’t just one or two bowls, either.
They’d stopped at an old-fashioned café relatively close to where the murder took place. There were a few other customers present, and they kept glancing in Fukuzawa and Ranpo’s direction. Fukuzawa had to fight against the impulse to go around the shop explaining that thi
s kid just followed him here for some reason. Ranpo had already finished his eighth bowl and was currently digging into his ninth. Fukuzawa was sitting in suspense, but not because he was worried about how much money he had left. He had enough. The problem was—
“Hey!” Fukuzawa just couldn’t hold it in any longer. “Why aren’t you eating the mochi?”
—in each finished bowl of Ranpo’s porridge sat several white mochi, entirely untouched. He was eating only the red beans.
“Because they’re not sweet.”
Not sweet? It’s red bean porridge. The stuff is more mochi than red bean.
If he were simply looking for a sugar rush, then he could have gotten sweet bean jelly, mashed sweet potatoes, or even a sweet bun. “Hear that? Those are the wails of the mochi you left behind” is what Fukuzawa wanted to say, but he held his tongue. There was nothing more meaningless than wagging one’s finger at another’s food preferences. It was hard to watch, but it wasn’t as if Ranpo were committing any crimes. He didn’t want things to get worse by saying anything, either. Just imagining Ranpo peeling off the bread of the sweet bun and eating only the red bean paste inside made him shudder. If Fukuzawa criticized him for being wasteful, the boy would call him a cranky old guy, he was sure.
When the police finally arrived at the crime scene, Fukuzawa and Ranpo explained the situation. It was a rather complicated statement, and having no interest in talking, Ranpo tried to casually leave. Nevertheless, Fukuzawa somehow convinced him to stay and explain what happened in the president’s office. Fukuzawa and Ranpo would have been put in a bizarre position if they made one wrong move, but they ended up being let go almost immediately after telling their side of the story. One of the officers happened to know of Fukuzawa due to his being a well-known martial artist, which fortunately helped them receive the police officers’ complete trust. One condition was that they would still have to come to the station to tell their story again, though.
The Untold Origins of the Detective Agency Page 8
